About: Ibrar Ayyub

Today I will show a very simple ionization chamber that can detect radioactivity. I was able to detect with it ionizing radiation from a smoke detector (Am241 isotope). It’s also immune to electromagnetic interference (EMI) due to a good shielding. This device doesn’t explicitly use any power supply. It’s connected to a multimeter set to […]

Low losses, precise design, low power consumption and moreover a very affordable price are one of several reasons saying for the signal relays from Fujitsu. Despite a big advance in a segment of semiconductors, there are still many reasons for usage of electromechanical relays. Galvanic isolation of a driving signal from a switched signal, resistance […]

Omron has released such a thing: a manual mains switch with a coil inside that will flip it to the ‘off’ position following the application of 5V for 50ms. Unlike a latching relay, the coil cannot set it to the ‘on’ position. There is also a more elaborate version, dubbed “delayed-off” (see below), for situations […]

Photodiode Preamps In some JFET op amps such as the AD743, the input capacitance is in the order of 18 to 20 pF. In comparison, with an LSK489 dual FET, the input capacitance is in the order of 3 pF, which will be suitable for low noise photodiode applications. In this section we will see […]

An innovative architectural approach is required to manage multi-hundred gigabit-per-second levels of system performance with smart processing at full line rate, scaling to terabits and teraflops. The mandate isn’t simply to increase the performance of each transistor or system block, or scale the number of blocks in the system, but to fundamentally improve the communication, […]

Philips Lumileds a family of high flux density LEDs in wavelengths of 380-430nm. The Luxeon UV LEDs are designed for applications including ultraviolet curing, counterfeit detection, medical, industrial and specialty lighting. “The UV LED market has been hampered by limited flux density and a lack of design flexibility,” said Kurosh Hashemi, Senior Product Line Manager at Philips Lumileds. “The company addressed […]

Communications, the China-based mobile chip supplier, is targeting the low-end smartphone market which is now seen as the key high-growth smarttphone market. Spreadtrum is using a single core Cortex-A5 CPU to keep design costs low  and it is in volume production of its SC7710 chipset. “The mass market opportunity in smartphones is the entry level smartphone buyer, that is […]

ARM says it is seeing big success for its Mali graphics processor core in Android smartphones and tablets. The Mali graphics accelerator is a relatively new processor product for the low power CPU developer, but it is fast gaining significant traction in the mobile market. “ARM Mali GPUs unit shipments have increased by more than […]

Three reference designs from Maxim Integrated Products are aimed at design of factory automation systems. Called Carmel, Monterey, and Fremont, these industrial reference designs are fully tested subsystems, complete with schematics, layout files and firmware, and are available for immediate use and customisation. The Carmel (MAXREFDES18#) subsystem, with its high-accuracy, low-noise analogue output high voltages […]

Step 1: Assembling the Double Gearbox A basic hobby motor turning at 12,300 RPM is basically useless without a good gearbox. Just touching the shaft will stall the motor. I obtained a Tamiya double gearbox kit for under $10, which through a series of gears provided a ratio of 114.7:1 at 115RPM. There were a […]