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SpaceX’s Hyperloop Pod Competition: The Pod Flight Heard Around the World SpaceX’s Hyperloop Pod Competition: The Pod Flight Heard Around the World Judy Warner and Benjamin Kitzinger of Altium If I had any question I am a total geek, all doubt was dispelled yesterday when I entered the gates to the Hyperloop Pod Competition II held at SpaceX headquarters in Torrance, California. I felt exactly like a giddy 8-year-old clearing the turnstile at Disneyland for the first time. Then, when the WARR Hyperloop team set the new pod world speed record, at 324 km/h ( just over 200 mph), I nearly Read Article
Why You Should Use PCB Assembly Variants for Multiple Design Configurations Why You Should Use PCB Assembly Variants for Multiple Design Configurations Years ago I was working on a design that had been copied from an existing board, but there was a problem. A few of the circuits on my layout didn’t match what the engineer had in his schematic. This generated a lot of confusion. We eventually tracked the problem down to some edits that had been made to the board after the design had been approved and sent to fabrication. An inadvertent change to the board while creating an assembly variation had Read Article
How to Prevent Silkscreen Placement Errors in PCB Manufacturing How to Prevent Silkscreen Placement Errors in PCB Manufacturing Make sure to leverage the DRC system in your CAD software to catch and solve PCB silkscreen errors. Read Article
3D Printing versus Real Time, Pre-Build Clearance Checking 3D Printing versus Real Time, Pre-Build Clearance Checking 3D printing has been revolutionizing the manufacturing industry. Once you have your completed design, just feed it into your printer and press a button, and it can be fabricated automatically. 3D printing is used for fast and easy prototyping of all sorts of complex and intricate items. So why not use it to fabricate your completed printed circuit board designs? Well, because when it comes to PCBs, there’s a better way. The Problem with 3D Read Article
PCB Design Process: The EDA Design Approach - OnTrack In this episode, Chris Carlson gives an overview of the process flow of PCB design. An expert in PCB design, Chris discusses the toolchain a product needs to go through during development. What are the limitations of typical processes and is there a better way? Get the most effective information on PCB design and Electronic Design Automation. If you find this video interesting, please like and share with your fellow PCB designers. Read the Watch Video
Top 5 Money Saving Techniques for PCB Design Top 5 Money Saving Techniques for PCB Design “It can be done fast, it can be done cheaply, or it can be done well. Pick any two.” A lot of engineers use this maxim to explain why their project is behind schedule or over budget. And there is some degree of truth to it. If you want a high-quality design, it’s either going to take a lot of money or a lot of time to figure out how to do it for less. However, if you know a few money-saving techniques ahead of time, they can help you keep your Read Article
Need to Keep Your PCB Project Under Budget? Use a PCB Design Tool that Helps You Do That Need to Keep Your PCB Project Under Budget? Use a PCB Design Tool that Helps You Do That When you design a printed circuit board, you tend to design it for ideal conditions. You figure out how things should work together and engineer a solution that works perfectly on paper. Unfortunately, when you go to manufacture that PCB and apply it for its intended use, you very rarely come across ideal conditions. What works on paper doesn’t always match up with reality. As a result, you often have to do what you can to salvage the design and Read Article
A Comparison of Active Cooling Techniques for Electronic Equipment A Comparison of Active Cooling Techniques for Electronic Equipment Cooling of electronic equipment is pretty important. I know this because part of my laptop’s motherboard melted once. I bought a new top-of-the-line computer back in 2010 to try out a new graphics-intensive video game. It came with an amazing graphics card, but an undersized thermal management system to hang. I should have known there was a problem when the keyboard got too hot to touch when I started playing games. Soon afterward, my computer Read Article
How IBM’s 5 nm Transistors Will Enable Internet of Things Deep Learning and Other Technologies How IBM’s 5 nm Transistors Will Enable Internet of Things Deep Learning and Other Technologies My great-grandmother was born at a time when normal people still used horses and carriages to get around. By the end of her life, she had seen jet airplanes, computers, and spacecraft. Technology in the last century accelerated rapidly, and this century promises more of the same. Moore’s Law has been one measure of the pace of advancement. While many experts have predicted its doom, Moore’s Law stands today. The most recent proof of electronic Read Article
How to Setup and Interface with WS2812B LEDs How to Setup and Interface with WS2812B LEDs for PCB Are you in the mood for a good laugh? Well, I have a story for you. I’m a design engineer with decades of experience, but a LED project recently almost brought me to my knees in despair. I used to think that LEDs were as simple as getting the light emitting diode connected to a limiting resistor and a power supply. Aren’t they? That’s exactly what went through my mind as I worked on an architecture model lighting project a couple of years ago. On Read Article
Intel Will Showcase Future Technology in Electronics and Communication at the Olympics 2018 Olympics: Intel Will Showcase Future PCB Technology in Electronics and Communication Editorial credit: lazyllama / Shutterstock.com I love watching the Olympics. It’s exciting to see the best athletes from each country test their skills against one another. The Olympics are also a forum for host countries to showcase everything that they’re capable of. In the 2018 Olympics countries aren’t the only ones who will be showing off. Intel recently announced a partnership with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that will let Read Article
How to Perform In-House Pre-Compliance Testing for Radiated Emissions How to Perform In-House Pre-Compliance Testing for Radiated Emissions Sometimes you can feel like you’re putting out good vibes, but you’re really emitting something else. The same goes for wireless circuits. You go through the design and immunity testing, then send your board off to an EMC lab only to find out your board is radiating the electronic equivalent of garlic breath. Performing in-house hardware pre-compliance testing can help you avoid a costly rejection. You’ll have to spend some money on equipment Read Article
conducted emissions test equipment Conducted Emissions Test Equipment and Noise Reduction Guidelines One of my classes in college was so difficult that the professor would give us the test questions a week in advance. Even knowing exactly what to study for the exam, lots of students still failed. Conducted emissions analysis for electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) is similar. Devices need to be checked to see if they’re putting too much noise back into the grid through their power supply. Otherwise, the FCC will think you’re disrupting utility Read Article
How FRAM Memory Simplifies Embedded System Data Logging How FRAM Memory Simplifies Embedded System Data Logging I’ve always found it easier to make decisions when the options were clear-cut. Choosing between black and white, right or wrong, you could make your decision and never regret it. However, decisions that involve picking black, white, or one of many shades of gray really stress me out. I was happy abiding by my binary logic until Ferromagnetic Random Access Memory ( FRAM) came on the commercial market and I was forced to embrace one of the shades Read Article
Using Star Grounding for Analog Ground and Digital Ground Connections Should You Use Star Grounding for Analog and Digital Ground Separation? Be careful when you use star grounding to connect analog and digital ground planes in mixed signal PCB design. Read Article
Advantages of Massive MIMO for 5G Cellular Infrastructure Massive MIMO Benefits for 5G Cellular Infrastructure Editorial credit: PureRadiancePhoto / Shutterstock.com Even though I ended up here in southern California, I was originally born in Texas. We have a saying that you probably have heard, “everything’s bigger in Texas.” That turned out to be true for me, as I’m the tallest member of my extended family. I’d like to think that the minds behind massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antenna arrays were also born in Texas. MIMO has been around Read Article
RS-485 The RS-485 Interface in a Wireless World RS-485 is still relevant, even if it does not use those big D-sub connectors. Read Article