I shipped a new iPhone app a few weeks ago – “Resistor Photo ID”. It uses your iPhone’s camera to help identify resistor values. I specifically developed it with color blind people (like myself) in mind – who can’t successfully ID resistors even if they take the time to learn the color codes.
Our microprocessor reference sheet has been a great success and a valuable resource for many DIY hackers out there. We are proud to introduce an updated version, a second page with ATMegaXX4/Sanguino and a brand new
electronics reference sheet.
We now also have the reference sheet in bigger resolutions suitable for printing on both A4 and A3 paper.
Building FreeIMU v0.4 in a factory. This is a report on all the process of building a FreeIMU v0.4 in a professional grade factory with completely automated machines. I really had a great time!
One of the joys of working with basic digital electronics– and logic gate ICs in particular –is that it almost works like building with a set of Lego blocks: One output goes here, which connects to the next input here, and so forth until it does what you wanted.
If you’ve played with chips like these, you’ve probably also come across chips with “open collector” outputs. And if not, they’re worth knowing about. Open-collector outputs form the basis of a number of clever tricks for level-shifting and interfacing between different types of logic, and from logic to other types of electronic circuits.
In what follows, we’ll work with the SN7407N, which is one of the most basic ICs with open-collector outputs. We’ll discuss what it means to have “open collector” outputs, and show some of the different ways that they are used.
CircuitLab today released a browser-based schematic editor and circuit simulator for the online electronics community. SPICE-like device models and mixed-mode simulation support allows engineers and hobbyists to tackle a wide range of board-level design problems. While most EDA software is Windows-only, CircuitLab is 100% web-based, Windows/Mac/Linux cross-platform, and requires no installation or plug-ins. Instead of today’s typical forum posts with static screenshots from different desktop tools, the online electronics community can now use CircuitLab to share useful URLs (as well as PNGs and PDFs) which link directly to interactive, editable, runnable schematics. In just a few clicks, another designer can open that circuit, make a change, simulate it, and post the new version back to the community.
A little over a year ago, I started playing around with the newly available AVR ATTiny4313. It’s a neat little chip, and you can have a lot of fun with it. However, I soon got tired of wiring up programming headers, power supplies and all the other stuff you need to get up and running. I also grew wary of all this support circuitry taking up significant breadboard real estate.
To eliminate all that hassle, I created the BB313. It’s got all the stuff you need (programming header, regulated 5V power, etc.) wrapped up in a nice little package, and it plugs in on the edge of the breadboard so you have lots of space for other stuff. I also added an 6-pin connector for an FTDI cable or adapter.
I originally designed it for myself, but I figured other people might like it too, so I’m releasing it open-source CC-BY-SA 3.0) so you can make your own.
I just got of the phone with a sales rep for a large semiconductor company trying to get a bit of information about a chip I was interested in. The first question: “what’s the volume?”. When I mentioned a few thousand to maybe ten thousand units, the tone of voice changed and I couldn’t keep the guy on the phone for more than about 90 seconds. (more…)
Sharing space with Adafruit in Sunday’s New York Times (coincidence? I don’t believe in coincidences) was this great piece by Jon Gertner about the culture of innovation at Bell Laboratories in it’s heyday. As most of you know, I’m a BTL brat — my dad worked there and we used to get to visit every Christmas. There was something special about that place that I sensed even as a child. I don’t know if I can articulate exactly, but the two things I picked up on were a) these people are really smart and b) these people are proud of what they do and wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. This article really gives some great insight into why that was the case. He suggests that Bell Labs is worthy of study in our modern era (in no small part because they helped to create it), as a model of real innovation:
Why study Bell Labs? It offers a number of lessons about how our country’s technology companies — and our country’s longstanding innovative edge — actually came about. Yet Bell Labs also presents a more encompassing and ambitious approach to innovation than what prevails today. Its staff worked on the incremental improvements necessary for a complex national communications network while simultaneously thinking far ahead, toward the most revolutionary inventions imaginable.
Indeed, in the search for innovative models to address seemingly intractable problems like climate change, we would do well to consider Bell Labs’ example — an effort that rivals the Apollo program and the Manhattan Project in size, scope and expense. Its mission, and its great triumph, was to connect all of us, and all of our new machines, together.
