Author Archives: Ian

Partlist Wednesday: Voltage regulators

Every Wednesday we highlight a component from the updated partlist. This week: regulators. This week’s part: voltage regulators. We try to use the cheap 150mA voltage regulators in SOT-23 package whenever possible. These are cheap (from 25 cents in 1s) and super resilient to shorts, over temperature, and over load. 150mA is enough for the […]

Giveaway: Touchstone Semi TS-9001 demo board

Tomorrow we’ll give away two TS-9001 analog comparator+reference evaluation boards from Touchstone Semi.  Leave a comment on yesterday’s post if you’d like one. You can also get a sample directly from Touchstone: We will send free evaluation boards to the next 10 people that request them.  Just go to touchstonesemi.com/freesamples and ask for a TS9001 […]

Do it yourself heart monitor

victzh posted picture of his DIY ECG using an Xprotolab mini-scope/logic analyzer in the project log forum. Some time ago I bought an excellent toy – Xprotolab mini-scope/logic analyzer by Gabriel Anzziani. I touched it signal legs, and immediately saw that it picks up 60Hz through my body. I looked around and found couple of simple and inexpensive ECG […]

Free PCB coupon to RT #8 & #20 @dangerousproto

Every Tuesday we give away some extra PCBs via Twitter. This post was announced on twitter. The 8th and 20th person who retweet it get free PCBs. We changed the approach this week due to auto-retweeters grabbing boards first. Thanks for the heads-up on auto-retweeters JT! Love it, hate it? Let us know in the […]

TS-9001 analog comparator+reference evaluation boards give away

Touchstone semi sent us two TS-9001 analog comparator+reference evaluation boards to give away. Leave a comment on this post if you want one, and we’ll give them away on Thursday. Mention how you might use this part for bonus points. The demo board contains two TS9001s – the push-pull TS9001-1 and the open-drain TS9001-2 – […]

Visualizing TV dialog using closed caption data

nootropic writes:  Guys, I did some pretty cool stuff with visualization of the dialog spoken in TV broadcasts. I accomplished this by decoding the closed caption stream (data embedded in NTSC broadcasts) and displaying it with a Processing program. Check it out…! One of the coolest things you can do with the nootropic design Video […]

A tale of two op-amps: A Hitch-Hikers guide to op-amp specs

A few weeks ago we covered the Touchstone Semi TS1001 ultra low-power and low-voltage op-amp. Ultrasounder commented: Looking at the datasheet, the key [specs] reveal a very lousy, CMOS input-output opamp which is not speced for anything beyond audio. The GBW is 4KHz which means that the max frequency this thing can reliably amplify without […]

Read the AK8975 magnetometer with a Bus Pirate

Reading the AK8975 magnetometer with the Bus Pirate: I managed to mess up the ATAVRSBIN1 I got from Atmel during a [quadracopter crash]. After the crash I noticed it didn’t respond any more so I hooked it to my Bus-Pirate… Get your own handy Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our […]

Bus Pirate: TMP102 I2C temperature sensor

Anthony interfaced the TMP102 I2C temperature sensor with the Bus Pirate: This is a tiny I²C sensor which provides a great resolution (12 bits), accuracy (0.5° C), and nice features including programmable high/low alerting temperatures and low power consumption. The ADDR/A0 pin allows for configuring the slave address to allow up to 4 devices on […]

5-channel power-supply manager and intelligent fan control

rsdio tipped us to an app note on power-supply sequencers and voltage trackers: here’s something for cloudform511’s Open Source Laptop, assuming it will need a fan The MAX34441, PMBus 5-Channel Power-Supply Manager and Intelligent Fan Controller Power supply/thermal manager provides unparalleled “black box” failure logging and energy efficient fan control Provides predictable operation of up […]