What do you think of when you hear the term electronic hobbyist or experimenter? I seem to see a person who likes to build electronic circuits and equipment. A bench with breadboarding socket, power supply, multimeter, function generator, oscilloscope and the usual parts boxes. This person probably even designs some circuits and equipment as well as builds from a kit. Electronics hobbyist like those just mentioned do still exist, but they are no longer the majority. There is a new electronics hobbyist out there now and they are different. Maybe you are one of them.
The phenomenon known as RF interference — RFI to its many friends and acquaintances — involves interference caused by signals propagated wirelessly as radio waves. Most people don’t know (or care) about RFI until their garage door opener won’t work.
Rings, beads, cores ... find out exactly what ferrite is and what makes it ideal for a variety of uses in electronics. First created in 1930, they have since become important materials in the electronics and RF world.
Listening to shortwave radio is very interesting, and filled with the voices and music of far-off lands. Digging a bit deeper, there is another world of shortwave radio that does not use conventional sounds. It is the realm of data transmissions.
Even though they're ancient by today's standards, old tube radios can almost always be brought back to life, and there's still plenty of broadcasts out there for them to receive! Not to mention, they just look so classy and have a presence few modern electronics can match.
Whether you need to flash an LED, energize a relay, turn a buzzer or alarm on or off, or invert a voltage level, the NPN transistor switch can easily solve your problem. This article shows you how to use a transistor as a simple SPST switch.
In the fast moving world of digital electronics, I find it incredible that the vacuum tube — a piece of early 20th century analog technology — has managed to survive. It should have bitten the dust long ago but that just did not happen. This back-to-the-future one-tube radio is made with readily available parts, operates on 12 volts, and offers amazing performance.
Typically, one of the first experiments people do when working with microcontrollers is to blink an LED. However, the thrill of this wears out pretty quickly, so let’s see what else can be done.
Every signal begins with an oscillator — In ham radio, the oscillator is a key element in generating signals, mixing them together, and extracting the information from them. Let's see how to make an audio oscillator, plus learn about common RF types.
Previously, we learned what makes an oscillator do what it does, and tried a simple low frequency example. Now, it's time to move up — in frequency — to the oscillators which make the signals that drive the ham's wireless world.
