Category Archives: adc

Open Hardware Board For Robust USB Power Monitoring

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We’ve all seen the little USB power meters that have become popular since nearly every portable device has adopted some variation of USB for charging. Placed between the power source and the device under test, they allow you to see voltage and current in real time. Perfect for determining how long you’ll be able to run a USB powered device on batteries, or finding out if a USB power supply has enough current to do the business.

[Jonas Persson] liked the idea of these cheap little gadgets, but wanted something a bit more scientific. His design, which he refers to …read more

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An LED You Can Blow Out, With No Added Sensor

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We’d seen it done with buttons, switches, gestures, capacitive touch, and IR remote, but never like this. [electron_plumber] made an LED that can be blown out like a candle, and amazingly it requires no added sensors. The project uses an Arduino to demonstrate turning a tiny LED on and off in response to being blown on, and the only components are the LED and a resistor.

How is this done? [electron_plumber] uses an interesting property of diodes (which are the “D” in LED) to use the LED itself as a temperature sensor. A diode’s voltage drop depends on two things: …read more

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Thumbs Up for This Custom Atari 5200 Controller

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It may be nearly 40 years old, but the Atari 5200 still inspires legions of fans to relive the 8-bit glory days of their youth. There was much to love about the game console, but the joystick-and-keypad controllers were not among its many charms. The joystick didn’t auto-center, the buttons were mushy, and the ergonomics were nonexistent.

Retro-aficionados need not suffer in silence, though, thanks to this replacement controller for the Atari 5200. [Scott Baker] didn’t want to settle for one of the commercial replacements or, horrors, an adapter for the old PC-style joystick, so he rolled his own. Working …read more

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Save Some Steps with this Arduino Rapid Design Board

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We’re all familiar with the wide variety of Arduino development boards available these days, and we see project after project wired up on a Nano or an Uno. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, but there comes a point where some hobbyists want to move beyond plugging wires into header sockets and build the microcontroller right into their project. That’s when one generally learns that development boards do a lot more than break the microcontroller lines out to headers, and that rolling your own design means including all that supporting circuitry.

To make that transition easier, [Sean …read more

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Should Business Risk Mitigation Be A Factor When We Choose Our Suppliers And Manufacturers?

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This is something that I have struggled with for most of my working life. As a technology professional, it is my job to pick the best products and solutions or to dig deeper to marry that technological decision with one that’s best for my organi… Continue reading Should Business Risk Mitigation Be A Factor When We Choose Our Suppliers And Manufacturers?→

Double The Resolution, From An Arduino ADC

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Analog-to-digital converters, or ADCs, are somewhat monolithic devices for most users, a black box that you ask nicely for the value on its input, and receive a number in return. For most readers, they will be built into whatever microcontroller is their platform of choice, and their resolution will be immutable, set by whatever circuitry is included upon the die. There are a few tricks that can be employed to get a bit more from a stock ADC though, and [Neris] has taken a look at a couple of them.

The first circuit doubles the resolution of an ADC, in …read more

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Maintaining Your Data Center’s Agility and Making the Most Out of Your Investment in ADC Capacity

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Deciding on an appropriate application delivery controller (ADC) and evaluating the need for supporting infrastructure is a complex, complicated, and challenging job. Such challenges result from the fact that ADCs are increasingly used across diverse … Continue reading Maintaining Your Data Center’s Agility and Making the Most Out of Your Investment in ADC Capacity→

Portable DVD Player gets Raspberry Pi Zero Upgrade

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You might remember a time when people thought portable DVD players were a pretty neat idea. In the days before netbooks, cheap tablets, and arguably even the widespread adoption of smartphones, it seemed perfectly reasonable to lug around a device that did nothing but play movies. Today we look back at them as we would flip phones: a quaint precursor to the technology overload we find ourselves in currently. But the fact remains that millions of these comical little devices were pumped into the greedy maw of the consumer electronics market. They’re ripe for the hacking, all you need is …read more

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Marrying the Business Need With Technology Drive: Recapping It All

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Throughout the past four blogs in this series we have harkened back to some of the same key points. Today, we will recap. 1) Not everything that glitters is gold, so use your common sense. If you can’t find a physical world comparison, don&#8217… Continue reading Marrying the Business Need With Technology Drive: Recapping It All→

A Compensated Thermocouple Amp, Ready for Arduino

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When you want to measure temperature with an Arduino or other microcontrollers, there are a ton of options for sensors. Temperature chips and sensor modules abound, some with humidity sensors built-in and all with easy interfacing and an expansive supporting code library. But dip one of those sensors into, say, molten aluminum, and you’ve got a problem.

If you’re measuring something hot, you need a thermocouple. Trouble is, the signal from a thermocouple is pretty small, and needs amplification and compensation before being fed into the ADC of a typical microcontroller. Unable to find a commercial amp to meet his …read more

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