Digital potentiometers – digipots – are widely used, versatile, flexible, and feature-laden alternatives to classic mechanical potentiometers. In addition to their “hands-off” controllability, digipots offer additional simplicity, design-in ease, and much lower cost than potentiometers. Among their other capabilities: Dual digipots are useful where two resistances must be adjusted independently but especially so when they […]
Analog IC Tips
Digipots as electronic potentiometers, Pt 2: Features
Digital potentiometers – digipots – are widely used, versatile, flexible, and feature-laden alternatives to classic mechanical potentiometers. In a traditional potentiometer, a person’s hand (or perhaps even a small motor) sets the wiper position and thus the voltage-division ratio. In a digipot, instead, a computer and digital interface connect to the digipot IC and establish […]
Precision signal chain platform optimizes system performance in DC to ~10 kHz applications
Analog Devices, Inc. introduced a precision narrow bandwidth signal chain platform that optimizes system performance for signal bandwidths of DC to approximately 10 kHz in industrial and instrumentation applications. The new platform offers a host of complete signal chains with customizable solution options and a curated suite of development tools to simplify the design journey. […]
Cryptography tool protects products and integrates with 1-Wire
Analog Devices, Inc. introduced the DS28E30 1-Wire ECDSA Secure Authenticator, a cost-effective solution to detect and help protect products from counterfeiting or misuse. Combining a fixed-function cryptographic toolbox based on the industry-standard FIPS 186 elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA), secure storage of keys and application data, and the single-contact 1-Wire interface, the device easily […]
Common-mode filters boast 10.7 GHz bandwidth
New common-mode filters from STMicroelectronics have an extremely wide differential bandwidth of 10.7GHz to protect antenna sensitivity in adjacent wireless circuitry from the latest serial digital interfaces. The 2-channel ECMF2-40A100N10 and 4-channel ECMF4-40A100N10 are compatible with high-speed interface standards including USB 3.2 Gen 2, USB4, HDMI 2.1, and DisplayPort. With their low serial resistance of just 3Ω, which […]
Breadboards evolve to meet 21st-century design needs, Part 3: The present and near future
The classic wooden breadboard is obsolete, but its name refers to a vital engineering tool that has changed to meet today’s component and design realities. Wooden breadboards are obsolete as platforms for circuits using modern components, of course, and so-called solderless breadboards are also of very limited usefulness. At the same time, the way designers […]
Breadboards evolve to meet 21st-century design needs, Part 2: Recent past and present
The classic wooden breadboard is obsolete, but its name continues to refer to a vital engineering tool that has changed to meet today’s component and design realities. As leaded components such as discrete transistors and low-pin-count ICs in DIP packages came into use in the late 1960s and 1970s, breadboarding technology evolved as well. Among […]
Our second 5G Handbook is now available
Featuring 15 articles, the 2022 5G Handbook looks at private networks, timing, connectivity, latency, mmWaves, test, and other topics.
Breadboards evolve to meet 21st-century design needs, Part 1: The “Ancient” Past
The classic wooden breadboard is obsolete, but its name continues to refer to a vital engineering tool that has changed to meet today’s component and design realities. Breadboards have a special place and multiple meanings in the engineering lexicon. So, what is a breadboard? It can be a crude try-out version of a subcircuit to […]
Stamped-spring pin sockets handle BGA289 chip packages
A new socket addresses high-performance requirements for testing BGA289-packaged ICs.The contactor on the SBT-BGA-6577 socket is a stamped-spring pin with a 31-gm actuation force per ball and cycle life of 125,000 insertions. The self-inductance of the contactor is 0.88 nH, insertion loss is less than 1 dB at 15.7 GHz, and capacitance is 0.097 pF. […]