Voltage Drops Are Falling on My Head: Operating Points, Linearization, Temperature Coefficients, and Thermal Runaway
Today’s topic was originally going to be called “Small Changes Caused by Various Things”, because I couldn’t think of a better title. Then I changed the title. This one’s not much better, though. Sorry.
What I had in mind was the Shockley diode equation and some other vaguely related subjects.
My Teachers Lied to MeMy introductory circuits class in college included a section about diodes and transistors.
The ideal diode equation is...
Optimizing Optoisolators, and Other Stories of Making Do With Less
It’s been a few months since I’ve rolled up my sleeves here and dug into some good old circuit design issues. I started out with circuit design articles, and I’ve missed it.
Today’s topic will be showing you some tricks for how to get more performance out of an optoisolator. These devices — and I’m tempted to be lazy and call them “optos”, but that sounds more like a cereal with Greek yogurt-covered raisins — are essentially just an LED...
Someday We’ll Find It, The Kelvin Connection
You’d think it wouldn’t be too hard to measure electrical resistance accurately. And it’s really not, at least according to wikiHow.com: you just follow these easy steps:
- Choose the item whose resistance you wish to measure.
- Plug the probes into the correct test sockets.
- Turn on the multimeter.
- Select the best testing range.
- Touch the multimeter probes to the item you wish to measure.
- Set the multimeter to a high voltage range after finishing the...
10 Items of Test Equipment You Should Know
When life gets rough and a circuit board is letting you down, it’s time to turn to test equipment. The obvious ones are multimeters and oscilloscopes and power supplies. But you know about those already, right?
Here are some you may not have heard of:
Non-contact current sensors. Oscilloscope probes measure voltage. When you need to measure current, you need a different approach. Especially at high voltages, where maintaining galvanic isolation is important for safety. The usual...
Specifying the Maximum Amplifier Noise When Driving an ADC
I recently learned an interesting rule of thumb regarding the use of an amplifier to drive the input of an analog to digital converter (ADC). The rule of thumb describes how to specify the maximum allowable noise power of the amplifier [1].
The Problem Here's the situation for an ADC whose maximum analog input voltage range is –VRef to +VRef. If we drive an ADC's analog input with an sine wave whose peak amplitude is VP = VRef, the ADC's output signal to noise ratio is maximized. We'll...
First-Order Systems: The Happy Family
Все счастли́вые се́мьи похо́жи друг на дру́га, ка́ждая несчастли́вая семья́ несчастли́ва по-сво́ему.— Лев Николаевич Толстой, Анна Каренина
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.— Lev Nicholaevich Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
I was going to write an article about second-order systems, but then realized that it would be...
Lost Secrets of the H-Bridge, Part IV: DC Link Decoupling and Why Electrolytic Capacitors Are Not Enough
Those of you who read my earlier articles about H-bridges, and followed them closely, have noticed there's some unfinished business. Well, here it is. Just so you know, I've been nervous about writing the fourth (and hopefully final) part of this series for a while. Fourth installments after a hiatus can bring bad vibes. I mean, look what it did to George Lucas: now we have Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and
April is Oscilloscope Month: In Which We Discover Agilent Offers Us a Happy Deal and a Sad Name
Last month I wrote that March is Oscilloscope Month, because Agilent had a deal on the MSOX2000 and MSOX3000 series scopes offering higher bandwidth at lower prices. I got an MSOX3034 oscilloscope and saved my company $3500! (Or rather, I didn't save them anything, but I got a 350MHz scope at a 200MHz price.)
The scope included a free 30-day trial for each of the application software modules. I used my 30-day trial for the serial decode + triggering module, to help debug some UART...
March is Oscilloscope Month — and at Tim Scale!
I got my oscilloscope today.
Maybe that was a bit of an understatement; I'll have to resort to gratuitous typography:
I GOT MY OSCILLOSCOPE TODAY!!!!Those of you who are reading this blog may remember I made a post about two years ago about searching for the right oscilloscope for me. Since then, I changed jobs and have been getting situated in the world of applications engineering, working on motor control projects. I've been gradually working to fill in gaps in the infrastructure...
Efficiency Through the Looking-Glass
If you've ever designed or purchased a power supply, chances are you have had to work with efficiency calculations. I can remember in my beginning electronic circuits course in college, in the last lecture when the professor was talking about switching power converters, and saying how all of a sudden you could take a linear regulator that was 40% efficient and turn it into a switching regulator that was 80% efficient. I think that was the nail in the coffin for any plans I had to pursue a...
Back from ESC Boston
NOT going to ESC Boston would have allowed me to stay home, in my comfort zone.
NOT going to ESC Boston would have saved me from driving in the absolutely horrible & stressful Boston traffic1.
NOT going to ESC Boston would have saved me from having to go through a full search & questioning session at the Canada Customs on my return2.
2017/06/06 update: Videos are now up!So two days...
Stability or insanity
I've just spent over two weeks getting ready to do my next video. It was a combination of one of those vast underestimations one occasionally makes, combined with falling into a bit of an obsession.
I am, at this point, not only wondering if it was worth it, but questioning my sanity in carrying on even when the going went beyond tough to just plain crazy.
At any rate, a good video needs a visual aid, and I decided that my video needed to demonstrate stability with a pendulum....
Specifying the Maximum Amplifier Noise When Driving an ADC
I recently learned an interesting rule of thumb regarding the use of an amplifier to drive the input of an analog to digital converter (ADC). The rule of thumb describes how to specify the maximum allowable noise power of the amplifier [1].
The Problem Here's the situation for an ADC whose maximum analog input voltage range is –VRef to +VRef. If we drive an ADC's analog input with an sine wave whose peak amplitude is VP = VRef, the ADC's output signal to noise ratio is maximized. We'll...
Finally got a drone!
As a reader of my blog, you already know that I have been making videos lately and thoroughly enjoying the process. When I was in Germany early this summer (and went 280 km/h in a porsche!) to produce SEGGER's 25th anniversary video, the company bought a drone so we could get an aerial shot of the party (at about the 1:35 mark in this video). Since then, I have been obsessing on buying a drone for myself and finally made the move a few weeks ago - I acquired a used DJI...
Another 10 Circuit Components You Should Know
It's that time again to review all the oddball goodies available in electronic components. These are things you should have in your bag of tricks when you need to design a circuit board. If you read my previous posts and were looking forward to more, this article's for you!
1. Bus switches
I can't believe I haven't mentioned bus switches before. What is a bus switch?
There are lots of different options for switches:
- mechanical switch / relay: All purpose, two...
The Least Interesting Circuit in the World
It does nothing, most of the time.
It cannot compute pi. It won’t oscillate. It doesn’t light up.
Often it makes other circuits stop working.
It is… the least interesting circuit in the world.
What is it?
About 25 years ago, I took a digital computer architecture course, and we were each given use of an ugly briefcase containing a bunch of solderless breadboards and a power supply and switches and LEDs — and a bunch of
Short Takes (EE Shanty): What shall we do with a zero-ohm resistor?
In circuit board design you often need flexibility. It can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to respin a circuit board, so I need flexibility for two main reasons:
- sometimes it's important to be able to use one circuit board design to serve more than one purpose
- risk reduction: I want to give myself the option to add in or leave out certain things when I'm not 100% sure I'll need them.
And so we have jumpers and DIP switches and zero-ohm resistors:
Jumpers and...
Two Capacitors Are Better Than One
I was looking for a good reference for some ADC-driving circuits, and ran across this diagram in Walt Jung’s Op-Amp Applications Handbook:
And I smiled to myself, because I immediately remembered a circuit I hadn’t used for years. Years! But it’s something you should file away in your bag of tricks.
Take a look at the RC-RC circuit formed by R1, R2, C1, and C2. It’s basically a stacked RC low-pass filter. The question is, why are there two capacitors?
I...
The New Forum is LIVE!
After months of hard word, I am very excited to introduce to you the new forum interface.
Here are the key features:
1- Easily add images to a post by drag & dropping the images in the editor
2- Easily attach files to a post by drag & dropping the files in the editor
3- Add latex equations to a post and they will be rendered with Mathjax (tutorial)
4- Add a code snippet and surround the code with
Ancient History
The other day I was downloading an IDE for a new (to me) OS. When I went to compile some sample code, it failed. I went onto a forum, where I was told "if you read the release notes you'd know that the peripheral libraries are in a legacy download". Well damn! Looking back at my previous versions I realized I must have done that and forgotten about it. Everything changes, and keeping up with it takes time and effort.
