The major building blocks for a white-LED driver are an oscillator, a charge pump, and a regulated current source. National Semiconductor (www.national.com) produces a device that contains all these ...

Microcontrollers commonly add intelligence or digital functions to products, but they can also provide a variety of analog signals. An 18-pin PIC 16C54 microcontroller, combined with an inexpensive, 8 ...

In this article, I'll be explaining the basics of how microcontrollers work, physically and virtually. First off, microcontrollers are no simple thing, so don't be discouraged if you find it ...

It’s generally pretty easy to spot a microcontroller on a PCB. There are clues aplenty: the more-or-less central location, the nearby crystal oscillator, the maze of supporting passives, and perhaps ...

While DSPs are the primary controllers in uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) with power-factor correction (PFC), ac generation and battery management, microcontrollers serve secondary functions for ...

Voltage comparators began appearing in single-chip microcontrollers (MCUs) in the late 1990s. At the time, the change was viewed as a simple cost reduction. Comparators required less silicon, while ...