The story behind the invention of vacuum tube  Anything in Science has its own history and some hidden truths behind its invention. It must be fascinatingly curious for any science savvy person to know the invention story of technical tools, and other innovations of Science. This is one such write up which will help […]
Invention of Integrated circuits – Behind the scene Have you ever heard the story behind  invention of  integrated circuits or what made people work on it? Well, if your answer is ‘No’, continue reading to unveil the truth. This article takes you through the path of invention and developments of integrated circuits. What are Integrated
In this article, we are giving an introduction to MATLAB. This article is part of a tutorial series we are developing for MATLAB. We hope you to give us feedback, so that we can improve our MATLAB tutorial series. What does MATLAB stand for? MATLAB stands for MATrix LABoratory. Hence, as the name suggests, here
Hi Friends, 2 years before, we have launched Forums in CircuitsToday with great expectations. However due to lack of time on our side, we failed to monitor the forums properly. Above all the software we bought to power forums was too susceptible to spam activities. We had a tough time dealing with “automated spam” activities
Transistors and its path of invention We all know “transistor” is an integral part of any electronic circuit/device. It is very rare to see any circuits built without at least one transistor. This  semiconductor device is used either for switching purposes or for amplification purposes in electronic devices. They are either packed separately or found
The good definition of Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) is in the name itself. It means modulating/varying the width of the pulse (Not the frequency). To best understand what PWM is, let us first see some basic terminologies. Microcontrollers are intelligent digital components which live on binary signals. Best representation of a binary signal is a
I am really excited by the amazing comments & responses I got for my two articles on PN Junction. If you have not read them yet, here they are – 1) Understanding the PN Juction and 2) PN Junction Diode Characteristics. In those 2 articles, I have tried to demystify PN Juction and explain it
We all see Police using breathalyzers on drivers to check if they are under the influence of alcohol. Drink & driving is a crime in all countries. But do you know that this machine is easy to make? Here is how to DIY alcohol breathalyzer with 3 digit display output. Alcohol Breathalyzer circuit using 8051
This article is a guide for any one who is interested in knowing about the different types of LED’s available in the market. This can be considered as a general informational guide on LED and a buying guide for hobbyists as well. Â One important challenge I faced while writing this guide was to incorporate consumer
Usually we publish articles that are of interest only to the “electronics” community. However today I thought of publishing an article about career opportunities in Web Development & Web Technologies. The reason being the wide opportunities it provides for fresh engineers & graduates. “Cloud Computing” is making a wave and plenty of new job opportunities
Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI), is a very vast domain and is known to be the best and most sought after field among all branches in electronics. Our idea is to bring in the basic knowledge on VLSI to our readers and for those who are interested is pursuing this field for a career. As
This article is about a simple heart rate monitor using 8051 microcontroller. Like the previous 8051 projects, AT89S51 is the microcontroller used here. The device senses the heart rate from the finger tip using IR reflection method and displays it on a three digit seven segment display in beats per minute. The circuit has an
This article is about interfacing a hex key pad to 8051 microcontroller. A clear knowledge on interfacing hex key pad to 8051 is  very essential  while designing embedded system projects which requires character or numeric input or both. For example projects like digital code lock, numeric calculator etc. Before going to the interfacing in detail,
This article is a compilation of all 8051 based Electronic Projects and Circuits we have developed at CircuitsToday till date. We have one of the biggest collection of 8051 based Projects – which range from very Advanced one’s like Electronic Voting Machine, Heart Rate Monitor, RFID based Access Control (and a lot more) to Medium
Ultrasonic range finder using 8051 . A simple ultrasonic range finder using 8051 microcontroller is presented in this article. This ultrasonic rangefinder can measure distances up to  2.5 meters at an accuracy of 1 centi meter. AT89s51 microcontroller and the ultrasonic transducer module HC-SR04 forms the basis of this circuit. The ultrasonic module sends a
Contactless digital tachometer using 8051. A three digit contact less digital tachometer using 8051 microcontroller which can be used for measuring the revolutions/second of a rotating wheel, disc, shaft or anything like that is introduced in this project. The tachometer  can measure up to a maximum of 255 rev/sec at an accuracy of 1 rev/sec.
PWM lamp dimmer. A simple and efficient PWM lamp dimmer using timer IC NE555 is discussed in this article. Yesterdays linear regulator based dimmers can only attain a maximum efficiency  of 50% and are far inferior when compared to the PWM based dimmers which can hit well over 90% efficiency. Since less amount of power
In this article, we learn about PN junction diode characteristics in detail – like how to bias a PN junction (Forward & Reverse bias methods), behavior of PN junction during forward & reverse bias setups, how to plot the VI characteristics, what is reverse breakdown and many other essential concepts regarding a PN junction diode.
This article is a compilation of the simple and popular audio circuits we have published over years in CircuitsToday. This list involves a collection of simple amplifier circuits that you can try at home and some other audio related circuits with specific applications. Image Source 1. 150 Watt amplifier circuit – This circuit is the
Whenever someone decides to learn electronics, the first question that comes to his mind may be – “Where shall I begin?“. I would say, one shall begin at a junction 😉 the “pn junction“. We know semiconductor devices like transistors and diodes are the basic building units of any equipment that involves electronics, say tablet
Delay using 8051 timer. The 8051 microcontroller has two independent 16 bit up counting timers named Timer 0 and Timer 1 and this article is about generating time delays using the 8051 timers. Generating delay using pure software loops have been already discussed here but such delays are poor in accuracy and cannot be used
The world around us is changing at a much faster pace than any one can anticipate. The world of “computing” has already seen great shifts from Desktops to Notebooks to Smartphones and Tablets. The coming decade will be more focused on mobile computing and cloud computing. Here in this article, I am listing some of
In this article we will take a look at Debugging feature of Keil uVision. In Previous Article we had seen how to create project, hex file and building Project. Once you build your project and if you see 0 errors and 0 warnings you are half way through your project. Now what is debugging? Debugging is
Basics of Image Processing Sight/vision is one of the greatest powers of a human being. Our eyes can tell us the shape, size, color of any and everything which comes in front of it.An Image is a 2 D light intensity function f(x,y). A digital image f(x,y) is discretized both in spatial coordinates and brightness.
Software delay routine in 8051 In an 8051 microcontroller, it requires 12 cycles of the processor clock for executing a single instruction cycle. For an 8051 microcontroller clocked by a 12MHz crystal, the time taken for executing one instruction cycle is 1µS and it is according to the equation, Time for 1 instruction cycle= 12
