Power Consumption Tips: What are Ways to Reduce Power Consumption in an Embedded System? For years, I always forgot to turn off the lights and fans at my house. Despite initially denying that constantly using these appliances significantly increased my electricity usage, I eventually broke my bad habit and began turning off every little switch. After all, being more prudent about my electricity usage reduces my monthly bills and promotes a greener earth. Unfortunately, minimizing system power consumption in an embedded system Read Article Rigid PCB Vs Flexible PCB: How Adaptable is Your Design Approach After working on multiple projects for a demanding client, I often relieve my stress by kicking it out at a local martial arts gym. When I was a teenager, I was quite flexible and had no trouble landing kicks. These days, however, my kicks are somewhat restrained by my rigid legs; I’m simply not as flexible as I used to be. Of course, flexibility and rigidity are important concepts outside of the martial arts gym as well. While designing PCBs Read Article Beyond Unified Workflow: True Unified PCB Design When it’s crunch time my only focus is on getting my PCB design to the finish line correctly and out the door to manufacturing - unified workflow comes later. I know from experience that there are a number of obstacles in that can get in my way and cause a delay. You know, unavailable parts, feature creepage - I’m used these obstacles, they are part of the job. But I am routinely stressed by needing to manipulate different design tools and data Read Article 3D PCB Editor Simplifies Concurrent ECAD/MCAD Modeling Spending my weekends contending with powerful, yet non-intuitive modeling software is getting old. It is a shame we’ve come so far from the first CPU and its promise of computing power to still struggle with endless menus, and setting intricate parameters just to get started. The learning curves continue to suck precious hours from engineers and PCB designers, leaving many to give up new functions, such as 3D, in favor of reliable 2D environments Read Article How to Connect Two PCB Boards With a Bus: Do Not Pass When Flashing Yellow During my school days, my favorite time of the day was when the bell rang and we were free to go home. While waiting for my school bus, I spent time messing around with my friends and would be so engrossed in playing that I’d occasionally miss my bus. Naturally, my mom wasn’t too thrilled about having to pick me up after a busy day of work. Missing the school bus, fun as it may have initially seemed, resulted in some serious grounding. Without Read Article Knowledge Before Power: Making Shapes to Create an Assembly Drawing in Altium Designer You are going to be doing a lot of critical work in your CAD tools. Everything from the building, connecting schematic nets, laying out the PCB, and finally creating the assembly drawings. That’s a lot to consider when you are first exploring your PCB design system that it can be easy to overlook a very basic function in all of those “how-to” videos and demonstrations. How in the world do I create a simple rectangle or even a line in these tools Read Article PCB Manufacturing Production and Process Manufacturing a printed circuit board and designing a circuit board are two different things. As designers or electrical engineers who are now laying out boards, you may have some questions for your manufacturer that are best asked in advance. There is always an advantage to working closely with your fabricator. Consider the big picture and the very details that impact your projects' success. Click the PDF above to read more about PCB Read Article PCB Design Presentation: Modular Design PCB Design is a complex field and every step you take to design and develop a board has its own set of best practices. But what will truly move the needle in your design process? Modular Design tools that keep your team not only focused but in the flow. Altium has pioneered collaborative design for EDA tools because Altium PCB design tools start each iteration with ultimate productivity in mind. Join us in an exploration of Modular PCB design and Read Article Ambitious Students, Makers and Innovators In the number three spot is a solar car team from the University of Waterloo in Toronto, Canada: The Midnight Sun Solar Car team. Relive the guts and the glory of this ambitious team. Congratulations, Midnight Sun Solar Team. Thank you for your pursuit of excellence and being an inspiration for our readers! Taking the number two spot is the New Jersey Institute of Technology SAE Baja team that earned first place in the endurance race, and 13th Read Article Three Exceptional Professional PCB Designers I've had the opportunity to interview several exceptional professionals in PCB Design this past year, which includes interviewing this popular group of engineers. Here are the most popular articles in our Professional PCB Designers series: In the number three spot is a beloved professional designer, BSEE, and a CID Master Instructor who also has a passion for golfing... Cherie Litson. Congratulations Cherie and thank you for contributing so much Read Article Picking the Right Bluetooth Antenna Types for Your PCB Design Have you ever tried tracing your wireless usage? Bluetooth PCB antenna design has gotten our bluetooth electronics everywhere by allowing devices to connect to a standardized matching network. For instance, I am streaming music from my phone to wireless headphones. Later, I’ll hop into my car and take phone calls through my hands-free computer system. Then I can get home and talk to my home-assistants to tell me the weather, set dinner timers Read Article Suppress Noise and EMI in Your PCB With the Right Analog Filter Design The electronics industry continues to pack more capabilities onto smaller PCBs and devices are being run at lower power and at higher frequencies. Noise suppression becomes even more important as operating frequencies rise and signal levels fall, this becomes more manageable with an EMI filter for noise on a PCB design. Adding filtration to your PCB designs can enhance signal integrity in EMI-prone environments with large stray magnetic fields Read Article The Square Kilometre Array Telescope and Multi-board PCB Design What is a Square Kilometre Array Telescope? Listen to this OnTrack Podcast with Judy Warner & hear from Omer Mahgoub of SKA Africa about the making of the largest and world's most sensitive telescope. Read Article Designing to Meet a Target BOM Price and PCB Cost Estimate Creating an accurate PCB cost estimate for design, components, production, assembly, shipping, and even firmware can be a challenging task for new designers. Even established organizations can have trouble getting it right as it's hard to anticipate every problem that can arise during a design. Manufacturers can help you handle the production and assembly portion of a project, but any time a new design needs to be put into production, components Read Article How to Create Schematic Symbols in Altium Designer A step by step walk through of the Schematic Symbol Generation Tool in Altium Designer. Read Article Avoid Signal Integrity Loss While Using a Fanout Strategy in Your PCB When I was much, much younger, I looked at the pin layout on the back of a processor and wondered how anyone can possibly route all of those electrical connections on a PCB. I didn’t know much about signal integrity, of fanouts on PCBs then but fast forward fifteen years and now I get to layout those traces on PCBs. Fanout is a technique where short traces and vias are used to connect inner rows of pins on high pin-count ICs. Fanout can also Read Article Coatings vs Resins for Your PCB: What’s Best for Providing Protection? In today’s world, protection is always a welcome asset. Whether it be protection from the rain above your head (mitigated by a roof), protection from the sun (mitigated by sunscreen), or protection from electromagnetic currents (mitigated by current isolation techniques amongst others). With resin and conformal coating for your PCB, you can think about the forces that attack your PCB from a physical (environmental) standpoint - beyond EMI Read Article Pagination First page « First Previous page ‹‹ Page144 Current page145 Page146 Page147 Page148 Page149 Next page ›› Last page Last » Load More