Nobody has any doubt that valve amplifiers produce a remarkably beautiful sound. They have a lively, deep, clear, and expressive sound, and dynamically they do not appear to have any limitations. The author investigates, in a systematic theoretical approach, the reasons for these beautiful properties. He develops new models for power valves and transformers, thus enabling the designer to determine the properties of the amplifier during the design process. Mathematical models for the coupling of power valve(s) and output transformer are provided. These will generate new insights in a special kind of distortion: the dynamic damping factor distortion (DDFD). With mathematical models in the complex domain, especially the properties at the limits of our hearing range (from 20 Hz to 20 kHz) are investigated and the minimal stability criteria for the amplifier are formulated. The often-applied negative feedback in amplifiers is extensively modelled and discussed in relation to our hearing appreciating. And after all this theory a fine selection of special amplifiers is presented and discussed.
You will notice in this book that the author not only writes about amplifier technique, but tells about the way the development of valve amplifiers can have an influence on your daily life; even the usefulness of patents is discussed. Summarizing: new theories and solutions for perfect audio with valve amplifiers. Not only the professional and the DIY-er but everyone who wants to understand valve amplifiers will read this book with much pleasure.
A Toolbox for Audio Lovers and Engineers
Without any ambition to reach scientific levels, this book aims to be a toolbox for both audio lovers and high-end equipment designers. The elementary theory presented is the bare minimum for readers to grasp the operation and practical use of electrical, electromagnetic, physics, and electronic operations available in the designers’ toolbox. Each tool is explained in a minimum of words and theory without needless coverage of underlying equations or figures.
The book chapters guide you through the process of designing quality amplifiers with vacuum tubes, from the very beginning, considering both technical and subjective requirements – in theory and practice.
The book is a compilation of the author’s notes used in his professional and educational career but was nevertheless primarily written as a result of true love for the audiophile hobby.
A Toolbox for Audio Lovers and Engineers
Without any ambition to reach scientific levels, this book aims to be a toolbox for both audio lovers and high-end equipment designers. The elementary theory presented is the bare minimum for readers to grasp the operation and practical use of electrical, electromagnetic, physics, and electronic operations available in the designers’ toolbox. Each tool is explained in a minimum of words and theory without needless coverage of underlying equations or figures.
The book chapters guide you through the process of designing quality amplifiers with vacuum tubes, from the very beginning, considering both technical and subjective requirements – in theory and practice.
The book is a compilation of the author’s notes used in his professional and educational career but was nevertheless primarily written as a result of true love for the audiophile hobby.
Valve Amplifiers are regarded by many to be the ne plus ultra when it comes to processing audio signals. The combination of classical technology and modern components has resulted in a revival of the valve amplifier. The use of toraidal-core output transformers, developed by the author over the past 15 years, has contributed to this revival. The most remarkable features of these transformers are their extremely wide frequency ranges and their very low levels of linear and nonlinear distortion.
This book explains the whys and wherefores of toroidal output transformers at various technical levels, starting with elementary concepts and culminating in complete mathematical descriptions. In all of this, the interactions of the output valves, transformer and loudspeaker form the central theme.
Next come the practical aspects. The schematic diagram of a valve amplifier often appears to be very simple at first glance, but anyone who has built a modern valve amplifier knows that a lot of critical details are hidden behind this apparent simplicity. These are discussed extensively, in connection with designs for amplifiers with output powers ranging from 10 to 100 watts. Finally, the author gives some attention to a number of special valve amplifiers, and to the theory and practice of negative feedback.
In summary, this book offers innovative solutions for achieving perfect audio quality. Do-it-yourself builders, as well as persons who want to gain a deeper technical understanding of the complex world of audio transformers, valve amplifiers and audio signal processing, will find this book a rich and useful source of information.
Hands-on in more than 50 projects
STM32 Nucleo family of processors are manufactured by STMicroelectronics. These are low-cost ARM microcontroller development boards. This book is about developing projects using the popular STM32CubeIDE software with the Nucleo-L476RG development board. In the early Chapters of the book the architecture of the Nucleo family is briefly described.
The book covers many projects using most features of the Nucleo-L476RG development board where the full software listings for the STM32CubeIDE are given for each project together with extensive descriptions. The projects range from simple flashing LEDs to more complex projects using modules, devices, and libraries such as GPIO, ADC, DAC, I²C, SPI, LCD, DMA, analogue inputs, power management, X-CUBE-MEMS1 library, DEBUGGING, and others. In addition, several projects are given using the popular Nucleo Expansion Boards. These Expansion Boards plug on top of the Nucleo development boards and provide sensors, relays, accelerometers, gyroscopes, Wi-Fi, and many others. Using an expansion board together with the X-CUBE-MEMS1 library simplifies the task of project development considerably.
