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Workbench Wednesdays

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Multi-layer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) are so ubiquitous that you see them on almost every printed circuit board. Engineers and supply chain managers often ask whether polymer electrolytic capacitors can replace MLCCs. The replacement could be because of availability, or an application cannot tolerate the extreme capacitance loss with MLCC’s DC Bias Effect. This video demonstrates what happens when you replace MLCCs with Polymer Tantalum (KO-CAP) capacitors.

I dive into Pico Technology’s latest PicoScope oscilloscope software, PicoScope 7. Using a PicoScope 2000A (from the element14 Community), James walks through key measurements and demonstrations using the built-in arbitrary waveform generator. He explores new functionalities in PicoScope 7, such as the improved UI, a unique feature called DeepMeasure, and decoding I3C traffic.

A long time ago, I made a video suggesting math was unnecessary to determine proper pull-up resistor values. Like most generalized statements, that suggestion is not always true. For example, in data buses like I2C, speeds like 400 kHz and 1 MHz are common. At those speeds, the pull-up resistor and the bus capacitance form an RC filter that fundamentally limits the data transmission speed. Or. It limits the range of pull-up resistor values. In this Workbench Wednesdays video, I show how to estimate I2C bus capacitance, measure that capacitance, and pick pull-up resistor values.