Digital Electronics

Tutorial on Logic Gates Part 2: Electrical Properties of Gates

A while back I published a tutorial on the basics of logic gates. The tutorial talks about what logic gates are, truth tables, and active levels.

Then, the tutorial talks about the basic logic gates many of us are familiar with: NOT, AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR, and XNOR.

Because of limited space, the post did not cover Boolean algebra, DeMorgan’s theorems, combinational logic, etc. It also leaves out an important and practical part of digital design with gates – the electrical characteristics of logic gates.

This tutorial on logic gates will leave the topics of Boolean algebra, DeMorgan, etc. for a future tutorial.

This time, we’re going to focus on the important and practical, yet often overlooked, electrical properties and characteristics of logic gates.

Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) Tutorial

2 Comments

At its core, pulse width modulation (PWM) is just another modulation technique like AM or FM, among others.

Many electronics hobbyists who build robots and other moving things recognize the term as it pertains to controlling the speed of a motor.

But PWM has a lot of other, lesser known uses also.

Let’s first start with some PWM fundamentals.

What is Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)?

Breaking the Hex: Understanding Hexadecimal Numbers

Leave a Comment

Just as understanding binary numbers is important, so is understanding hexadecimal or hex numbers. Before we go into any detail about hexadecimal numbers, I strongly suggest you read the post on binary numbers.

In it, you’ll learn why binary numbers are used in digital systems. This will help you understand why hex numbers also often appear in digital systems. You’ll also get a quick review of the decimal system (and number systems in general). Finally, you’ll learn how to read binary, which will help you understand how to translate from binary to hex.

As I said before, if you’re new to digital electronics, it’s a must read.

And if you’re not so new it’s a good review.

Let’s break the hex and learn about hexadecimal numbers!

A Bit of Fun with Binary Number Basics

4 Comments

Understanding binary numbers is important. All things digital involve circuits and systems in which there are only two possible states. Two voltage levels represent these states; a HIGH and a LOW. In other words, digital devices communicate this way. For a quick review on what it means to be digital, check out the post Analog vs Digital: What’s the Difference?

Binary information that digital systems work with appear as waveforms that represent a sequence of bits. As an example, see the figure below which relates the 1’s and 0’s to voltage levels on the waveform A. As we can see, a 1 is a HIGH and a 0 is a LOW. [Read more…] about A Bit of Fun with Binary Number Basics