Here we show the waveform of a zero-voltage switching (ZVS) inductive heating circuit and the thermal profile in operation. A typical buck regulator DC-DC is challenging to design when there is a significant voltage difference between the input and the output voltages. A significant voltage difference typically increases switching losses and limits the device’s switching […]

In Thesis, we develop products using various MCUs – Cypress PSoC4/5/6, STM32, Nordic nRF, Arduino, and PIC. In the past, we did that because of various client requirements and/or outcomes from our in-depth engineering evaluation. However, we do it nowadays because we aim to make our product design as MCU agnostic as possible to circumvent […]

Introduction A very noticeable feature in modern wearables and smartwatches these days is the presence of an optical photoplethysmograph (PPG) heart-rate sensor. PPG is a non-invasive method of measuring the variation in blood volume in tissues using a light source and a detector. In this article, we will talk about some component-level heart-rate measurement (HRM) […]

Ingress Protection Codes and Ratings Regardless of how smart your electronics are, they need protection against the elements and daily handling, which comes in the form of an enclosure that provides mechanical and/or water protection. Some recent notable devices are the water-resistant Samsung Galaxy S8, iPhone X and wearables such as the Apple Watch Series […]

There is increasing public concern that adverse health effects may arise from exposure to radiofrequency (RF) sources, particularly due to the increasing use of mobile and wearable devices with growing radio-communication capabilities such as GSM, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. This is particularly true with wearables, which are usually worn on the body and sometimes in direct […]

One of the ubiquitous wireless communication methods has gotten even better. Bluetooth SIG has released Bluetooth 5 (BT5), an enhancement to the current Bluetooth Low Energy v4.2. The key updates to Bluetooth 5 are 8x data, 4x range, and 2x speed, as well as improved interoperability and coexistence with other wireless technologies. For a designer and […]