Fabien Dubois EDN The circuit in this Design Idea lets you set a well-controlled voltage rate of change, often expressed as the differential dV/dt (instantaneous rate of voltage change over time in volts per second). You can vary the sensitivity ...
Soumitra Bhattacharjee EDN In PIC microcontrollers, the MSSP (master synchronous serial port) module uses multiplexed pins for the I 2 C and SPI peripherals. There is typically no issue using either of the two peripherals. But what if both ...
Universal power supplies must work from mains power lines ranging from 90 to 264 V ac at 50 or 60 Hz. Directly rectifying the input voltage charges the filter capacitor to 120 to 370 V dc. Such voltages present a serious threat to personnel who are ...
The circuit in Figure 1 converts an analog input voltage, V IN , to a proportional wiper setting of a DPP (digitally programmable potentiometer). The potentiometer's wiper setting, which varies from position 0 through 31, corresponds to the ...
Peter Demchenko EDN This Design Idea circuit regulates the current through one or more LEDs, making it almost independent of supply voltage. Its main advantage is a very small dropout voltage, which can be less than 100 mV. The design could find ...
Peter Demchenko EDN Low-current switching regulator ICs often use a Darlington as the output switch. The power conversion efficiency in this case can be improved with the help of only two cheap components. To make this possible, the chip should ...
Although an SMPS (switch-mode power supply) can protect itself against permanent short circuits, it sometimes has problems when dealing with transient overloads. Transient overloads are not short circuits but can push the power supply above its ...
Michele Costantino EDN This Design Idea describes a simple and effective way to provide optoisolation for devices connected on the I 2 C bus (Figure 1). It improves on an earlier version (Reference 1). SDA and SCL are on the bus master’s side ...
Ausias Garrigos David Marroqui EDN Photovoltaic systems commonly include a means of energy storage batteries or supercaps to provide electricity to the load when sunlight is not available or during power transients. However, when feasible, ...
Stepan Novotill EDN Designs for solar-powered applications with low-duty-cycle requirements can often rely on capacitors for energy storage in place of less reliable batteries. Typical applications include solar positioning, telemetry transmitters, ...