Circuits & Schematics - 20

Recently, I’ve been working on a solar off-grid monitoring system. In the system are a few split-core Hall effect sensors to monitor DC current in the solar panel current, the battery charge current, and the inverter input current. These ...

Lighting LEDs from a single 1.5 V cell poses a problem because their forward voltages are higher than the cell’s. The simplest way to light the LED is to use a step-up dc/dc converter. This Design Idea offers a simple and reliable alternative ...

Figure 1. Common view of the Precision Thermocouple Amplifier board. This precision thermocouple sensor module performs cold-junction compensation and digitizes the signal from any type of thermocouple. The output data is formatted in degrees ...

The standard boost converter in Figure 1 uses not only IC 1 , C 1 , L 1 , D 1 , and C 2 to generate a main 5 V output, but also additional small, low-cost components to provide two auxiliary supply rails of 10 and 5 V. These auxiliary outputs are ...

Many electronic-control systems have digital outputs that use transistors. One method of improving the security in these outputs is to use an oscillating signal to represent a logic-high state instead of a fixed voltage level (Figure 1). This type ...

A rechargeable battery’s load should be disconnected at the point of complete discharge, to avoid a further (deep) discharge that can shorten its life or destroy it. Because a battery’s terminal voltage recovers when you disconnect the ...

It is sometimes necessary for a microcontroller to generate a pulse whose voltage is higher than the power-supply voltage of the microcontroller. The circuit in Figure 1 allows you to generate 14 V pulses from a 5 V power supply. An adaptation of ...

Mechanical push-pushbutton switches (also known as alternate-action or push-on/push-off switches) can be bulky and expensive. As an alternative, an electronic version uses a cheaper, NO (normally open), momentary-on switch (Figure 1). Figure 1. ...

This Design Idea involves a low-power motion-detector circuit that operates from battery power for extended times. Part of the design includes a solenoid-operated trip mechanism that triggers whenever it detects motion. The drive circuit for the ...

This Design Idea describes a handy continuity tester with two modes of operation: It may sound if it detects continuity between its two probes, or it may sound when it detects no continuity. The second option permits testing for intermittent cable ...