mmac_

5 ms·

1.
by mmac_ 3y ago
Kicad is the best free EDA I've used and I know many others that use it. The active development and large community make it a no-brainer. I use Altium professionally ($$$) and I feel like Kicad could cover most of the boards I work on
2.
by mmac_ 3y ago
It's ok, if you wait long enough it'll go back down to a small number. Or maybe a negative number and then the car crashes? Please cap your numbers for both user experience reasons, and safety reasons. Yes, have dealt with this be
3.
by mmac_ 3y ago
Chipset makers, probably correct but there aren't that many companies that make them. Depends on the analogue front end if they support the new frequencies. I know the 3rd party module makers do tailor their modules to regions and the
4.
by mmac_ 3y ago
Many of these SoC have HDMI directly from the IC without needing additional hardware converters. Something like DP you need a converter IC which adds expense and board space/complexity. Something like MIPI -> DP, I think TI makes
5.
by mmac_ 3y ago
You encounter this in older industrial equipment. Some of the old ethernet chipsets don't support automatically switching the pairs around. It's not really a problem since at least in our local area they need to be installed by
6.
by mmac_ 3y ago
One of my earliest experiences with USB was back in the day where I had a PC without any USB front ports that were free. So I grabbed my USB thumb drive and reached around the back of the PC tower and plugged it in without looking. USB did
7.
by mmac_ 3y ago
Often I see someone who will design something in CAD but not think about how the product will be manufactured. Design for manufacturing isn't a buzzword. It happens with both plastic and other type of enclosures (metal etc). The bett
8.
by mmac_ 3y ago
This is solid advice. Find something you're interested in and go from there. If you can't find anything, maybe build something like a weather station. You'll start with a simple task: read the ambient temperature and disp
9.
by mmac_ 3y ago
I agree with the parent comments. You will spend an absurd amount of time making library components, and you can't trust 3rd party. The 3rd party sites are a great starting point to take out some of the grunt work, but you need to tw
10.
by mmac_ 3y ago
You can get a business account with Mouser/Digikey and then they just become another distributor. Your login gets discounted pricing (it's not much though) which is good for quick prototypes, and you can sometimes get an account
11.
by mmac_ 3y ago
I would generally agree with this, however I do find the esp32 on the whole has been as reliable as any of the major brands (although haven't had to use an ADC). We don't drive them too hard though, but their cheapness has pushed
12.
by mmac_ 4y ago
M.2 and PCIE style connectors are great for board-to-board connections. We use them all of the time in industrial applications. Super cheap and super reliable if you follow the rules. Very common to see all sorts of commodity connectors (
13.
by mmac_ 4y ago
yeah this looks correct and it's a different world if you have direct access to the modem IC. To clarify I was referring to the modules that the average person can get their hands on. If you rip open the module (or look at the FCC pap
14.
by mmac_ 4y ago
You generally pick one interface and do everything on that. The modules are still using old school AT commands (so you still send ATD to dial a phone number). Yeah the 4G uses the same AT interface over serial. You picked up the drawback:
15.
by mmac_ 4y ago
Most people will be familiar with RS-232 when connecting to a computer (COM ports). In the industrial/embedded world, it's still used quite a bit to connect to devices for logs/terminals/programming and setup etc. Of c
16.
by mmac_ 4y ago
As someone who cut their teeth in embedded before going into web development, I've seen a significant amount of similarities between the two. The most obvious to me is that now we spend a lot of time connecting prebuilt libraries toge
17.
by mmac_ 4y ago
A bit of a generalisation, but I tend to find when a traditional EE writes firmware, they treat the firmware as controlling the hardware and are more direct with their instructions. i.e. if they need to set a gpio they will often do it dir
18.
by mmac_ 4y ago
Single pair communications are invaluable in industrial applications - almost all of our scenarios involve the restriction of not being able to run new cable. The costs involved in running new cables can be eye watering to say the least.