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Electronics for beginners

Arduino, DYI and how to assemble electronics

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Chemistry lesson: how to expose a microchip's crystal for photography

Reading time 6 min
Views 1.9K

Introduction


If you have dabbled into microchip photographing before, then this article will probably not offer much to you. But if you want to get into it, but don’t know where to start, then it’s exactly for you.


Before we start, a fair warning: while the procedure is quite entertaining, at first it’ll probably be physically painful. The chemicals used during the process are toxic, so please handle them carefully – that way it’ll still hurt, but less so. Also, if you have even a slight amount of common sense, conduct the procedure in a fully-equipped chemical laboratory under supervision of trained professionals: we’ve had to deal with people who tried to do it at home immediately after reading the guide. And finally: if you don’t know whether you need to pour acid into water or water into acid without a Google search and don’t realize what this lack of knowledge will entail – stop reading this immediately and go to a chemistry 101 course in a local college or something.


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Total votes 25: ↑24 and ↓1 +23
Comments 0

Common misconceptions about space-grade integrated circuits

Reading time 27 min
Views 21K

Space exploration was always fascinating, and recent developments have reignited the interest to the heights never seen since the last man stood on the Moon. People argue about Mars exploration and features of spaceships as their grandparents would’ve done if the internet existed fifty years ago. I’m an electronics engineer working in the aerospace industry, so I know a thing or two about the technical background of this stuff — and I see that these things aren’t common knowledge, and people often have significantly skewed ideas about the reasons behind many things and decisions. Namely, I’d love to speak of some misconceptions about radiation hardened integrated circuits and the means of protection from radiation-induced damage.

So, let's start our journey
Total votes 15: ↑15 and ↓0 +15
Comments 35

Board game for learning the basics of electrical circuits. Why not?

Reading time 3 min
Views 4.8K


I made the “electric” designer of… cardboard. Alas, the project still remains at the prototype stage, not developing into an industrial “physical” look and is waiting for its time (and investor).


But I decided to go further — once we started making cardboard, we’ll bring the situation to its logical conclusion — we’ll make a complete cardboard board game, but with an electric setting and a learning effect. There were a lot of options — starting from a simple “walker” and ending with Ameritrash from a zombie with electron movement and vicious short circuits and swollen capacitors.


As a result, I decided to dwell on a logical abstract, since the schematics of electrical circuits are very suitable for it. Said and done — as a result of the first iteration, the game “Circuit” was born.

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Total votes 12: ↑11 and ↓1 +10
Comments 1

Compensation for Error Caused by Limited Gain-Bandwidth of Operational Amplifiers in Low-pass Filters

Reading time 6 min
Views 3.9K
Amateur vs Pro

An operational amplifier has the internal compensation circuit for stability which limits its working bandwidth. Frequency response of the compensated Op Amp has slope of −6 dB/octave or −20 dB/decade. Unity gain frequency defines the bandwidth where the Op Amp is able to amplify a signal. If we multiply the gain and frequency at any point, the result is the same, allowing us to use this parameter to select the appropriate Op Amp. It is called Gain-Bandwidth Product, GBW or GBP. The limited open-loop gain introduces a closed-loop gain and phase error.

But we want to optimize our circuits, right?
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Total votes 8: ↑8 and ↓0 +8
Comments 0

Tech Insights: Are LED filament-lamps so good?

Reading time 8 min
Views 3.7K
Saluting my LED lamp fans!

Today we will talk about the palpitating and extremely popular subject in recent years — filament LED (Light-Emitted Diode) lamps. Numerous articles have been published here on Habr (1, 2, 3) and on the web, but none of them tells us a word about in-depth analysis of the lamps (what is actually inside) and comparison of their temperature characteristics. Therefore, especially for you — my dear LED-lovers — I conducted a detailed analysis of such lamps from different manufacturers, including temperature measurement of LEDs themselves.

Afterwards we will try to answer the question: are filament lamps as good as marketers present them to us?

