Electronic door locks are safer than conventional door locks. There is no possibility of lock picking in such door locks as the entire mechanism is electronic. Such door locks have an underlying embedded access control system which is generally impenetrable. Several access control systems are used in electronic door locks. The most common access control…
Top ten tips for nailing your PCB silkscreen design
By Suresh Patel, Sales Engineer, Mer-Mar Electronics Silkscreen represents the outer layers of a PCB that include text-based readable information like component reference designator, test points, company logos, PCB part number and version number, etc. This is necessary for circuit board assembly, rework and debug support. The silkscreen ink is different from the regular printing…
What are different types of Artificial Intelligence ?
Artificial Intelligence is a multi-disciplinary field that deals with making computers/machines intelligent like humans. Theoretically, it aims at simulating human cognitive functions and excelling them even better than humans. This theoretical concept of artificial intelligence is known as “Artificial General Intelligence”. AI, from the view of its concept, is still in its infancy. Despite that,…
What is Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Natural Language Processing?
Data science is set to prevail in the 21st century. By the late 1900s, computers had already become an inseparable part of human civilization, all thanks to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. This followed the glorious rise of the internet all across the globe. Then with mobile phones, smartphones, and wearables, almost every person on…
Color generation using RGB LED, Arduino, and potentiometer
RGB LED is a combination of three LEDs red-green-blue together. It has four terminals – either anode or cathode, and the other three are for these three colors. Interestingly, when two colors inside the LED are turned ON simultaneously, the LED gives a different color. Also, as the amount or intensity of any color in…
IoT liquid (oil) level monitoring system
In this article, we will make a device that will monitor liquid levels in water/oil or any tank. The monitored level information will be sent to a monitoring station. This can be helpful to monitor some water tanks installed at a place where humans cannot frequently reach and at places that are toxic, like labs…
8-, 16- and 32-bit MCUs, are more bits better?
Are more bits better in an MCU? That’s similar to asking: are more cylinders better in an internal combustion engine (ICE)? Peripherals and other features matter, not just bits (or cylinders). For example, in the 1980s, Volvo offered a station wagon with a turbo-V4 engine that was faster off the line than Chevrolet Corvette with…
Switches: The complete guide
From DIP, rotary DIP, and slide switches to tactile, rocker, push button, and toggle switches, there is a nearly limitless range of mechanical switches differing in size, shape, interfaces, and features. Although a relatively basic component in electronic design, each switch type has its benefits, drawbacks, and ideal use cases. Because all switches serve a…
What are Zener diodes?
A Zener diode is one of the diode types that is often used at any electronics bench. That is because Zener diodes are almost always used in power supply circuits and wave shaping circuits. Zener diodes are just like a regular PN junction diode, athough it is heavily doped. This makes the diode behave differently…
How to generate PWM-based dual sine waves
By Krupa Bhavsar, Applications Engineer, Dialog Semiconductor Sine waves are continuous waves, which describe a smooth periodic oscillation. These waves are generally used in signal processing and engineering fields In this article, dual sine waves with opposite polarity as shown in Figure 1 are generated without coarse PWM “steps”. For generating sine waves, one PWM…
Centralized control system for IoT devices
In this project, we will be creating a single control center for all of our IoT devices. We will control all of our IoT devices with just one single tool and get the status of all of them live on a single screen. We can implement these types of control centers for most of the…
What is Cryptocurrency?
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…
What are the different types of fingerprint scanners?
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…
Battery voltage/usage monitoring using Arduino and Simulink
Simulink and MatLab are great tools to simulate and analyze an application. Simulink offers blocks (software, hardware, arithmetic, functional, electrical, etc.) which can be put together for monitoring or generating various kinds of functions and controls. Putting blocks together gives a clear image of the system. Through blocks, control and data flow sequentially. Let’s see…
Wireless Sensor Network example using Arduino
A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of the following: One central receiver (for monitoring, storage, and controlling) Several wireless sensor nodes The wireless sensor node is a battery-powered or solar-powered circuit that senses any physical quantity (like temperature, pressure, flow, soil moisture, gas, smoke, etc.) and transmits its value to a remote receiver. It consists…
What is the Z-Wave protocol?
Smart homes need wireless connectivity, and Z-wave has emerged as the ultimate solution for home automation. The Z-wave protocol is a wireless, radio frequency protocol designed primarily for smart home networks. All the existing wireless communication protocols had one or the other problem. Bluetooth and Zigbee often shortfall of range while Wi-Fi poses its own…
Terminal block selection guide
Terminal blocks, often called connection terminals or screw terminals, provide secure wire-to-board or wire-to-wire connections in a range of end applications. While a relatively straightforward component by their very nature, terminal blocks still have a number of design considerations to take into account. Key mechanical specifications like the wire-entry orientation, wire-securing method, and module type…
RPi Python Programming 27 – SPI protocol explained
In the previous tutorial, we discussed interfacing with the ADXL345 accelerometer sensor with Raspberry Pi using the I2C interface. UART, I2C, and SPI are the most common serial communication interfaces used in embedded systems. UART is used for point-to-point full-duplex asynchronous serial communication between two devices. I2C is used for synchronous serial communication among multiple…
RPi Python Programming 26 – Interfacing ADXL345 accelerometer sensor with Raspberry Pi
In the previous tutorial, we discussed synchronous serial communication in Raspberry Pi using I2C protocol. In this tutorial, we will use the I2C interface of Raspberry Pi to communicate with a digital sensor. The digital sensor that we will talk with is the ADXL345 accelerometer. ADXL345 is a small, ultra-low power, 3-axis accelerometer sensor that…
Basics of GPS receivers
The Global Positioning System (GPS) is the most widely used satellite navigation system around the world. It is one of the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) that provides geolocation, time, and velocity information. GPS is operational since 1978 and globally available since 1994. The latest GPS receivers provide geolocation with an accuracy of 30 centimeters.…