Current Controlled Boost LED Driver and Black Soldermasks

The MAX16834 is a neat little chip (it's not the only one, there are plenty of others out there) that allows high efficiency designs for LED string driving. It provides a platform for a Buck or Boost converter design, as well as brightness adjustment via analog/PWM input pins, as well as a fault output (in case of open/short circuits for example) and also diverse other functionalities that can be quite useful. [Link]

Plants liven up any space by adding a sense of airiness and life. That is – of course – when you don’t forget to water them, and they shrivel up and die. I am very bad at remembering to water plants. That is why I built this self-watering plant to do it for me. Using a soil sensor, and an Arduino-controlled water pump, I have created a system that will never forget to do it.

 

Instead of remembering to water my plants when the soil goes dry, I only have to remember to once and a while refill the water reservoir. In this way, I have decreased my obligation to these plants and put it off to a much later date. Perhaps further iterations of this device can be connected to a rain barrel so that I won’t even have to worry about refilling my reservoir, and the entire system can be fully automated. [Link]

LTC3605A – 20V, 5A Synchronous Step-Down Regulator

The LTC®3605A is a high efficiency, monolithic synchronous buck regulator using a phase lockable controlled on-time constant frequency, current mode architecture. PolyPhase operation allows multiple LTC3605A regulators to run out of phase while using minimal input and output capacitance. The operating supply voltage range is from 20V down to 4V, making it suitable for dual, triple or quadruple lithium-ion battery inputs as well as point of load power supply applications from a 12V or 5V rail. [Link]

Mini Block Push-Pull EL84 (6BQ5) Valve Amplifiers

It has been a while since I did anything really crazy in DIY and had it work out far above my expectations. Such is the case for the Mini Blocks. I had a lot of extra parts lying around (really a huge amount of them) and tried to figure out what I could build. Two small chassis about 5 inches by 9 inches by 2 inches (12.5 X 22.5 X 5 cm) were just begging for a project. They are just the right size for lots of things. I first thought of a pair of SET amps.

But since I didn’t have any suitable single ended output transformers I nixed that idea. A preamp perhaps could be built on one of the chassis. Since I have many preamplifiers now that didn’t really get the nod either. A pair of small push-pull amplifiers was next on the list. Maybe, but I have so many amps now that it doesn’t make sense either. Since this hobby doesn’t always have to make sense, that is what I built. [Link]

USB Sound Card

In this article I will discuss my own experiences about designing a USB sound card, which is the USBDAC. DAC is an acronym for Digital-to-Analog Converter because in a sound card, digital data representing the sound is converted into analog voltage that moves the speaker cone.

My device is loosely based on the PCM2706 reference design. I will not go through the tecnical details but instead concentrate on my own experiences in the design of the device. This is to keep people not familiar with electronics, as well as newcomers to electronics design, interested. You will see that one working product is the result of many failed prototypes. [Link]