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December 30, 2022, Episode #359
Picking a part for your design
- What is your process for selecting a part for your design?
- What is your preferred method of learning about electronics?
- How would you make the process of selecting parts for your design easier?
The Return of the Cat Feeder Unreminder
- Experimenting with the AEM10941
- User Interface changes?
- Segmented LCD
- VI-422DPRCS
- Driver?
- Need 3VAC – 6VAC
- Made an oscillator with a 4049 hex inverter
- More power reduction?
- CD4047 oscillator, mxshift from slack says it will pull around 20uA
- Comparator in a oscillator configuration, metacollin says ~1uA
- Segmented LCD
About the Hosts

Parker Dillmann
Parker is an Electrical Engineer with backgrounds in Embedded System Design and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. The following year he designed and produced an Atari 2600 video mod to allow the Atari to display a crisp, RF fuzz free picture on newer TVs. Over a thousand Atari video mods where produced by Parker from 2006 to 2011 and the mod is still made by other enthusiasts in the Atari community.
In 2006, Parker enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin as a Petroleum Engineer. After realizing electronics was his passion he switched majors in 2007 to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Following his previous background in making the Atari 2600 video mod, Parker decided to take more board layout classes and circuit design classes. Other areas of study include robotics, microcontroller theory and design, FPGA development with VHDL and Verilog, and image and signal processing with DSPs. In 2010, Parker won a Ti sponsored Launchpad programming and design contest that was held by the IEEE CS chapter at the University. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Spring of 2012.
In the Summer of 2012, Parker was hired on as an Electrical Engineer at Dynamic Perception to design and prototype new electronic products. Here, Parker learned about full product development cycles and honed his board layout skills. Seeing the difficulties in managing operations and FCC/CE compliance testing, Parker thought there had to be a better way for small electronic companies to get their product out in customer's hands.
Parker also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components.

Stephen Kraig
Stephen Kraig began his electronics career by building musical oriented circuits in 2003. Stephen is an avid guitar player and, in his down time, manufactures audio electronics including guitar amplifiers, pedals, and pro audio gear. Stephen graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University.
Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!
Related Podcasts

Design For Everything
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We Have Clearance, Clarence
On this episode, there are some AND!XOR hints for DC29 and we discuss the difference between PCB DRC specifications for clearance and creepage.

Breadboarding for Success
This week we are talking about Breadboards. Is breadboarding a circuit or design still applicable in today's SMT component dominated world?

Operation Scope Creep
Multi-layer PCB designs. As an engineer, how do you decide when it is time to increase layer count and how do you decide what goes on those layers?

The PCB Plague
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Through Hole Manufacturing
Through hole assembly for PCBs might be great for low volume prototypes but how do you scale up that process? What design considerations are needed?