Portable battery-powered devices often spend most of their life in standby mode, in which the quiescent current of an internal boost converter continuously bleeds the battery. The quiescent current during standby can be larger than the actual load ...
Fan noise is becoming a significant issue as electronic equipment increasingly enters the office and the home. Noise is proportional to fan speed, and the airflow hence, fan speed necessary for cooling is less at low ambient temperatures. Because ...
EDN The circuit in Figure 1 provides 32 steps of brightness control from 0 to 100% for a backlight or instrument panel, using just two general-purpose-microprocessor signals. In addition, the circuit requires little board space, because it uses ...
EDN The simplest technique for measuring current in an actuator or a motor is to monitor the ground current with a resistive element between the load and the ground. Because the device and its associated electronics share a ground potential, you ...
EDN A true-differential, power-source-free, high-input-impedance amplifier with bipolar output would present distinct advantages in remote devices. Such an amplifier, with its bipolar output, would be a better choice than a unipolar, 4- to 20-mA ...
EDN If you use an ADC to monitor a system's power-supply voltage, you may encounter situations in which the supply voltage exceeds the ADC's reference voltage (Figure 1). However, the ADC's input voltage cannot exceed its reference ...
A small and simple circuit derives 5 V from the 48 V rail that telecomm applications typically use (Figure 1). Useful for gate bias and other purposes, the 5 V supply delivers as much as 5-mA output current. A shunt reference, IC 1 , defines 5 V as ...
Temperature sensors must sometimes operate at locations whose return potentials differ considerably from that of the data-acquisition system's common that is, equipotential ground. In consequence, the temperature sensor's support circuitry ...
Minh-Tam Nguyen, Maxim Integrated EDN Unlike the four-wire SPI, QSPI, and Microwire data-interface standards, I 2 C and SBBus buses require only two wires for data transmission, because they send and receive over the same wire. The circuit in ...
Advances in semiconductor technology have allowed ICs to replace many mechanical relays, but relays still dominate in high-current circuits that must stand off high voltages of arbitrary polarity. Contact bounce in those relays, however, can prove ...