Welcome back to this week’s installment of Scope Noob where I’m sharing my experiences learning to use my first oscilloscope. Last week I started out measuring mains frequency using an AC-AC wall wart ...

If you measure a DC voltage, and want to get some idea of how “big” it is over time, it’s pretty easy: just take a number of measurements and take the average. If you’re interested in the average ...

The more common approach to manipulate the incoming AC wave so that both halves are used to cause output current to flow in the same direction is the use of full-wave rectifiers. A full-wave rectifier ...

In general terms, dimmers are devices that vary light level (intensity) of lamps by controlling the amount of power that is delivered to the lamp. Dimming can be controlled by either manual or ...

On infrequent occasions, I am asked to design a circuit to measure the RMS value of a current or voltage for some kind of power measurement. Since the work I do is hardly unique, I thought some of you ...

Understanding the capabilities and differences of linear and pulse-width modulated (PWM) AC power sources is especially helpful when determining which models meet your requirements. And, the selection ...