Author: Yahya Tawil

MCUs are called microcontrollers because they embed a CPU, memory and I/O units in one package. Apparently, today's MCUs are full of peripherals and in most cases they are not used in the application, and from an engineering point of view this is a waste of money and energy, but on the...

Time can be calculated using the azimuth of the sun (aka solar time). Based on this idea, Tinkerman has built an unusual project called Solr. The concept is to translate the position of the sun into time presented on a vintage display. This new digital watch is freak enough to work only...

Interest in magazines has declined in the age of social media and blogging. However, some people are somewhat skeptical about the future of this industry, especially the printed magazines. But surprisingly, a story published on EEVBlog forum about a new 100-page-long Australian...

Another OS for IoT applications called Mongoose OS. Like the other OS’s for IoT, Mongoose OS has some security features like: Microchip ECC508A crypto chip support. Supporting mbedTLS library from ARM. Implementation of file system encryption and full SPI-flash encryption on...

With the host of protocols available in electronics interfaces, choosing a protocol is a hard job. Some protocols are designed for long distance and reliable communication applications such as RS-485. Others are used for low cost and short range communication such as I2C, and so...

Today’s market requirements change faster than the typical development time for a new device or the ability of designers of SoCs to know. To solve this problem, FPGAs/MCUs are used so developers can change the configuration/firmware later. As known, MCU IP is static and you can't...

When you flip any electronic device (your TV screen, laptop, power supply, computer mouse, ...etc) you will see lots of marks. These marks are conformity marking for certain quality and technical standards such as: CE, FCC and UL. Today we are going to investigate more about the CE...

In the past, I’ve  always seen small circuits of copper with no silk screen or solder mask on top of it and as a PCB designer I have always the question in my mind: What is it for? — I’ve never needed them before! As I can find them in Arduino’s PCBs as well, I decided to open...