Raise the Volume: How To Design A Signal Amplification Device When you’re used waking up to your baby’s loud cries in the middle of the night, you can sleep through any alarm clock. After a few months of babysitting, you stop hearing any alarm that isn’t amplified by a loudspeaker. Even in electronics, signals sometimes need to be amplified before being processed by microcontrollers. For example, audio signals and inputs from certain microsensors might require amplification before they can be processed by Read Article How to Test For a Short Circuit on a PCB Wondering how to find ground on a circuit board? Looking for a circuit board tester? Clear and simple steps on how to test for a short circuit on a Printed Circuit Board. Read Article PCB Design Limitations Beyond Borders: Extending Past Edge Clearance Have you ever stood, two feet planted, on the edge of a cliff? No, not a very steep slope that would slightly injure you if you fell, I’m talking about the 90-degree style, 2,000 feet straight down cliffs you see pictures of in National Geographic. Certainly a terrifying experience, no matter how seasoned you are at cliff standing. The thoughts that race through your mind are non-stop and extremely primal. Will my feet slip if I get too close Read Article Difference Between Single-Sided and Double-Sided PCBs: Necessary Costs Comparisons Duck hunters cherish their favorite call. With hundreds of available calls at our fingertips, choosing the right call can challenge anyone. Single and double reed duck calls perform differently and vary in cost. Conventional wisdom might conclude that “double” translates into “more value.” Yet, professional and experienced duck callers prefer single reed calls. Since many beginners don’t have time to practice, many choose a double reed duck call Read Article BOM Control: Setting up your PCB Documentation for Success Years ago I ventured into the world of remote control helicopters. Not the ready-to-fly-out-of-the-box drones that they sell today, but a gas-engine, Bell-Hiller mix, remote-controlled helicopter. What the salesman didn’t tell me though was about all the other items that I would need to purchase in order to complete it. I was going to have to purchase the engine, muffler, radio components, servos, starter, battery, as well as much more. As you Read Article Best PCB Design Tips PCB Design is a complex field and it always pays to learn from other's mistakes so you can avoid repeating history. Here we have brought together a small collection of insights to help inform your design process. From implementing WDTs in your board design to determining components we want you to stand on the shoulders of giants when it comes to improving your design and yielding better results. Click the PDF above to read more about Best PCB Read Article Advanced PCB Layout Become an expert in Advanced PCB Layout when you use Altium Designer software. Benefits to the Unified Data Model Approach include not just time savings, but the potential of simultaneous design that is available with the integrated schematics and PCB layouts offered in Altium Designer. Simultaneously consider the big picture and the very details that impact your projects' success. Click the PDF above to read more about Advanced PCB Layout in Read Article ADAS The automotive market has been growing and is promised to grow even more. The growing demand for ADAS features and other in vehicle systems and features has made electronics the most valuable part of a vehicle. Learn more about ADAS features, augmented reality in cars, as well as in depth technical considerations regarding ADAS software development and ADAS vehicle safety. Click the PDF above to read more about Advanced Driver Assistance Programs Read Article A Big Kick in PCB Interconnect Solutions: Multi-Board Best Practices I’ve always enjoyed thinking about circuits similar to tiny cities. Copper routing as the streets, components as building structures, vias, and the following electrons as the inhabitants running around. But imagine what PCB would be in the city from Inception where the flat ground starts turning on its head and extending overtop, or if Salvador Dali became a city planner. In today’s world of densely packed components (HDI), advanced manufacturing Read Article Where Do They All Go? PCB Layout Component Placement Guidelines When I first learned how to play “Hearts,” I was always worried about how to pass those three cards right off the bat. What if I helped who I was playing against? I got the hang of it eventually and with enough games under my belt. I could recognize card patterns to make the best choices, but until I got to that point it felt like I was throwing random cards across the tables. My PCB design wasn’t too far off from my card strategy there, in Read Article Wet and Dry PCB Etching Solutions: Which Process is the Right Solution? I have always been a very visually-oriented thinker. When I was much younger, I used to look up maps to video game levels online and put a sheet of tracing paper up against the screen to copy them down. The Zelda games specifically would always leave me with a notebook full of maps and, on the more challenging dungeons, color-coded warnings. If I sneezed once in my tracing process or the screen moved or I was called away mid-tracing, my map would Read Article Properties of Semiconductors: Electrodeposition, Gas Sensors, and PCB Devices I started working with gas sensors 10 years ago—my team had several ideas on how to improve the performance of our devices by integrating semiconductor nanomaterials into our PCB-based sensors. We were familiar with various electron, barrier heights, valence electrons, conduction band and the semiconductor interface. We were all masters of electrodeposition and masters of gas sensors in our own right, and we had the idea to integrate the two Read Article Sooner or Later, Your PCB Design Layout Will Need Rework I woke up last Saturday morning eager to get started on my latest backyard project. First, a trip to the hardware store for supplies, and then spend the rest of the day working on the project. Or at least I thought that I had it all planned out until my wife reminded me that I had promised to help her with some other chores. The proverbial rug of my weekend project was yanked out from under me by the classic “honey-do” block. Since I had, in fact Read Article Bill of Materials Management Strategies: Automation is Your Friend When I was a boy I really enjoyed reading the “Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators” mystery books. These books were a contemporary to “The Hardy Boys” mystery books and I filled a lot of my free time reading about “The Secret of Terror Castle”, “The Mystery of the Screaming Clock”, and many other frightful enigmas. A few years ago I ran across some of these books, and now I collect as many as I can find. Another avid fan I know said it Read Article Step Up Your Game: Multi-Board Versus Multilayer Designs Sometimes, a circuit board gets too cramped and has too many layers for its good. Highly cramped assemblies and higher layer counts generally increase costs, and you can't always enlarge a board just to fit everything into your mechanical constraints. Things like enclosures, connector placements, attached mechanical or electrical components, and the like all limit what you can do inside the space you are given. What's the difference between a Read Article Practice Makes Perfect: Testing and Verifying Electronic Component Assemblies during PCB Design When I was younger, well much younger, I had dreams of one day being a pro athlete. I wanted to be the guy who scored the winning touchdown, knocked in the winning run or hit the buzzer-beater. Although I never made to the professional level, I did have some success and I learned a lot. The most important thing was the results you achieved were strictly tied to your preparation. In other words, if I wanted to do well in the game I had to test Read Article High Current Board Design and its Real World Applications With the rise of PCB applications stretching far and wide, designs are being created for applications that extend past simple signal integrity solutions. Advancements in material technology, PCB manufacturing capabilities, and the rising demand for PCB design is opening up the floor for many industries that otherwise have been dormant in the PCB world. Many limitations that were not present a handful of years ago are beginning to loosen. Of Read Article Pagination First page « First Previous page ‹‹ Page157 Current page158 Page159 Page160 Page161 Page162 Next page ›› Last page Last » Load More
