That’s bright!

IKEA LEDARE lamp with 16.5 W and 1000 lm.

Transatlantic recently asked about a new IKEA LED lamp, the LEDARE with 1000 lm. It comes as a quite big globe (diameter 95 mm) with an E27 socket, an electrical power rating of 16.5 W and is supposed to be dimable! Transatlantic commented on the high quality of the warm-white light output and wondered if… Continue reading That’s bright!

AVR ISP breadboard adapter

My very own AVR ISP adapter on a breadboard.

Breadboards are great! I mean the solderless breadboard type which you can get everywhere now for almost no money. I use them all the time to prototype electronics circuits and have been forcing my students to do the same. Most of my current projects also involve AVR microcontrollers which support an in-system programming. For this… Continue reading AVR ISP breadboard adapter

special offer at Bauhaus

Special offer on LEDs at Bauhaus: new price twice as high as before!

Today I was at Bauhaus in Uppsala, just browsing, not looking for anything special. Close to the exit there was a table with LED light bulbs which were obviously taken out of the regular assortment and re-labelled with new prices. Usually you would expect a bargain – and since I am somewhat sold to LED… Continue reading special offer at Bauhaus

Do you need a byte?

The final board on a breadboard for testing. The bits are controlled in the background by a dip-switch.

My latest Instructable is on the design of a breakout board to view the state of up to eight bits in a breadboard circuit. I don’t fell I have the time to repeat all the steps from the Instructable here, just let me tell you that it works nicely! The circuit itself is simple: the… Continue reading Do you need a byte?

MOSFETs – what the datasheet doesn’t tell you

Measurement circuit for the electrical characteristics of a MOSFET.

I am planning to construct a logarithmic current meter and were yesterday doing some simulations with LTspice. Using a logarithmic converter you can span a wide range of currents with a single readout without the necessity to switch ranges. Of course this has disadvantages as well, but if you know what you are doing it… Continue reading MOSFETs – what the datasheet doesn’t tell you

Notes from the student lab

Every place in our course laboratory is equipped with an analog oscillsocpe and a Metex Universal System. This instrument consists of a power supply with two fixed and a variable outpur voltage, a multimeter, a function generator and a frequency counter. This sounds nice and it usually is – most of the time the instrument… Continue reading Notes from the student lab