Microcontrollers (MCUs) have a few display options available. A Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) is a common, low-cost option that uses a backlight made of either cold-cathode fluorescent tubes (CCFL) or light emitting Diodes (LEDs). The term “LED display” actually refers to an LCD display with LED backlighting, and thus is the same thing as an […]
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Top microcontroller threads on EDAboard.com – May
(editor’s note: Intrigued by the problem? Have a similar challenge? Have a question or another solution? Then click the “Read more” link and follow the conversation on EDAboard.com or log in to EDAboard and participate in the microcontroller forum thread.) PWM interrupt Microchip clarification -I have configured a PWM interrupt for every 30 microseconds. The […]
GPUs: Not just for graphics anymore
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are special processors that can rapidly process repetitive computations. GPUs were originally designed for rendering performance-hungry display graphics to take excess load off of CPUs. GPUs can be characterized by extremely fast computing power, especially in repetitive computations. Within the past decade, GPUs are increasingly used in applications that require […]
First RISC-V-based development board for Arduino platform
SiFive, the first fabless provider of customized, open-source-enabled RISC-V semiconductors, today announced the release of the Arduino Cinque, the first RISC-V-based development board for the popular open-source hardware platform. Today’s announcement marks the latest development in SiFive’s work to democratize access to custom silicon. The Arduino Cinque features SiFive’s Freedom E310, the industry’s first commercially […]
RISC architecture and instruction architecture
RISC stands for Reduced Instruction Set Computer and is a type of architectural processor design strategy. “Architecture” refers to the way a processor is planned and built and can refer to either the hardware or the software that is closest to the silicon on which it runs. An Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) specifies the basic […]
Documenting code: use this when you just don’t know what to write
Documenting code is something most people dislike doing. By the time you are done with writing, debugging, testing, fixing and re-testing, you are so sick of it that you just don’t want to look at it anymore. But most of us have already been on the other side of the code: a recipient of some […]
Metal Oxide Field Effect Transistor: What is RDS(on)?
RDS(on) stands for “drain-source on resistance,” or the total resistance between the drain and source in a Metal Oxide Field Effect Transistor, or MOSFET when the MOSFET is “on.” RDS(on) is the basis for a maximum current rating of the MOSFET and is also associated with current loss. All things being equal, the lower the […]
Top microcontroller threads on EDAboard.com – April
(editor’s note: Intrigued by the problem? Have a similar challenge? Have a question or another solution? Then click the “Read more” link and follow the conversation on EDAboard.com or log in to EDAboard and participate in the microcontroller forum thread.) ADE7763 SPI register read issue – I an currently working on SPI communication between PIC24FJ64GA006 […]
Teardown: The electronics of Hello Barbie
Parents leery of privacy invasion have little to fear from Barbie, whose language skills mainly reside in the cloud. There’s been a lot of discussion in the media about privacy and home appliances that listen to conversations. The Hello Barbie doll is a voice-enabled toy that has been part of the controversy. It uses Wi-Fi […]
RF cable and RF wireless transmission
What is RF? RF stands for “Radio Frequency” and has become a catch-all term for certain wired communications and a large (spectral) range of wirelessly transmitted waves. It’s easy to find wireless RF modules for microcontroller development kits and other design-ready products, but where does RF cable fit in? What does Ethernet have to do […]