Circuits & Schematics - Microcontrollers Usage

Receiving infrared (IR) signals while conserving system power is difficult, and typically requires the inclusion of complex power-management routines in the firmware. You can avoid that problem by disconnecting power to the microcontroller when IR ...

When designing devices with microcontrollers (MCU), I like to use some of the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) inputs to measure onboard voltages along with all the required sensors inputs. This means I often run out of ADC inputs. So presented ...

It’s remarkable how many switching regulator chips use the same basic two-resistor network for output voltage programming. Figure 1 illustrates this feature in a typical (buck type) regulator. See R 1 and R 2 where: Quantitatively, the V ...

Figure 1’s silly-simple voltage-to-time ADC is an exercise in dynamic range. Assuming that it is used with a 10-MHz counter/timer, its resolution is roughly 10 µV per count for inputs around 0 V and 100 mV per count at 1 kV, and it ...

Figure 1 shows an example of on/off circuitry commonly used in battery-operated devices. The p-channel MOSFET, Q 1 , serves as a power switch. When you push the On button, S 1 , Q 1 ’s gate goes low. Q 1 turns on and supplies battery voltage ...

Analog-to-digital conversion based on the classic combination of a voltage-to-frequency converter (VFC) with a counter has been around for (many) decades, mainly because it has some durable time-proven advantages. VFC digitization is naturally ...

An excerpt from Christopher Paul’s “Parsing PWM (DAC) performance: Part 1 Mitigating errors” ( Ref. 1 ): “I was surprised to discover that when an output of a popular µP I’ve been using is configured to be a ...

The 0- to 20-mA current loop is a reliable means of data communication in industrial applications. These circuits use a precision shunt in the receiver to convert the current signal into a voltage signal. Accidentally connecting the precision ...

Pulse width modulation (PWM) is a terrific basis for digital to analog conversion. Credit goes to features like simplicity and (theoretically) perfect differential and integral linearity. Unfortunately, PWM’s need for ripple filtering tends ...

The basis for this Design Idea is a circuit that uses three resistors and a microcontroller-I/O pin to work as input high impedance or output to independently drive two LEDs ( Reference 1 ). The idea sounded good for this design, mainly because of ...