[Ben Laskowski's] been working on a Class-D audio amplifier for several months. What you see above is the most recent version of the amp. A class-D amplifier uses transistor switching (or in this case MOSFET switching) to generate the pulse-width-modulated signal that drives the speaker. This is different from common amplifiers as it doesn’t generate the kind of heat that traditional amplifiers do, making it much more efficient.

After the break you can hear it demonstrated. It’s operating off of a single-supply laptop brick and we do hear a bit of a hum coming through the system. Still, we’re quite pleased at the power and quality the small board can put out. Take a look at a post from November to get a handle on what went into development. If you still hunger for more details, [Ben's] shared the bulk of his prototyping materials in the github repository.

Filed under: digital audio hacks

German insurance company LVM has switched 10,000 laptop and desktop machines over to Ubuntu Linux with the help of Ubuntu creator Canonical (announcement). Some early reports on the net have hailed this as a victory for Linux, but it seems like the company was already a mixed shop of Windows and Linux machines with a long history of reliance on open source software. more>>

In [Dave's] latest episode of the EEVblog he takes a look at constant current dummy loads. These are used to test power supply designs and instead of just chaining resistive loads together every time he’s decided to look into building a tool for the job. What he ends up with is a reliable constant current load that can be dialed anywhere from 1.5 mA up to just over 1A. There’s even an onboard meter so you don’t have to probe the setting before use.

It may look like he sent his design off to the board house for production but that’s actually a re-purposed PCB. In walking though his junk-box assembled dummy load [Dave] shares some great tips, like using multiple 1% resistors instead of shelling our for one large and accurate power resistor. But our favorite part comes at about 12:00 when he takes us through some rough math in calculating heat sinks. We’ve always just guessed, but like any good teacher, [Dave] explains the theory and then measures the actual performance taking the guesswork out of the design. See for yourself after the break.

[Thanks Strider_mt2k]

[Kenneth] built a 5v controlled power outlet inside of a junction box. We’ve seen plenty of projects that can switch 120v outlets using 5v logic for refrigerator controllers, lighting controllers, or grow systems, but they almost always use solid state relays to facilitate the switching. This iteration uses mechanical relays along with the necessary protection circuitry. The project is housed in an extra deep single-gang box and allows for individual switching of the two outlets. You can see this connected to an Arduino switching two lamps after the break.

[Thanks Mightysinetheta]

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