All the projects in the book have been tested and are working. The following sub-headings are given for each project: Project Title, Description, Aim, Block Diagram, Circuit Diagram, and Program Listing for the STM32CubeIDE.
In this book you will learn about
STM32 microcontroller architecture;
the Nucleo-L476RG development board in projects using the STM32CubeIDE integrated software development tool;
external and internal interrupts and DMA;
DEBUG, a program developed using the STM32CubeIDE;
the MCU in Sleep, Stop, and in Standby modes;
Nucleo Expansion Boards with the Nucleo development boards.
What you need
a PC with Internet connection and a USB port;
STM32CubeIDE software (available at STMicroelectronics website free of charge)
the project source files, available from the book’s webpage hosted by Elektor;
Nucleo-L476RG development board;
simple electronic devices such as LEDs, temperature sensor, I²C and SPI chips, and a few more;
Nucleo Expansion Boards (optional).
The FRDM-MCXN947 is a compact and versatile development board designed for rapid prototyping with MCX N94 and N54 microcontrollers. It features industry-standard headers for easy access to the MCU's I/Os, integrated open-standard serial interfaces, external flash memory, and an onboard MCU-Link debugger.
Specifications
Microcontroller
MCX-N947 Dual Arm Cortex-M33 cores @ 150 MHz each with optimized performance efficiency, up to 2 MB dual-bank flash with optional full ECC RAM, External flash
Accelerators: Neural Processing Unit, PowerQuad, Smart DMA, etc.
Memory Expansion
*DNP Micro SD card socket
Connectivity
Ethernet Phy and connector
HS USB-C connectors
SPI/I²C/UART connector (PMOD/mikroBUS, DNP)
WiFi connector (PMOD/mikroBUS, DNP)
CAN-FD transceiver
Debug
On-board MCU-Link debugger with CMSIS-DAP
JTAG/SWD connector
Sensor
P3T1755 I³C/I²C Temp Sensor, Touch Pad
Expansion Options
Arduino Header (with FRDM expansion rows)
FRDM Header
FlexIO/LCD Header
SmartDMA/Camera Header
Pmod *DNP
mikroBUS
User Interface
RGB user LED, plus Reset, ISP, Wakeup buttons
Included
1x FRDM-MCXN947 Development Board
1x USB-C Cable
1x Quick Start Guide
Downloads
Datasheet
Block diagram
When you experiment with the Raspberry Pi on a regular basis and you connect a variety of external hardware to the GPIO port via the header you may well have caused some damage in the past. The Elektor Raspberry Pi Buffer Board is there to prevent this! The board is compatible with Raspberry Pi Zero, Zero 2 (W), 3, 4, 5, 400 and 500.
All 26 GPIOs are buffered with bi-directional voltage translators to protect the Raspberry Pi when experimenting with new circuits. The PCB is intended to be inserted in the back of Raspberry Pi 400/500. The connector to connect to the Raspberry Pi is a right angled 40-way receptacle (2x20). The PCB is only a fraction wider. A 40-way flat cable with appropriate 2x20 headers can be connected to the buffer output header to experiment for instance with a circuit on a breadboard or PCB.
The circuit uses 4x TXS0108E ICs by Texas Instruments. The PCB can also be put upright on a Raspberry Pi.
Downloads
Schematics
Layout
STM32 Nucleo family of processors are manufactured by STMicroelectronics. These are low-cost ARM microcontroller development boards. This book is about developing projects using the popular Nucleo development board. In the early chapters of the book, the architecture of the Nucleo family is briefly described.
Software development tools that can be used with the Nucleo boards such as the Mbed, Keil MDK, TrueSTUDIO, and the System Workbench are described briefly in later Chapters.
The book covers many projects using most features of the STM32 Nucleo development boards where the full software listings for Mbed and System Workbench are given for every project. The projects range from simple flashing LEDs to more complex projects using modules and devices such as GPIO, ADC, DAC, I²C, LCD, analog inputs and others.
In addition, several projects are given using the Nucleo Expansion Boards, including popular expansion boards such as solid-state relay, MEMS and environmental sensors, DC motor driver, Wi-Fi, and stepper motor driver.
These Expansion Boards plug on top of the Nucleo development boards and simplify the task of project development considerably.
