Sometimes it is useful to make sure that the home counter is working correctly and does not count anything superfluous. To do this, it is enough to measure the real power consumption of your home electrical appliances. Or maybe you have doubts about whether the heater or the water heater consumes too much, if it’s painfully impressive bills lately come for electricity.

One way or another, there are several ways to find out. The first way - using the meter itself to find out the consumption that it counts, the second - using a multimeter or current clamp to find out the consumption of the device? The third way is to measure the consumption of a specific device with a household wattmeter. Let's look at each method in detail, and let the reader choose the most convenient and suitable for themselves. At each counter, whether it is electronic or mechanical ...

An IGBT transistor (short for English Insulated-gate bipolar transistor) or an insulated gate bipolar transistor (abbreviated IGBT) is a three-terminal semiconductor device that combines a power bipolar transistor and a field-effect transistor controlling it inside one housing.

IGBT transistors are today the main components of power electronics (powerful inverters, switching power supplies, frequency converters, etc.), where they serve as powerful electronic switches that switch currents at frequencies measured in tens and hundreds of kilohertz. Transistors of this type are produced both in the form of separate components, and in the form of specialized power modules (assemblies) for controlling three-phase circuits. The fact that the IGBT transistor includes transistors of two types at once allows you to combine the advantages ...

Often in constructions based on arduino (and not only), especially in amateur robotics, it can be useful to recognize the presence of a particular surface in the coverage area of ​​the device or even measure the distance to it. An analog or digital line sensor will be useful for this purpose.

The sensor can be installed, for example, on the platform of the robot, in order to limit the area of ​​its movement to the limits of a certain working circuit. So the robot can simply follow the line or along the line, and never go beyond the work area, or, if necessary, it will keep at a certain distance from this bounding surface. An analog line sensor can not only distinguish between black and white surfaces, it is also able to respond to other colors and their intermediate shades. In addition, the analog line sensor allows you to measure the distance to the surface of the selected color ...

Arriving at the electronics store, you sometimes notice that your eyes are scattering from the number of different outlets that are presented on the window. Overhead and domestic, expensive and cheap, with and without curtains, etc. Which choice? A flair seems to suggest that a good and high-quality product, in principle, can not be cheap.

On the other hand, what might be so unusual in the design of a seemingly ordinary outlet, which makes it so expensive? Although the bitter experience reminds: “once I took the cheapest outlet, it cracked during installation right away”. The answer suggests itself. More expensive outlets are really better, and it would be better to take a closer look directly at the store, what is so useful in the design of an expensive outlet.The bottom line is that the designs of new outlets, from manufacturers cherishing their reputation, are developed taking into account shortcomings ...

7 questions for real electricians.And what do you think? 1. You are the director of energy sales. A subscriber came to your appointment and said that he was paying. I take 10 amperes from the network and return exactly the same amount to her. What should I pay for? Explain to him why.

2. There is such an episode in E. Radzinsky’s novel about Stalin. A giant statue of Stalin was installed on the Volgo-Don Canal. Unreasonable birds sat on their heads and expressed disrespect for the great leader and teacher. To combat them, voltage was brought to the monument. On landing, birds that had perished fell dead on the ground. Do you think this is true or fiction writer?

3. In the program “duty on the country”, the famous comedian M. Zhvanetsky complained about the sockets “pull the plug, and the socket also extends with it”. But is the “duty officer on the country” handling the outlet correctly? ...

All digital devices, such as players, smartphones, voice recorders and other wearable gadgets, as well as electric vehicles, are being improved more and more in their capabilities. Limitations are imposed mainly by the finite amount of energy stored in the batteries. A smartphone, for example, works after the next recharge for a maximum of 2 days. Now, if the batteries were improved, made more capacious, then work on a single charge could be extended many times.

However, smartphones, unfortunately, are developing in the past 10 years much faster than improving battery technology. But there is hope for improvement, because science does not stand still, and in recent years, scientists have begun to offer very interesting new solutions. They can be called battery technology of the future. Let's pay attention to some of them. In 2022, the Israeli company StoreDot plans to launch production ...

If you need to measure the distance to an object located at some distance in front of you, or to some major obstacle in a non-contact way, then you can use an ultrasonic sensor. Devices of this type are very easy to use, they are reliable and economical, while they do not require any consumables.

The principle of measuring distance is based here on the technology that some animals use simply because of the specific structure of their body and the characteristics of the environment. The main condition is that there is air between you and the object, the distance to which is measured. The ultrasonic sensor generates individual sound pulses of the ultrasonic range, that is, those that are not heard by a person in his ear. And since these pulses propagate through the air, they move at the speed of sound. As soon as this sound reaches the nearest boundary of the object ...

Low-current servos driven by arduino (micro servo motor) are widely used today in amateur robotics, they make small desktop machines and many other things interesting and useful in the household. Even just at the hobby level, such servos find a ton of diverse uses. Let's see what a servo is in its simplest form, how it is fundamentally designed and how it works.

The word “servo drive” itself can be translated as “servo drive”. That is, it is such a driving device that contains an engine controlled by negative feedback, which allows precise movements with verified positioning of the working body.In principle, a servo drive can be called a motor, in the control system of which there is a position sensor of the working device (or just a shaft), the current parameters from which determine ...