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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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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) |
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) |
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) |
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) |
Thermistor signal conditioning: Dos and Don'ts, Tips and Tricks
In an earlier blog entry, I mentioned this circuit for thermistor signal conditioning: It is worth a little more explanation on thermistor signal conditioning; it's something that's often don...
posted by Jason Sachs on Jun 15 2011 under Tutorials | circuit design | thermistor Comments (2) |
Byte and Switch (Part 1)
Imagine for a minute you have an electromagnet, and a microcontroller, and you want to use the microcontroller to turn the electromagnet on and off. Sounds pretty typical, right?We ask this question o...
posted by Jason Sachs on Apr 26 2011 under Tutorials | interface circuitry | circuit design Comments (4) |
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) |
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) |
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 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) |
Byte and Switch (Part 2)
In part 1 we talked about the use of a MOSFET for a power switch. Here's a different circuit that also uses a MOSFET, this time as a switch for signals: We have a thermistor Rth that is located som...
posted by Jason Sachs on May 7 2011 under Tutorials | circuit design | low-voltage design | thermistor Comments (4) |
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) |
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) |
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) |
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) |
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) |
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) |
Real-time clocks: Does anybody really know what time it is?
We recently started writing software to make use of a real-time clock IC, and found to our chagrin that the chip was missing a rather useful function, namely elapsed time in seconds since the standard...
posted by Jason Sachs on May 29 2011 under Tutorials | circuit design | real-time clock Comments (5) |
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) |