Features of this book
Learn the architecture of the STM32 microcontrollers
Learn how to use the Nucleo development board in projects using Mbed and System Workbench Toolchains
Learn how to use the Nucleo Expansion Boards with the Nucleo development boards
Update
The Mbed compiler has been replaced with two software packages: The Mbed Studio and Keil Studio Cloud. Both of these software packages are free of charge and are available on the Internet. If you need assistance using the Keil Studio Cloud, please download the Guide below.
Features
Build in USB to Serial interface
Build-in PCB antenna
Powered by Pineseed BL602 SoC using Pinenut model: 12S stamp
2 MB Flash
USB-C connection
Suitable to breadboard BIY project
On board three color LEDs output
Dimensions: 25.4 x 44.0 mm
Note: USB cable is not included.
Build your own AI microcontroller applications from scratch
The MAX78000FTHR from Maxim Integrated is a small development board based on the MAX78000 MCU. The main usage of this board is in artificial intelligence applications (AI) which generally require large amounts of processing power and memory. It marries an Arm Cortex-M4 processor with a floating-point unit (FPU), convolutional neural network (CNN) accelerator, and RISC-V core into a single device. It is designed for ultra-low power consumption, making it ideal for many portable AI-based applications.
This book is project-based and aims to teach the basic features of the MAX78000FTHR. It demonstrates how it can be used in various classical and AI-based projects. Each project is described in detail and complete program listings are provided. Readers should be able to use the projects as they are, or modify them to suit their applications. This book covers the following features of the MAX78000FTHR microcontroller development board:
Onboard LEDs and buttons
External LEDs and buttons
Using analog-to-digital converters
I²C projects
SPI projects
UART projects
External interrupts and timer interrupts
Using the onboard microphone
Using the onboard camera
Convolutional Neural Network
Build your own AI microcontroller applications from scratch
The MAX78000FTHR from Maxim Integrated is a small development board based on the MAX78000 MCU. The main usage of this board is in artificial intelligence applications (AI) which generally require large amounts of processing power and memory. It marries an Arm Cortex-M4 processor with a floating-point unit (FPU), convolutional neural network (CNN) accelerator, and RISC-V core into a single device. It is designed for ultra-low power consumption, making it ideal for many portable AI-based applications.
This book is project-based and aims to teach the basic features of the MAX78000FTHR. It demonstrates how it can be used in various classical and AI-based projects. Each project is described in detail and complete program listings are provided. Readers should be able to use the projects as they are, or modify them to suit their applications. This book covers the following features of the MAX78000FTHR microcontroller development board:
Onboard LEDs and buttons
External LEDs and buttons
Using analog-to-digital converters
I²C projects
SPI projects
UART projects
External interrupts and timer interrupts
Using the onboard microphone
Using the onboard camera
Convolutional Neural Network
Hands-on in more than 50 projects
STM32 Nucleo family of processors are manufactured by STMicroelectronics. These are low-cost ARM microcontroller development boards. This book is about developing projects using the popular STM32CubeIDE software with the Nucleo-L476RG development board. In the early Chapters of the book the architecture of the Nucleo family is briefly described.
The book covers many projects using most features of the Nucleo-L476RG development board where the full software listings for the STM32CubeIDE are given for each project together with extensive descriptions. The projects range from simple flashing LEDs to more complex projects using modules, devices, and libraries such as GPIO, ADC, DAC, I²C, SPI, LCD, DMA, analogue inputs, power management, X-CUBE-MEMS1 library, DEBUGGING, and others. In addition, several projects are given using the popular Nucleo Expansion Boards. These Expansion Boards plug on top of the Nucleo development boards and provide sensors, relays, accelerometers, gyroscopes, Wi-Fi, and many others. Using an expansion board together with the X-CUBE-MEMS1 library simplifies the task of project development considerably.
All the projects in the book have been tested and are working. The following sub-headings are given for each project: Project Title, Description, Aim, Block Diagram, Circuit Diagram, and Program Listing for the STM32CubeIDE.
In this book you will learn about
STM32 microcontroller architecture;
the Nucleo-L476RG development board in projects using the STM32CubeIDE integrated software development tool;
external and internal interrupts and DMA;
DEBUG, a program developed using the STM32CubeIDE;
the MCU in Sleep, Stop, and in Standby modes;
Nucleo Expansion Boards with the Nucleo development boards.
What you need
a PC with Internet connection and a USB port;
STM32CubeIDE software (available at STMicroelectronics website free of charge)
the project source files, available from the book’s webpage hosted by Elektor;
Nucleo-L476RG development board;
simple electronic devices such as LEDs, temperature sensor, I²C and SPI chips, and a few more;
Nucleo Expansion Boards (optional).