A couple of years ago I presented a preamplifier on my homepage which allowed it to use standard oscilloscope probes on the line input of a soundcard. This small circuit solved the problem that a soundcard has quite a low impedance on its line inputs which makes it unusable for measuring high-impedance signals. Already at… Continue reading A new soundcard oscilloscope
Category: Electronics
Buying cable by the metre…
…or not…? For the second time this year I have encountered a strange way to handle cable-deliveries here in Sweden. I haven’t experienced anything like this before, so I don’t think it is something typical Swedish like moose or meatballs — probably it is only an indication on how companies treat their customers nowadays. The… Continue reading Buying cable by the metre…
Knight Rider is back
Now I am completely sold to AVR microcontrollers. ATMEL’s free software seamlessly interfaces to the also free AVR-GCC C compiler and it is really easy to get started with the AVR microcontrollers – both in assembler and in C. Today I first rewrote yesterday’s assembler code into C in order to get the same effect.… Continue reading Knight Rider is back
Bugs with six and more legs
Today was the first really sunny day this spring in Uppsala. Reaching 25°C I spent a large part of the day on my balcony where I was visited by a special guest: This rose chafer was elected the insect of the year 2000 in Germany where it is rare and protected. On my balcony here… Continue reading Bugs with six and more legs
Lights for Energihuset
Today I designed a solar-cell powered LED lighting for a model of the planned energy education centre Energihuset in Uppsala. The model was built by Nyréns Arkitektkontor and equipped with 108 white light-emitting diodes, series connected in groups of three for a common supply voltage of 12 V. The model will be presented at the Swedish… Continue reading Lights for Energihuset
Solar cells for amateurs
BEAM electronics, as it is known, has become quite popular. One of the central ideas is to drive small autonomous robots with solar cells, powered by ambient light. Sunceram II Since 1983 Panasonic has been manufacturing solar cells from the Sunceram II series. These cells were very popular for amateur electronic projects until about 2003… Continue reading Solar cells for amateurs
Inside electronics
I have always been fascinated by knowing what’s inside electronics. And this does not stop by looking inside electronic apparatus — it continues into the packages of the individual electronic devices. Take the green light-emitting diode which I chose as this blog’s logo: There is nothing special to this LED. It probably dates from the… Continue reading Inside electronics