Collaborate Disseminate
[Peter Demchenko] wanted to use a low power TS555 in an ESR meter design. The problem is, he needed to handle significant current sink requirements for cases where the capacitor …read more Continue reading Humble 555 Gets a Boost for ESR Meter
We’ve all heard about the perils of counterfeit chips, and more than a few of us have probably been bitten by those scruple-free types who run random chips through a …read more Continue reading Exploring Cheap Tantalum Caps of Mysterious Provenance
Inductors are more like a resistor in series with an ideal inductor, resistors can be inductors as well, and well, capacitors aren’t just simply a capacitance in a package. Little …read more Continue reading Why Is My 470uF Electrolytic Cap More Like 20uF?
[Kasyan TV] over on YouTube was given a pile of spare parts in reasonably large quantities, some of which were useful and allocated to specific projects, but given the given …read more Continue reading Building A Spot Welder From 500 Junk Capacitors
We know what you’re thinking. It’s a bad power supply, of course it was capacitors to blame. But even if we all intuitively know at this point that bad caps are almost always the culprit when a PSU gives up …read more
Continue reading Chasing Down Bad Caps to Save a Troubled PSU
Multiple critical memory safety bugs in Firefox 69 and Firefox ESR 68.1 in particular affect medium and large government entities and enterprises. Continue reading Firefox, Chrome Bugs Allow Arbitrary Code-Execution
Got a bunch of questionable electrolytic caps sitting in your junk bin? Looking to recap a vintage radio chassis? Then you might need to measure the equivalent series resistance of the capacitors, in which case this simple five-transistor ESR meter might come in handy.
Even if you have no need for an ESR meter, [W2AEW]’s video below is a solid introduction to how ESR is determined. The circuit itself comes from EEVBlog forum user [Jay-Diddy_B] and is about as simple as such a circuit can get. Two transistors form an oscillator that generates a square wave that drives a resistor …read more
Continue reading Getting a Handle on ESR with a Couple of DIY Meters