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Explore Altium's Resource hub to discover content from blog posts and design guides to technical white papers, all gathered together for your convenience and written by Altium's community of PCB design experts.

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Looking Forward 2021 Industry Trends and Events to Watch for Looking Forward: 2021 Industry Trends and Events to Watch for Where are we going in these crazy times? Mike Buetow shares with us what to look out for, the current trends, and what will help you be a better design engineer in 2021. Read Article
Remotely Powering Devices, Wirelessly Remotely Powering Devices, Wirelessly With electronic devices being available in smaller and smaller sizes and the prevalence of wi-fi networks, the rise of remote monitoring devices around the home and the workplace continues to grow. Smart heating solutions now place sensors in every room, monitoring everything from temperature to occupancy to provide a highly efficient zonal heating system. Intruder detection systems no longer require thousands of meters of wiring to be installed Read Article
symbolic division Guidelines for Creating Useful Schematic Symbols The schematic symbols that you use to represent the components are at the heart of your schematic design. The quality of the symbol and how it is arranged can be one of the most critical factors influencing your schematic’s readability. A poor quality schematic symbol will lead to an unreadable schematic sheet that is difficult to understand. I created the largest open-source library for Altium Designer over five years ago, initially as a way to Read Article
Using a Thermal Camera for PCB Diagnostics Using a Thermal Camera for PCB Diagnostics There has likely been a time when you’ve powered on a freshly built prototype for the first time, only to find you’ve hit the current limit on the lab power supply. Even as you increase the current limit to way beyond what you would expect your board to draw, the lab power supply is still limited. If it’s safe, you poke around the board with your finger, but you can’t feel any parts that are hot to the touch. Also, probing around with a Read Article
What does AMD’s purchase of Xilinx mean for the electronics world? What Does AMD’s Purchase of Xilinx Mean for the Electronics World? Who is Xilinx? While AMD is focused on microprocessor production, Xilinx is a specialist producer of FPGA (field-programmable gate arrays), which are particularly useful for telecommunications applications, and the development of 5G across the world has opened up significant growth in this sector. The expected number of new 5G cellular base stations required over the next five to ten years will be in the millions. Xilinx has been one of the front Read Article
IPC-2551 digital twin IPC-2551 Digital Twin Standard Released Read our brief on the new IPC-2551 standard and how digital twins might be used in the PCB industry. Read Article
S-parameter measurement S-Parameter Measurements and Errors in Power Integrity No matter where you look, it seems S-parameters never go away! They are mandatory tools for understanding some systems, such as an interconnect or antenna, while other network parameters can sometimes give a better conceptual understanding of electrical behavior. These parameters are normally reserved for signal integrity among electronics engineers, but if you look hard enough, you’ll find that S-parameters are also used for power integrity Read Article
Smart Micro Fan Controller Smart Micro Fan Controller If you’ve ever had to wear eye protection for an extended period of time, especially if you have prescription inserts in that eye protection, you’ve probably noticed fogging can be a major issue. Last year I designed and 3D printed a small fan unit that mounts a 25mm x 25mm x 10mm fan on each side of a military eye protection. It directs a small flow of air over the inside of the lenses and keeps them clear even during physical exertion on cool Read Article
PCB design reuse Complete Guide to PCB Design Reuse in the Cloud Isaac Newton once said "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." Not all designs need to be remade from scratch, and if you organize your designs properly you can easily reuse your old design data in a new project. PCB design reuse practices are great for cutting down design time and ensuring all your products live up to the same level of quality. It’s all about making sure the knowledge you’ve gained from building Read Article
Create a Buck-Boost Power Supply Create a Buck-Boost Power Supply In this series of articles, we’re looking at the design and implementation of the main types of power regulators and converters you might use in an electronics project. I gave a graduate engineer who I mentor a series of requirements to demonstrate each of these types and have recorded the results here so you can work through the same exercises and hopefully come up with the same results. The next switching regulator is the last in our switching Read Article
How to Design a Boost Voltage Regulator How to Design a Boost Voltage Regulator In this series of articles, we’re looking at the design and implementation of the main types of power regulators and converters you might use in an electronics project. I gave a graduate engineer who I mentor a series of requirements to demonstrate each of these types and have recorded the results here so you can work through the same exercises and hopefully come up with the same results. For the next switching power supply project from my Read Article
Build an Advanced Brushless Motor Controller Build an Advanced Brushless Motor Controller In this project article, we’re going to be taking a different approach to my typical project. Driving a brushless motor is relatively simple from a schematic perspective; however, there is a large amount of theory about brushless direct current motors that you need to understand to be successful. If you only have experience with brushed motors or no experience with driving motors at all, we will be covering everything you need to know. You can Read Article
Controlling Crosstalk In Connector Pinoutsarticle Controlling Crosstalk In Connector Pinouts This article will describe this type of crosstalk, the types of disruptions it causes, wherein the design cycle it needs to be factored in and how it can be successfully controlled. Read Article
PCEA is Here to Meet the Challenges of the PCB Design Industry PCEA is Here to Meet the Challenges of the PCB Design Industry Why is it important t be involved in the PCB Design community? How will it help your career growth? Tomas is here for a Part 2 episode, Watch or listen on the go now. Read Article
Gerber compare Gerber Compare in Altium 365's Online Platform Gerber compare features are a very important part of a design review. Here’s how you can use Altium 365’s cloud platform to share and access Gerbers from project revisions. Read Article
From RC to Atomic Clocks: All Clock Sources From RC to Atomic Clocks: All Clock Sources In almost modern circuits, especially whenever digital circuitry is involved, you will find some kind of clock source. All clock sources present a series of tradeoffs regarding stability, reliability, size, power consumption and cost. Luckily for us, such tradeoffs are relatively simple and can be explained almost fully within this single article. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of each clock source, from the RC in a 555-powered oscillator, to a Read Article
What They do not Teach you About Capacitors What They do not Teach you About Capacitors In engineering, we often adopt hundreds of mental shortcuts in order to keep the complexity of the topics we tackle to a manageable level. If we were to run a quantum-physics simulation every time we flash an LED, we would never get anything done. Yet, many of these shortcuts and rules-of-thumb were created in times past , when the electronics industry was radically different than what it is now. Today, we are going to unlearn what a capacitor is Read Article