Circuits & Schematics

In electrical heating applications, resistive heaters are powered through phase angle-controlled SCR/triac circuits to vary the applied voltage/power to maintain the required temperature. Phase angle control produces a lot of harmonics leading to ...

Although adequate for undemanding applications, the circuit suffers from several drawbacks which may limit its suitability. The Darlington’s current gain (which can vary considerably from device to device and with temperature) plays a ...

Awhile back I published a simple design idea for a thermal airspeed sensor based on a self-heated Darlington transistor pair (Ref, 1). The resulting sensor is simple, sensitive, and solid-state, but suffers from a radically nonlinear airspeed ...

This design for a photonic switch needs more than approximately 70 V at the cathode of a duo-lateral optical position-sensing device. This voltage gets speedy response at longer wavelengths, such as 980 nm. The circuit uses fast transimpedance ...

In developing electronic systems, designers look for products or ideas that may benefit from the better performance, smaller size, lower cost, and improved reliability that an IC can offer. Toward that end, the digital potentiometer emerged as an ...

A previous Design Idea [ 1 ] outlined a relatively simple circuit in which a momentary pushbutton could be made to function like a latching, mechanical switch. The article generated a good deal of reader feedback. Amongst other comments, readers ...

Capacitor type charge pumps are a well-known, simple, efficient, cost-effective (and therefore popular!) method for inverting and multiplying voltage supply rails. Perhaps less well known, however, is that they also work just as well for dividing ...

The Power Integrations TOPSwitch family of integrated flyback-regulator ICs provides exceptional performance in small, low-pin-count packages. For the lowest-pin-count packages, the multifunction, or M, pin serves multiple purposes, including ...

At the end of the DI for a Simple log-scale audio meter (Ref. 1), I promised to show how to upgrade it to work better. With these fixes, it now has near-digital performance, with faster response and smoother operation. Even this supersized version ...

As the latest generation of new LEDs achieves higher levels of power and efficiency, use of these devices extends to new areas, such as flashlights and vehicular applications. High-power LEDs are finding use even in ambient lighting, long the sole ...