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1500 questions
22
votes
4 answers
What does a resistor do?
OK, very basic question here.
I read lots of books, searched quite a bit, and every description I read seemed to talk about the flow of electrons and right away go too deep in theory for me to grasp the basic principle of their use.
I understand a…
FMaz008
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22
votes
9 answers
Why is the chassis used as ground in automotive electrical circuits
Automotive electronics generally use the metal chassis as the negative ground connector for the DC circuits. Obviously this saves something on wiring. Is there an electrical reason for this approach?
(I am not asking why negative instead of…
bib
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22
votes
2 answers
2 Voltage regulator wired together to produce higher amperage possible?
I need a 12V 2.56A regulator. I happened to have 2x 2A 12V linear regulators I brought and did nothing with.
I was wondering could I wire them together and get 12V 4A or would I have divide my circuit amongst the two regulators? A schematic of how I…
Ageis
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22
votes
3 answers
What are those small metal bars going across a PCB for?
In quite a lot of PCBs that I have seen, they often have these small metal bars going across from one point to another.
Here is an image of what I am talking about. In this example it is a charger:
J2 and J3 are what I am talking about
For…
George
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22
votes
4 answers
What protocol does a headphone jack use?
I have 2 questions. One is simple, the other may be not.
1. What's the official name for the standard headphone jack? It's universal for all brands of phones, so it must have a name (when you want to go shopping for components).
2. Is it using…
user3710
22
votes
5 answers
5 Band resistors and correct orientation
few days ago i bought few (about 500) resistors and i noticed that they have 5 color bands instead of 4. My question is how do i count them (which color is the tollerence) and how should i put them? Do they have a good or bad orientation like + or -…
Meletis Flevarakis
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22
votes
7 answers
Ferrite bead position
I wish to use some extra power supply filtering for my DAC, ADC, CPLD and OpAmp devices. In this question I got the point about the global locations for ferrite beads. If I understood correctly, the ferrite bead should be placed close to the device…
Nazar
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22
votes
2 answers
Stm32 Event and interrupts
I started studying interrupts on stm32 specifically the stm32f4 discovery board. i found this example in which you have to press the button to start the interrupt and push it again to stop it.
In this line:EXTI_InitStructure.EXTI_Mode =…
ChiPlusPlus
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22
votes
5 answers
How different are 8-bit microcontrollers from 32-bit microcontrollers when it comes to programming them
Right, so we have 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit microcontrollers in this world at the moment. All of them are often used. How different is it to program 8-bit and 16-bit micrcontrollers? I mean, does it require different technique or skill? Lets take…
quantum231
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22
votes
2 answers
How does a GPU/CPU communicate with a standard display output? (HDMI/DVI/etc)
I am interested in how the cpu/gpu presents (to whatever equipment that it does) video data after it has been processed.
I have been told that the video is processed by the CPU/GPU and then sent to an integrated circuit by high speed serial that…
Craig Lafferty
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21
votes
3 answers
"two bypass/decoupling capacitors" rule?
I found many discussions on bypass capacitors and their purpose. Usually, they come as a pair of 0.1uF and 10uF. Why does it have to be a pair? Does anyone have a good reference to a paper or an article, or could provide a good explanation? I wish…
Nazar
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21
votes
6 answers
Is there some logic in IC name prefixes?
There are hundreds of prefixes in IC names, this page lists a number of them. For some it's easy to see that they refer to the manufacturer's name, like AD for Analog Devices or LT for Linear Technology. Others can be found with several…
stevenvh
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21
votes
3 answers
How to transform 5 V into 12 V?
I would like to transform 5 V 500 mA (from USB power) into 12 V with a few cheap components.
Is this possible with the help of some generic parts (and not with the help of some expensive transformer, etc.)?
Also, how many milliamps would this…
Matt
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21
votes
7 answers
What are the smallest microcontrollers?
I am looking for a microcontroller to use in a project which is very space-limited. What microcontrollers have some of the smallest packages? This does not need to be high performance, most microcontrollers are more powerful than is necessary in…
Alex I
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21
votes
5 answers
What can reduce overshoot and ringing on a simple square wave pulse generator?
I've built a simple RC and Schmitt-trigger-based square wave pulse generator. On the breadboard, it has some obvious unwanted qualities due to jumper length, the breadboard itself, etc.
Schematic and breadboard version:
And the waveform…
JYelton
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