Electronics Design

Capacitor distortion

A resistor is a resistor, a coil is a plain ol’ inductance, and a capacitor is a capacitor – or so you thought. Alas, life isn’t quite so trivial… There are non-ideal properties of real components. Capacitors have non-idealities that you should know about when designing electronics circuits. If you are building high frequency circuits

Soldering gun tech and hacks

A soldering gun is an approximately pistol-shaped, electrically powered tool for soldering metals using tin-based solder to achieve a strong mechanical bond with good electrical contact. The tool has a trigger-style switch so it can be easily operated with one hand. Soldering guns are often used where more heat is needed than from the lower-power

Induction heater wireless LED

Inductive cooker powers a LED wirelessly. The kettle needs to be here to keep the inductive stove to be turned on (it will turn off when no big metal object is detected on heating area). This LED circuit worked for me for a short test, but there is no guarantee that it will work for

Qi Charger LED Flasher

Here is one experiment to power two LEDs using Qi standard smart phone charger. The two LEDs are wired to opposite directions in parallel to the output wires of 0.17 mH coil. The coil has around 80 turns (5 layers and about 16 turns each) Here is LED active I actually built two circuits with

Oral B toothbrush charger

Wireless charging for toothbrushes offers a convenient and cable-free solution. Wireless charging eliminates the need for physical connectors or USB cables. Toothbrushes are commonly used in wet environments (bathrooms), and wireless charging systems for toothbrushes can be designed to be water-resistant. It’s a well-known fact that electronics and water do not go together. Most electric

AC power frequencies

There are two widely used mains power frequencies for alternating current: 50 Hz and 60 Hz. Unless specified by the manufacturer to operate on both 50 and 60 Hz, appliances may not operate efficiently or even safely if used on anything other than the intended frequency. But there are also other frequencies used for power. But

TTL logic is 60 years old

Transistor–transistor logic (TTL) is 60 years old this year based on the following article (Wikipedia claims this happened already in 2023). TTL became the foundation of computers and other digital electronics. TTL integrated circuits (ICs) were widely used in applications such as computers, industrial controls, test equipment and instrumentation, consumer electronics, and synthesizers. The 7400