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You CAN Do It: A CAN Networking Tutorial for Beginners

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A Small CAN of History

CAN is short for Controller Area Network. It was originally created by the Robert Bosch company. CAN networks have found their home mostly in vehicles where they’ve been used since the late 1980s.

The first vehicles to use CAN were expensive luxury cars like Mercedes. As the average vehicle grew more complex and found itself stuffed with more and more electronics, CAN migrated to more ordinary vehicles.

CAN’s cousin, LIN (Local Interconnect Network) is newer and used for less critical subsystems where data transmission speed and reliability are less critical such as air-conditioning and infotainment.

CAN is designed for more critical systems like engine control, anti-lock brakes, parking assist etc.

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Resistor Types

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Resistors — they’re one of the most basic, ubiquitous, easiest to understand electronic component.

Or are they?

Resistors are a critical part of just about every type of circuit, even integrated circuits. They’re also one of the main characters in Ohm’s Law.

We often take them for granted, but there are many types of resistors and choosing the right one for your purpose can make the difference between a widget that works, or a widget that doesn’t work or only works sometimes.

Complete books have been written on resistors, but today I’m just going to talk about the more common resistor types that you’re likely to run into and a little on how/when to use them in your circuits.

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Interview with Ward Silver: Nuts & Volts Columnist, Engineer, Ham Radio Enthusiast

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Audio Player

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Audio Transcription

Note: I did not transcribe this myself. Please excuse any spelling, grammar, punctuation errors or omissions.

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How to Turn a $100 Netbook into a Lean, Mean Machine That Will Rival a $500 iPad – Part1

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I run a business where I often receive calls before I get out of bed in the morning. At first, I used an inexpensive Kindle Fire (1st gen) tablet PC and a mobile version of LogMeIn to connect to my main desktop computer which runs QuickBooks (used as sort of a POS system) and other productivity applications, but often found it difficult to type info into QuickBooks on the remote computer in the other room using the tablet. [Read more…] about How to Turn a $100 Netbook into a Lean, Mean Machine That Will Rival a $500 iPad – Part1