Silicon Chip March 2008

This month a wealth of useful technical articles for the engineer and hobbyists. Firstly, Digital TV has arrived, we look at what is required and how to set-up your system. For the constructor, an excellent article on soldering surface mount devices, this article covers all the basics, as well as providing an easy solution for reflow soldering. For the design engineer, a quick introduction to the I&sub2;C bus, how to use it and some of the problems you will face. Finally an interesting article on battery-powered flight, a new milestone for clean air technology.

This month’s projects includes a high current DC Motor Controller, this unit is suitable for both 12 and 24V DC Motors and can deliver up to 40A. It features speed regulation under load, soft-start and fast switch-off, eight memory settings with pulse width modulation (PWM) for speed control. This unit is equivalent to much more expensive commercial units currently available. Also this month, a variable frequency oscillator (VFO) built with a readily available recycled Nokia LCD to display analogue and digital frequency readings. This month, also build a simple LPT-to-I²C interface for quick debugging of your I²C network, as well as a simple 1 pulse per second digital signal for quartz clocks.

Part Code: SILCHIPMAR2008

Features

• How To Get Into Digital TV
• How To Solder SMD's
• The I²C Bus: A Quick Primer
• Electric Flight
• Review: Tevion TEV8200 HD Set-Top Box

Projects

• 12-24V High-Current DC Motor Speed Controller, Part 1
• A Digital VFO with LCD Graphics Display
• A Low-Cost PC-to I²C Interface for Debugging
• One Pulse Per Second Driver for Quartz Clocks

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