Recent content by PhysEd

Thanks everyone for the answers, I compared all your notes to the physics course I am following and I think chrisbaird solved my confusion. The professor uses theta when the angle is unknown and alpha/beta when they are known! Awesome, thanks again.

Pretty simple question. When we draw triangles or other pictures with angles, when do we mark the angles as alpha and when do we mark them as theta? Is there some kind of convention or is it just whatever is free in the equation? It makes sense to me to use alpha for the first angle then...

Ahh... of course, I forgot the C :) Thank you!

Homework Statement I am integrating sin(x)^3cos(x)^3, I know the technique (I hope) and I get the right equation at the end. But if I ask wolfram alpha what the integral of the equation is and enter 0 into wolfram's answer and also enter 0 into my answer, the answers come out different. If...

I like the idea of using the variable output on the power supply to see the current being used. I just assumed that dedicated 5V output was created for this sort of thing and that's what I have been using. Also, I think I might have discovered my problem with the chips stopping working. I...

Yeah, what you say makes sense and I figured this is how it should be. But somehow I have fried like 6 chips in the span of a few months and all though I haven't made any ruling out, it feels like it always happens when I use my Bench power supply instead of a 9V battery and a 7805...

I know this question is so simple and probably stupid that it will enrage some people, but bear with me. :) When connecting a bench power supply that does 5V@3A, to let's say a P16F88, should I use 25 ohm resistor to bring those 3 Amps down to 200 ma? According to the p16f88 datasheet...

Mike, I think you just solved a problem I faced. I was trying to make the digital waveform match the remotes output and I kept getting into problems with the RS232 stop bit. If it wasnt for the stopbit, I could just send x amount of 0's and then y amount of 1's to simulate the remote's wave...

Ok here is a quick update (for anyone that cares :). As for me not seeing the frequency modulation, I still think I got that part wrong. From the responses here and some more reading, the "modulation" part in IR remotes is actually a 38.9 khz wiggle that turns on and off during specific time...

I'll will try that, right now, to ease the learning curve, I am trying to to ghetto-send the IR signals through a serial port connected to an IR LED. Let's see if I have better luck on this end.

Some very good tips. But, I am suspecting I have something backwards here. As far as my understanding, the oscilloscope should not even be able to separate the original data from the carrier signal, but I see no trace of the carrier signal, I only see the data. If you look at this...

Hi guys, my first post on these forums. I am learning electronics and am still very new to this all. My current tinker project is to learn how regular tv remote controls work. So far I have understood that the remote sends blinking IR pulses through an 940 nm LED. The remote uses...