How to design a digital-controlled PFC, Part 2

In Part 1 of this article series, I explained the system block diagram and each of the modules of digital control. In this second installment, I’ll talk about how to write firmware to implement average current-mode control. Average current-mode…

Wearables for health analysis: A gratefulness-inducing personal experience

What should you do if your wearable device tells you something’s amiss health-wise, but you feel fine? With this engineer’s experience as a guide, believe the tech and get yourself checked. Mid-November was…umm…interesting. After nearly…

Edge AI in a DRAM shortage: Doing more with less

Memory is having a difficult year. As manufacturers prioritize DDR5 and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for data centers and large-scale AI workloads, availability has tightened and costs have risen sharply: up to 3–4x compared to Q3 2025 levels…

Self-oscillating sawtooth generator spans 5 decades of frequencies

There are many ways of generating analog sawtooth waveforms with oscillating circuits. Here’s a method that employs a single supply voltage rail to produce a buffered signal whose frequency can be varied over a range from 10Hz to 1MHz (Figure…

Full circle current loops: 4mA-20mA to 0mA-20mA

A topic that has recently drawn a lot of interest (!) and no fewer than four separate design articles (!!) here in Design Ideas, is the conversion of 0 to 20mA current sources into industrial standard 4mA to 20mA current loop signals. Here’s…

Are non-magnetic connectors in your future?

Many years ago, I overheard an engineer, with whom I had some project contact, make a casual remark about an RF connector situation, asking “what’s the big deal, it’s just a connector?” That statement was enough to make me wonder about…

555 VCO revisited

It is well known that a 555 timer in astable mode can be frequency modulated by applying a control voltage (CV) to pin 5. The schematic on the left of Figure 1 shows this classic 555 VCO.  Figure 1 Classic VCO (left) and new 555 VCO variant…

Simplifying inductive wireless charging

What do e-bikes and laptops have in common? Both can be wirelessly charged by induction. E-bikes and laptops both use lithium-ion batteries for power, chosen for their light weight, high energy density, and long lifespan. Both systems can be…

TP-Link’s Kasa HS103: A smart plug with solid network connectivity

With Amazon’s smart plug teardown “in the books”, our engineer turns his attention to some TP-Link counterparts, this first one the best behaved of the bunch per hands-on testing results. Two months back, I introduced you to several members…

Thumbwheel switches: Turning numbers into control

Thumbwheel switches may evoke early digital design, yet their compact precision and tactile feedback keep them indispensable. From setting circuit-board addresses to configuring embedded parameters, they translate simple rotations into reliable…

Powering AI at scale: How HVDC and GaN are transforming hyperscale data centers

As AI workloads and hyperscale data centers drive unprecedented power demand, operators face mounting pressure to improve efficiency and reduce grid strain. High-voltage direct current (HVDC) distribution is emerging as a critical solution,…

Redriver boosts automotive camera link reliability

Diodes’ PI2MEQX2505Q MIPI D-PHY ReDriver supports data rates up to 2.5 Gbps, making it well suited for ADAS and automotive camera monitoring systems. It provides one clock lane and four differential data lanes. Each data lane features programmable…