At it’s height, the Bell Labs system was comprised of three major research locations, all of them in New Jersey. Murray Hill was the headquarters, and is currently the HQ of Alcatel-Lucent, the successor to AT&T Bell Laboratories. The other two campuses were in Whippany and Holmdel. Sometimes you’ll see these locations on old ARPAnet maps as BTL-WH and BTL-HO. Both Whippany and Holmdel have since been closed and the properties are vacant.
I don’t know about Holmdel, but there’s been talk of turning the Whippany Bell Labs campus into a (cringe, gasp, barf) shopping center. I think that’s a shame. I’d like to see it turned into an enormous innovation park, with a hackerspace (or two) and a bunch of open hardware startups, perhaps sharing communal fabrication facilities.
So what do you think? Can we re-capture the magic that was Bell Laboratories? In the modern world, where small firms innovate quickly and then get absorbed by giant behemoths, is there a place for slower, more measured invention?
The technological world of the 21st century owes a tremendous amount to advances in electrical engineering, specifically, the ability to finely control the flow of electrical charges using increasingly small and complicated circuits. And while those electrical advances continue to race ahead, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are pushing circuitry forward in a different way, by replacing electricity with light.
The latest batch of cats are up in the Cats of Engineering section! At the bottom of the page you can submit your own electronics friendly cat pal. Pictured above – Kzina.
I’ve been recently poking around an old stereo receiver, and have determined that the phono preamp is completely dysfunctional. now, this is ’70s era tech, and fairly high-end for the time. I need help identifying the construction and possible replacements for the capacitors on the preamp module.
Hello! Well as a result of all the great feedback from the component packages, I’m doing another post about SMD packages! I may be using some of the terminology from the last post in here as well, so just in case, here is the last post.
First off, SMD means Surface Mount Device; There is another acronym used that means pretty much the same thing which is SMT, and that means Surface Mount Technology. This’ll be describing the various packages that an LED can come in, as well as resistor and the more common capacitor packages as well as many other surface mount devices. The big rule about SMD is that many packages are represented by a 4 digit code. The first two digits indicate its length and the second two digits indicate its width. So an 0603 package would be .06″ x .03″ . Although if it isn’t represented by a 4 digit code, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t an SMD component, all that means is that you’ll have to do a little more searching to find the dimensions of your specific component.
The most common packages are the: 0603 , 0805 , 1206, 2512, and the SOT. although we will be discussing the 0606, 1204, 1210, SOD, PLCC, Chimney-Type, 3528, 5050, A, C, D, E. The space on the board where the SMD will sit is called the footprint, and the footprint is like a little diagram as to where the component is to be soldered on the board and how much space it takes up.
Personally, I’ve found all the little acronyms when looking for components to be a little confusing and I’m sure that I’m not the only one that’s been through that. Whats a TSSOP? Whats the difference between SIP and DIP? It can get very frustrating, so this will explain everything for you!
Well there are many different components out there and with that, there have to be different packages to fit different needs such as space availability, prototyping, and different circuit board layouts. The entire list of the more well-known packages, others may be lurking in R&D that we don’t know about, goes something like this : CDIP , PDIP , SPDIP, SIP, SDIP, SOIC, TSOP, SSOP, TSSOP, PLCC, QSOP, VSOP, LQFP, PQFP, CQFP, TQFP, CGBA, and QFN. Its mostly all about space on the board, which kind of package utilizes the precious space on the circuit board the best. So lets start with the descriptions!
Ian takes you on a tour of Tokyo’s Akihabara Electric Town. Via DangerousProto:
Akihabara is a giant neighborhood of electronics stores in Tokyo, Japan. This weekend we exported the markets with Tokyo Hacker Space on the first leg of our Global Geek Tour.
The SEG Electronics Market in Shenzhen is definitely bigger, but Akihabara is a lot easier to get to. Americans can visit Japan with just a passport, you need a $200 visa to visit SEG in China.
If you want to visit Akihabara on your own, this Akihabara Google Map layer will help you find everything. Add it to Google Maps on your phone before you go.
In the words of the great Liz Lemon: “I want to go to there.”
Printable catalog (PDF)
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