Disclaimer: this is my very first attempt to translate and adopt an article from Habr into English, so I will ask you to give a fruitful feedback and correct some mistake if any present.
Shock, thrill and scandals!
Total votes 9: ↑8 and ↓1 +7
Comments 0

Bootstrapping Azerbaijan as a new center of ASIC design + Verilog Meetup #6 in Silicon Valley

Reading time 11 min
Views 1.4K

Last week I was doing a seminar on SystemVerilog, ASIC and FPGA at ADA University in Baku, Azerbaijan. I will replicate the last two sessions of this seminar, on RISC-V CPU simulation and synthesis, at the Verilog Meetups on March 3 and March 10 at Hacker Dojo, Mountain View, California. For this reason I am combining the information about Azerbaijan and California seminars in a single post.

First, let's talk about ADA University.

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Total votes 8: ↑7 and ↓1 +6
Comments 0

Exploring VALID/READY protocol, pipelines and experimenting with flow control using an HDL training tool

Level of difficulty Medium
Reading time 1 min
Views 956

Ссылка на русскую версию / link to Russian version

Understanding valid/ready protocol is extremely important for every microarchitect.

Valid/ready is one of the main protocols used to organise flow-control inside a logic block as well as on inter-block (SoC) level.

In the last lesson, we explored FIFO buffer using hdlgadgets - human-in-the-loop HDL training tool.

This time we will take two FIFO buffers (which form a pipeline with valid/ready handshakes) and will experiment with it by changing flow-control logic of the pipeline.

We will show that valid/ready is not only a mechanism for transferring data from one FIFO queue to another, but also a method for organizing various kinds of logical functionality between queues.

If you have not worked with valid/ready protocol before, you will be surprised how easy it is to achieve desired functionality of the design by simply writing couple of lines of Verilog code in the handshaking logic block between two FIFOs.

Read further and watch the video
Total votes 6: ↑6 and ↓0 +6
Comments 0

Active Termination Drivers

Reading time 9 min
Views 3.5K


The easiest way to build a driver with specified output impedance is to use an amplifier with high load compatibility and add a resistor to its output. The penalty is a voltage drop across this resistor, so there is power loss and we need a higher supply voltage. If our driver is able to deliver the same voltage and current to the same load, but the extra resistor will have a lower value, our device will be able to deliver the same output power at a lower supply voltage. Less power losses, less heat, and longer working time when a battery is used.
There is an idea how to solve this problem: active termination. We can synthesize the output impedance!

Now when we know what we want, go to design our drivers!
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Total votes 6: ↑6 and ↓0 +6
Comments 0

DSO138 upgrade

Reading time 11 min
Views 4.2K

On Ali, an interesting toy – an oscilloscope called DSO138 is sold for a very inexpensive price. It has already gained quite a lot of popularity among electronics lovers, but the parameters of this device, alas, allow it to be more or less fully used only for debugging very low-frequency circuits. Actually, it is not positioned as a tool, but rather as a DIY-kit for novice electronics engineers.

This "toy" oscilloscope is assembled on the STM32F103 microcontroller, and with a fairly competent circuit design of the digital part, the presence of a fairly decent 320X240-dot color display, and not the most rotten analog path, everything, alas, is ruined by very weak ADCs on board the 32F103. The claimed band of 200 kHz can be recognized as such only with a very large stretch. Yes, it will show the presence or absence of a signal with such a frequency, but it will not be possible to really look at something beyond this.

At the same time, the 103-series has a slightly more powerful brother - the STM32F303, it is almost completely compatible with the legs, but it is significantly better in terms of the parameters we are interested in, there are 4 ADCs on board with a conversion frequency of 5 MHz (6 MHz with a 10-bit resolution). In this scenario, if you use all 4 ADCs in parallel with a 10-bit resolution, you can get a effective resolution of up to an honest 24 MSPS (millions of samples per second). The microcontroller is also inexpensive; you can easily find it on the same Ali for very reasonable money again. It is clear that the idea to change the microcontroller arose almost immediately after I tried this DSO138.

At the same time, if upgraded the toy can turn out to be a completely full-fledged tool that even professionals, not just novice amateurs, could already use. With these thoughts in mind, I decided to try to do something with a Chinese toy in my free time.

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Total votes 5: ↑5 and ↓0 +5
Comments 0

GoROBO: an educational initiative from the ITMO University startup accelerator

Reading time 3 min
Views 1.3K
GoROBO is an ITMO University project through and through: one of the co-owners graduated our mechatronics MA program, and two other employees are current postgrad students.

