Category

Electronics Basics

Category

Smoke detectors beep when their backup battery dies, which always seems to occur in the middle of the night (at least for me.) These backup batteries are usually a small rectangular 9V. They have become popular choices for electronics projects. If you need your Arduino project to last longer than a day, this isn’t the battery you want to use.  Here’s why.

The idea for AddOhms #8 has been around for quite some time.  I’m always trying to find ways to explain why current limiting resistors are necessary.  So while working in the shop one day, I decided to play with some LEDs and a bench-power supply.  Then I decided to record what happens.

Soldering every circuit you build probably isn’t practical.  At some point you are probably going to want to use some type of temporary method to connect different components together.  One of the popular methods is using a breadboard.  This simple (and cool) looking device only needs a few instructions before you can begin

It isn’t always clear what is meant by calling a device or a signal “analog” and “digital”.  This AddOhms tutorial explains the difference between analog and digital by using an analogy to clocks.  Old-school clocks with hands are a great example of “analog” while alarm clocks with digits as their display are an excellent example of “digital”.