The Zener diode is often used to create a reference voltage. In tutorials and even college texts, there are mentions of creating a Zener diode based regulator. The idea is that the Zener maintains a known voltage drop. The problem is that current matters. This post looks a quick Zener diode overview and shows what happened when I tried to power a microcontroller using a “Zener diode regulator.”
It is commonly known that ceramic capacitors change capacitance with applied voltage. What isn’t always as well known is how strong this effect can be and why it occurs. At KEMET we’ve put together a technical video that answers that question.
Ask An FAE is a new video series we launched at my day job, KEMET. An FAE is a field application engineer. These engineers are very common in the electronics industry. Companies like KEMET, where I work, have FAEs who meet with customers to answer technical (and very detailed) questions about how to use their products. In UBM’s Mind of an Engineer survey, FAEs were ranked as one of the top information sources for design engineers.
At KEMET we decide to use FAEs to answer the questions. While I’m not an FAE today, I was in the past and happy to kick off the series with our CEO.
Check out KEMET’s Ask An FAE
I was invited to speak at the 11th Hardware Developers Didactic Galactic group at the Supplyframe office in San Francisco. I talked about the misconception that capacitors are a simple device.
Chris Gammell recorded the discussion and posted it via PHY Media. This video is about 50 minutes.
In this talk, I break down a few things to know about Ceramic, Aluminum, Tantalum, and Supercapacitors. You can see the full video via PHY Media’s YouTube Channel: They’re JUST Capacitors. For links and the slides, check out this post.
A switching voltage regulator is one of my favorite circuits. In school, they were the first circuits I built where I understood how transistors worked. In fact, they were the first circuit I saw an inductor being useful! Switching regulators are incredibly efficient when designed properly. Of course, this detail about design is important. They are not as simple as a linear regulator, which is basically an IC and two caps.
To understand the basics of a switching regulator, I released AddOhms #18 this week. This is video tutorial dedicated the Switching Voltage Regulator. If video tutorials aren’t your thing, then keep reading for my written tutorial.
Whether you are an engineer with enough experience to be called a graybeard or a novice that keeps grabbing the wrong end of a soldering iron, there is one component that eludes everyone working in electronics.
It’s the humble capacitor.
A seemingly simple device, turns out, to be incredibly complex. While the basic electrode-dielectric-electrode structure sounds simple, the materials used in that structure drastically changes the characteristics of the device.
[featured-image]KEMET Engineering Center Screenshot, Courtesy of KEMET Corporation.[/featured-image]There’s a new website created by KEMET Electronics which aims to educate all levels of engineers about the ins and outs of capacitors. They call it the KEMET Engineering Center.