Let’s talk about the educational environment they want to create, why they chose to build such an unusual startup, and what awaits GoROBO clubs in the future.

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Total votes 5: ↑5 and ↓0 +5
Comments 0

Exploring FIFO principles using an HDL training tool

Level of difficulty Medium
Reading time 1 min
Views 581

Ссылка на русскую версию / link to Russian version

FIFO is a key concept in hardware design. Understanding of FIFO is necessary for understanding the valid/ready protocol, which in turn is necessary for organisation of flow-control within a design.

Unfortunately, there are very few books on this topic, and to be fair, microarchitectural concepts are quite difficult to master from books, since understanding of these concepts are coming with practice. In other words it is more about developing hardware intuition.

The idea of the HDL training tool is that it can help develop a hardware intuition, providing the opportunity to explore ready-made scenarios in a step-by-step interactive way. The tool also provides detailed visualization of a simulated scenario.

Since the tool is a front-end for the HDL simulator, the real, synthesized SystemVerilog is executed on the simulator itself, which can be viewed and even modified.

So, the video of exploring FIFO on the training tool is here:

Watch the video and continue reading
Total votes 4: ↑4 and ↓0 +4
Comments 0

Wi-Fi internet radio from a router with station switching capability

Level of difficulty Medium
Reading time 8 min
Views 1.3K
Wi-Fi интернет-радиоприёмник.
ChatGPT was not used in writing this article.
The animated image uses the webp file format instead of gif.
In this article, you will find a complete description of how to make a Wi-Fi internet radio receiver from a router that can play mp3 streams from internet radio stations.
It is also possible to switch between two internet radio stations. We will use OpenWRT firmware installed on the router to create a Wi-Fi internet radio. It is possible to complete this project without using a soldering iron. All the components can be placed inside the router to create a finished device — a Wi-Fi internet radio.
To make this, you will need:
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Total votes 4: ↑4 and ↓0 +4
Comments 1

Android for electronics design engineers

Reading time 5 min
Views 1.8K

There is a list of well-known electronics design tools for Android which can be found in every review for the last 10 years: “Electrodoc”, “Every Circuit”, “Droid Tesla”, “Electronics Toolbox”, “RF & Microwave Toolbox” and so on. Also, there is a lot of trash on the market that turns finding a good tool into a quest.

This short review is about an unknown but cool tool “Circuit Calculator” working on Android devices and intended for professional electronics designers.

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Total votes 4: ↑4 and ↓0 +4
Comments 0

SEPIC-Ćuk split-rail converter average model

Reading time 4 min
Views 1.4K

SEPIC-Ćuk split-rail converter can be used to make positive and negative supplies from a single input voltage for relatively well-matched loads like operational amplifiers.

Transient models are time consuming. Average models reduce modeling time drastically.

The PWM switch average models for current- and voltage-mode are described in details in Christophe Basso’s book “Switch-Mode Power Supplies, Second Edition: SPICE Simulations and Practical Designs”. Using of these models for SEPIC and Ćuk converters is also shown.

This text shows how to use the PWM switch average model to design a split-rail SEPIC-Ćuk converter.

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Total votes 4: ↑4 and ↓0 +4
Comments 0

RS485 — a standard for industrial networks. What are the main features of the transceiver microcircuit?

Reading time 8 min
Views 2.1K

When building a network for communication between a large number of devices, one may think: what interface to choose? Each interface has its own pros and cons that determine its application: CAN — Automotive, RS485 / RS232 — Industrial, Ethernet — Consumer Electronics / Server. What features of the transceiver microcircuit help to protect against many problems during installation and operation? How is the process of measuring and researching of transceiver microcircuits going on? New RS485 microcircuit is ready to get to market!
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Total votes 4: ↑4 and ↓0 +4
Comments 0

Gyrators

Reading time 13 min
Views 3K


Gyrators are impedance converters usually used to simulate inductance in circuits. Though they are rarely used in discrete electronics, they are interesting circuits looking like pole dancers in pictures. There are studies on gyrators, but still something is missing, so it is interesting to do another one.
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Total votes 4: ↑4 and ↓0 +4
Comments 0
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