Line & Load Voltage Regulation

Line regulation Line regulation is the ability of the power supply to maintain its specified output voltage over changes in the input line voltage. It is expressed as percent of change in the output voltage relative to the change in the input line voltage. Load Regulation Load regulation is the ability of the power supply […]

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Basic DMX Guide

We’ve designed lots of DMX equipment over the years.  Here’s our very simple guide:   Set the UART port up as 250k baud, 1 start bit, 2 stop bits, no parity bit. 250k baud means each bit is sent at 4uS intervals.  There are 11 bits sent for each byte: 4uS * 11 = 44uS […]

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Medical Electronic Design General Notes

  Medical products need to comply with relevant parts of EN 60601-1 (e.g. EN 60601-1-2) Good resource sites www.601help.com Indicators And Buttons Red or yellow indicator lights, buttons or switches must not be used for general items as these have special meaning. Connectors Connectors on patient leads must not be of a type in common use, […]

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PC Power Supplies

AT Power Supply (original IBM PC XT AT standard) Connections: Ground (0V) +5 V +12 V (typically for disk drives and cooling fans) -5 V (typically for peripherals on the ISA bus) -12 V (typically for RS-232 serial port negative rail) Power Good – pin used to prevent digital circuitry operating while the power supply […]

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Anti Static Packaging

  Pink bags and bubble wrap and anti static tubes These products are anti-static, in that they are specially coated with a material which prevents static charge build up.  It works great at what is does,  BUT it does not protect fully against static discharge damage.  If you are carrying a high voltage static charge […]

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Using Bluetooth In A Design

Bluetooth devices have to be tested, both from the radio certification side and the Bluetooth software stack certification side.  Even with a straightforward design it’s expensive – very expensive!  This is frustrating as in many cases by using a Bluetooth IC solution incorporating the Bluetooth stack and following the manufacturers app note for the PCB […]

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