News & Updates

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PROGRAMMABLE LED DIMMER

Around one and a half years ago I’ve designed and built various LED dimmers for both white and RGB LEDs.  Then late last year someone approached me asking if I could make an RGB dimmer for him, too. But my designs were really tailored to their specific applications and built with home-made, i.e. milled PCBs which are time-consuming to […]

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BEACON KEYER

This is likely the first ham radio related project that I document here on this blog. But my very first PIC project was a beacon keyer that I made for my father, HB9BBD. That was was in 2013. A beacon keyer is a great project to get started with microcontrollers since it’s not much more

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supercap power energy Lab test setup

Using a supercapacitor for power management and energy storage with a small solar cell, Part 2

In Part 1 of this series, we have reviewed solar cell performance, how to select and size the supercapacitor, requirements of supercapacitor charging circuits and charging IC characteristics. We will now use two case studies to illustrate these properties in detail. Case Study 1: Using a small solar cell indoors at low light, 100 lux, to power a

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170418eedn omron seismic sensor

Smallest seismic sensor uses vibration spectral analysis

Omron Electronic Components believes it has the world’s smallest class size seismic sensor, specifically designed to trigger the shutdown of potentially hazardous or easily damaged systems in the event of an earthquake. Specifically designed for the growing number of autonomous IoT systems, the Omron D7S provides high precision measurement of spectral intensity, allowing it to

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BQ25504 Solar Cell LiPo Charger

Ultra-Low Power LiPo Charger via Energy Harvesting from a Solar Cell What is it? This is a small (0.5 x 0.5 inch) breakout board for Texas Instrument’s BQ25504Ultra Low Power Boost Converter with Battery Management for Energy Harvesting Applications. From the datasheet: “The bq25504 device is the first of a new family of intelligent integrated energy

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Environmental Sensors

                Environmental conditions have a major impact on our well-being, comfort, and productivity. Sensirion’s sensor solutions provide detailed and reliable data on key environmental parameters such as humidity, temperature, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), particulate matter (PM2.5), and CO2. Environmental Sensing opens up new possibilities to create smarter devices

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Lowest-IQ ‘fuel gauge’ monitors batteries in wearable & portables

Maxim Integrated has posted details of a battery charge monitor IC for which it claims the lowest quiescent current available, at 7µA. The 1-cell Fuel Gauge with Maxim’s ModelGauge m5 EZ algorithm can eliminate battery characterization issues. MAX17055 is a 7μA operating current fuel gauge; the ModelGauge m5 EZ algorithm makes fuel gauge implementation easy

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