When I first started with microprocessors we...
Crowdfunding Articles?
Many of you have the knowledge and talent to write technical articles that would benefit the EE community. What is missing for most of you though, and very understandably so, is the time and motivation to do it.
But what if you could make some money to compensate for your time spent on writing the article(s)? Would some of you find the motivation and make the time?
I am thinking of implementing a system/mechanism that would allow the EE community to...
March is Oscilloscope Month — and at Tim Scale!
I got my oscilloscope today.
Maybe that was a bit of an understatement; I'll have to resort to gratuitous typography:
I GOT MY OSCILLOSCOPE TODAY!!!!Those of you who are reading this blog may remember I made a post about two years ago about searching for the right oscilloscope for me. Since then, I changed jobs and have been getting situated in the world of applications engineering, working on motor control projects. I've been gradually working to fill in gaps in the infrastructure...
Specifying the Maximum Amplifier Noise When Driving an ADC
I recently learned an interesting rule of thumb regarding the use of an amplifier to drive the input of an analog to digital converter (ADC). The rule of thumb describes how to specify the maximum allowable noise power of the amplifier [1].
The Problem Here's the situation for an ADC whose maximum analog input voltage range is –VRef to +VRef. If we drive an ADC's analog input with an sine wave whose peak amplitude is VP = VRef, the ADC's output signal to noise ratio is maximized. We'll...
Short Takes (EE Shanty): What shall we do with a zero-ohm resistor?
In circuit board design you often need flexibility. It can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to respin a circuit board, so I need flexibility for two main reasons:
- sometimes it's important to be able to use one circuit board design to serve more than one purpose
- risk reduction: I want to give myself the option to add in or leave out certain things when I'm not 100% sure I'll need them.
And so we have jumpers and DIP switches and zero-ohm resistors:
Jumpers and...
Voltage - A Close Look
My first boss liked to pose the following problem when interviewing a new engineer. “Imagine two boxes on a table one with a battery the other with a light. Assume there is no detectable voltage drop in the connecting leads and the leads cannot be broken. How would you determine which box has the light? Drilling a hole is not allowed.”
The answer is simple. You need a voltmeter to tell the electric field direction and a small compass to tell the magnetic field...
Live Streaming from Embedded World!
For those of you who won't be attending Embedded World this year, I will try to be your eyes and ears by video streaming live from the show floor.
I am not talking improvised streaming from a phone, but real, high quality HD streaming with a high-end camera and a device that will bond three internet connections (one wifi and two cellular) to ensure a steady, and hopefully reliable, stream. All this to hopefully give those of you who cannot be there in person a virtual...
Somewhat Off Topic: Deciphering Transistor Terminology
I recently learned something mildly interesting about transistors, so I thought I'd share my new knowledge with you folks. Figure 1 shows a p-n-p transistor comprising a small block of n-type semiconductor sandwiched between two blocks of p-type semiconductor.
The terminology of "emitter" and "collector" seems appropriate, but did you ever wonder why the semiconductor block in the center is called the "base"? The word base seems inappropriate because the definition of the word base is:...
Going back to Germany!
A couple of blog posts ago, I wrote that the decision to go to ESC Boston ended up being a great one for many different reasons. I came back from the conference energized and really happy that I went.
These feelings were amplified a few days after my return when I received an email from Rolf Segger, the founder of SEGGER Microcontroller (check out their very new website), asking if I would be interested in visiting their headquarters...
Feedback Controllers - Making Hardware with Firmware. Part 7. Turbo-charged DSP Oscillators
This article will look at some DSP Sine-wave oscillators and will show how an FPGA with limited floating-point performance due to latency, can be persuaded to produce much higher sample-rate sine-waves of high quality.
Comparisons will be made between implementations on Intel Cyclone V and Cyclone 10 GX FPGAs. An Intel numerically controlled oscillator
Feedback Controllers - Making Hardware with Firmware. Part I. Introduction
Introduction to the topicThis is the 1st in a series of articles looking at how we can use DSP and Feedback Control Sciences along with some mixed-signal electronics and number-crunching capability (e.g. FPGA), to create arbitrary (within reason) Electrical/Electronic Circuits with real-world connectivity. Of equal importance will be the evaluation of the functionality and performance of a practical design made from modestly-priced state of the art devices.
- Part 1:
