Projects

Background As I have only recently come to realize, inductor selection for boost converters is not a trivial matter at all. Every inductor I tried saturated way too early, causing progress for the SMPS Chronicles Boost Converter project to grind to a halt. After many frustrating afternoons, and several blown parts and melted breadboard holes, I had enough. Inspired by this video on the RF Man YouTube channel (really nice channel by the way), I decided to build a dedicated jig that would allow me to easily measure the saturation current of the any inductor that I was about to use....

The inspiration for this series of articles came from Microchip’s TB3103 and TB3104 , which outlined the implementation of current mode controlled buck and boost converters using the PIC16F753’s internal analog peripherals, which include an operational amplifier, a comparator, PWM, etc. As a hobbyist, I’ve always found stuff like transfer functions, bode plots (the more complex ones), and SPICE to be really intimidating. I am aware of what these are, and why they are used in circuit design, but I’ve never really sat down and worked with them before, much less explore their nitty gritty details....

If you do orchestral programming, you know that MIDI faders are absolutely essential to achieve a sound that wouldn’t be passed of as “MIDI-like”. What happens when you really, really want a MIDI controller with a bunch of faders, but don’t feel like spending *that much* money on one? Well, you build one. In this series of posts, I will present my take on the DIY MIDI controller, which has 4 faders, 4 rotary encoders, and a 4×4 key matrix, all of which are fully programmable via an onboard LCD....