Practical Electronics – April 2022
English | 78 pages | pdf | 21.05 MB

It’s all about power

Jake Rothman’s opening line in this month’s Audio Out column – ‘Audio lives or dies by its power supplies…’ – is of course aimed at audio electronics fans, but it’s a good reminder that all our projects, designs and explorations in the world of electronics come to nothing if the battery, PSU, supply or whatever source of electrical power you are using isn’t up to the job.
We do run plenty of power supply projects, but I hope you’ll take the time to read through Jake’s latest design. Even if audio is not your main focus, it’s an excellent example of elegant analogue design that could be used in many other applications that need stable power with low levels of ripple and hum. As always, Jake’s designs use inexpensive, readily available components to get excellent results that anyone can build.

Advancing with Flowcode

Martin Whitlock returns in this issue with another in-depth exploration of how to use Flowcode. You’ll recall from his January and February articles that Flowcode is a flexible and intuitive programming environment that lets you program a PIC16F88, Arduino Uno and many other PICs/microcontrollers without having to use assembler or C – you just draw fl owcharts of the intelligent process that you want to implement. This month, he shows you how to create a simple electronic thermometer and tackles two common requirements for microcontroller users – reading an analogue voltage and writing to a 16×2 character display.
A nice piece of serendipity is that this month’s Circuit Surgery looks at the LM35 temperature sensor IC. This is exactly the same device used in the Flowcode mini project, so there’s analogue and digital focus on one useful and easy-to-follow project.

Projects, projects, projects
Speaking of projects, in addition to our regular columns, this month we start three fascinating designs for you to build – a useful High Current Battery Balancer, a handy 64-key MIDI Matrix and a top-quality Digital FX Unit. Plus, Phil Boyce explains all you need to know to build a Micromite-based iButton Electronic Door Lock.

Lots to keep you busy!
Keep well and stay healthy
Matt Pulzer
Publisher

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