When I make my hardware projects, during development I usually need to know different magnitudes into the circuit like voltage of a pin, how many current is drained from the voltage source or a PIN and so on.
Voltage, current and often power that are involved into a circuit are magnitudes that an electronics designer must know during all time that they are active.

To measure them the simplest measurement instrument that you can use is the multimeter:
a basic and cheap multimeter  measure voltage and current of a circuit and their values  are display with numbers (often 3 digit) 3 times per seconds.
Another instruments that measure these magnitudes and offers some others interesting features is the oscilloscope: Continue reading

In the previous article we have seen the main features of this ultra low power regulator.
Now I want to show the main uses of this breakout board.

The simplest method to use it is to choose the output voltage that you need and with the VSEL table connect the VSEL pins to the correct voltage (to obtain a logic level “LOW” connect them to GND, to obtain a logic level “HIGH” connect it to 5V of arduino),

A typical circuit for a standalone application should be like this:
EN pin must be connected to 5V if you want the desired voltage on VOUT pin, VS1, VS2, VS3, VS4 all tied to 5V generate 3V3 to the Vout.
To obtain a different output voltage change VSEL configuration following the table below:

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Today I want to talk about a new breakout board that I made:

It is based on TPS62740, an ultra low power step down switching regulator that can regulate input voltage from 2.2V to 5.5V to an output voltage from 1.8V to 3.3V and a maximum of 300mA output current, in fact it is designed for battery powered system that handle low current and where energy saving is a must.

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In this article I want to show you some different ways to use the BQ24250 breakout board

The most full feature mode is to use it with a microcontroller and using the I2C communication

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I have already talked about the main features of a switching battery charger here, but now it’s time to talk about my project of a switching LiPo battery charger based on BQ24250, an IC designed by Texas Instruments

This is the breakout board that I made:

and this is the schematic:

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In the previous article we have seen the main characteristics of the linear charger IC AAT3681A.
In this article I want to share an example of use, connecting the AAT3681A breakout board to an arduino M0 and a 18650Guard.

this is the project:

Arduino M0 is powered via USB, this USB provides also a serial port communication useful to communicate the state of charging

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In the previous article I talked about the main differences about linear and switching lithium battery charger.

Here I want to explain my project of a linear battery charger for lithium battery based on the IC AAT3681A.
For the first thing I want to share with you the schematic and then discuss every single component

The charger IC  is AAT3681A,these are the main features:

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When you design a project that works with a battery you have two alternatives to choose:

• non rechargeable battery
• rechargeable battery

In this article we want to talk about projects that use rechargeable batteries, in details , lithium rechargeable batteries.

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