Electronics Design

Friday Fun: An Electric Capacitor Revolver

Electrolytic capacitors blow up when they are pushed too hard. That’s normally a very bad thing. This hardware hack uses exploding capacitors as a propellant. For purely for innovation and engineering, this YouTube experimenter built a working capacitor revolver and tested its capabilities. I Built An Electric Capacitor Revolver! https://youtu.be/4Fy9bZEufx0?si=1iZFB-Kvs1GvOzR8 Funny idea, but not the

Moisture detector circuit failures

I saw this circuit design at “I take pictures of electronics part @Facebook” https://m.facebook.com/groups/ElectronicParts/permalink/2237548103101179/ As many circuit designs posted to Facebook, this has it’s problems and non-idealities. Here are some comments on this circuit design: 1. At worst case LED will shine bright as a star in the sky until either it or the transistor

Oscilloscope with a great history

IT’S A HUMBLE ‘SCOPE, BUT IT CHANGED OUR WORLD https://hackaday.com/2023/07/06/its-a-humble-scope-but-it-changed-our-world/ Now anyone seeking a connection with both Pong and the Apple II can have one of their very own if they have enough money because [Al Alcorn]’s Tektronix 465 oscilloscope is for sale. He’s the designer of the original Pong and used the instrument in

High voltage probe

A high voltage probe allows an ordinary voltmeter to measure voltages that would otherwise be too high to measure or even destructive. Typically normal multimeters are typically designed to measure voltage up to hundreds of volts or one kilovolt. If you need to measure higher voltage, you need to use a high voltage probe. A

What is low Z on multimeter?

What is low Z on multimeter? Dual impedance digital multimeters have feature to control the input impedance of the multimeter. LoZ stands for Low Impedance (Z). This feature presents a low impedance input to the circuit under test. A typical digital multimeter has typically around 10 megaohms input impedance, which loads the circuit being measured

Surge protection of serial ports

What happens when your RS-232 serial ports do not have enough surge protection in them and surge hits? Here are some examples what can happen: The failed chip on those examples is ZT3243LFEY from ASIX Electronics Corporation. ASIX Electronics’s ZT3243LFEY is triple transmitter quint receiver rs-232 28-pin tssop in the interface, bus line transceivers category.