Articles and news - Microcontrollers - 5

Figure silly-simple voltage-to-time ADC is an exercise in dynamic range. Assuming that it is used with a 10-MHz counter/timer, its resolution is roughly 10 µV per count for inputs around 0 V and 100 mV per count at 1 kV, and it never really over-ranges...

Filtering occurs frequently in the analog world. Unfortunately, in the digital world, engineers apply it mainly to the DSPs and not to the small 8-bit microcontrollers that designers commonly use...

Light and Versatile Graphics Library (LVGL) is steadily making inroads in the graphics realm by efficiently facilitating graphical user interface designs in small, resource-constrained, and battery-powered devices...

Sensors such as strain gages, RTDs, and thermistors produce a resistance that’s proportional to force or temperature. If you measure a sensor’s resistance, you can calculate the physical parameter. Circuits such as resistance bridges can help you measure the unknown resistance...

Cortex-M0+ is not the newest small, low-power processor and, in fact, some newer offerings may surpass it. However, its broad deployment and mature environment continue to make the processor a compelling offering for low-power applications...

Analog-to-digital conversion based on the classic combination of a voltage-to-frequency converter with a counter has been around for (many) decades, mainly because it has some durable time-proven advantages...

An excerpt from Christopher Paul’s “Parsing PWM (DAC) performance: Part 1 – Mitigating errors”: “I was surprised to discover that when an output of a popular µP...

Pulse width modulation is a terrific basis for digital to analog conversion. Credit goes to features like simplicity and perfect differential and integral linearity. Unfortunately, PWM’s need for ripple filtering tends to make it slow...

The 0- to 20-mA current loop is a reliable means of data communication in industrial applications. These circuits use a precision shunt in the receiver to convert the current signal into a voltage signal...

The basis for this Design Idea is a circuit that uses three resistors and a microcontroller-I/O pin to work as input high impedance or output to independently drive two LEDs...