Electronics FAQ

Here is a high resolution scanned image of assorted SMD components. It took me one hour to place the components on the scanner glass and scan it at 1200dpi. Why did I do it? I don't know, just like that. Actually, this pic is quite useful to acquaint an engineering student with various SMD packages: SOT23, TQFP, SOIC, TSSOP, Case B, 0805, MELF, QFN ... blah blah blah.. Here is the full A4 size image (low res.): Here are the various sections of the above image in high resolution:

A picture speaks better than a thousand words and "jugaad" is a word best defined thru pictures, so I will be putting up photos of jugaads whenever I come across them. Jugaad inside an intercity Bus (Chandrapur <> Nagpur) to prevent VCD skipping due to jerks from potholes and bumps on the road:

Lots of "lots ofs"      0.1 microfard Mylar Capacitors (5 mm pitch) (scanned 'em ;) )      0.1 microfarad box capacitors    ATmega8535L    ATtiny2313    SPDT Slide Switches    3.6864 MHz Crystals    Lots of random SMD components 

I made these two charts/pics as references for use while laying out PCBs: Diameters of common thru hole cylindrical Electrolytic Capacitors: and Length and Breadths of SMD Tantalum Caps: Notice that in thru hole electrolytic capacitors, the black band mark the negative terminals and in case of SMD tantalums, the black band marks the positive terminals. I learnt this the hard way - by soldering the tantalums the otherway round and watching them blow up. I wonder why some engineers make life so difficult for other engineers. How hard could it have been to follow the same standard on all kinds of polarized caps?

Here, are some pics of our Laboratory. This lab is used by the Research Center and Design Services. Notice how well organized the lab is - I know, I am actually trying to show off here :P

The setup: I have a Intel motherboard inside my office desktop with a built-in serial port. Over the days, I managed to screw up the builtin COM port (and my friends at office did the same to their desktop PCs too.. haha!). What probably happened is that does to some ESD or overvoltage on one of the pins during experimentation caused the RS232 Driver on board the motherboard to get spoilt. As a result, the COM port (COM1 in this case) was detected alright by windows XP but Bray's Terminal or Hyperterminal were either not able to receive or transmit data out of the port. So we all got Serial Port PCI cards which costed around Rs.250 a piece. Each of these cards are based around the CH352 (more specifically CH325L) chip made by WCH (a chinese company). WCH Website (Chinese): www.wch.cn WCH Website (English): www.wch-ic.com CH352 Product Page and Datasheet: http://www.wch-ic.com/product/pci/ch352.asp All these cards have 2 Serial Por...

LARE & UC Micro Systems had put up a stall at Elecrama 2010 (20th to 24th January). We got a fantastic response from all kinds of visitors - professionals and students alike. (Being one of the handful few of electronics based company in a large exhibition full of electrical companies did help! :) ) Here are a few pics from the event: