Category: Blog

KiCad templates for two different hat models for Orange Pi Zero boards can be downloaded from my GitHub repo. Two different KiCad templates can be downloaded in the same GitHub archive: one uncut, 46×48 mm exactly same size as Orange Pi Zero; the other one has some cuts for network and USB connector, to accomodate …

I was quite busy the other day trying to understand how Baofeng is using RDA1846 transceiver in their products. While analyzing the schematic it struck me the overcomplicated way they do the switch between UHF and VHF. This is an excerpt of the schematic: The entire selector block is made up with discrete components ! …

A couple of weeks ago during what should have been a routine firmware upgrade, my Jabra Evolve 65 simply died. Have no idea what happened and maybe that will make an interesting future project, but because this headphone is my main headset used for teleconferences and other communication required by my job, I was kind …

Some time ago, my old Time Capsule died. It simply did not start. I read that this is an issue that plague all older (first and second generation) TCs. The culprits are four electrolytic capacitors inside the switching power supply, two 1,500 µF, one 1,000 µF and one 470 µF. The 1,500 µF were badly swolen. …

This will be another short post. I also made the GitHub repo public, but please be aware, current design is flawed. If you use it, you acknowledge that you use it on your own risk. Today I managed to build the revision 1.0 of this power sensor, not without some lessons learned. It was my …

My first finished KiCad project is a prototype of a RF Power meter with input attenuation built around an Analog Device AD8307. An excellent tutorial about log amps can be read in March 1999 edition of Analog Dialogue. KiCad PCB: And the 3D rendering of the same PCB: The next step will be PCB ordering, …

This short guide explains how to install Python version 3.7.0 on a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian. First, get rid of old versions: Ensure system is up to date: Install the dependencies needed for building the distribution: build-essential tk-dev libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev libreadline6-dev libdb5.3-dev libgdbm-dev libsqlite3-dev libssl-dev libbz2-dev libexpat1-dev liblzma-dev zlib1g-dev libffi-dev Get the python src distribution: …

One very interesting feature of Altera FPGAs is that almost any system can be created in its next-generation system integration tool Qsys using a standard library of reusable IP blocks. The system interconnect fabric is automatically generated by Qsys and binds the blocks together. The system interconnect manages dynamic bus with matching, interrupt priorities, arbitration …

This week was quite busy to complete my assignments for the FPGA Course. I was running out of time because I did not estimate properly my available free time and things got crowded at the office, at this end of week. With a lot to do there, I barely found any time to focus on …

I’ve been quite busy lately and neglected the blog. I enrolled on Coursera for a very interesting FPGA course, in what seems to be a FPGA specialization from University of Colorado Boulder. I have always had somewhat a reserved attitude towards FPGAs mainly because I believed that these are hard to understand and need a …