Hello, Welcome to the Altium Learning Hub

Printed antennas are a very popular option for RF PCBs as they maintain the low profile of a planar device. If you look at some Bluetooth/WiFi capable MCUs, you will likely see an inverted-F antenna along the board edge to provide Rx and Tx in a compact form factor. In this article, I’ll show how to design one of these antennas, including some design equations, and where to place these antennas for maximum radiation efficiency without...

As part of circuit design, it is always advisable to perform some circuit analysis in the frequency domain, time domain, or Laplace domain to understand circuit behavior. The time domain and Laplace domain are related in one area: the transient analysis, where we look at what happens to a circuit as it experiences fast changes in its excitation. From looking at a transfer function in the Laplace or frequency domain, it may not be obvious what the...

Functional testing is when you power up an electronic device for the first time and then perform voltage rail checks and programming of processors, and more. And this is exactly what FixturFab offers their customer. In this episode, Zach is talking with the co-founders of FixturFab, Duncan Lowder and Joe Selvik. They will have a chat about automated test fixtures and turnkey systems that aid low to medium electronic production to deliver...

SFP connectors are used to route data into fiber optic transceiver modules, which are normally found in high-speed networking equipment. Today, however, I’ve had multiple design requests that involve the use of fiber transceivers outside of a data center environment. Newer systems in sensor fusion, MIMO systems, rugged OpenVPX switches, and some industrial robotics need to stream huge amounts of data back to a workstation or server, with data...

Introduction Printed circuit board (PCB) designers are needed now more than ever, and this need is only going to increase in the future, as more and more veteran PCB design engineers retire, while the challenges and complexities of PCB design increase. No longer is PCB design simply about ‘connecting the dots’ but rather an intricate science, that if neglected, will leave you with a non-functioning product. Unfortunately, PCB design is not...

Click here to jump to the viewer embed and browse this project There is a group of products I work on that require boot and configuration over RS-232 or UART, and I like to boot prototypes by connecting them to my laptop. However, in order to access that interface, I have to send data and receive over a COM port. Unfortunately, my laptop only has USB ports, so I need to convert between the USB port and the UART interface. Normally I use a small...

.b-post__table td { border: none !important; } .b-post__table #outlook a { padding:0; } .b-post__table table td {border-collapse: collapse;} .b-post__table .ExternalClass * {line-height: 115%;} .b-post__table .AddressLinks a {color:#888888; text-decoration: none;} .b-post__table li{ font-size: 14px !important; text-align: left !important;...

In this episode, we are fortunate to have two key personalities at Luxonis, a hardware, firmware, software, AI, and simulation company. Erik Kokalj, director of application engineering at Luxonis, and Bradley Dillon, CEO of Luxonis discuss how and who can benefit from AI technology. Tune in and make sure to check out the show notes and additional resources below. Listen to Podcast: Download this episode (right-click and save) Watch the...

Flexible circuits have been around for decades and are one of the fastest growing segments of the printed circuit board market.  I imagine at this point in time, most experienced printed circuit board designers are aware of the benefits of using flexible circuit technology: Solves a packaging issue Reducing space and weight needed Reduced assembly costs Facilitates dynamic flexing Thermal management  Improves product aesthetics Biocompatibility...