Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange
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1500 questions
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2 answers

Why do condors get electrocuted by power lines?

Plenty has been said about why birds are safe to land on power lines. But condors, apparently, are not. The linked article explains that condors are electrocuted often enough and endangered enough that they are doing special "power pole aversion…
Nate Glenn
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How to chose via diameter and drill size based on trace width

I am designing a two layer board, the problem is I do not know how to select via diameter and drill size, as well as outer and inner diameters. In my circuit I use 056, 012 and 006 mil traces: I have asked the manufacturer, they said they can…
Dumbo
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How can a capacitive touch screen be triggered without human contact?

I want to robotically touch an iPhone screen without any human intervention. I've done some experiments but have not found a reliable solution. It seems even styluses that work through gloves still rely on the capacitive characteristics of the…
Tom R
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Why did my fuse blow after 3+ years of no problems?

For several years, I've had a solenoid wired to the 24VDC output of a PLC (Rockewell Automation 1769-OB16). To protect the PLC output card, a fast-acting 500mA fuse was installed between the PLC and the solenoid. The fuse has been working without…
CaptJak
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Whats does "hr" mean among "V" and "Ah" in batteries?

I have a battery which indicates 12V25Ah/10hr. What does 10hr mean here? I guess "hr" stands for "hour". But 25Ah already means if battery is fully charged and if I load 12V 25A (=300W) to it, it should last for an hour (correct me if I am…
Farrukh
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3 answers

Do all USB Type C cables support full power delivery?

USB Power Delivery is able to work over USB Type A/B cables which are specifically designed to support it. Since the USB Type C was designed much later, I am curious: Do all USB Type C cables support USB PD by default? And do they support a certain…
William Entriken
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4 answers

How to clean up a noisy signal?

I'm controlling a 4-pin PWM PC fan from a PIC16F684 with the fan speed driven from an ADC reading of a proximity sensor. This all works ok. I wasn't originally planning to use the tachometer output from the fan, but as it's available I been…
Roger Rowland
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How to read serial data from oscilloscope

I have a microcontroller (PICAXE 20X2) and a pot meter. I programmed the micro so that it sends any change of pot meter to serial port of PC. Obviously it is a 8bit ADC. Now the interesting thing for me is being able to decode this serial data on…
Dumbo
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What is the difference between operational, differential, and instrumentation amplifiers?

RS Components lists three categories of similar amplifiers: Operational Amplifiers, Differential Amplifiers, and Instrumentation Amplifiers. I think that there should be a single section called Operational Amplifiers. Why do these three separate…
quantum231
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Dissipating 1W on a TO-220 without heatsink?

Can a TO-220 without a heatsink dissipate 1W in still air? Or, a different way of asking the question is: Assuming an ambient temperature of 25C, how can I go about calculating the maximum power I can dissipate on a TO-220 packaged MOSFET? The…
SomethingBetter
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Is there a common netlist format?

Is there a common netlist format that is portable between different schematic/pcb/EDA/CAD tools, and if so where is the format or reference so I can implement it? If not, does each package implement it differently, or are there a few standards that,…
Adam Davis
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Injecting a communication signal over DC power supply lines

I'd like to be able to daisy chain multiple devices using just the power supply wires and then inject a communications signal over the power lines to turn it into a half duplex network. Are there any common methods of achieving this? The simpler the…
Peter Gibson
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Why is a MOSFET triggered by Vgs and not Vgd?

Looking carefully at this diagram of one type of MOSFET: (found in this application note) We can see the device is virtually symmetrical. What makes the gate reference itself to the source and not the drain? Also, why would the gate oxide break…
Thomas O
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6 answers

What's the schematic to share one crystal with two micros?

How do I share a single crystal (not a complete oscillator module) between two micros? Is it OK to just connect everything as normal for the first micro and also directly connect its XO to the XI of the second microcontroller? I expect to place the…
joeforker
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Single supply op-amp audio amplifier

I am trying to create an op-amp amplifier that would work from single 5V supply, and would be able to amplify -100mV to +100mV audio signal to around a 1V peak-peak or so. I've came across this circuit from this article, that could seem to work, but…
Golaž
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