How many remote controls do you have in your home? Don’t you wish all these things were better integrated somehow, or that you could add remote control functionality to a random device? It’s a common ...

The use of transistors for switching things ON and OFF is a key feature of proper hacking. The ability for bipolar transistors to turn things ON and OFF is one of the less known uses while transistors ...

For switching high-powered loads from a microcontroller, or for switching AC loads in general, most of us will reach into the ...

OK, so I have an old project laptop with an IDE/PATA/slim-ATAPI optical drive bay, into which I have inserted a SATA drive caddy with a bridge board. The thing is, the caddy doesn't transfer the drive ...

The two types of standard transistors are PNP and NPN which differs in circuit symbols. The layers of semiconductor material used to make the transistor are denoted by the letters. To keep a straight ...

Relays usually are driven using optocouplers, which offer isolation between analog and digital grounds to ensure that switching currents in the relay coils do not affect the noise margin of the ...

Large scale digital logic began not with the vacuum tube but the electromechanical relay. Although vacuum tubes were available at the time – and were used on competing machines – Konrad Zuse chose to ...

Solid-state relays are much smaller than corresponding single-pole relays. They are also faster, dissipate less power, and withstand a larger number of operations. And unlike electromechanical relays, ...