Hello, Welcome to the Altium Learning Hub

I’ve always found it easier to make decisions when the options were clear-cut. Choosing between black and white, right or wrong, you could make your decision and never regret it. However, decisions that involve picking black, white, or one of many shades of gray really stress me out. I was happy abiding by my binary logic until Ferromagnetic Random Access Memory (FRAM) came on the commercial market and I was forced to embrace one of the shades...

Grounding electrical systems can be a complicated topic that stymies even the most experienced designers. For power distribution systems, the requirements tend to be rather clear; don't create multiple ground points separated by sufficient resistance to cause a ground star loop. In mixed-signal PCBs, whether they run at low or high speed, establishing a clear potential reference point in the design (something that we like to call "ground") is as...

Editorial credit: PureRadiancePhoto / Shutterstock.com Even though I ended up here in southern California, I was originally born in Texas. We have a saying that you probably have heard, “everything’s bigger in Texas.” That turned out to be true for me, as I’m the tallest member of my extended family. I’d like to think that the minds behind massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antenna arrays were also born in Texas. MIMO has been around...

In the world of electrical design, RS-485 communication offers robustness and resiliency for cable-based systems. However, in today's world of high-speed serial protocols like USB, and with just about everything having a wireless connection, you'd probably wonder whether RS-485 is still a relevant skill area for today's PCB design professionals. As wireless communication technology becomes more ubiquitous with each passing day, and as the...

Do you remember using those old floppy disks back in the day? I remember my computer had two floppy disk drives. You’d put the disk with your program in one and a disk for the data in the other. Eventually, the incredible invention that is the hard drive came about and storage space exploded. Our memory capacity is still increasing, but now the size is becoming less of a factor. When it comes to the Internet of Things (IoT) energy usage is the...

When I was younger I was a bit of a nerd, and I guess I still am. The most visible sign of my nerdiness was my fashion sense or lack of it. Tall socks, cargo shorts, and a brown Pacman hoodie that I wore in every season, except summer, made up my daily wardrobe. I was simply more interested in gizmos and gadgets than I was in looking good. I’m still more interested in fashionable electronic devices than clothes, but the line between the two is...

My grandmother has lived down the street from my parents for the past 7 years. She moved down there after it became apparent she had Alzheimer’s disease and my parents realized she couldn’t live alone anymore. However, technology has allowed her to live a semi-independent life. My mother uses nanny cams to make sure my grandma is safe and happy and goes down to the house whenever grandma needs help. This arrangement has kept my grandmother out...

When you take a board into a PCB factory, SMD parts are going to be assembled onto the board using reflow soldering. This highly efficient process is standard in electronics manufacturing, but some companies have built soldering products that scale down reflow soldering to small desk-sized oven units. Why consider buying a desktop reflow oven? Sometimes, if you opt for prototyping in-house, it makes sense to run a basic reflow process on a group...

High-tech firms increasingly need to utilize pervasive engineering simulation and a consolidated engineering simulation platform in order to stay competitive in an ever-expanding market. By incorporating both of these components into the design process, Best-In-Class firms are able to more successfully fulfill their targets. Key findings include: High-tech companies are investing in a broad portfolio of engineering simulation tools. High...