Electronic Engineering Design Ideas
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By Henry Santana, May 04, 2012
Electronic loads are electronically controllable resistances used to test power circuit behavior at load resistances close to zero. This short piece shows how to build one using two op amps, an FET, a pot, a fixed resistor and an auxiliary (battery) supply.
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By Brad Albing, May 04, 2012
How to use Intersil's ISL6132 for overvoltage sensing.
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By Alexander Asinovski, April 04, 2012
This design idea extends the ability of a battery-monitoring data acquisition IC to allow temperature monitoring of up to 12 batteries in a power saving design with minimal error.
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By Ajoy Raman, February 29, 2012
Pre-regulators at the input of power supplies minimize losses. This version uses optical feedback from an LED and light-dependent resistor instead of the more common optically isolated TRIACs.
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By Contributing Author, February 22, 2012
In a number of cases, an inexpensive source of 115-V, 400-Hz power with low
distortion is needed for bench tests or mobile applications. This circuit, which
uses the Apex Microtechnology PA25 dual power op-amp IC, can be that source
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By Richard Bedell, February 13, 2012
Using both D and J-K flip-flops, this simple contestant-selection circuit is easily expandable. The design uses open-drain inverting amplifiers to set a very short window of opportunity in order to avoid the need for arbitration.
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By Rick Mally, February 10, 2012
A low-cost shunt regulator serves as the active element in Sallen-Key second-order low-pass filter as well as shifting the output DC voltage into a bipolar range, creating a digitally controllable precision reference with 3mA output.
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By Jianwen Shao, January 31, 2012
While there are still many challenges facing the LED before it becomes the primary light source, there is no question that LEDs will continue to be used in ever more lighting applications. Two challenges standing in the way of LED adoption in low-power bulbs are the size of the driver and cost.
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By Derek Bowers, January 24, 2012
A simple circuit uses one control device to control bass and treble simultaneously, with a symmetric response that is flat at the center of the adjustment range.
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By Michael Shustov, January 24, 2012
Anoop Hegde analyzes a contributor's simple zener regulator circuit to illustrate some potential traps.
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By William H. Morong, December 27, 2011
These two circuits provide ripple rejection for unregulated power supplies to audio amplifier applications and can follow a declining voltage source (such as a battery) to low values without dropout. A higher-power version that sacrifices some high-frequency performance is included. The basic circuit can be made to operate to reject ripple at frequencies well above 1 MHz.