Drone informs us that the TI 2012 Audio Guide is now available. It’s a comprehesive product selection document, covering all-digital Audio IC components as well as digital and analog Audio IC solutions from TI. Download your copy of this 57-page … Read more
Manuel Garbe and Drone both wrote in to draw our attention to this new “Lightning Detector” chip from Austriamicrosystems. According to the manufacturer’s press release, “[t]he AS3935 is a programmable Lightning Sensor IC that detects the presence and approach of … Read more
Ante Vukorepa draws our attention to this video of Claude Paillard, a French radio amateur (F2FO), making his own tubes (also known as thermionic valves) from scratch. “The video depicts the whole process, from winding the filament through making the … Read more
From the comments on our earlier Akihibara Electric Town tour post: Tokyo Hackerspace has a video tour of most shops. Some have a website, some don’t and if they have, it’s in Japanese. But here is a spoiler Thanks Tayken! … Read more
Tronixstuff has posted a detailed tutorial on using Arduino and TM1640 LED Display Modules. The Arduino library included allows you to display numeric and certain alphabet characters on the display using the TM1640.
Here’s a novel application. Supecapacitor has developed a circuit simulation project using Arduino-Processing. As he describes it: “SuperScope is a circuit simulator app for representing and calculating analog circuits. What’s so cool about SuperScope is the ability to actually import … Read more
Ben Eishen sent in this link. He says, “I have been thinking about building an ESR meter, and this one looks like a winner.” The design is based on the ATMega88 and according to the designer, Dr. Le Hung, “The … Read more
We are constantly developing prototypes, so we end up with a large pile of unused components. When we moved to a new location we realized some components sat untouched since the previous move. A while ago we read about the … Read more
Jameco Electronics presents a challenge to correctly identify power connectors as male or female. While most connector genders are determined by common characteristics and become set in terminology, this is apparently not the case for barrel type power connectors. Jameco … Read more
Brent let us know he has a few extra AVR Component Tester PCBs he’d like to giveaway. His project is based on the AVR Transistor Tester which identifies electronic components like transistors and FETs, determines the pinout, and measures basic … Read more
Ian Griffiths writes to inform us of this Op Amp Selection Guide available from Analog Devices. This 58-page PDF offers a complete overview of their product offerings. As Ian G. points out, “it has 3 pages devoted to different terms … Read more
For those of you who like the 8051 chip, we notice that Microchip has 8051 compatible MCUs available in 40-pin PDIP, part number SST89E516RD-40-C-PIE, available as samples. According to the datasheet: The SST89E516RDx and SST89V516RDx are members of the FlashFlex … Read more
Squonk informs us of some interesting papers (PDFs) on noise suppression techniques and EMI suppression filters available from muRata. The same page also contains some information on the EMI regulations in different countries. Via the contact form.
The folks over at MAKE have a pulse sensor which attaches to your fingertip or earlobe and measures minute changes in light from expansion of the capillary blood vessels to sense your heartbeat. Technical information is available here, including design … Read more
TI has introduced the LM5017 buck regulator. The LM5017 is a 100 V, 600 mA synchronous step-down regulator with integrated high side and low side MOSFETs. The constant-on-time (COT) control scheme employed in the LM5017 requires no loop compensation, provides … Read more
Voidptr started a thread about the latest electronics gizmo you acquired. Post your latest components, tools, or anything else electronics-related you bought or salvaged recently.
Here’s a brief video from the recently concluded 28C3 hacker conference hosted by Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, Germany. Jonathan Foote of rotormind.com covers some ways to drive high power LEDs without burning them up, including the latest technology current … Read more
David has written this short article on RGB LED strips and their different controllers. He covers addressable RGB LED strips and the HL1606, WS2801 and others controllers along with their control libraries. Via the contact form.
Knowing of our interest in programmable logic, Mike writes to inform us of a PLD by Silego: Silego programmable mixed-signal arrays are a combination of a very small programmable logic device (10 LUTs) plus some common functional blocks (flops, SPI, … Read more
We’ve been researching various component testers, and BrentBXR tipped us about this high-resolution capacitor meter. It’s accuracy is claimed to be around 0.2%, which is much lower than typical capacitor tolerances. Internal comparators in a PIC16F628 create an oscillator with … Read more
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