Microelectronics is a subfield of electronics. Microelectronics, as the name suggests, is related to the study and manufacture, or microfabrication, of electronic components which are very small (usually micrometre-scale or smaller, but not always). These devices are made from semiconductors. Many components of normal electronic design are available in microelectronic equivalent: transistors, capacitors, inductors, resistors, diodes and of course insulators and conductors can all be found in microelectronic devices.

Digital integrated circuits (ICs) consist mostly of transistors. Analog circuits commonly contain resistors and capacitors as well. Inductors are used in some high frequency analog circuits, but tend to occupy large chip area if used at low frequencies; gyrators can replace them in many applications.

Digital signal processing (DSP) is concerned with the representation of the signals by a sequence of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals. Digital signal processing and analog signal processing are subfields of signal processing. DSP includes subfields like: audio and speech signal processing, sonar and radar signal processing, sensor array processing, spectral estimation, statistical signal processing, digital image processing, signal processing for communications, biomedical signal processing, seismic data processing, etc.

Since the goal of DSP is usually to measure or filter continuous real-world analog signals, the first step is usually to convert the signal from an analog to a digital form, by using an analog to digital converter. Often, the required output signal is another analog output signal, which requires a digital to analog converter. Even if this process is more complex than analog processing and has a discrete value range, the stability of digital signal processing thanks to error detection and correction and being less vulnerable to noise makes it advantageous over analog signal processing for many, though not all, applications.

Many of you may be upgrading to HD receivers for your DirecTV systems. The installers will take away your old standard def receiver when they do the upgrade but they do not have to. Tell them you want to keep it and scrounge out useful parts.



Note: You will need to get the correct sized Torx bit to remove the screws. These “security” screw bits are available at just about any place you can buy screw drivers.

The first part you want to get is the 250GB hard disk. This drive is a simple IDE drive you can use in your PC projects. Just reformat it. I have already removed the drive from the pictured unit. There are a few other interesting parts you might want to scrounge as well. You can see what I collected in the full article after the jump.

Visualizing Sensor Data With the Arduino using Processing and an Infrared Distance Sensor. This article was submitted by Cory Barton as part of the uCHobby giveaway program. Cory shows us how to combine the Arduino, sensors, and the Processing environment to visualize real world sensor measurements.

In this first picture we see an IR sensor Mounted to a servo on small robot

From the 1950's to the present, the prevalent electronic "on/off" switch has been the transistor, invented at AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1948 by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley (all of whom shared the Nobel prize for physics in 1956 for the transistor's invention). Transistors are equivalent in operation to vacuum tubes, but are smaller, cheaper, require less power, and obtain faster switching times. The first transistor was made from materials that included a paper clip and a razor blade.


An Intel 486 processor and a Motorola 68030 processor