Latest Updates in Electronics News: Trends, Innovations, and More

Select circuit-protection devices with free online tool

Electronics News Updates / By Ibrar Ayyub

The free ESD Suppression Selection Tool, from Littelfuse captures the environment where a circuit-protection device resides, and then runs a software simulation of the device. “This tool doesn’t evaluate our part as a standalone device because the part never operates as a standalone device,” said Chad Marak, director of semiconductor business development for Littelfuse. “It […]

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Building an ISP Shield for Arduino

Electronics News Updates / By Ibrar Ayyub

This Instructable is for the build instructions for our new AVR ISP Shield Kit for Arduino. Its development owes a great deal to Instructables and our own community (particularly Nick!) and I hope to explain some of that along the way. Some astute Instructablites have asked. What does this do? Well essentially this shield can

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SSD1306 OLEDs – DMA Library for Arduino Due

Electronics News Updates / By Ibrar Ayyub

So we’re always cooking up hot new hardware in the Grav Corp labs. Recently, we’ve been working on a project using a 128×64 OLED screen with the SSD1306 controller. Adafruit is a good source of these displays, with an excellent library written by Limor Fried. The Adafruit_SSD1306 library makes it simple to use these displays with

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Introducing ESPToy 1.2 (with Lua Firmware)

Electronics News Updates / By Ibrar Ayyub

A little while back I released the very first version of ESPToy — a ESP8266 Development Board with a few useful on-board components like color LED, button, and temperature sensor. It has a built-in ATmega644 microcontroller, and pin headers for plugging in a ESP-01 through-hole WiFI module. Shortly after that, I discovered the Lua firmware

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ESP8266This 5 Microcontroller with Wi Fi is now Arduino Compatible

ESP8266: Arduino compatible $5 MCU with WiFi

Electronics News Updates / By Ibrar Ayyub

This is the 1st part of a series of 3 posts on the new ESP8266 microcontroller I only talk about a bare handful of new boards because most of them don’t pass my test: whether they’ll let me do something today that I couldn’t do yesterday. But every once in a while a new board, or a chip, comes along that

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One wire brings power & data to LCD module

Electronics News Updates / By Ibrar Ayyub

Embedded systems frequently use HD44780-type LCD displays as it is considered the most popular alphanumeric display controller. The interface comprises at least 14 pins: eight for data, three for control (EN, WR, RS), two for power supply (Vdd, Vss), and one for contrast (Vre). Configured in 8-bit mode, it requires at least 10 I/O lines

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Battery Recharging… One Lump or Two?

Electronics News Updates / By Ibrar Ayyub

BLACKSBURG, Va., Jan. 22, 2014 – A Virginia Tech research team has developed a battery that runs on sugar and has an unmatched energy density, a development that could replace conventional batteries with ones that are cheaper, refillable, and biodegradable. The findings from Y.H. Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the

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Build An Open Astronomy Learning Tool With Arduino

Electronics News Updates / By Ibrar Ayyub

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING PROJECT USES LASERS. PLEASE CHECK YOUR LOCAL AREA RULES ABOUT LASER USAGE. PLEASE BE CAREFUL AS HIGH POWERED LASERS CAN ALSO DAMAGE YOUR EYES. I CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY CONSEQUENCES OF USE. Given the opportunity to use one of the Intel Galileo boards, we wanted to build something that would

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Latching power switch uses momentary pushbutton

Electronics News Updates / By Ibrar Ayyub

Low-current, momentary action pushbutton switches, such as PCB-mount ‘tactile’ types, are cheap, and available in an abundance of different styles. Latching types, on the other hand, are often larger, more expensive, and available only in a relatively limited range of styles. This can be a problem if you need a small, inexpensive switch for latching

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ARACHNIO – Arduino Variant with WiFi

Electronics News Updates / By Ibrar Ayyub

About this project The Arachnio is the first Arduino variant with an integrated ESP8266. Arachnio hardware and software is fully Arduino-compatible and open source. This makes it easy to get your Arachnio up and running. Easy-to-use libraries make joining an existing WiFi access point or creating your own local access point quick and simple. The day that the first Arachnio leaves

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