Law of Conservation of Parts

Reels of parts are the way to go when you need a lot of boards built. It's just not practical to deal with a bunch of cut strips when building hundreds or thousands of boards. It's even easier to use... Read more

One Library Per Design

There was a time when I relied pretty heavily on the libraries that came with my CAD software. At first, I exclusively used what came with the package. Next, I started downloading libraries for new components from user contributed content.... Read more

Weekend Wisdom - Is the age of Gerber over?

I have in my bookshelf, an autographed copy of "The Inventor's Dilemma, The Remarkable Life of H. Joseph Gerber." I purchased the book, written by the subject's son, David Gerber, in early April 2016 with the knowledge that I would... Read more

Single Node Nets

I've read various opinions on schematic technique regarding the illustration of nets and nodes. Some folks want to route as much as is possible with net lines and some folks think it's clearer to use a lot of node symbols... Read more

PCB Assembly vs. Mondayitis

I pulled up an older MCU and motor driver board of mine this morning. It's a project from about ten years ago that I haven't had built since 2016. It's still a nice design. In 1.3" x 2", I have... Read more

Angst and Anxiety in Electronics Design

I've been called many things: Spock, Sheldon, weird, nerd, dork - probably too many names to list, and some not fit for print. The names aren't the point of this article, but the angst and anxiety that comes along with... Read more

30-second Philosophy - Wait or Rev Part 2

When you sell a house, the offer they make sounds great until you realize that the big number gets a lot smaller after accounting for replacing the roof, digging out the 60-year-old heating oil tank and fixing the 80-year-old plumbing.... Read more

Fundamentals of Marketing - Marketing for the Engineer Entrepreneur

The language of the engineer and the marketeer don't always mix well. It's understandable. The two disciplines have different vocabulary sets and different objectives. To make matters worse, there is a lot of bad marketing floating out and about. Some... Read more

Quoting PCB Assembly got you down?

In five years, plenty of new chip fabs will be online and we'll be able to buy those microcontrollers again. Of course, the brand new AugInt drive chips will still be hard to come by, but what breakthrough new technology... Read more

Supply Chain Woes - An open letter to microcontroller companies

To all of you out there who design, manufacture and sell microcontrollers - I'm talking to you! Actually, I'm talking to anyone who makes chips that have programmable configuration bits and overlapping model numbers. What do I mean by "overlapping... Read more