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Jason Sachs's Embedded Systems Blog
Jason has 16 years of experience in signal conditioning (both analog + digital) in motion control + medical applications. He likes making things spin.
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Isolated Sigma-Delta Modulators, Rah Rah Rah!
I recently faced a little "asterisk" problem, which looks like it can be solved with some interesting ICs. I needed to plan out some test instrumentation to capture voltage and current informat...
posted by Jason Sachs on Apr 25 2013 under Products | ADC | analog circuits Comments (0) |
Oscilloscope review: Hameg HMO2024
Last year I wrote about some of the key characteristics of oscilloscopes that are important to me for working with embedded microcontrollers. In that blog entry I rated the Agilent MSOX3024A...
posted by Jason Sachs on Mar 28 2013 under test equipment Comments (1) |
How to Estimate Encoder Velocity Without Making Stupid Mistakes: Part I
Here's a common problem: you have a quadrature encoder to measure the angular position of a motor, and you want to know both the position and the velocity. How do you do it? Some people do it poorly -...
posted by Jason Sachs on Dec 27 2012 under Tutorials | sensors | measurement | signal processing Comments (17) |
Chebyshev Approximation and How It Can Help You Save Money, Win Friends, and Influence People
Well... maybe that's a stretch. I don't think I can recommend anything to help you win friends. Not my forte. But I am going to try to convince you why you should know about Chebyshev approximation, ...
posted by Jason Sachs on Sep 30 2012 under Software Development | applied math Comments (2) |
Thoughts on Starting a New Career
I recently completed a 16-year stint at an engineering company. I started there fresh out of college in June 1996. This June I just started a new career as an applications engineer in the area of moto...
posted by Jason Sachs on Jul 22 2012 under career Comments (7) |
10 Software Tools You Should Know
Unless you're designing small analog electronic circuits, it's pretty hard these days to get things done in embedded systems design without the help of computers. I thought I'd share a list of softwar...
posted by Jason Sachs on May 20 2012 under Tools | Software Development Comments (14) |
Have You Ever Seen an Ideal Op-Amp?
Somewhere, along with unicorns and the Loch Ness Monster, lies a small colony of ideal op-amps. Op-amp is short for operational amplifier, and we start our education on them by learning about these my...
posted by Jason Sachs on Apr 30 2012 under circuit design | analog circuits Comments (0) |
Hot Fun in the Silicon: Thermal Testing with Power Semiconductors
Here's a trick that is useful the next time you do thermal testing with your MOSFETs or IGBTs. Thermal testing?! Yes, that's right. It's important to make sure your power transistors don't overheat....
posted by Jason Sachs on Apr 20 2012 under circuit design | power electronics Comments (0) |
How to Build a Fixed-Point PI Controller That Just Works: Part II
In Part I we talked about some of the issues around discrete-time proportional-integral (PI) controllers: various forms and whether to use the canonical form for z-transforms (don't do it!) order ...
posted by Jason Sachs on Mar 24 2012 under Tutorials | control systems Comments (1) |
How to Build a Fixed-Point PI Controller That Just Works: Part I
This two-part article explains five tips to make a fixed-point PI controller work well. I am not going to talk about loop tuning -- there are hundreds of articles and books about that; any control-sys...
posted by Jason Sachs on Feb 26 2012 under Tutorials | control systems Comments (3) |
10 More (Obscure) Circuit Components You Should Know
The interest in my previous article on obscure but useful electronics parts, "10 Circuit Components You Should Know" was encouraging enough that I thought I would write a followup. So here are another...
posted by Jason Sachs on Feb 5 2012 under circuit design Comments (1) |
Oscilloscope Dreams
My coworkers and I recently needed a new oscilloscope. I thought I would share some of the features I look for when purchasing one. When I was in college in the early 1990's, our oscilloscopes look...
posted by Jason Sachs on Jan 14 2012 under test equipment Comments (4) |
Stairway to Thévenin
This article was inspired by a recent post on reddit asking for help on Thévenin and Norton equivalent circuits. (With apologies to Mr. Thévenin, the rest of the e's that follow will re...
posted by Jason Sachs on Dec 31 2011 under circuit design | analog circuits Comments (0) |
Organizational Reliability
I was cleaning out my email inbox at work today and ran across something I had forwarded on to a friend a few years ago, which I thought I would share, for those of you who are working in the engineer...
posted by Jason Sachs on Dec 22 2011 under career Comments (1) |
Help, My Serial Data Has Been Framed: How To Handle Packets When All You Have Are Streams
Today we're going to talk about data framing and something called COBS, which will make your life easier the next time you use serial communications on an embedded system -- but first, here's a quiz: ...
posted by Jason Sachs on Dec 11 2011 under communications Comments (6) |
10 Circuit Components You Should Know
Chefs have their miscellaneous ingredients, like condensed milk, cream of tartar, and xanthan gum. As engineers, we too have quite our pick of circuits, and a good circuit designer should know what's ...
posted by Jason Sachs on Nov 27 2011 under circuit design Comments (1) |
Analog-to-Digital Confusion: Pitfalls of Driving an ADC
Imagine the following scenario:You're a successful engineer (sounds nice, doesn't it!) working on a project with three or four circuit boards. More than even you can handle, so you give one of...
posted by Jason Sachs on Nov 19 2011 under circuit design | ADC | analog inputs Comments (2) |
Modulation Alternatives for the Software Engineer
Before I get to talking about modulation, here's a brief diversion. A long time ago -- 1993, to be precise -- I took my first course on digital electronics and processors. In that class, we had to bu...
posted by Jason Sachs on Nov 8 2011 under Software Development | interface circuitry | actuators Comments (0) |
Complexity in Consumer Electronics Considered Harmful
I recently returned from a visit to my grandmother, who lives in an assisted living community, and got to observe both her and my frustration first-hand with a new TV. This was a Vizio flatscreen TV t...
posted by Jason Sachs on Oct 1 2011 under user interface | product design Comments (0) |
Which MOSFET topology?
A recent electronics.StackExchange question brings up a good topic for discussion. Let's say you have a power supply and a 2-wire load you want to be able to switch on and off from the power supply us...
posted by Jason Sachs on Sep 1 2011 under Tutorials | circuit design | power electronics Comments (0) |