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PCB Design

Everything You Need to Know About Ferrite Beads

Everything You Need to Know About Ferrite Beads As noted in my previous blog regarding PDS design, the whole power supply conundrum is one that has been plagued over the years with a number of erroneous rules-of-thumb; “black magic” design rules and confusion as to what does or doesn’t work. One of the most controversial topic areas focuses on the use of ferrite beads as a means of controlling and containing EMI. There is conflicting information concerning the use of ferrite beads and it is Read Article

The EMC Doctor is in: Ken Wyatt on EMI and PCB Health

The EMC Doctor is in: Ken Wyatt on EMI and PCB Health The OnTrack Podcast welcomes Ken Wyatt (also known as ‘the EMC Doctor’). Ken is an EMC Engineer, a prolific author on EMI/EMC related topics, and an industry consultant. Read Article

Industry 4.0 artificial intelligence applications

Industry 4.0, Artificial Intelligence, and IoT in Manufacturing When it comes to electronics, consumer devices like smartphones and Alexa tend to get all the attention. However, according to Alun Morgan at Ventec International Group, “about 23% of PCBs produced worldwide are used in electronics equipment for manufacturing applications.” The numbers only go up when you include other non-consumer categories that support manufacturing operations, such as automotive, telecom, power generation/distribution, and Read Article

Stealth aircraft and quantum radar

NVIDIA Jetson Nano: Lane Detection and Tracking Autonomous vehicles are slowly becoming an important part of the automotive industry. Many believe fully autonomous vehicles will soon be driving alongside humans, and technology companies are in a race to deploy fully autonomous vehicles. In December 2018, Waymo, the company that emerged from Google’s self-driving car project, officially started its commercial self-driving car service in the suburbs of Phoenix. Companies like May Mobility, Drive Read Article

Altium Syncs Your Design and PCB Programming Software

Altium Syncs Your Design and PCB Programming Software Wondering how to program a PCB board? Altium Designer and Altium 365 can accept outputs from your PCB programming software and store them in the cloud. Read Article

Understanding PCB Copper Thickness in Altium Designer

Understanding Copper Weight and Thickness in PCB Design At one time it was a simple process for printed circuit board designers to get their design manufactured. Board sizes and layer stacks were more generic, and usually, someone else made all the hard layer configuration choices for you. It is a completely different game now with multi-layer PCB designs ranging from two to over thirty layers. In addition, trace widths, ground planes, hole sizes, substrate materials, characteristic impedance Read Article

Fundamental Approach to PCB Antenna Design

The Best PCB Antenna Design Software Eases Antenna Implementation Circuit Board antenna design can be a difficult task for any software; however, that shouldn’t be a problem for Altium Designer, which can serve as your go-to BLE antenna design software and much more. ALTIUM DESIGNER Ensuring that your antenna designs are placed without issue Consumer and industrial demand have prompted the demand for smaller wireless devices. The devices support wearable technologies, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) applications Read Article

The Best EDA Software for PCB Design

The Best Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Software for PCB Design You don’t have time for underperforming electronic design automation (EDA) tools that are difficult to learn and use, you need the best EDA software for PCB design automation that you can get; Altium Designer. But what is EDA software? ALTIUM DESIGNER The most powerful, modern, and easy-to-use EDA simulation software or electronic design automation software for professional use. You’ve got a job that needs to be done and that means the printed Read Article

PCB Temperature Won’t Overheat with Smart Checking Design Software

PCB Temperature Won’t Overheat with Smart Checking Design Software Board integrity can be compromised without a conscious effort by the designer to mitigate high temperature board areas. Heat management can help keep your board from catching aflame. ALTIUM DESIGNER The right board design software will go a long way in high-speed designs and beyond. The emphasis on achieving smaller product footprints has pushed multi-layer PCB designs toward higher component densities. As a result, the application of better Read Article

Propagation Delay Calculators in High-Speed PCB Design

Propagation Delay Calculators in High-Speed PCB Design Propagation delay becomes an important consideration in high-speed PCB design. You’ll need to make sure that your signals remain synchronized throughout your board in order to prevent skew. A PCB design package that incorporates a propagation delay calculator as part of your design rules makes it easy to compensate for propagation delay, allowing you to focus on routing and signal integrity, rather than manually adjusting traces and calculating Read Article

Round and Curved PCB Design in Altium Designer

Round and Curved PCB Design in Altium Designer Our modern lives would not be possible without electronics. Sometimes it seems like a race to be the first person to wire everything in your house onto PCBs. With the multitude of possible device shapes and sizes, circular or rounded PCBs are becoming more popular. If you want to design your next device on a round PCB, your design software needs CAD and layout tools that don’t constrain you to working on rectangular PCBs. When you work with Read Article

Customizing AI for Your Application

Customizing AI for Your Application AI technology is quickly changing how devices interact with the world. Traditionally, a programmer has to predetermine how a system will react to the various and unpredictable circumstances that can arise in real-world scenarios. With AI, a model can be trained that captures desired reactions in such a way that the model can reliably provide desired reactions to circumstances that were never anticipated. One challenge for developers new to AI is Read Article

Bringing AI to Market the Easy Way

Bringing AI to Market the Easy Way There are numerous resources available that can enable you to bring AI into your product line. However, if you are new to AI, the path from prototype to production can seem daunting. There are new technologies to consider, making developing an AI model a very different beast compared to traditional linear programming. Estimating the processing and memory resources you’ll need can seem somewhat challenging as well. While implementing AI can be Read Article

Battery module for Raspberry Pi Zero

Production-Grade Battery Modules for Raspberry Pi Zero I’ll admit, I’m a big fan of Raspberry Pi. This set of inexpensive boards packs plenty of general purpose computing power into a small form factor, it easily connects to a LAN/WiFi and is accessible via SSH, and its memory is easily expandable with a micro SD card. It’s also easy to get a new prototype embedded application up and running directly from your laptop. The one aspect that prevents its application as a production-grade embedded system Read Article

PCB design review and collaboration

PCB Design Review and Collaboration in Altium 365 Remote collaboration tools are everywhere these days, and now designers have access to a convenient collaboration system for electronics design. Whether you’re part of a design team, or you need to quickly execute any design changes recommended by your manufacturer, you need cloud collaboration tools that are immediately accessible within your PCB design application. Now with Altium 365, you’ll have access to a cloud-driven design interface that Read Article

Length matching with differential pairs is like walking a tightrope

Differential Pair Length Matching: Best Practices for Signal Integrity Conceptually, differential pairs are very simple, being just a pair of equal and opposite polarity signals running on two parallel conductors. In terms of signal integrity, differential pair routing becomes progressively more difficult when frequencies get higher. At the low end of the possible range of rise time values and frequencies, timing is the main constraint, while at faster rates we see issues with skew, mode conversion, and bandwidth Read Article

Interactive differential pair length tuning in Altium Designer

How to Perform Differential Pair Tuning in Altium Designer In order to properly suppress common-mode noise, differential pairs should be routed in parallel with symmetry and matched lengths. Today's CAD tools make it easy to come close to all three objectives, but only if you have the right design tools. Instead of eyeing out your different pair lengths, the interactive routing tools in Altium Designer make differential pair length matching easy. You can encode permissible length mismatches as design Read Article