Chasing a Minimal Power Budget If you’re working on a battery powered project that needs a long service life between charges or battery replacements, you’ll quickly find that every last microwatt of power starts to add up over months of operation. I have worked on some projects in the past that needed to run for months on a single charge of a secondary battery, or a single primary battery that was small enough that simply running the microcontroller at full power would drain Read Article Carl Schattke - Designing Complex Boards Carl Schattke gives us a sneak peak of his keynote ‘Making and Breaking the Rules’ at AltiumLive 2019 in Frankfurt. He also shares what he considers the best tool every PCB designer must have. Read Article Designing Printed Electronics with Altium Designer 19 As far as I know, Altium Designer 19® is the first electronics design tool that effectively supports printed electronics design . With this tool you can create printed electronics designs in the same level as with capabilities parallel to standard PCB designs, and to do that, Altium created electronics design features specific to printed electronics. With Altium Designer 19 you can define design rules according to production capabilities that Read Article Closing the gap between Electronics (ECAD) and Mechanics Users of modern devices expect manufacturers to design new generations of products that exceed their demands and expectations—high-quality products which provide amazing user experiences. With regard to product design that offers the best user experience, PCB design software is expected to provide engineers with specific features enabling the seamless collaboration between the electrical and mechanical engineers. To efficiently meet the above Read Article Ceramic Capacitors - Why Voltage and Capacitance Ratings Aren't the Full Picture Ceramic Capacitors - Why Voltage and Capacitance Ratings Aren't the Full Picture The true capacitance of ceramic capacitors rarely matches what is stated on the specifications once they’re installed in end applications. Depending on what frequency, voltage, and dielectric you’re using, true capacitance can be vastly different from what you’d expect. This guide walks through the common misconceptions and demonstrates how to select the right Read Article Designing For The Mil-aero Market Segment—Navy When it comes to PCB design for a particular market segment, often times the design methodologies readily transfer from one market segment to another with very few, if any, significant changes. Other times this is not the case and designing products for a particular market segment requires specific design practices, materials and testing procedures. This blog is the first in a series addressing design strategies for specific vertical market Read Article Getting Started in Altium Designer: The Schematic A schematic is a way to record an idea. Schematics are drawings or diagrams that are used to communicate electronic ideas to others. You may have never thought about it, but anyone who understands electronics can look at your schematic and understand your idea, no matter what language they speak! Schematics are a universal “language” for recording and sharing electronic ideas. Here’s the official definition from IPC-T-50 (Terms and Definitions) Read Article Unique Flex Termination Methods I think it is important to know that basically any connector you would select for rigid printed circuit boards can also be assembled to a flexible circuit. Traditional thru-hole and SMT connectors, high density circular connectors, D-subminiature connectors, pin and socket connectors, leaded and unleaded, are all options to consider with flexible materials . That said, I am going to veer slightly off topic with the caution to NOT forget to review Read Article The Value of Rapid Prototyping Hardware Open hardware boards provide a fast path forward during the prototyping phase. But then what? One of the most important aspects of prototyping is exploratory learning. Each stage explores the balance of tradeoffs between performance, power, cost, ease of manufacturing, and many other variables. The initial idea begins to morph, becoming better than it originally was. The downside of this incremental improvement is that each stage of prototyping Read Article Newer PCB Materials If you are hearing about the newer, higher density HDI-PCBs used by Apple called SLP, and their processes like SAP, or uSAP or mSAP (Semi-Additive Processes) recently, these are the printed circuits that are getting down to 30 micron and 25 micron (1 mil) traces and spaces. HDI is now estimated to be over 250 million square meters produced per year-and still growing! But SAP is not NEW! We used it early in the 60’s and 70’s when we were making Read Article ECAD-MCAD Collaboration - Bridging the Communication Gap Let’s face it, there are things that we do the same way every day, simply because ‘we have always done them that way’ and we are used to them. Due to schedule pressures and outside demands, there is rarely time to think about how to make these things better, never mind try to actually implement something new. This makes the motivation to invest in exploring different methodologies challenging. Our general tendencies lean more toward continuing to Read Article 46:06 Design and Library Migration to Altium Designer Watch Video 15:18 Exploring Project Releaser in Altium Designer 19 Watch Video Reading Impedance Profiles of High Speed Backplanes Impedance remains a confusing topic in the signal integrity community. By definition, impedance is the ratio of voltage to current. That doesn’t really paint a clear picture to anyone. Getting more specific, the term impedance can mean several things. Step response of broadband reflection coefficient in ohms Impulse response of broadband reflection coefficient in ohms Time domain Z-parameters Frequency domain Z-parameters Signal Integrity Read Article Bob Martin Goes From Prototype to Production with an Arduino Board How to go from prototype to production seamlessly? Listen or Watch today's OnTrack podcast with Bob Martin The Wizard of Make. He will share some info about his keynote at AltiumLive 2019 in San Diego Read Article On Shaky Ground—the Arguments Against Copper Pours On Shaky Ground—the Arguments Against Copper Pours Recently on the SI-List, aka the SI Reflector, (see note at the end of this article) there’s been a spate of activity around the topic of copper ground pours and whether they are advantageous in a multilayer PCB implementation. There were arguments on both sides of the question. One person said a ground fill pour reduces EMI, another stated that it balances the copper and makes the board less Read Article OnTrack Newsletter: Student Hackers, Crosstalk and Design Blogs - August 2019 OnTrack Newsletter August 2019 VOL. 3 No 4 Major League Hacking Fuels Students Passion for Engineering To bridge the gap between theoretical university-level electrical and computer science education and the kind of practical hands-on experience young engineers need and crave, Jonathan Gottfried co-founded Major League Hacking (MLH). In this interview Jonathan shares the inspiration behind MLH and talks about the impact of the hundreds of Read Article Pagination First page « First Previous page ‹‹ Page92 Current page93 Page94 Page95 Page96 Page97 Next page ›› Last page Last » Load More