When you get the call, “The motor won’t start,” you’d best have a logical and systematic plan in place to approach the problem. “Easter egging” just doesn’t work unless you happen to be very lucky!

Let’s face it: Diagnosing electric problems is a pain, to say the least. You can get far with a test light and your trusty digital multimeter, but you still might end up just throwing parts at the ...

Michael Sanborn’s column, “Five Ws,” in the Nov. 18 edition was an excellent response to BH Energy’s shallow explanation of ...

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. When undertaking DIY electrical projects at home, safety should ...

If you are an electronic experimenter who cannot get his circuit working, this is for you. I really feel your pain as it brings back my own unpleasant memories – yes, we have all been there. Here are ...

Relays usually are driven using optocouplers, which offer isolation between analog and digital grounds to ensure that switching currents in the relay coils do not affect the noise margin of the ...

Modern operational amplifiers (op amps) and instrumentation amplifiers (in amps) provide great benefits to the designer, when compared with discrete semiconductors. But all too often, some very basic ...

Apple's power adapters for its laptops can suddenly stop working. Here are some options you can try to overcome this. Topher, an avid Mac user for the past 15 years, has been a contributing author to ...

In Part 1 of this two-part series, we presented a 3-phase, 480VAC motor circuit with its associated controls (Figure). We stepped through a logical, systematic approach to troubleshoot the main power ...