Electronics

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A bipolar junction transistor (either PNP or NPN type) can be used as an analog amplifier or as a digital switch. These days, it is probably much simpler to use an operational amplifier to achieve amplification of analog signals instead of building an amplifier using individual transistors but there are many situations where using a

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A bit mask (or bitmask) is a sequence of bits that can be used with bitwise operations to change or flip bits in a byte or nibble. That may be a convoluted definition so let me give an example using Arduino-style code to try to clarify. byte myByte B01001011; myByte = myByte & B00010001; This

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Using a shift register like the 74HC595 you can convert a serial signal to a parallel output. This is incredibly helpful if you need more digital outputs then the 14 that the ATmega328 on the Arduino Uno provides. The Arduino IDE includes a shiftOut() function that can be used to control an 8-bit shift register

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A project I am working on requires temperature data to be sent periodically (about every 5 minutes) from a sensor node to a data logger using an XBee radio. The project requires the sensor to operate using battery power for two weeks. To conserve power, I built a 3.3 V breadboard Arduino with a efficient

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A project I am working on requires temperature data to be sent periodically (about every 5 minutes) from a sensor node to a data logger using an XBee radio. The project requires the sensor to operate using battery power for two weeks. To conserve power, I built a 3.3 V breadboard Arduino with a efficient