Happy birthday, Transistor article tells that the first working version of transistor, the ubiquitous building block of all electronic circuits, was powered up 65 years ago today. The device is jointly credited to William Shockley (1910-1989), John Bardeen (1908-1991) and Walter Brattain (1902-1987), and it was Bardeen and Brattain who operated the first working point-contact →
phatIO a different way of interfacing a computer with the world that you might be used to. I first saw phatIO uses file system to control external hardware article at Hackaday.com that mentioned phatIO. phatIO is an USB I/O device that uses a mass storage file system for control. Using mass storage for I/O controlling →
Netduino is an interesting dev board built around the .NET Micro framework with the goal of being compatible with Arduino shields. Netduino is an open source hardware platform that can run .NET Micro Framework 4.2 code. The Netduino is a dev board built around the .NET Micro framework with the goal of being compatible with →
The Open 7400 Logic Competition has brought awareness to open hardware and software, and fosters understanding of the building blocks of modern integrated circuits. What can you build with basic logic chips? 7400 Logic Competition winners are announced According to competition results page all the entries were amazing! There are quite a few of them. →
How Long Will My Battery Last? Standardized benchmarking methodology compares microcontroller power consumption in battery-powered applications →
Understand How & Why a Dev Kit Should Be Your Design’s Starting Point article tells that many electronics designs start with a development kit. That’s a very good point to start. The processor vendors usually offer them at very reasonable prices, or free in many cases. I think that another good starting point are many →
Is plain old FR-4 PCB material suitable for use in RF designs? Many say no, fewer say yes – who’s right? What PCB material do I need to use for RF? article tries to answer this question. It says that FR-4 can be suitable for many RF designs. This is not to say that FR-4 →
Board-level designers often have concerns about the proper way to handle grounding for integrated circuits (ICs) which have separate analog and digital grounds. Should the two be completely separate and never touch? Should they connect at a single point with cuts in the ground plane to enforce this single point or “Mecca” ground? How can →
The microprocessor world seems to be going in ARM direction. And so seems to be microcontrollers. Cheap ARM based 32-bit micro-controllers are taking their place and trying to replace less powerful 8- and 16-bit micro-controllers. I wrote earlier that Arduino Goes ARM. It took quite bit of time for Arduino to take that step and →
In Internet there seems to be many plans for DIY logic analyzers: Open source logic analyzer OpenBench Logic Sniffer Openbench Logic Sniffer SUMP FPGA Based Logic Analyzer FLASH – PLAICE: Programmer, Logic Analyzer and In-Circuit Emulator Project A logic analyzer using the PC’s parallel port A logic analyzer using the PC’s parallel port MiniLA – →