Reading simple 0 to 5V or 0 to 3.3V signals with an ADC is trivial and can be done entirely with the integrated hardware on most microcontrollers. Things get slightly more difficult when you need to sample analog signal that can be negative or positive. This blog post will walk you through a basic solution […]
Eagle Tip: Measure Trace Length
If you need to know the exact length of a trace in Eagle, for example: differential signaling, impedance matching, timing constraints, etc. There’s a built-in ULP to make this easier. The script will display basic information for each net in your circuit. To run it, just type:
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1 |
run length-freq-ri |
Introduction to LTSpice
SPICE tools (Simulation Program for Integrated Circuit Engineering) such as LTSpice are designed to provide stable circuit simulations in order to validate designs prior to physical prototyping. This is incredibly useful when working with new analog designs as it enables you to quickly validate different circuits without having to spin a prototype or procure the […]
Mentor PADS: Designer Layout Modeless Commands
Mentor PADs features a variety of “modeless” commands that all you to change settings on the fly using quick keystrokes instead of poking around through the GUI menus. This post describes some of the available commands using the Layout package. To activate the commands you simply start typing when the software has focus. After the […]
Markdown: Cheat sheet
Markdown was designed as a lightweight markup language that could be quickly converted to other formats (such as HTML). The advantage is that it’s simpler and quicker to get basic information formatted and shared. Below I’ve compiled a short cheat sheet. Headers # H1 ## H2 ##### H5 Horizontal Rule Three or more hyphens, asterisks, […]
Adding Visual Studio Code to Your Context Menu
I’m a huge fan of Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code but the one thing that I found was missing when switching from Sublime Text is the inability to open any file with it by using the context menu. Adding this functionality can be done with a simply registry tweak. Open the registry by pressing [WIN]+[R} and […]
Getting Xilinx ISE to Work on Windows 10
Unfortunately, Xilinx ISE does not officially support Windows 8 or newer and likely will not due to the shift from ISE to Vivado. Fortunately enough, there’s an easy fix to keep you up and running. The below steps were performed on Windows 10 x64. Open the following directory: C:\Xilinx\14.7\ISE_DS\ISE\lib\nt64 Find and rename libPortability.dll to libPortability.dll.bak […]
SnapEDA: Electronics CAD Hub
SnapEDA is changing the way engineers design electronics. Built on powerful algorithms, SnapEDA’s computer-aided design (CAD) building blocks, including PCB footprints and schematic symbols, can be downloaded instantly to an engineer’s CAD software of choice using powerful conversion technology, dramatically improving productivity and accelerating innovation. Our patent-pending Diagnostic Checker for CAD models provides engineers with […]
Tools: OnShape – Cloud Based 3D CAD
I’ve had the need for an inexpensive 3D CAD tool to design basic enclosures and to better convey ideas in a common format. OnShape definitely foots the bill. It’s a very robust tool that’s capable of integrating with existing CAD tools such as Solidworks and AutoCAD. That way I can take an existing design and […]
RealTerm and CSV Debugging
What if what you’re debugging is a little more complicated than verifying a serial packet? That you’re not just tracking down an issue with a couple bytes or words of sensor, variable, or EEPROM data, but a more complex algorithm. In doing so, you may want to know the critical values involved in each step […]