Designers of LED lighting are always looking for ways to reduce the cost and size of the power management solution in applications that use more than one LED. NEC Electronics has recently developed a solution that reduces both. The new 8-bit high-current driving (HCD)/LED microcontroller is a 4-channel constant-current driver with embedded flash memory integrated into a single chip for maximum savings of cost and space.

Have you ever had an LED or other diode placed backwards? Screaming Circuits strives to place every component, from the largest, highest pin-count logic chip down to the smallest passive components, correctly every single time. A key element of that accuracy is our understanding of your board and the component markings.

The QFN form factor delivers a number of advantages over other SMT package form factors. It is generally a smaller part and, with the center pad, can have better grounding and thermal properties. These advantages are partially offset by layout and assembly difficulties. But by following a few guidelines, you can use the parts with confidence.

Via in pad seems to be one of the hot topics these days. The SMT guys pretty much always say: "don't ever do it." However, with certain parts, the component manufacturer strongly recommends it. Rather than just telling you "no, never," we're going to do our best to give a few guidelines on how to do it properly.

This intermediate level tutorial provides a review of the basic topologies of Switched Mode Power Supplies (SMPS), addresses voltage mode and current mode control and provides characteristics of topologies for higher power applications.

Introduction to Switch Mode Power supplies. This tutorial provides an overview of the various circuits and their characteristics. The training also describes popular solutions for voltage mode control and current mode control and the tradeoffs in efficiency etc. between the various solutions.

By using a continuous conduction mode (CCM) flyback topology, which has a constant power output characteristic, this power supply is capable of supplying short term, high surge currents of over 7 A for powering industrial equipment such as motors, solenoids or other inductive loads.

When developing an embedded device, deciding which technology to implement as the system's primary controller is one of the first key engineering milestones. In addition to considering processor architectures, operating system capabilities, and other components, you must decide which portion of the system to design and which portion to buy off the shelf. By designing and building a custom controller, you can completely customize the end solution and optimize costs, but any design specification changes or oversights can cause lengthy and expensive delays. Alternatively, using an off-the-shelf platform increases the cost of goods sold (COGS), and you may pay for features that are not necessary for your design. Nevertheless, off-the-shelf systems typically offer a faster validation cycle and, therefore, shorter time to market. This tutorial outlines two options for developing a new controller - build or buy - and discusses the technical and financial risks associated with both.

Field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology continues to gain momentum, and the worldwide FPGA market is expected to grow from $1.9 billion in 2005 to $2.75 billion by 20101. Since its invention by Xilinx in 1984, FPGAs have gone from being simple glue logic chips to actually replacing custom application-specific integrated circuits(ASICs) and processors for signal processing and control applications. Why has this technology been so successful? This article provides an introduction to FPGAs and highlights some of the benefits that make FPGAs unique.

The ToolStick Virtual Tools application provides a set of tools for the PC that can be controlled via the UART serial interface of the ToolStick Base Adapter. The ToolStick Virtual Tools application includes the following components: ToolStick Terminal, ToolStick Virtual LCD, ToolStick Virtual Oscilloscope.