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1500 questions
22
votes
9 answers

How can AC current power anything?

I understand the difference between AC and DC. What I don't understand is how does AC power anything when it's reusing the same electrons over and over as they are moving back and forth? A visual picture is this link at 0:35 . Wouldn't it require…
Luke
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22
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3 answers

What value does ammeter or voltmeter measures (RMS, Average or Peak )?

What value does these meters measure? Is it RMS, Average or Peak value ?
Arun M
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22
votes
1 answer

PCIe, diagnosing and improving an eye diagram

I have implemented a design that uses PCIe. It is somewhat different in that the PCIe interface is used as a chip-to-chip communication lane on a single PCB (e.g. no PCIe connector). The root complex device is a Freescale i.MX6 which is PCIe Gen 2…
Funkyeah
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22
votes
3 answers

How to read serial data from oscilloscope

I have a microcontroller (PICAXE 20X2) and a pot meter. I programmed the micro so that it sends any change of pot meter to serial port of PC. Obviously it is a 8bit ADC. Now the interesting thing for me is being able to decode this serial data on…
Dumbo
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22
votes
1 answer

Difference between DC-DC Switching "Controllers" and "Regulators" and "Converters" please?

I'm looking for a switching regulator for my design, and I head over to Digikey... Now I'm curious what the general difference is between these categories: PMIC - Voltage Regulators - DC DC Switching Controllers PMIC - Voltage Regulators - DC DC…
bcsteeve
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22
votes
5 answers

Is it OK to put LEDs in parallel?

I wonder if it's a good idea to put LEDs in parallel, as below: I've heard that it might not be because the voltage threshold won't be exactly the same for each LED, so they'll shine all with very different brightness and you don't have a way to…
Kar
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22
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4 answers

Do conductors age under reasonable electric load?

Construction steels are prone to fatigue failure - they get structurally weaker when exposed to repeated mechanical stress. Is there any similar process for conductors which makes them less usable once they conduct current for long enough? In other…
sharptooth
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22
votes
4 answers

What and Why's of termination?

I am new to electronics, and don't understand what is termination and why it is needed, especially in digital communications. Thanks
sumeet
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22
votes
8 answers

Dissipating 1W on a TO-220 without heatsink?

Can a TO-220 without a heatsink dissipate 1W in still air? Or, a different way of asking the question is: Assuming an ambient temperature of 25C, how can I go about calculating the maximum power I can dissipate on a TO-220 packaged MOSFET? The…
SomethingBetter
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22
votes
6 answers

Is there a common netlist format?

Is there a common netlist format that is portable between different schematic/pcb/EDA/CAD tools, and if so where is the format or reference so I can implement it? If not, does each package implement it differently, or are there a few standards that,…
Adam Davis
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22
votes
11 answers

Injecting a communication signal over DC power supply lines

I'd like to be able to daisy chain multiple devices using just the power supply wires and then inject a communications signal over the power lines to turn it into a half duplex network. Are there any common methods of achieving this? The simpler the…
Peter Gibson
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22
votes
3 answers

White hairs inside a headphones cable

I have a cheap set of Phillips SHE3000 earphones with a broken wire on the plug. Since I was repairing another set of headphones, with the same problem, I bought an extra plug, just to try repairing them too. Here's my problem - inside the cable for…
sg2002
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22
votes
6 answers

What's the schematic to share one crystal with two micros?

How do I share a single crystal (not a complete oscillator module) between two micros? Is it OK to just connect everything as normal for the first micro and also directly connect its XO to the XI of the second microcontroller? I expect to place the…
joeforker
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22
votes
8 answers

Reduction of DC motor noise

I am designing a circuit with a DC motor 12V DC Reversible Gearhead Motors - 70RPM and some other stuff including a MCU and a LASER, all driven from a single 12V source and am concerned about big HF noise ripple from the motor (electrical rather…
ElecEnthusiast
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22
votes
2 answers

Half-wave diode rectifier - is textbook wrong?

I've noticed that in all resources on diodes and rectifiers, they show the output voltage as the positive half-wave of the input signal. However, that seems wrong. I understand that there's a voltage drop across the diode, and if the total voltage…
MightyPork
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