Meeting Report June 2019

Power Supply Simulation. Andrew.

I was interested in finding out how to optimize power efficiency when the problem is how best to power some very low current equipment ,

less than 1 mA for most of the time but then as much as 500mA for a few seconds. I found the quality of the inductor used to be a major issue.

The power source being a stack of alkaline batteries so a very wide range of input voltage ( ie. 16 volts down to 6 volts in the system in question )

had to be accommodated. Perhaps the real answer is to use lithium batteries !

The Maxim power circuits promo is a Free design simulator called 'simplis’ for power supply design.

Link :

https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/design/design-tools/ee-sim-design-simulation-tool.html

German Microcontroller programming course. Anthony.

Anthony showed the Sparkfun iotthing and a mikrokontroller course he is doing in german!

First he wrote an rgb program in c and tested it on Arduino.

Reversing it back to blockly was harder than first thought!

The Digital Test Tool. Steve.

I demonstrated an old circuit I hand wired more than 25 years ago.

It was dusty and needed some re-soldering and it works now - mostly!

Features are :

A logic probe - beeps and LED latches on when pulse detected.

A clock source (5V square wave) at 1024Hz & 1 Hz.

8 bit wide digit display.

Also, here's a link to the new super-mini "Pokit Meter" :

https://pokitmeter.com/