News

It’s been a while since I last posted here, and it was for the server upgrade. Well, I have not been sitting idle during all this time as I can now announce the launch of datasheetcentral.com. Datasheetcentral is quite simply put a search engine for datasheets, combined with hosting of […]

As of today idyl.io is officially upgraded to a brand new dedicated server. It’s a pretty beefy Xeon with 32GB of RAM and dedicated bandwidth. This is also why you might have had some issues accessing the website while I was ironing out the last problems. Setting up SSL certificates […]

A new “Electronics” section is now available from the menu! Electronics are everywhere. Now, they’re even in your fridge and having your toaster connected to the internet through a small chip is only a matter of time, if not done already. What’s more: electronics of today are different than what […]

This is a sour experience I wish to share with everyone. The lesson learned: do not buy ICs from Aliexpress/Banggood etc. On my VFD tube driver design, everything runs off 12V. Everything except an ATTINY13 that generates a 5V square wave. I therefore needed a tiny 12V to 5V drop […]

It’s very hard to find new and interesting chips in DIP packages nowadays. Hell, it’s even worse than this: many electronics manufacturers are now even dumping the SOIC package (0.05″ / 1.27mm pitch) completely in favor of ever smaller sizes. If you are starting with surface mount components, you will […]

Shenzhen, China, is considered today to be the Mecca of everything electronics. However, other cities in China also boast lively electronic components shopping. In Shanghai, the financial capital of the People’s Republic, lies the SEG Electronics Market Located at 668 Beijing East Road, near the Bund and its skyscrapers; the […]

I recently bought an old Soviet era VFD clock, because I wanted to study how they built these things back in the days.   Unfortunately it wasn’t working when I got it so I took it on myself to fix it. Opening it up delivered a treasure trove of old […]

I am proud to say that idyl.io is now hosted on a proper dedicated server. The potato that was previously hosting it (a dual core, 2GB of ram virtual machine) has been replaced by a proper 8 core machine with plenty of ram to spare. People should hopefully see the […]

What’s new in China? New maker products roundup May 2017 Here are new maker products recently released which are worth looking at: “Wifi board not based on ESP8266” ElectronicFans has a new RTL8710 wifi board. At slightly over US$7, it isn’t the cheapest board, but it seems fairly complete. The […]