Designing Ideas
Design Ideas editor Paul Rako introduces EDN's latest engineer-submitted circuit designs, providing links to related articles from our archives, design resources elsewhere on the Web, and just-plain-fun stuff.
Rako moves on…but stays analog
As I explained in my anablog post, I am sad to say I am leaving EDN. I have a great opportunity at Analog Devices. I wanted to post some links to my articles and such that might help you folks with your designs, and I sure hope you liked my work editing Design Ideas. I don’t want to go all Mr. Weepytears on you, but I have to tell you that it is a misnomer to call these “my ” ...... Read More
Comments (1)A cheap 3GHz Agilent 8133A pulse generator for my home lab
I recently told you about my home lab, as well as the home labs of Barrie Gilbert, Darryl Philips, Alan Martin, and Jim Williams. Well, seeing all that lab equipment worked me up into a frenzy. I got back on eBay and checked for some of the equipment I still wanted. In that blog post about my lab I mentioned that I had an HP 8131A pulse generator, but I wanted the faster, PRBS (pseudo-random binar ...... Read More
Comments (9)Vlad Dvorkin on a clever way to measure IP3 and non-linearity
So last Tuesday I called an RF aficionados meeting. I was sure to ask Earl McCune, author of Practical Digital Wireless Signals. I also asked James Long, an RF consultant and Vietnam vet. James told me he was prouder of his extra class Ham license than he was of being a professor at Cal Tech. Another go-to guy for RF is Linear Technology’s Vlad Dvorkin. Vlad is a hard-core systems engineer ...... Read More
Comments (4)The home lab of Paul Rako
What with my recent blog posts about Barrie Gilbert’s home lab, and Darryl Phillips’es home lab, and Alan Martin’s home lab, and my old post about Jim Williams home lab, I would be remiss if I didn’t snap a few pics of my own home lab. Click on any image to enlarge. . This is my main bench. Since we should draw schematics from left to right, I like to put signal source ...... Read More
Comments (17)The home lab of Alan Martin
After the success of my blogs about Barrie Gilbert’s home lab, and Darryl Phillips home lab, I wanted to show you my pal Alan Martin’s lab. Alan is over at Texas Instruments these days, via National Semiconductor. He has also had stints at Sipex and Linear Technology. Alan’s lab is like a lot of ours, so I will show you a picture of the way I found it one day, when he has pile ...... Read More
Comments (6)The home lab of Darryl Phillips
My buddy Darryl Phillips has a home lab that is a labyrinth of steel, alarms, and cameras. After the success of my recent posts about Barrie Gilbert’s home lab, I wanted to get Darryl’s lab in the blog. I met Darryl when he was a power apps engineer at National Semiconductor. He now does consulting on analog and power electronics design and testing. He writes: I’m the enginee ...... Read More
Comments (9)Schematic for regenerative super het radio by Ron Quan
I recently did a very popular post about Ron Quan’s regenerative radio. Ron was nice enough to send me the schematic. I also added it as an update to the original blog, but I figured you would want me to flag this with a new post as opposed to just editing and old blog post. So here are Ron’s comments: Here is the schematic for the regenerative radio that was designed and built in 20 ...... Read More
Comments (11)Linear Tech demo board helps you compensate switching power supplies
One of the benefits of hanging out with a bunch of former Linear Technology FAEs is that you find out about neat little demo boards like the one in this picture. It is a tiny RC decade box you can use to tune in the loop response of your switching regulators. It must be expensive to make so you can expect to pay a few bucks for it, hang on…. Yeah, it is not even listed in the demo boards o ...... Read More
Comments (2)The home lab of Barrie Gilbert
Analog Devices fellow Barrie Gilbert sent an email out that had a PowerPoint of his home lab. I doubt our web server would let us host a PowerPoint, so I just broke it up into HTML text and the pictures. Barrie looks pretty well set up there in the Portland Oregon forest. I want to post it in this blog so I can point to it in a post about Barrie’s rant to Bob Pease years ago. Oh, those were ...... Read More
Comments (21)A steam engine made out of glass
Here is a fun Friday link of a steam engine made out of glass. There is music with the YouTube video, so turn down the speakers if you are at work. Note the video defaults to 480 pixels, but there is a 720 and 1080 resolution on the menu bar. More steam engine models at this site. Tip o’ the hat to my buddy Rob Bowers for sending this around. ...... Read More
Comments (6)Free op-amp demo board from Touchstone Semi
The fine folks at startup Touchstone Semi, including analog aficionado Adolfo Garcia wants you to know they have extended their free demo board offer until the end of the year. These boards are great for hacking and will support their TS1001 op amp, which works down to 0.8V power. That is the part used in a recent Design Idea I edited. It was submitted by Martin Tomasz, a consultant Touchstone hir ...... Read More
Comments (3)A super-het radio runs 5 years on a C-cell, plus a pentode radio
Ron Quan, analog aficionado and inventor of the dreaded MacroVision VHS content scrambling system, saw my blog about a radio that uses Russian rod tubes. I saw Ron Saturday at the last eFleaof the season and we got to talking about the rod-tube radio. In the course of telling me how much he liked the blog, Ron mentioned that he did a super heterodyne radio that would run for 5 years continual ...... Read More
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