Home » 2017 » July

Monthly Archives: July 2017

Led driver triac dims across 1-100%

Recom RACT triac dimmable led driver

Recom is claiming 1% to 100% leading-edge or trailing-edge triac dimming from four led drivers, rated at 9, 12, 18 or 25W. Both leading and trailing edge phase angle control makes them suitable for many standard dimmers for a wide range of applications,” said the firm. Called the ‘RACT series’ (RACT20 for 20W, for example), their constant current outputs are between ...

Hats off to a particular professional cyclist

I was standing by the roadside, watching the Surrey Classic professional cycle race on Sunday. And the cycling was most impressive. But none of the riders cracked a smile, despite a little crowd that was cheering its heart out. Then, a long way behind the main pack, there was tired group of four riders – two or three with fixed ...

Arduino Shenanigans

Arduino has had a great commercial success but a lousy corporate history. Now the CEO has been ousted after it was found that his degrees are phony. Five guys founded Arduino LLC in 2008 but, in 2010, when they applied for a worldwide trademark on the name, they found that one of the founding five, Gianluca Martino, had registered the ...

Fable: The Costly Micro

40 years ago this year, the first 16-bit microprocessor to be designed and made in Europe was launched on the market. Here is the die shot:               It had a 60mm² die size and was made on a 3.5 micron bipolar process. It had 64KB of physical memory and ran at 8HMz. It didn’t ...