Archive for June 2016

ESP8285 WiFi chip

Expressif has released a new WiFi chip. It is not that interesting ESP32 that I have written about earlier, and should be available soon. The new ESP8285 went into mass production in March. Hackaday article describes it as ESP8266-Killer, but I I think that this kind of headline is clickbaiting. What could possible make it

Finding faults in coaxial cables

Coaxial cables are essential transmission lines in many RF/microwave applications. Coaxial cables are usually reliable, but sometimes coaxial cables can develop unseen faults that may be anywhere in their length. Finding those faults can often be challenging, typically requiring the use of time-domain reflectometry (TDR) which operates much like a radar system. Analysis of the reflected

WS2812 addressable LEDs test

RGB LEDs are awesome – especially the new, fancy ones with the WS2812 RGB LED driver. These LEDs can be individually controlled to display red, green, and blue, but interfacing them with a microcontroller or computer. To test controlling WS2812 RGB LEDs I bought a cheap addressable LED strip. An addressable RGB LED strip is