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How to Create an Amplifier Simulation in Altium Designer

How to Create an Amplifier Simulation in Altium Designer There are a variety of performance simulations you can run in Altium Designer. Read and understand the role of simulation and learn how to create and run an amplifier simulation in your schematic. Read Article

Push and Shove Router: How it Works and Why You Need It

Push and Shove Router: How it Works and Why You Need It If you have a complex layout like the one shown above, and you need to move traces or vias around the board, what can you do to decrease your routing time? This is where the push and shove router feature in Altium Designer can be a huge help. Using this feature eliminates the need to reroute a large number of unselected traces as you adjust traces and vias in your layout. So when would you need to use something like this? Doesn’t this interfere Read Article

How to Choose an RGB LED Panel for Your Next Upverter Project

How to Choose an RGB LED Screen Panel for Your Next Upverter Project Billboards are just one application for RGB LED panels I remember the days where I would drive down the highway and see workers placing new graphics on billboards dotting the roadside. Now you hardly see this because so many billboards have gone digital. You can thank RGB LED panel display tiles for this, which allows multiple advertisements to share the same space and allows for some interesting animated advertisements. RGB LED panel displays Read Article

How to Add an RGB Matrix Display to Your Board in Upverter

How to Add an RGB Matrix Display to Your Board in Upverter Micro RGB Matrix Tile connected to the WiFi RGB LED Matrix board. When it comes to custom display applications, you may not need to go the route of including a large-scale LED or LCD display screen. For specialized or artistic lighting applications, you can benefit from a system that provides selectable color mixing and distribution across your lighting module. This is where an RGB matrix display is an ideal choice for your next lighting Read Article

Calculating your PCB Complexity & First Pass Yields

Calculating your PCB Complexity & First Pass Yields There are four things I know about PCB yields—mathematically! PCB yields are not normally distributed. They are what is called GAMMA Distributed. Defects that produce low yields may be systemic and repeatable, others may be just random—but you can test for this. You can predict yields if you take the time to collect the data. Yields are such wonderful things! I wonder why we don’t write about them more. They are the dividing phenomena that often Read Article

Adding a GNSS Module to Your SBC with Upverter

Adding a GNSS Module to Your SBC with Upverter Adding GPS functionality to an embedded system is easier than you think Embedded systems for edge computing, autonomous systems, and other highly mobile systems need embedded navigation capabilities, but adding a GPS module to your next embedded system can be difficult. You’ll need to consider precise layout for GPS receivers in order to prevent signal degradation. There’s also the issue of compatibility with other global navigation satellite Read Article

3:01 Multi Board ActiveBOM In Altium Designer 20 Watch Video

Military-Grade Single Board Computer Design for UAVs

Military-Grade Single Board Computer Design for UAVs A General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, a hunter-killer surveillance UAV Unmanned aerial vehicles also known as UAVs, and colloquially known as drones, are aircraft designed to be piloted without a human on board. Drones are finding realistic uses outside the military, including applications in surveillance, agriculture, search and rescue, scientific studies, shipping, and many other areas. As tactical demands increase, so do the processing, memory, and Read Article

Building A Faraday Cage To Contain EMI, Part 2

Building A Faraday Cage To Contain EMI, Part 2 Part 1 of this article addressed the various ways in which EMI impacts products, and covered how to build a Faraday cage to contain it. This part of the article will focus on getting power into a product without letting EMI out; building a Faraday cage for rack-mounted products, determining whether or not logic ground should be connected to a Faraday cage while also providing some additional ways to build one. How to Get Power into a Product Read Article

Building a Faraday Cage To Contain EMI, Part 1

Building a Faraday Cage To Contain EMI, Part 1 EMI (Electromagnetic Interference) is a phenomenon that can plague a design if it is not properly and carefully addressed. One of the most often used but not necessarily thoroughly understood ways to contain EMI is through the use of a Faraday cage. This two-part article will provide an overview of EMI, how it can interfere with other products, and how to address EMI through the successful design and implementation of Faraday cages. Included in Read Article

DC Analysis of Linear and Nonlinear Circuits in Schematic Design

DC Analysis of Linear and Nonlinear Circuits in Schematic Design These circuits can always use DC analysis If you’re working with a new design that involves some custom circuitry, it always helps to understand how the circuit behaves in DC. There is some merit to this, particularly if you are designing a custom power conditioning system, amplifier, equalizer, or other circuit. These circuits and many more require a range of analyses to evaluate their functionality, but the most fundamental of these is a DC Read Article

Three Common PCB Design Mistakes You Can Spot in Your Gerbers

Three Common PCB Design Mistakes You Can Spot in Your Gerbers Spotting some common PCB design mistakes will help get your board into production faster I’ll admit that I was not an excellent student until I hit graduate school. At that point, I started putting more energy into my homework than most other areas of my life. Sure, my social life became non-existent, but I soon became an exemplary student and I never looked back. Just like you need to do your homework while in school, you should do your homework Read Article

Pulsed Laser Diode Driver Circuit Layout for Lidar

Pulsed Laser Diode Driver Circuit Layout for Lidar As part of the sensor suite for autonomous vehicles, lidar range maps play an important role in object identification in the surrounding environment, alongside car radar and other sensors or imaging systems. Building a functional driver circuit with small form factor and sleek packaging is critical for enabling lidar imaging/rangefinding around a self-driving vehicle. These same circuits can be adapted to other lidar applications, such as Read Article

PDN Impedance Analysis and Modeling: From Schematic to Layout

PDN Impedance Analysis and Modeling: From Schematic to Layout Do you know the factors that determine the impedance of your PDN? Here’s what you need to know about PDN impedance analysis and modeling. Read Article

Agile Development and Testing: The Role of Simulations

Agile Development and Testing: The Role of Simulations Simulations can help you avoid repeated prototyping and testing Design, build, test; whether you are a hardware designer or a software engineer, you’ll go through multiple iterations when developing complex systems. The build and test portions are the moment of truth—when you find out whether your hard work will pay off. An important part of design, build, and test iterations concerns narrowly defining test cases and functionality requirements Read Article

Length Matching for High-speed Signals: Trombone, Accordion, and Sawtooth Tuning

Length Matching for High-speed Signals: Trombone, Accordion, and Sawtooth Tuning Once upon a time, length matching guidelines for high-speed signals required a designer with enough skill to remain productive when manually applying different trace-length turning schemes. With today's advanced interactive routing features in modern PCB design tools, designers no longer need to manually draw out length tuning structures in a PCB layout. The remaining choice for a designer is deciding which length-matching scheme to use: trombone Read Article

Never Cross a Ground Plane Gap in High Speed PCB Design

Never Cross a Ground Plane Gap in High Speed PCB Design I often browse electronics and PCB forums, and I see the same question asked over and over: Why shouldn’t I route a trace over a split in my ground plane? This question gets asked by everyone from makers to professional designers who are just dipping their toes into high speed PCB design. For the professional signal integrity engineer, the answer should be obvious. Whether you’re a long-time PCB layout engineer or a casual designer, it helps to Read Article