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They’re JUST Capacitors?

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.

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6 Electronic Safety Tips I learned while Mountain Climbing

electronic safety tips

Electronic safety tips from mountain climbing? Yes! After spending two weeks in Europe for work, I had the chance to spend a weekend with friends in Germany. We hiked up Kampenwand in Bavaria. While working my way through the snow and rocks, I realized mountain climbing safety tips were the same as electronic safety tips. Really! Here’s how.

Grabbing a soldering iron and throwing polarized components around a circuit board is something I often do. So often, I don’t even realize I’m using some of these electronic safety tips. However, a new activity gives you a chance to exercise the safety portion of your brain. Especially when there are no guard rails.

While constantly wondering “why am I doing this again?” I thought about these 6 electronic safety tips that I learned while climbing a mountain.

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Four Current Flow Myths Addressed

what is current flow?

Current flow (direction) is the topic I’m planning for my next AddOhms tutorial. While preparing the script, I started to realize there are some myths or misunderstandings about electricity and current flow.

Ben Franklin Father of Current Flow
via Wikipedia

Everyone probably knows Ben Franklin. He discovered electricity, of course! Yet, he didn’t. Franklin was the first to prove that lightning was composed of electricity with his famous kite experiment. He was also the first to provide electricity’s well-known labels: positive and negative. And somewhere in there Franklin became famous for “inventing” conventional current flow.

This convention creates a lot of confusion around conventional and electron current flow. It’s a concept that has been covered by many others and may even be covered by an Electronics Tutorial Video Series in the future.

Instead, I want to explore some common current flow myths even I believed at some point.

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Why do engineers (love to) hate Arduino?

why engineers hate arduino

A couple of months ago podcast I listen to interviewed an embedded engineer. Eventually, the topic of Arduino came up, and all three people on the show let of sighs of disgust. This lead to me to start thinking about why do engineers hate Arduino?

On this particular show, they said Arduino had too many abstraction layers to be useful. All three members of the panel agreed that direct hardware access was critical to success in embedded designs.

On the same episode, the same people talking, the topic changed to using a new chip or sensor. Then this comment was made: “I won’t design for a chip with no high-level software API and detailed examples.” (I’m paraphrasing to protect the innocent.) Everyone on the episode agreed.

Wow. Just what is Arduino then? One view is that it’s a well-documented board, with a high-level API, and lots of detailed examples. But somehow, these features on other platforms is desirable? So why do did these engineers hate Arduino so much when it is what they said every vendor should offer?

Are they haters? Are they trolls? Or are they just engineers who show a behavior common to humans. Let’s take a look at why engineers hate Arduino using other examples and concepts from psychology.

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