While a lot of manufacturers have “design” tools to help you choose their parts, there are also other useful tools out there. Some, like Appcad, were just tools without trying too hard to sell you anything. Appcad is still available www.hp.woodshot.com and the current version 4.0.0 is really version 3.0.2 with the branding changed. I […]
FAQ
How to choose transistors
Choosing a transistor can be a daunting task, not because it is necessarily complicated (but it can be!) but because there are so many to choose from. Digi-Key lists over 40,000 MOSFETs for example. Even before you start your search you need to decide on which type of transistor. For a simple, microcontroller driven switch […]
Understanding charge storage in semiconductors
While we are all probably familiar with the concept of capacitors storing charge, remember that semiconductors do so as well. This may not be an issue for your design or it could be a major headache, depending on the application. With bipolar transistors, charge storage in the base when the transistor is saturated will slow […]
Temperature sensors: IoT tilts balance from traditional devices to chips
by Majeed Ahmad Temperature sensors come in a number of mechanical, electrical and solid-state electronics forms and are widely used in industrial, consumer, medical, automotive and computing segments. Take the case of an engineer who is using an analog temperature sensor—a thermistor—to monitor a fish aquarium – a mature application with a predictable temperature range. […]
How to choose an operational amplifier: what you need to know
Choosing an opamp for a particular task can sometimes be simple but at other times, you will have a lot of conflicting requirements which makes choosing more of a challenge. Also, the number of opamps available now is huge so it can take a while to work your way through the options from different manufacturers. […]
How much math do you need to know to design electronics?
Education for electronics design tends to have a fair amount of math in it but how much is really required nowadays in order to design electronics? You certainly…
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Basics of analog-to-digital converters
We straddle two realms, analog and digital. The output of a sensor, musical instrument, the human voice, and most of the signals that originate in the real world are analog. Today most information processing is digital. This works well in terms of audio and video quality, but analog data must be converted by an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) […]
Starting out with Verilog
If you are from a software background coming into digital design using CPLD/FPGAs (complex programmable logic devices/field programmable gate arrays) then you need to adopt a different way of thinking for designing logic. While Verilog and VHDL look like a conventional programming language, the way it is interpreted is different. With software for a microprocessor […]
Direct RF sampling with high performance ADC
by Philip Pratt, Texas Instruments Previously analog-to-digital converters (ADC) at high input frequencies were limited in usefulness due to distortion and noise performance. Today, however, ADCs can provide nearly 9.5 bits of effective number of bits (ENOB) at radio frequencies (RF) of 1 GHz with signal bandwidths greater than 200MHz. Such performance at high frequencies eliminates […]