For battery powered systems it can be useful to know something about the state of the battery in order to predict remaining battery life. With specific charge/discharge information, you could also manage battery consuming resources to maximize battery life. There are integrated circuits to help with either approach. For simple charge or discharge information, a […]
FAQ
How to measure electrolytic capacitors
Electrolytic capacitors are often used because they deliver relatively large capacitance values in a physically small package. The compact packaging is possible because they use a thin dielectric layer in conjunction with an etching or sintering process that vastly increases the area of the plates and the capacitance associated with them. Most capacitors have two […]
Stray current and parasitic capacitance in circuits at RF
Strange things can happen at high frequencies. It begins with stray current in your printed circuit board (PCB). What is stray current? Stray current starts with stray voltage, relating through Ohm’s Law (V=IR). Stray voltage refers to a situation where between two points, there exists a voltage potential that should not be there (and wouldn’t […]
Display options for MCUs: LCD, LED, and OLED
Microcontrollers (MCUs) have a few display options available. A Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) is a common, low-cost option that uses a backlight made of either cold-cathode fluorescent tubes (CCFL) or light emitting Diodes (LEDs). The term “LED display” actually refers to an LCD display with LED backlighting, and thus is the same thing as an […]
How to test switching power supplies
The two major types of power supplies, linear and switch mode (SMPS), operate according to entirely different principles and have distinguishing characteristics. Design work and maintenance on each one requires totally different mindsets. The SMPS is now widely used because of its greater efficiency, lower cost and better weight and thermal qualities. There are some […]
Are your op amps pumped?
I was recently thinking about the issues surrounding rail to rail input opamps and the problems of making them low distortion – a problem I have had to overcome when designing integrated circuits for instrumentation applications. Some rail to rail opamps use two input stages – one using NMOS input transistors, the other using PMOS […]
The post Are your op amps pumped? appeared first on Analog IC Tips.
What is inrush current?
Inrush (in-rush) current is a sudden large flow of current that exceeds the usual, steady-state operating current, and can be a problem for any circuit. Inrush is most often associated with turning on equipment. Inrush current can be caused by large-capacity decoupling capacitors that draw a lot of current as they initially get charged up. […]
The post What is inrush current? appeared first on Power Electronic Tips.
GPUs: Not just for graphics anymore
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are special processors that can rapidly process repetitive computations. GPUs were originally designed for rendering performance-hungry display graphics to take excess load off of CPUs. GPUs can be characterized by extremely fast computing power, especially in repetitive computations. Within the past decade, GPUs are increasingly used in applications that require […]
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Basics of bandpass filters
Filters will allow some signals to pass through while blocking others. A bandpass (a.k.a. band-pass) filter allows signals of a certain frequency range (“a band of frequencies”) to pass through the filter as-is. (This range of accepted frequencies is called the passband. The size or range of the passband is called the bandwidth.) With a […]
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Is it a sensor or a transducer?
The terms sensor and transducer are frequently used interchangeably, however, there are differences. Going strictly by definition, a transducer is a device that translates primarily nonelectrical quantities into electric signals [1]. Instrument engineers limit the definition to a device used for measurement purposes. In this context, transducers can be used for measuring mechanical, thermal acoustic, […]
