Grounding, or connecting some part of an electrical circuit to ground ensures safety for personnel and it usually improves circuit operation. Unfortunately, a safe environment and a robust ground system often do not happen simultaneously. It takes planning based on systematically understanding how electricity behaves in various types of circuits. Preventing electrical shocks and electrical →
Flexible printed circuits are useful when the size and shape of your invention is integral to its overall design. Very many consumer electronics gadgets have them inside: in mobile phones, cameras, etc. Tips for Building a Flex Circuit article tells that because of the unique characteristics that set them apart, an electronics engineer must consider →
Hackaday article Hand placing flash die to make USB drives tells how boards inside USB drives populated. The article points to Where USB Memory Sticks are Born article that tells that once the bare die FLASH chips are screened for functionality, they are placed by hand onto a PCB (using some sort of tool made →
The markings on SMD components have been always hard to read. Besides the fact that the numbers and letters in them are very small, the number coding used on them is different than what is used on traditional though-hole components (the reason is that there would not be enough space to print any long codes →
10 Ways to Destroy an Arduino article tells how you can accidentally destroy Arduino board. Use a sledgehammer, fire a bullet at it, throw it into a pool….that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re going to show you how to electrically destroy your Arduino: Method #1: Shorting I/O Pins to Ground Method #2: Shorting I/O →
I wrote few years ago blog article Unshielded RCA cable is bad design. I just received yesterday a comment on it: “It’s not always that simple. There are equipment combinations which REQUIRE twisted pair RCA. Here’s explanation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOagVDZLQnA” So I watched this Truth about RCA signal cables video mentioned on this comment: The video was →
HackEDA is an interesting looking new on-line electronics design tool. The premise is simple: most electronic projects are just electronic Lego: You connect your microcontroller to a sensor, add in a battery, throw in a few caps and resistors for good measure, and hopefully everything will work. HackEDA takes all those basic building blocks and →
Wireless power has become a hot topic as wireless charging of mobile devices is get getting some popularity. Wireless charging isn’t something new; the technology exists since 1981 and Nikola Tesla has made first wireless power experiments over 100 years ago. Wireless charging for Qi technology is becoming the industry standard on smartphones (pushed by →
In my posting War on DIY Electronics I already told that that the trend is that electronics is heading to be less and less hackable. Wired has an opinion article Forget the Cellphone Fight — We Should Be Allowed to Unlock Everything We Own that has many good points that I can agree on. USA →
What did the iPhone look like before it looked like an iPhone? Apple’s popular product looked radically different in the early stages of development (like many other high tech gadgets). Image of the Day: iPhone prototype from 2005 article gives you view of the early iPhone prototypes. Check out the article for interesting photos. That →