Once the purview of strictly military operations, GPS has become a regular part of modern living and in relatively short time! Who wouldn’t want want to know when and where they are anywhere on the planet? It’s a science fiction dream brought into reality, one now so woven into our lives it seems almost trivial. …
DipTrace is a sophisticated schematic and PCB layout software. I had it installed on my computer for over a year but have never really used it. Since I needed a super simple PCB for some 78XX / 79XX type linear regulators, I decided to use this opportunity for my first steps with DipTrace. DipTrace offers …
Reading the temperature of your environment is pretty easy right? A quick search suggests the utterly ubiquitous DHT11, which speaks a well documented protocol and has libraries for every conceivable microcontroller and platform. Plug that into your Arduino and boom, temperature (and humidity!) readings. But the simple solution doesn’t hit every need, sometimes things need …
I have a $500 Rigol DP832 programmable triple-output power supply sitting on my bench, yet I built a 5V regulator to sit atop a 9V battery for some reason. Perhaps it’s more portable, or cheap enough to toss in with the rest of the project it is powering, or maybe the bench power supply is …
The 555 timer was introduced over 40 years ago. Due to its relative simplicity, ease of use and low cost it has been used in literally thousands of applications and is still widely available. Here we describe how to configure a standard 555 IC to perform two of its most common functions – as a …
If you have a load with a variable or poorly specified resistance and want to regulate the power applied to it (a heater for example), merely controlling the voltage or current will not work, as in both cases the power P = I2R = V2/R depends on R. Instead, let us generate pulses with constant …
In numerous RF synthesizer chips lies an inverter with input and output pins for making a reference crystal oscillator clock. I built some discrete chip inverter xtal oscillators with 74HC series logic gates to better examine them. You’ll quickly recognize the oft-used Pierce oscillator topology with 1 trimmer capacitor to tweak the fundamental frequency which …
Reverse engineering the popular 555 timer chip (CMOS version) This article explains how the LMC555 timer chip works, from the tiny transistors and resistors on the silicon chip, to the functional units such as comparators and current mirrors that make it work. The popular 555 timer integrated circuit is said to be the world’s best-selling …
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Use MKR1000 to show the Santa location in real-time on a colorful world map made of neopixels. Things used in this project Hardware components Arduino MKR1000 × 1 Raspberry Pi 3 Model B × 1 FR-1 Printed Circuit Board Blanks × 2 Translucent Colored Cast Acrylic (Sign Lighting White 40%) × 1 Neopixel WS2812B × …
When I was working on the capacitors section for the next version of Common Parts Library, I realized that it would be helpful to explain why one might pick one capacitor type over another. This information is important because there are a lot of factors (temperature characteristics, package, etc.) which might make a type of …
