electronics News - Page 6 of 20 - CNX Software

April 26, 2022April 29, 2022 by Sponsored Post - 1 Comment

Save up to over a thousand dollars on your PCB purchases (Sponsored)

NextPCB is organizing a promotional event with coupons valued at up to $500 for heavy discounts on PCB and PCBA purchases. But the promotion ends on April 30, so you’d need to act fast! Let’s get straight to it go through all the conditions: Eligible participants: all registered NextPCB members, including new members Coupon collection rules: each ID user can collect the coupons 3 times, click the button on the activity page to get the coupons; the expiration date is April 30, 23:59 Available coupons PCB orders $50 coupon for orders over $400 $250 coupon for orders over $2000 $500 coupon for orders over $5000 PCBA orders including PCB manufacturing, components purchase, and assembly $50 coupon for orders over $500 $200 coupon for orders over $2000 All coupons can only be used to deduct the product amount in the order and cannot be used in conjunction with other coupons, specials, […]

April 21, 2022October 21, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments

BGA socket allows RAM upgrades on SBCs

In most cases, both the eMMC flash and RAM are soldered on single board computers, but we’ve previously boards with eMMC flash modules that allows to optionally add storage of various capacity and speed. But today I learned something similar exists for RAM chips with a socket that allows you to clip a BGA chip to change RAM capacity. The BGA socket is simply soldered on the board instead of the RAM chip itself, and as demonstrated on the MangoPi MQ Pro board, you could then insert the chip on the board instead of soldering it. Those are the specifications of the “DDR3x16-96” socket used above: Materials Socket base: LCP (liquid crystal polymers) Contacts: BeCu (Beryllium Copper), selective Au-Au flash over Ni plating Insulation resistance – 1000 MOhm or more at DC 100V Dielectric withstanding voltage – 100V AC for one minute Contact resistance – 50 mOhm max, at 10mA […]

March 20, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Avnet survey shows chip shortage impacts most designs, increases engineers workload

Avnet has just released a survey of global engineers asking them how they were coping with the global chip shortage, longer lead times, and the impact on product design. Note that most of the 530 respondents are from EMEA (56%), and the US (31%), while only 10% are in Asia, and 2% are in Japan (I understand Asia means ex-Japan here), so it may not perfectly reflect the global situation, but the results are interesting nonetheless. If times have been challenging for your company/project, know that you are not alone, and 98% percent of respondents have had troubles accessing parts, 93% has experienced longer lead times, 73% of the survey respondents say the chip shortage presents a significant challenge, and 64% are now selecting parts based on availability rather than preference. Microcontrollers are the most challenging part to get hold of (think STM32), which has led to an increase in […]

March 10, 2022March 10, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

TIMI-130 – A breadboard color display with hundreds of pre-designed user interfaces

Tiny I2C, UART, or SPI displays are usually not difficult to connect to a breadboard with a few jumper cables, but Breadboard Mates TIMI-130 display makes that neater with a design made specifically for the breadboard, plus hundreds of pre-designed user interfaces/pages to simulate buttons, LED matrices, gauges, and other widgets. TIMI stands for Tiny Intelligent Modular Instrument, and TIMI-130 comes with a 1.3-inch color TFT IPS LCD, plus two 5-pin headers to power and connect the display to the breadboard through UART or I2C and update the widgets and values with simple commands. TIMI-130 specifications: Display driver – 4D Labs Pixxi-28 graphics processor with 14KB SRAM, 32KB flash Storage – 32MB flash Memory. Display – 240×240 pixel resolution TFT IPS LCD (non-touch). 2x 5-pin 2.54mm pitch headers with 3.3V (5V tolerant) serial UART interface (300 to 2187500 Baud). Master I2C (3.3V level) interface bus. 3x GPIO (3.3V level): 2x […]

March 8, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

COVID-19 outbreaks and lockdowns in Shenzhen and Hong Kong delay some projects

This may read like January or February 2020 headlines with disruption to shipping and manufacturing in China due to a “new coronavirus”, but it’s happening again, particularly in Hong Kong and Shenzhen where COVID-19 case numbers have jumped and the governments have implemented strict measures to attempt to contain it. Since Shenzhen is a hub of electronics manufacturing and Hong Kong is often the gateway to those goods, we’ve received several reports of disruption and delayed projects. First, from Source Parts saying the Popcorn Computer will be further delayed in parts due to the COVID situation in Shenzhen: …Within a short period of time after cases suddenly began to rise, we noticed that more apartment complexes were undergoing mandatory lockdown. We started to stock up early on essentials including food and water. One day, the two nearby food markets we frequent were fully stocked in the morning and empty in […]

January 6, 2022January 19, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 37 Comments

The death of transformers? AC Direct DC Enabler is a solid-state solution for AC-DC power supplies

Power supplies would typically transform AC mains to DC voltage with the use of transformers, rectifiers, or filtering, but Amber Solutions’ AC Direct DC Enabler chip claims to do without those old tech electromechanical components by enabling DC extraction directly from AC mains through solid-state architecture. The company claims the technology leads to dramatically smaller size footprints, while simultaneously “delivering a much more dynamic, configurable power delivery capability”. Consumer, commercial and industrial electrical products manufacturers and semiconductor companies can already evaluate the technology as the AC Direct DC Enabler is now available as a demo kit. The company made bold claims even announcing the death of transformers: The magic of the Amber AC Direct DC Enabler is that it allows manufacturers to add modern intelligence and enhanced functionality to new and existing products using much smaller silicon chips to manage and deliver DC power. Using a single silicon chip, this […]

December 27, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

KiCad 6.0.0 released with revamped user interface, thousands of changes

It took around 3.5 years of development to release KiCad 6.0.0 open-source EDA suite, as the previous major release, KiCad 5.0.0, was introduced in July 2018. KiCad 6.0.0 comes with a refreshed user interface that’s supposed to reduce the barriers of entry for new users and users switching from other design software with notably the schematic and PCB editors now feeling like being from the same program instead of completely different tools. As noted by the developers, it’s difficult to summarize all the changes because of the thousands of updates made between KiCad 5 and KiCad 6, but here are some highlights: Revamped schematic editing with the object selection and manipulation paradigm as the PCB editor, and several new features such as net classes, one-click wire start, intersheet references Brand-new schematic and symbol library file format allowing embedded symbols Redesign of the PCB design tool with new options such as […]

December 24, 2021December 27, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 24 Comments

Manufacturing samples of Xassette-Asterisk open-source hardware board

We covered Xassette-Asterisk open source-hardware Allwinner D1s RISC-V Linux SBC last October. But it will most likely never be mass-manufactured since SdtElectronics, the designer, has no resources and time for production. So I thought I should give it a try, and I managed to get 10 boards manufactured and assembled. Time for a little disclaimer. While the post is not sponsored in the sense I did not get paid for it, NextPCB agreed to cover all costs, aka sponsor, and manufacture ten boards. Today, I’ll report my experience manufacturing an open-source hardware board, but I had no time to check whether any of the boards worked. Manufacturing timeline Since I did not want to go through the whole process of ordering the PCB, purchasing the components, and soldering each board individually, I opted for NextPCB’s PCB manufacturing and assembly services. Here’s the detailed timeline: November 9 – Ordered 10 boards […]