Collaborate Disseminate
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?
We’ve all experienced power outages of some kind, be it a breaker tripping at an inconvenient time to a storm causing a lack of separation between a tree and a …read more Continue reading Cascade Failures, Computer Problems, and Ohms Law: Understanding the Northeast Blackout of 2003
The simplest ideas can be the ones that change the world. For Otis Boykin, it was a new way to make wirewound precision resistors. Just like that, he altered the course of electronics with his ideas about what a resistor could be. Now his inventions are in everything from household …read more
Continue reading Otis Boykin’s Precision Passives Propelled the Pacemaker
When designing a mains power supply for a small load DC circuit, there are plenty of considerations. Small size, efficiency, and cost of materials all spring to mind. Potential lethality seems like it would be a bad thing to design in, but that didn’t stop [Great Scott!] from exploring capacitive …read more
Continue reading Mains Power Supply for ATtiny Project is Probably a Bad Idea
The Smith chart is a staple for analyzing complex impedance. [W2AEW] notes that a lot of inexpensive test gear like the MFJ-259B gives you complex readings, but fails to provide the sign of the imaginary part of the complex number. That makes it difficult to plot the results on a Smith chart or carry out other analysis. As you might expect, though, he has a solution for you that you can see in the video, below.
A common method is to increase the frequency slightly. In a simple case, you’d expect the imaginary part — the reactance — to go …read more