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Thought Leadership
The Wheel Keeps Turning: Advanced Bill of Materials for PCB Design
At a young age, my grandfather was trained in the repair and construction of wooden wheels, which was a necessary skill on the rural farm where he was raised. When modern times finally found Eastern Missouri, that highly skilled confluence of woodworking and blacksmithing was totally replaced by modern technology, save for the occasional historical re-creation. The change had been inevitable, so my grandfather proactively added machining
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Preventing Critical PCB Contamination: There Goes the Boom
Ensuring chemical compatibility isn’t always as straightforward as avoiding throwing oil on a fire. When I was an undergrad, I worked in a lab with a heavy emphasis on etching. Processing steps use a range of chemicals, and sometimes these chemicals would not be compatible. One day, a student coworker of mine was hearing weird sounds while etching. After a few minutes, he pulled the fume hood shut and encountered a small explosion from
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Design for Electromagnetic Compatibility in PCB: Let Your Revels Never End
What if William Shakespeare worked as an electrical engineer instead of a poet and playwright? If electronics existed during the mid-to-late sixteenth century, the Bard may have studied the impact of electromagnetic interference (EMI) on circuits and the need for electromagnetic compatibility (EMC). After all, he wrote about his fascination with noise in The Tempest: “Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give
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Internet of Things Security Vulnerabilities: It's All About That Buffer Overflow
I follow a bunch of animal and nature publications, and recently the phrase ‘zombie ants,’ kept popping up in my feed. I decided to do a little digging and discovered that there’s a type of fungi - Ophiocordyceps - whose life cycle involves infecting ants that walk across its spores with fungal cells that infiltrate the ant’s central nervous system and essentially take over the ant. Once they have the ant "under its control", the fungus-infected
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Finding the Perfect World for Multilayer PCB Design and Fabrication
I have always been a huge Clint Eastwood fan. Dirty Harry always seemed to be a little too quick on the draw for an urban twentieth-century environment, but The Man with No Name—he was perfect for the ruggedness and lawlessness of his time. Obviously, I always rooted for him to beat up the bully, outdraw the outlaw, or get the girl, but the most intriguing thing was that he was usually quick to make a decision. Of course, the results varied
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Take Your Shoes Off: Modular Design Tips for Obsolescence Management
I’ve noticed that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who have a large armoire full of lightly-used shoes to choose from for their daily activities, and those who have a few (too) well-worn pairs of shoes that they are squeaking out until the toe-holes become intolerable. I am among the latter, and unfortunately for my current pair of sneakers - it is getting time to replace them. But there’s always a golden period to replace old
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Give Them No Quarter: Code Protection in PIC Microcontrollers for Duplication Prevention
Copying, from all understandings, seems like a disingenuous and sub-par strategy for any solution you need; from taking a test in school, to catching up with your friends, it is rare to find a moment where you would be rewarded for simply copying a message or answer. Imitating, on the other hand, is an encouraged practice in most professional industries - follow the guidelines and roadwork laid out before you so as to avoid the tedious work of
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Design Tips For Incorporating GSM Modules into Embedded Systems
As loving and rewarding as a family is, sometimes they can be a pain. My aunt, for example, refuses to communicate with my grandfather. They live less than thirty minutes apart; however, refuse to see each other. This makes coordinating visiting my family unnecessarily difficult as, often, I need to make separate day plans in order to see each so-to-speak faction. But what’s most stressful, is that often it leaves the middleman communication role
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Is Cloud Data Storage a Gold Rush for Remote Access to BOMs in PCB Design?
Imagine yourself as a dusty miner, fresh to the erratic outlands of the west in the 19th century. You tell yourself you’re going to make it rich, and that there’s gold in the hills, the rivers—everywhere. Now, obviously the trip has been heralding and there isn’t any particularly effective, high-speed transportation available, so you won’t be able to take whatever gold you find very easily, or very quickly to wherever you want to go. There might
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Sayonara Input Errors: PCB Component Management Software and Tool Commonality
I will confess that I can be just a little OCD, but my son has me beat. One year I installed some CO2 detectors in my house that ended up being crooked. It wasn’t worth the effort to re-install them so I left them as they were. While I was on vacation my son found the crooked detectors, took a picture of them, and texted the picture to me demanding to know why I would allow this. If his shower had the misaligned tile that you see in the picture
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Paint by Numbers: Solder Paste Stencil Design Guidelines To Reduce Shortages
I’ve never had much artistic talent, but when I was a kid I loved those paint-by-numbers kits. Up until I saw those I’d only used watercolors, but I was enthralled with the thick, slow flow of the paint. I may also have killed some brain cells from breathing all the fumes. I was completely obsessed with keeping the paint in the lines, so I didn’t use the brush they gave you. Instead, I traced the outlines with a toothpick that had barely been
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Untangle Yourself with an SD Card Bootloader
Like Ray LaMontagne, I’ve got trouble . Smartphone trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble. I can figure out the apps I want, and I’ve got the games I need (wait, I might have those priorities backward), but transferring all my images and data is a bit more of a pain. There always seems to be music that gets left behind or images that, for whatever reason, refuse to back up. I consider myself pretty savvy, but when I got a new smartphone I was
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Finishing Strong with PCB Drawing Software and Manufacturing Data Files
I have a great admiration for people who run. Since I am not a runner myself I can’t necessarily identify with their desire to run, but I can sure appreciate their determination. I find the runner’s tenacity to finish a long, grueling race a very motivational quality; even when they are running on empty, you will see that look of resolve on their faces as they push hard to “finish strong.” We as printed circuit board designers need to “finish
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Instructions Are Easy When You Write Them: The PCB Assembly Drawing
learn about the basics of assembly drawing.
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Following the Recipe for PCB Design: The PCB Fabrication Drawing
A few years ago I surprised my wife by making her crème brûlée for her birthday. She was stunned—the extent of my cooking at that time was limited to boiled eggs and burnt toast. Before attempting it, I spent some time finding a recipe with clear instructions to follow. With the recipe holding my hand every step of the way, I cooked my way into being a hero for the day. In hindsight, there wasn’t much to lose if I messed it up; we’d be
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Security by Design: Internet of Things Authentification and Self Testing
Have you noticed how many organizations are getting hacked lately? Businesses like Equifax aren’t the only targets of these attacks; government institutions like the NSA have also been hit. Even the Internet of Things (IoT) has been targeted. Hackers infect and control devices in order to use them as a tool for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults . I’m sure you’ve gotten your credit card hacked, as well; I have. The difficult part about
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Designing a User Database for Card Access Systems
How long does it usually take for you to unpack your clothes and organize them after you move? If you’re anything like me, they might slowly move from your suitcases and boxes to a dresser over a healthy span of weeks. In the interim, I have to develop an internal logic of where, in all the clutter, certain clothes are located: dress shirts in the box at the foot of the bed, socks and underwear tucked in front of the dresser. Even my logic fails
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