It does not always pay to design everything from ground up. Basing your product on a reference design or demo board can speed time to market. And on hobby projects using ready designs can help you so that you can concentrate using your time on the most interesting parts instead spending most of the time →
The most common reasons that modern digital electronics devices fail seem to be a bad electrolytic capacitors. Bad electrolytic capacitors cause frequent failures of switch mode power supplies. It seems power supplies are often the weakest link in many modern electronics devices. Since there is tremendous price pressure on PC’s and other consumer electronics devices, →
Here is a bit long article about HIFI system interconnect cables. There are pages promoting use of different unshielded cable constructions for HIFI systems interconnections. But the truth is that unshielded RCA cable is bad design and should be avoided. This article tells the truth about unshielded RCA cables, why they are bad and how →
Broadband through LEDs tips up article tells that German Scientists believe the light coming in to your home could by encoded to receive a wireless broadband signal. The scientists think they can transport data at high bandwidths (currently 230Mbps) by generating a signal in a room by slightly flickering all the lights in unison. The →
Nowadays there is ENERGY STAR rating for solid state lamps in USA. Solid-state lighting (SSL) products that meet efficiency and performance criteria set by the U.S. Department of Energy can earn the ENERGY STAR. For more details refer to the ENERGY STAR Requirements for SSL Luminaires. In December 2009, DOE published ENERGY STAR criteria for →
I visited Microsoft Tech Days 2010 two days ago (I got free ticket), and if you are interested in technical stuff I leaned at the event and understand Finnish, you can my news report of that event published at Prosessori web site. I saw a quite interesting musical performance on the evening party. There was →
Nothing is perfect. The most common digital security technique used to protect both media copyright and Internet communications has a major weakness. RSA authentication is a popular encryption method. he RSA algorithm gives security under the assumption that as long as the private key is private, you can’t break in unless you guess it. Researchers →
Current design methodologies, whether for software or hardware, are in constant pursuit of making applications faster. In the office PC environment there is more than enough power for typical business applications, and they can be written using tools that are not the most optimized for execution speed (for example Java, .NET, scripting languages, web application →
Moore’s Law observes that the number of transistors doubles for the same area every two years. Strange that this law has hold for a long time. This has made some people to predict that that 32-bit processors will replace 8-bit processors. The argument starts with the fact that the relative size difference between an 8- →
Just about all professional equipment uses balanced audio lines, which, if properly executed, will eliminate the hum completely. They help especially with long interconnects where earth loops can be a real pain. Circuits driving balanced lines must themselves be balanced to maintain the benefits of balance. This may be achieved by differential signaling, transformer coupling →