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Altium Designer Projects
Low Noise, Low EMI Voltage Regulator
A couple of months ago, I purchased an entry-level cinematography camera: the Black Magic Ursa Mini Pro 4.6K G2. I'm planning to use it for project videos, factory tours, and trade show interviews with it mostly being mounted on a shoulder rig. In addition to the camera itself, this requires a surprising number of devices to be powered. To save having lots of batteries to keep track of, I want to run everything off the main camera battery
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12V DC Uninterruptible Power Supply
I live in a rural village that tends to have intermittent power when there are high winds or storms. Because of this, my computers, servers, and network equipment are all on relatively low-cost, uninterruptible power supplies. These all run on sealed lead acid batteries and are not an overly efficient way to power a DC device such as a Raspberry Pi or internet router as the incoming mains. AC charges a DC battery, which then creates AC power
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The “Mini Monkey” Board – Using the LPC55S69 in the VFBGA98 Package
For as long as I can remember, I have been a microcontroller addict. In 2020 there is no shortage of component selection. We are also at an interesting period where MCUs can tackle complicated tasks that we may have chosen a high-end applications processor for. Quite a bit of my career has been focused on doing really awesome things in the MCU space as you get a great balance of cost, design control, and simplicity. I am always on the lookout for
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Current Monitor and Controller Project in Altium Designer
Read more to learn Mark's design to help him monitor currents to be sure he doesn't trip his 16A breaker.
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Creating a Powerful 150W DIY LED Driver for Driving Large Lighting Panels
Most of my recent projects have been working towards building a high CRI (Colour Rendering Index) light panel for cinematography. A good quality video light panel is expensive, and for good reason, but as a maker, I tend to like buying things instead of just buying them. My goal was to build a 300-320W panel. However, I’ve come to realize that the limitation for a panel with that many LEDs is not driving them, but instead reflowing the board. A
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USB Charger Project in Altium Designer: Part 2
In a previous blog post, I showed the process for building a schematic for a custom USB charger board using Altium Designer. This board requires a small number of components and some particular attention to the USB power supply design/decoupling networks, but aside from this it’s quite easy to build out the connections you need for the USB A connectors. Here, I’ll show the strategy for translating this schematic into a compact board with a small
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USB Charger Project in Altium Designer: Part 1
When I’m in my office, I keep my pluggable USB charger around, otherwise the battery on my phone is likely to run out. If you want to build your own USB charger, you can create your own USB charger board with the powerful schematic design and layout tools in Altium Designer. Here, I’ll present the overall design process for a portable USB charger. The charger requires 12 V of power and charges two external devices through two USB ports. We’ll
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PCB Current Transformers: How To Project
If you need to measure the current from an AC source, a current transformer can be a low cost, accurate option. You can find current transformers designed specifically for anything between 50/60Hz power line applications and much higher frequencies that are more suitable for industrial/scientific machinery or process monitoring. Current transformers are non-contact and non-invasive, meaning that you do not need to run AC power through your
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48V to 3.3V Regulators Design Project
Recently, I have been working on a 300W LED panel project. I’ve already written an article about building a 65W LED driver, and another about simulating it on PDN analyzer. However, there are some features I still want to implement, one of which is wireless dimming capability on the panels. Wireless dimming is important because getting the perfect balance of light is difficult when you have to keep pulling a light down from the top of a tall pole
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PDN Analyzer Simulation of 65W Single IC LED Driver
In my last article, I designed a 65W LED driver for powering a 36V LED string at 1.8A. The small MSOP-8 IC on it is going to get quite warm, which makes me believe the power distribution network is worth simulating with PDN Analyzer. This will allow me to see if there are any spots that need optimization on the board. Anywhere I can reduce the current density in high-current areas to ensure a lower copper temperature will be worth the time
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Isolated USB Connection Project
While working heavily with microcontroller projects in the past, I learned that computer USB ports can be fragile things. Simply shorting dozens of volts across the port just kills them dead—and there are so many other creative ways to destroy USB functionality on a motherboard! I’ve seen USB isolation devices on the market which solve precisely these sorts of problems (developers doing bad with their devices), however, I never really got around
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65W Single IC LED Driver Project
One of the projects I’m working on for personal use at the moment is a high color rendering index (CRI) LED panel, which I’m aiming to make about 300W. I was exploring options for making a high-performance LED driver pcb that would be quite compact, and while I couldn’t build a 300W single IC LED driver, I was able to design a 65W one that didn’t look like it would melt right through the circuit board. See more Altium Projects or read more by
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High Performance Sub 1GHz RF Project
This week, I’m building a high-performance sub-1GHz transceiver that I want to use as a standalone Internet of Things node using the ARM Cortex M3 microcontroller. As with my other projects, this project is open source and published on GitHub for you to use as the basis of your own design, or to use as-is. The RF schematic and layout are production proven, as are the microcontroller schematic and all footprints on the board. However, do keep in
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PDN Analyzer Quick Start on a Motor Driver PCB
Previously, I posted about designing a simple DC brushed motor controller using a single IC. While it’s a relatively simple board, it will still be transferring a maximum current of 4 amps if both motors are running at the driver’s full rated current per channel. For a board as simple as this, you could simply look at the trace length and width and use an online calculator (or a little math) to figure out current densities on the traces and see
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Driving Small DC Motors With Altium Designer
In this article, we’re going to run through the actual implementation of a driver IC from schematic creation to PCB layout. You will find this project on GitHub, released under an open-source license if you simply want to grab it to copy and paste into your own design. Part Selection I have two small, high-speed motors that I want to drive, which will draw about 1 amp each under load, and I’ll need to run off a 30 volt power source in an
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How to Design a Printed Circuit Board in 10 Easy Steps
Learn how to design a printed circuit board (PCB) and the standard workflow used in the industry. We'll cover schematic capture, PCB layout, and generating printed circuit board design outputs in Altium Designer. Read on to learn the universal PCB design steps.
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