Archive for the ‘Electronic Design’ Category:

2024-06-04 Gallium Nitride MOSFETs To Revolutionize Power Electronics

Gallium nitride power electronics will replace silicon and will make laptop power adapters smaller than a golf ball and will save major amounts of electricity.  GaN devices will waste a lot less power, which will enable power electronics equipment to be made smaller and more efficient.  Quote: “”GaN-based power electronics, on the other hand, could

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2024-05-29 Solar Panel Controller To Charge Lead-Acid Battery

This is a simple charge controller that includes a dump load to dissipate excess power from the PV panel.  D1 is the reference voltage that feed the 393 comparators, and its forward voltage changes with temperature.  It would be better to use a low power LM317 to give a stable 1.25 volts. Instead of a

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2024-05-16 Delta-Sigma Modulator Using 555 IC And Current Source

This circuit is used for converting an analog signal into a digital pulse stream.  Such things as class D audio amplifiers, servo amplifiers, A to D converters, or sending an analog signal across a fiber optic link. The Schematic and explanation here in this webpage. https://lrak.net/wiki/555_Delta-Sigma_Modulator.html The output signal is shown as audio modulated onto

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2024-05-05 Tesla’s New Dojo AI Super-chip Will Be 40 Times More Powerful

A 5 min. YouTube video.  Sam the Electric Viking said that the supercomputer is now in New York.  There will be a new AI data center (being built) in Gigafactory Texas. 

2024-04-20 RCWL-0516 Microwave Doppler Motion Sensor Module Schematic KO4BB

The modules use both the RCWL-9616 and the BISS-0001 but it seems the schematics are all labeled BISS-0001.  The parts values are different.  He gives some good information about them.  They operate at 3.5 and 3.98 GHz – the ones I have were advertised at 5 GHz.  Also he shows his own version that uses a

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2024-04-08 The 555 Timer Chip Was Not Named After The Three 5k Resistors Inside

The 555 timer chip has been extremely popular for over 50 years.  The 555 number was assigned by Hans Kamenzind; it was not named after the Three 5k Resistors. This 1 min YouTube short explains.

2024-03-24 Signal Distortion From High-K Ceramic Capacitors

A good article about signal distortion in a Butterworth low pass opamp filter using C0G and X7R MLCCs.  https://www.edn.com/signal-distortion-from-high-k-ceramic-capacitors/

2024-03-15 Ferranti Argus “Hearing Aid” Computer

In the “Original Series” chapter this very interesting Wikipedia article talks about the “hearing aid computer” that used the OC-71 germanium transistors which were used in hearing aids and could go only up to 25kHz clock rate. That was quite slow – tube computers could clock at 500kHz.  Later models used faster transistors and could

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2024-03-08 FWBR Ripple Calculator Online

This may be helpful when choosing the amount of capacitance for a certain unregulated AC power supply – the kind that uses an old fashioned transformer.  It calculates one variable given the others. https://www.chipbuilder.com/full-wave-power-supply-ripple-calculator.html

2024-02-27 MOSFET Driver

The gate driver circuit shown in the screenshot uses BC547s, which are limited to less than 200 mA current.  Instead, if the two transistors were BC337 or PN2222A which can easily handle over 500 mA, they could charge and discharge the gate faster, and thus reduce the dissipation in the MOSFET.

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