Recent content by Aristarchus

Most of the folks on this forum have their heads on straight and likely enjoy a decent gaming session, so it' should be no surprise that we react adversely when somebody directs criticism at a passtime we enjoy, and which has been the economic engine behind the development of a heck of a lot of...

FYI, Digi-Key also ships international on a regular basis--try www.digikey.com and click on the UK flag to go to the website with pricing in British pounds with applicable duties included. Don't know if it'll be all that much cheaper in the long run--take a good look at shipping costs. If...

40x 10uF SMT tantalums per board? Dude, you gotta be spending a fortune on caps... Do consider also that tantalums aren't necesarily the be all & end all of capacitors. For decoupling purposes especially, it's more a question of having a set of caps whose self-resonant frequencies complement...

FIrst off, there's usually a reason that things fry... And often as not, replacing the burnt component doesn't fix the underlying problem, and you only end up burning the replacement too... With that caveat, try the following (at your own risk, of course;) Using the utmost care, take a...

No, the frequency of the power grid is controlled pretty carefully, given the consequences of ignoring it... If you ever get a chance, take a class on power generation & distribution. Even if you don't take away any useful knowledge from it, you'll end up having a healthy respect for the folks...

Nice... I think Iv'e got the hardware end covered, as I've got at least an entire drawer full of ADI dev tools. At one point, I even had 3 BF537 EZ-LITES on mydesk. (too bad they were the crappy old silicon rev though...) I might tap into your software development expereience though, as...

If somebody were to offer a kit to build a nice HTPC receiver, (assemble it yourself) would anybody be interested? I'm starting on a reference design for Analog Devices' Blackfin line of DSPs, and am kicking around the idea of using that processor as the brains of a simple-yet-high-quality...

Yes, Digikey most certainly does carry SMD LEDs. And since I work there, I must admit a certain degree of bias, particularly given the employee discount... ;) I understand the $ part of the equation tho-I've been there myself. My suggestion is to do some careful planning, and take into...

It would take a little figuring, but a FET could serve your purposes quite nicely. You'd have to figure out some sort of feedback scheme to make it work, but it could quite possibly be simpler in the end than using a microcontroller to drive digital pots and whatnot all. SOmething to look...

The amount of flexibility you want will largely determine what your final cost would be. My suggestion for a really ghetto solution would be to build a receiver that's sensitive to two particular frequencies, and use a couple of FETs to either put your batteries in series or parallel depending...

That's probably gonna be your best bet. If you put a $10/hr price tage on your time, it doensn't take long to make dropping a c-note worth it

There's lots of ways to go about it... Everythign from using discreet logic to microprocessor based stuff. If you have/can procure the necessary development tools, i.e. a programmer, a PIC would be great for the application. You could use a photo-gate system set to trigger timing interrupts on...

Pull up a datasheet on the part, first off, and make sure you've got a unit that works for DC. A lot of SSR's are glorified thyristors, in which case they'll never turn off unless you're running AC. Beyond that, an SSR isn't necessisarily identical to it's electromechanical cousins. The...

I've seen cheap USB-based data acquisition systems (~$100) that have digital ports... Depending on how much speed you need, you could just multiplex those ports to get however many digital lines you needed.

It depends strongly on the battery chemistry and the application. Most Manufacturers websites have technical info on their products, including cell voltage curves as a function of discharge.