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.

Back to the Basics: What is Electric Current?

4 Comments

This post will tackle the age-old question what is electric current?

It is another write up on a basic, yet fundamental and important topic.

We’ll also try to keep this one a bit shorter than usual. After all, I know the nice long holiday weekend is on everyone’s mind (at least if you live in the U.S.) and I’m no exception.

Plus, this fundamental question shouldn’t take 2000 words to answer.

As usual, I’ll give a similar disclaimer to the ones I often give for posts on the basics. Some of you already know this. If so, it will be a good review. If you’re just starting to learn about electronics, the information in the post is need to know, so please read it.

And now let’s find out the answer to what is electric current…

3 Circuits You Totally Need to Know About

2 Comments

With today’s components, it is possible to make thousands upon thousands of useful circuits. These range from the very simple to very complex. But, did you know that there are only three basic types of circuits anyone can create? That’s right, every schematic you’ve ever seen, every circuit or project you or anyone else has ever built is one of three types of circuits (or a combination of them). [Read more…] about 3 Circuits You Totally Need to Know About

Back to the Basics: What is Voltage?

4 Comments

What is voltage?

If you live in the U.S., you know that a typical power outlet puts out 120 V.

You may know that the battery in your car is 12 V.

If you’re an Arduino enthusiast, you know probably know that the Uno has 5 V and 3.3 V outputs.

But what does all this mean?

What are volts, anyway?

Intro to Electrical Filters

6 Comments

Intro to Electrical Filters

So Many Electrical Filters, So little Time…

Do an online search for the word filter and you’ll get a ton of results ranging from car parts to coffee. This post, however, will focus on electrical filters.

Even if we narrow our search down to the term electrical filter, we’re still going to get a ton of results. After all, entire books have been written on electrical filters (I should know, I own one).

That’s because even in the realm of just electrical filters there are many different types.

We have passive and active filters. Digital and analog filters. Filters bearing the name of their creator like the Butterworth filter, Bessel filter, and Chebyshev filter (don’t ask me how to pronounce that). And there’s more.

Video – Exploding Capacitor Carnage

3 Comments

Exploding Capacitor Carnage

Why exploding capacitors? Why desecrate such a useful, universal electronic component?

I recently did a post on electrical safety. In it, there was a section on capacitors where I mentioned that small, low voltage capacitors can be dangerous because they can explode if the conditions are right.

This got me thinking what if I were to produce a video of this phenomenon to demonstrate it? The idea also sounded like a load of fun, so I went ahead with it.