Electronics Components: What are Operational Amplifiers?
An op amp is a super-sensitive electronic amplifier circuit that’s designed to amplify the difference of two input voltages. Thus, an op amp has two inputs and one output. The output voltage is often tens [more…]
Electronics Components: How the Op Amp Came to Be
The modern operational amplifier dates way back to the early days of electronics history. Specifically, the op amp was first created in the 1930s, when Bell Telephone was just starting to run telephone [more…]
Electronics Components: Open Loop Amplifiers
As its name suggests, one of the most basic electronic uses of an op amp is as an amplifier. If you connect an input source to one of the input terminals and ground the other input terminal, an amplified [more…]
Electronics Components: The Ideal Op Amp
If you read about op amps on the web or in an electronics book, you’ll undoubtedly come across the term ideal op amp.An ideal op amp is a hypothetical op amp with certain characteristics that real op amps [more…]
Electronics Components: Closed Loop Amplifiers
Open loop op-amp circuits aren’t very useful as electronic amplifiers because they’re so easily saturated. To make an op amp useful as an amplifier, you must use it in a [more…]
Electronics Components: Feedback in Closed Loop Amplifiers
If you’re interested in understanding how the feedback circuit works, remember this rule of electronic op amps: If the input voltage is anything other than zero, the op amp will be saturated, and the output [more…]
Electronics Components: How to Use an Op Amp as a Unity Gain Amplifier
A unity gain amplifier is an electronic amplifier circuit that doesn’t amplify. In other words, it has a gain of 1. The output voltage in a unity gain amplifier is the same as the input voltage. [more…]
Electronics Components: Integrated Circuits in Schematic Diagrams
In an electronic schematic diagram, an integrated circuit is usually represented simply as a rectangle with circuit connections placed conveniently around the rectangle without regard for the physical [more…]
Electronics Components: How to Power Integrated Circuits
In most DIP integrated circuits, two of the pins are used to provide electronic power to the circuit. One of these is designated for positive voltage, typically identified with the symbol V [more…]
Electronics Components: Integrated Circuit Data Sheets
Before you work with the electronics of a specific type of integrated circuit (IC), you should download a copy of the data sheet for the IC. An IC datasheet contains loads of useful information. In addition [more…]
Electronics Components: Popular Integrated Circuits
Thousands of different types of integrated circuits (ICs) are available for electronic devices. Most of these were designed for very specific applications. However, many integrated circuits have been designed [more…]
Electronics Components: How the 555 Timer Chip Works
The 555 is a single-chip version of a commonly used circuit called a multivibrator, which is useful in a wide variety of electronic circuits. The 555 timer chipis probably the most popular integrated circuit [more…]
Electronics Components: 555 Timer Chip in Monostable (One-Shot) Mode
The 555 timer chip in monostable mode in an electronic circuit works like an egg timer. When you start it, the timer turns on the output, waits for the time interval to elapse, and then turns the output [more…]
Electronics Components: Calculate the Time Interval for a Monostable Circuit
Monostable mode lets you use the 555 timer chip as a single-event timer. The time interval for a 555 monostable circuit is a measure of how long the output stays high when it's triggered in an electronic [more…]
How a Power Supply Regulates Voltage in Electronic Circuits
The purpose of a power supply is to provide power for an electronic circuit. For a given amount of power, there's an inverse relationship between voltage and current. Whenever current increases, voltage [more…]
The Basics of Radio Electronics
Radio — the electronic technology if not the audio programming — has never been more popular than it is right now. In the 1930s and '40s, there was only one use for radio: broadcast audio signals. Today [more…]
Radio Electronics: Who Really Invented Radio?
The history of electronic radio technology is plagued by controversy over the question of who actually invented the thing. The answer most often given is Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, but many others [more…]
Radio Electronics: Transmitters and Receivers
There are many natural sources of radio waves. But in the later part of the 19th century, scientists figured out how to electronically generate radio waves using electric currents. Two components are required [more…]
Radio Electronics: Amplitude Modulator (AM)
The original method of electronically encoding sound information on radio waves is called amplitude modulation, or AM. It was developed in the first few decades of the twentieth century. AM is a relatively [more…]
Radio Electronics: Frequency Modulation (FM)
Signals that interfere with an intentional electronic broadcast are called static, and static is the main drawback of AM radio. To counteract static, a better method of superimposing information on a radio [more…]
Radio Electronics: The Genius behind FM Radio
One of the great inventors in the history of radio electronics was an engineer named Edwin H. Armstrong. Born in 1890, he was fascinated with electrical technology from a very young age. At the age of [more…]
Electronics Components: How to Use an Op Amp as a Voltage Comparator
A voltage comparator is an electronic circuit that compares two input voltages and lets you know which of the two is greater. It’s easy to create a voltage comparator from an op amp, because the polarity [more…]
Electronics Components: How to Add Voltage to an Op Amp
An op amp can be used to add or subtract two or more voltages. An electronic circuit that adds voltages is called a summing amplifier. A summing amplifier has two inputs and an output whose voltage is [more…]
Electronics Components: Popular Op Amp Integrated Circuits
When you get around to building an actual electronic circuit using an op-amp, of course, you’ll need to use a real op amp. Fortunately, op-amp integrated circuits [more…]
Electronics Basics: What Is Alternating Current?
Alternating current is of vital importance in electronics for one simple reason: The electric current you can access by plugging a circuit into a wall outlet happens to be alternating current. [more…]
