by Anil Pandey, Principal R&D Engineer, Keysight Technologies and EDAboard.com forum member Electrostatic discharge(ESD) is the sudden and momentary electric current that flows between two objects at different electrical potentials caused by direct contact or induced by an electrostatic field. An Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) strike is a constant threat to device reliability and functionality. Many low-voltage core […]
FAQ
What is a digital potentiometer?
A digital potentiometer (or “digipot”) operates like a traditional mechanical potentiometer (pot), which is a variable resistor, except the digipot is an integrated chip (IC) that accepts signal input rather than the physical movement of a shaft or slide for adjustment. Essentially, both types of potentiometer are analog devices that provide variable resistance. However, a […]
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What is I2C, a.k.a. “I-squared-C”?
I2C stands for “Inter-integrated circuit,” or “inter-IC,” and is a simple, 8-bit, serial communication bus protocol that uses just two bus wires; a serial data wire (SDA) and a serial clock wire (SCL). I2C is integrated into many ICs and allows devices to communicate directly with each other, avoiding CPU cycles. I2C operates on a […]
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Digital potentiometer or digipot: Applications and uses
A digital potentiometer (or “digipot”) operates like a traditional mechanical potentiometer (pot), which is a variable resistor, except the digipot is an integrated chip (IC) that accepts signal input rather than the physical movement of a shaft or slide for adjustment. Essentially, both types of potentiometer are analog devices that provide variable resistance. However, a […]
Choosing a temperature-measurement sensing method
Temperature is a parameter that often needs measuring. It may be within an enclosure, on a PCB, remotely or even “wirelessly”. Wireless, in this case, does not necessarily mean a remote sensor communicating using radio frequencies, it can mean a pyroelectric sensor. Pyroelectric sensors are very long wavelength detectors which measure radiation in the 6-15μm […]
Ode to reliable USB connectors
Because our work depends so much on the technologies we utilize, one of our year-end reviews covers a post-mortem summary of all failures related to our equipment use. The summary includes system failures, which are thankfully rare, and also encompasses use-model failures such as our discovery that the RF data-link receivers we use on location […]
The best (and nearly) free education that you can get…earning $67K to $103K a year in under 3 months
If this sounds too good to be true, it is not: read on. Abe Lincoln was one of those guys that didn’t have a college education but made it to the top as a self-educated man. Back then, you didn’t have to have a 4-year college degree to get a decent paying job. Nearly everyone […]
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ADC specs: resolution, accuracy, repeatability, and throughput
Here, we review some common specifications for successive approximation register (SAR) and sigma delta analog to digital converters (ADCs.) For converters, resolution is the number of bits per conversion cycle that the converter is capable of processing. For example, a converter with 12 bits of resolution is often referred to as “12 bits wide,” since […]
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The Internal Processor Bus: data, address, and control bus
A bus is a pathway for digital signals to rapidly move data. There are three internal buses associated with processors: the data bus, address bus, and control bus. Together, these three make up the “system bus.” The system bus is an internal bus, intended to connect the processor with internal hardware devices, and is also […]
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The 10 most popular posts on Power Electronic Tips for 2016
We went into our article archives to uncover the most widely read posts on powerelectronictips.com over the past 12 months. Here for your reading (or re-reading?) pleasure are the top 10 stories: Teardown: What’s inside a Phillips Sonicare electric toothbrush? How and when MOSFETS blow up Gallery: Scenes from Texas Instruments’ power supply design seminar […]
