Applications such as turbidity measurement and densitometry require cleanly pulsed light sources with stable amplitudes. The LED driver in Figure 1 illuminates retinal neurons in a biological experiment that has similar requirements. For a given ...
I recently published a simple design ( Ref. 1 ) for a platinum resistance detector (PRTD) 4 to 20 mA transmitter circuit, illustrated in Figure 1. Figure 1. The PRTD 4 to 20 mA loop transmitter with constant current PRTD excitation that relies on ...
In today’s world, both households and industrial facilities are exploring ways to improve power reliability by harnessing multiple energy sources, not just the electricity from the grid. One clever solution: Automatic transfer switch (ATS). ...
Conventional astable oscillator circuits that use CMOS logic gates, bipolar transistors or low current op Amps, often require more current than necessary. The circuit shown generates a low frequency square wave signal while drawing only 0.5 ...
Design Idea (DI) contributors have recently explored various possibilities for ON/OFF power control using just a momentary contact “shiny modern push-button,” many of which build off of Nick Cornford’s “To press on or hold ...
To generate high voltages with proper insulation between the “hot node” and the rest of the circuitry, a car ignition coil can function in place of a high-voltage transformer. These coils have voltage ratings of approximately 20 kV, so ...
We recently saw how certain audio power amplifiers can be used as oscillators ( Ref. 1 ). This Design Idea shows how those same parts can be used for simple amplitude modulation, which is trickier than it might seem. The relevant device is the ...
LEDs need current to illuminate, and current usually flows through a power supply to an LED. A typical LED-driver circuit uses a transistor to provide current and a series resistor to decrease the voltage you apply to the LED. Unfortunately, the ...
The classical Schmitt trigger circuit that you'll find in textbooks provides some noise immunity, such as for the front end of magnetic pickup in position-sensor circuits (Figure 1a). You adjust the two threshold levels using R 1 and R 2 or R 2 ...
Stephen Woodward, a prolific circuit designer with way more than 100 published Design Ideas (DIs), had his “80 MHz VFC with prescaler and preaccumulator” [ 1 ] published on October 17, 2024, as a DI on the EDN website. Upon reading his ...