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 ...

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 ...

For switching high-powered loads from a microcontroller, or for switching AC loads in general, most of us will reach into the parts bin and pull out a generic relay of some sort. Relays are ...

The 1-Wire Net, or MicroLAN (by Maxim-Dallas), is a simple way to connect slow devices (such as sensors, relay drivers, switches, and so on) using simple components. These components contain the ...

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 ...