Mobile menu
Electronic Component Data How to Automate Electronic Component Data Tracking Today’s design tools can help automate collection and tracking of electronic component data. Here’s how Altium Designer keeps your components healthy. Read Article
Real-World Monitoring with Encoders Real-World Monitoring with Encoders Electrical devices don't tend to be useful unless they can interact with the real world, taking measures, producing outputs, or responding to events, for example. One functional ability that devices may require is the capability to measure physical movement. This may be a wheeled vehicle traveling across a surface or a fixed machine's shaft rotation. An encoder is a sensor that turns a position into an electrical signal. This position may be Read Article
Best Practices for Using PCB Reference Designs Best Practices for Using PCB Reference Designs Reference designs can help you get started building a new system, but watch out for these pitfalls if you plan to use reference designs for your PCB. Read Article
Sharing PCB design files How to Share PCB Design Data: Best Practices for Sharing PCB Files vs. Sharing PCB Projects Getting design files to customers used to require a thumb drive, DVD-RW, or emails before we had the cloud. Even though today’s cloud platforms are immaculately secure and they allow a range of files to be easily shared, there are times where you should limit the data you’re sharing to only the critical files required. For PCB designers, this means either sharing entire design projects or sharing individual files with your manufacturer, customers Read Article
Anatomy of Latitude Part Two: "Thread with a Needle” in the context of energy Anatomy of Latitude Part Two: "Thread with a Needle” in the context of energy We continue to explore the magic of energy conversion in a PWM transducer. Why is it magic? Theoretically, as we saw in the previous section, the line stabilizer initially converts some of the useful power into heat, which makes the efficiency of the line stabilizer less than 100%, and it is expected for technical systems. Theoretically, in a PWM transducer this happens without losses, isn't that magic? A PWM transducer, like a tailor with Read Article
Anatomy of Latitude Part One: Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) as a Result of the Evolution of Linear Systems  Anatomy of Latitude Part One: Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) as a Result of the Evolution of Linear Systems  Great Ideas and Smart Solutions There are different techniques in the world of technology to achieve various goals, both final and intermediate. Some techniques are so successful that they are commonly used with high efficiency. Electronics is no exception. Great ideas and ingenious solutions are found and applied in this area probably more than in other engineering fields. The greatest example is the use of Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) signals Read Article
Power Supply Design in Altium Designer Power Supply Schematic Design in Altium Designer Whether you’re designing a bench power supply for an electronics lab, or you need to design an embedded power supply for an IoT product, you’ll need some world-class PCB design tools. Altium is here to help you floorplan your power supply and create a set of detailed schematics with powerful circuit design and simulation features. With the schematic design features in Altium Designer, you can create and simulate your new power supply design. You Read Article
Estimating and Understanding Thermal Conductivity of PCBs Estimating and Understanding Thermal Conductivity of PCBs Your circuit board substrate and copper conductors are the primary factors that determine how heat will move around the board. Your components will generate heat during operation, illustrating the importance of estimating thermal conductivity of a PCB. The thermal properties of your circuit board substrate are one factor that determine temperature rise in your components (particularly junction temperature) and heat flux away from critical Read Article
Feature for Feature: Altium Designer versus Mentor PADS Feature for Feature: Altium Designer versus Mentor PADS Take a look at the electronic design automation software and computer-aided design software landscape, and you’ll find plenty of options for PCB design software. Altium Designer and Mentor PADS are two popular platforms for professional PCB designers. These two platforms have a number of features in common, but the proactive design engineer should take time to compare how each platform will help ensure productivity. ALTIUM DESIGNER A unified PCB Read Article
Overview of Passive and Active Heat Dissipation Techniques How to Dissipate Heat: Overview of Passive and Active PCB Heat Dissipation Techniques Do you know which PCB heat dissipation techniques are best for your board? Here’s everything you need to know about active and passive PCB heat dissipation techniques and materials. Read Article
Subscribe to