Circuits & Schematics - Analogue Design - 3

Frequent contributor Nick Cornford recently published a delightfully clever design idea ( Reference 1 ) using a platinum RTD calibrated to output a 1 mV/ C signal that’s perfect for direct readout via a standard DMM I thought Nick’s ...

Before shipping moving-coil meters, manufacturers may short-circuit the meters' terminals with a length of wire, which provides effective electromagnetic damping and results in better immunity to external mechanical vibration and shocks that ...

In recent EDN design ideas, we’ve seen thermostat designs that meld the functions of sensor and heater into a single device: FET, BJT, or even a simple length of fine gauge copper wire. A virtue inherent in thermostat designs that use a ...

There are many applications where an ADC needs to process a small differential input signal in the presence of a large common-mode signal. Traditional instrumentation amplifiers (in-amps) are not commonly used in these applications, due to their ...

A silly simple and ubiquitous circuit network is a variable resistance consisting of the series connection of a manually adjusted rheostat-connected pot and fixed resistor shown in Figure 1. Figure 1. Classic variable resistance with the series ...

High speed and precision are not the only areas where special V-F circuits are needed. Figure 1 shows a circuit which runs from a single 1.5 V cell with only 125 µA current drain. The circuit uses an LT1017 dual micropower comparator in a ...

Few methods for analog to digital conversion are more “mature” than the classic combination of a voltage-to-frequency converter (VFC) with a counter. VFC digitization is naturally integrating, so good noise rejection is inherent, as is ...

It’s interesting, useful, and fun that basic electronic topologies often turn out to have utility in multiple and surprisingly different applications. Figure 1 shows an example of such a circuit. It’s a charge pump voltage inverter ...

This Design Idea mates a precision current source IC with precision difference amp chips to create a programmable current source or sink. The resistor-programmable current source/sink in Figure 1 illustrates the basic topology, taking advantage of ...

In many applications, there are requirements of low power, high performance differential amplifiers to convert small differential signals to a readable ground referenced output signal. Input voltages at two inputs usually share a large common-mode ...