In my previous article I documented the design and build process of my USB microphone based around an STM32F446 MCU. If you haven’t already read it then it’s probably worth catching up now before reading the rest of this article so that you have the necessary context. The...
A USB microphone for online meetings
posted by Andy
Here in the UK the new reality of working in the IT business over the past year has been that we’re all at home working remotely over virtual desktop connections and for someone engaged in software development this is a setup that works well. Having to commute 90 minutes each way into...
A development board for an STM32G081 MCU
posted by Andy
I’ve been an avid user of ST’s F0 series ever since it was launched. The 48MHz Cortex M0 is almost always the perfect MCU for every project that I tend to build and it’s so easy to program and debug that, for me, it’s the default answer to ‘which MCU should I use...
How to use a 4k TV as a computer monitor
posted by Andy
I like big, high resolution monitors. The bigger the better. I can’t understand how so many young developers and engineers seem to be content to peer into the tiny screens on their Macbooks that offer only a few visible lines of code in perhaps two simultaneous columns, with any...
A high current power supply built around a server voltage regulator
posted by Andy
Regular readers of this blog will have already seen the article that I published about 4 months ago where I attempted to reverse engineer a voltage regulator module originally designed to fit into a Dell server. The theory was that these would be high quality, stable and robust designs that...
Old, not obsolete. Working with the Xilinx Virtex-E FPGA in a huge BGA package.
posted by Andy
Let me see now, it must have been about two years ago when this story started. I was bored. I can’t remember why but when I’m bored I often surf ebay just to see what interesting bits and pieces are out there. Mostly it’s the same old stuff repeated over and over. Cheap bare PCB modules from the far east at the low end and chancers wanting $1000 for a broken oscilloscope at the other. This time though I found something interesting. Someone in Sweden was selling a job lot of forty factory-sealed Virtex-E FPGAs for what amounted to two quid each. And they were big ones — the XCV600E-6FG676. ‘Virtex’ is...
