Scholarly articles on original research, new ideas, tips and tricks for common problems, and the like. See Papers Category for details.
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The low-pass MFB filter can be a little tricky to analyse so, if you are only interested in the result skip to the end. The MFB low-pass filter: - The first thing to do is convert impedances to ...
When working with microcontrollers, one will sooner or later face the situation where the MCU is not responding. Either it's a new PCBA you are trying to get up and running, or something that prev...
I've had a Nexus 5X smart phone since 2016, so now in Feb 2024 it's almost 8 years old. I like the phone and have had no problems with it until three days ago. I had it in the car plugged in and ...
MISRA C has become a de facto standard for all embedded systems firmware, no matter if it is safety-related or not. C comes with a lot of freedom, which makes it powerful yet dangerous. MISRA C is ...
I keep hearing that dynamic memory allocation on the so-called "heap" segment should not be used in microcontroller-based embedded systems. Pretty much every safety standard like for example MISRA ...
In contrast to diodes that maintain a relatively constant voltage when the current through them varies, a fundamental property of all types of transistors (BJT, FET...) is to maintain a relatively ...
It is well known that there is a linear relationship between the BJT collector and base current (Ic = beta x Ib). It would be interesting to explain it in an intuitive way. The power of such a "phi...
A fundamental property of all types of diodes (silicon, germanium, Schottky, LEDs, Zener ...) is to maintain a relatively constant voltage when the current through them varies. How do they do that?...
Introduction A capacitance multiplier is an electronics technique that allows reducing the voltage ripple at some point in a circuit. It is often used in power supplies, after the rectification of...
Need to visualize voltage distribution Once visualized the voltages of the internal circuit points, we can go even further and "enter" inside resistors to visualize the voltages along the resistiv...
Goals and objectives Motivation. Inspired that there is a place on the web where simple but clever circuit ideas are encouraged, I decided to share another 1-transistor circuit trick. Besides, to ...
Background Constant current sources (simply, current sources) are useful and necessary devices. They are widely used to drive LEDs, charge capacitors and batteries, bias differential amplifiers, e...
Need to visualize voltages I hope I have convinced you that a powerful technique for explaining circuits in an intuitive way is to show where currents flow. But since currents are created by volta...
Need to visualize currents I have long understood that one of the most important techniques to understand circuits is to see where currents flow inside them (in circuit theory, this is considered ...
Goals and objectives Motivation. Having shown how a 1-transistor circuit can be invented, now I will demonstrate how we can invent another more complex 2-transistor circuit. As before, my goals ar...
Building the circuit structure The classic circuit of the op-amp instrumentation amplifier is an example of an ingenious circuit solution. The best way to show it is by reinventing the circuit ste...
It was a big challenge for me to show the basic idea behind the op-amp instrumentation amplifier by building and reinventing it step by step. But it is no less challenging to show the idea behind t...
What follows is a proposed concept of a simple (in principle!) way to generate a fixed-amplitude triangle wave, using two clocks, an XOR gate, and not using any processor cycles. It is practical i...
Goals and objectives As can be seen from the name of the new platform (Codidact = Co + didact), it claims to use the principles of didactics (the art and science of teaching) for the purposes of t...
System description This concept provides a simple high/low indication for the output voltage of a power supply that is followed by an LDO (low drop-out) linear post-regulator. A basic diagram of t...
