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Explore content from blog posts to technical white papers gathered together for your convenience. All written by Altium's community of PCB design experts.

The Embedded Vision Alliance is No More What is “Edge AI”? Powerful new technology had become ready for widespread use, however the companies and developers creating systems and applications are still struggling to figure out how to best incorporate it into their products. Read Article

One Step Closer to Mapping the Human Brain Believe it or not a technology to render 3D map of a brain does exist! Read now to learn more. Read Article

The Resurgence of Retro Display Technologies Let's talk about the evolution of electronics display. From analog to digital display and also retro display and nixie tubes. Do you prefer the old fashion way? Read Article

43:14 Altium 365: ECAD-MCAD Collaboration Pretty much every printed circuit board assembly ends up in some kind of mechanical enclosure or fixed to a chassis Watch Video

Enterprise IoT Challenges for PCB Designers in 2020 Enterprise IoT became one of the biggest tech buzzwords in 2019, with many analysts promising improvements in business efficiencies and profits simply by connecting everything in the office. As time goes on, real problems that can be solved by connecting business assets start to become clear, and practical opportunities for innovation and problem solving can be identified. I would argue we’re starting to move away from the 1990s-equivalent age of Read Article

Revisiting Vertical Connection Structures-VECS Part 2 It’s been about one year since I posted a BLOG about the new VeCS Technology (vertical connection structures) invented by Joan Tourné. Since then, Joan has written four papers detailing much more information about his invention. This is a quick update, in case you have not seen or read those papers. He has two more coming up in January 2020, and March 2020 in PCB007. Vertical Conductive Structures-Rethinking Sequential Lamination [1] NEXTGIN Read Article

Linking Managed Projects with your Git Server using Altium Concord Pro There’s been a bit of chatter on the forums lately discussing linkages between managed projects within Altium Concord Pro, and version control using external Git servers (such as GitHub or Bitbucket). In this article, we will be taking a closer look at the backend of Altium Concord Pro’s managed project system and how we can link back to your Git server. Altium Concord Pro Managed Projects: A Closer Look Historically, the Altium Vault—which Read Article

Noise Margin Analysis Part 2 Part 1 of this article addressed the three elements that comprise a design rule set, noise sources and their impact on a system’s overall operation including Vcc, and ground bounce and ground and Vcc offsets. Also described, was what needs to happen when current leads are so high that it’s not possible to put enough copper in the power path. This second part addresses further noise sources and their impacts, including ground and Vcc drops in IC Read Article

Noise Margin Analysis Part 1 In a previous article, I described the various aspects of noise margins, their sources and why it is necessary to sum up all the noise margins for every logic component utilized in a given design. This two-part article addresses why noise margin analysis is a critical element within the design rule creation process, and how that analysis is incorporated into the final design rule set. Part 1 addresses the three elements comprising a design rule Read Article

Evaluating Concord Pro I’m working on several projects that require new PCB assemblies, and this presented a great opportunity to try Altium’s new product: Concord Pro™. Concord Pro is a component management system which makes component creation and organization much easier than using the current workflow. One of the PCB assemblies I need is a high-current voltage regulator that I will be using for a DC motor controller, and this is the PCB design I will use to Read Article

Leading a Team for Embedded Electronics Putting together a team, and the infrastructure to support embedded electronics design, requires an understanding of how every part works and how they interact. In this article I want to talk about how to build that team and provide some insight on how to build the infrastructure necessary for your product development. Definition: What are the different parts Designing an embedded electronic product requires pieces from different facets of Read Article

Creating a Powerful 150W LED Driver for Driving Large Lighting Panels Most of my recent projects have been working towards building a high CRI (Colour Rendering Index) light panel for cinematography. A good quality video light panel is expensive, and for good reason, but as a maker, I tend to like buying things instead of just buying them. My goal was to build a 300-320W panel. However, I’ve come to realize that the limitation for a panel with that many LEDs is not driving them, but instead reflowing the board. A Read Article

Designing a Custom High Speed Photogate PCB Mark Harris details the process of making a custom photogate board for a desktop injection molding machine—download the project files and follow along! Read Article

Reduce PCB Manufacturing Time Through Manufacturer Collaboration In a recent interview with PCB007, Altium VP of Marketing Lawrence Romine recalled a brief conversation with Tara Dunn, who remarked that all designs her company receives for manufacturing get put on hold. If you’re a manufacturer, this probably doesn’t surprise you; some designers can be very cavalier with their design choices. Although these designs may be innovative and useful from a signal integrity and layout perspective, they may not be Read Article

USB Charger Project in Altium Designer: Part 2 In a previous blog post, I showed the process for building a schematic for a custom USB charger board using Altium Designer. This board requires a small number of components and some particular attention to the power supply design/decoupling networks, but aside from this it’s quite easy to build out the connections you need for the USB A connectors. Here, I’ll show the strategy for translating this schematic into a compact board with a small form Read Article

USB Charger Project in Altium Designer: Part 1 When I’m in my office, I keep my pluggable USB charger around, otherwise the battery on my phone is likely to run out. If you want to build your own USB charger, you can create your own USB charger board with the powerful schematic design and layout tools in Altium Designer. Here, I’ll present the overall design process for a portable USB charger. The charger requires 12 V of power and charges two external devices through two USB ports. We’ll Read Article

Understanding Your PCB Netlist Understanding Your PCB Netlist There are several different ways that netlists are used at various stages of the electronics development process. Netlists may have different purposes and may have unique data formats, but they all provide a similar function; they list the connections of an electronic circuit. This is important for a variety of fundamental tasks in electronics and PCB layout design. Your netlist is used graphically in your schematic Read Article