Nikhil Agnihotri

Fingerprint scanners, which were once reserved for biometric logging systems and attendance systems, are now part of regular smartphones and much more. Fingerprints have been a trusted method of personal identity. Combined with face id or other biometric identification systems like retina scanning, fingerprints offer an impeccable way to recognize any person. With a blast…

Detecting the physical conditions of a robot is always useful in robotic applications. Particularly if the robot is a rover and is designed to explore different terrains. In such applications, there are instances when the state of the robot has to be detected. It may involve detection of collision or fall, change in orientation of…

Have you ever struggled to fix nails on a wall perfectly parallel to the floor or ceiling? In this project, we have modeled an electronic-level device useful in placing anything perfectly parallel. This device is prototyped on the popular microcontroller board – the Arduino. It uses very few components to build, only an accelerometer sensor…

You must have noticed token display boards at many places like food stores, hospitals, banks, various takeaways, etc. Token display systems are used to display token numbers. As these display boards show numeric information, these are easily designed using 7-segment LEDs. The commercial models use large 7-segment LEDs to display token numbers. It is even…

Internet of Things already has billions of devices by 2021. This globe-spanning network of sensors and consumer devices holds the future of a human-machine world. Well, financial transactions are all-important in a world of humans. IOTA is a cryptocurrency designed to add economics to the internet of machines. IOTA is quite different from thousands of…

Cryptocurrencies are getting popular day by day. Bitcoin was the first-ever cryptocurrency and is the most popular one right now. At present, there are more than 6700 cryptocurrencies around the world. In the future, where the world may go cashless with different kinds of electronic money, and all financial transactions may become digital, cryptocurrencies have…

Cities are getting overpopulated and much polluted day by day. Pollution is a major problem in urban areas, be it developed countries or developing ones. Countries like India are projected to increase their urban population from 30% to 50% by the next decade. The increase in population in cities is coetaneous with an increase in…

Temperature is one of the most commonly measured quantities of a device or the conditions surrounding it — and particularly for electronic components. This is because electronic devices and circuitry generate heat and require some type of thermal management. There are several types of temperature sensors that work well for such applications and that offer…

The Internet commenced as a medium to share files remotely. It didn’t take time to flourish as the most popular globe-spanning communication network for sharing information, messages, and all kind of data. With the evolution of technology, the internet is now the one-stop solution for everything. The Internet made the computers, and then the mobile…

In many ways, Raspberry Pi falls short as a full-fledged personal computer. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has tried to change this with its latest addition, the Raspberry Pi 400. Launched in November of 2020, the Raspberry Pi 400 is a single-board computer in the form of a keyboard, retailing at $70 per unit or $100…

As electronic miniaturization has been an all-time goal of chip manufacturers, motherboard-based computer/electronic systems have been eventually replaced by System-on-Chip (SoC) and Package-on-Package (PoP) ICs. Complex computer systems are now condensed to smartphones and other handheld devices. These sophisticated electronic devices and gadgets have an SoC at their heart which manages complete computing and control.…

Container shipping is a common transport medium. In fact, 80 percent of international trade in goods is carried by sea. Containers are large and reliable, offering a standard size that makes them portable between ships, trains, and trucks.  However, the loss of items transported via containers is not an uncommon problem in the shipping industry.…

Metal detectors offer several useful applications. A few examples include: Security checks Positioning detection for production equipment Elevator floor control Mineral prospecting Unearthing relics and artifacts Collecting traffic statistics  Metallic waste detection  Game entertainment Each detection circuit employs different electronic components and designs. A simple metal detector can be constructed using an RLC circuit. In…

Inertial sensors are used to detect linear and rotational motion of an object. There are two types of inertial sensors – accelerometers that detect linear acceleration and gyroscopes that detect rotational motion. Accelerometers and gyros are widely used in several applications, including aerospace, military, automotive, mobile phones, and consumer electronics. For example, in mobile phones,…

Proximity sensors — often called, proximity switches — detect the presence of nearby objects without making physical contact with them. These objects are called targets. There are several types of proximity sensors, including those used to detect metallic or non-metallic objects. Others are used to detect a specific object.  These sensors also rely on different working…

Electromyography (EMG) is a medical procedure that evaluates the health conditions of muscles and nerve cells. These cells transmit electrical signals that cause muscles to contract or relax. EMG is used to read these signals and plot them as numbers or graphs. Typically, EMG is performed by doctors as one part of a diagnostic tool…

In the previous article, we discussed how to set up your own electronics lab at home. Hopefully, you would have purchased all the stuff mentioned there and have already organized your electronics lab. Now, the first thing most important is to understand basic electronic components. But before that, it is worth mentioning the common mistakes…

Ever since robotics could reliably automate many human tasks, engineers have been diligently trying to add the five senses to these capabilities — as in sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. The most significant so far is vision.  However, how people see and how machines “see” is quite different. The human eye is a complex…

In the previous tutorial, we talked about common mistakes made by electronics beginners. Hopefully, you will have already set up an electronics lab. Now, it’s time to start learning about basic electronic components. We will begin with passive components like resistors, capacitors, and inductors. The electronic components are broadly classified into two categories — passive…

In the previous article, we discussed the signal behavior of a resistor. We also talked about various applications of resistors. A resistor is supposed to offer fixed resistance to the flow of current. That is what any ideal resistor (theoretically) is supposed to do. The ideal resistor is also expected to only provide resistance sans…