I’ve decided to post a link to my blog. My goal is to start writing more about the digital logic and microcontrollers project that I work on, to act as help and inspiration for my students. Occasionally I also write about my other passion, which is flying airplanes. Don’t expect updates terribly frequently, however. 🙂
Apparently, people actually read this blog (who knew!), so why not write about a topic I find interesting: multiplication. Multiplying two values together (as opposed to multiplying one value with a constant) is actually a difficult computational task. This was difficult to do in mechanical analog computers (shout out to any potential future mechanical engineers …
Keeping a record of the projects that you build is more important than you may think. Even if you have really well-commented code saved somewhere, or a schematic, it’s still really helpful to keep notes in a project notebook. Each of my projects gets written up in my notebook, which is open on my table …
When designing a sequential circuit with one or more clock signals, particularly circuits with either high-frequency clock signals, lots of wires, or both, noise can be a big problem! The circuit below from a past Digital Systems Design Project Showcase shows a good example of a circuit with lots of unwanted inductance caused by many …
Sometimes a 555 timer does not output a great square wave from 0-5 V. In this case, when using it as a clock source for a flip-flop, a bad 555 timer output can lead to missed clock pulses and seemingly strange behavior on the output. To correct this, use one or two Schmitt inverters (7414) …
In digital systems, I teach about a bunch of different hardware solutions that can be used to implement a project. I thought it would be fun (and not to mention, a learning experience for me) to come up with both a combinational logic project and a sequential logic project and implement each one using a …
The purpose of this post is to make the design process of creating printed circuit boards (PCBs) a little less scary. Please note that, as with most of the hobby stuff on my website, I am self taught. This means that I use auto-routing, don’t worry about ground planes, and the most difficult thing I …
Frequently, I will come up with an idea for a project I’d like to do. Some of the projects are small in scope, like designing a PCB for some DIP components so that my students don’t have to spend time wiring up a frequently-used component (like the 7447 and a 7-segment display). Those are relatively …
It can be very difficult to convey to students sometimes just how much effort can go into diagnosing a circuit that isn’t working, and how much tenacity it takes. There are many resources that can be used to try to overcome problems. I figured it might be a good idea to write about my experiences …
Stats for the day: I thought I was going to have a boring story to tell today. Let’s go back to last night. I was taking a hard look at the weather forecasts, as it appeared that today might be a little tricky as far as getting home at the right time. The visibility and …