Hi there!

Since this is my first time blogging, i’ll just introduce myself for the moment.

I am a student of electrical engineering and information engineering (though I am not quite sure what it really translates to – well you get the idea!) at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, currently 22 years old and I have been submerged in the world of electronics ever since primary school. I take a great interest in electrical/electronical and all kinds of technical craftsmanship, designing circuits and figuring stuff out – so I decided that now would be as good a time as ever to start publishing my own thoughts among the others that float around the net – possibly to help someone along the way on the same path.

Why I am writing this blog in english…I have loved the english language since I learned to read it and I read most of my books and materials in it (that is, if I can get it this way). The main purpose though is to enable a wider community to read what I write – and it is a wonderful new experience for me.

What you will get to see here – well, obviously mostly electronics stuff, but I don’t want to bind myself to it – other things might occasionally slip in.

Usually, I spend most of my time working with digital logic (hence the title) and microprocessors such as the famous ATMega series and it’s siblings, but right now I am digging into the world of switched power converters with special respect to LED highpower drivers and controllers. On other ends I do lots of audio stuff and am a great fan and thorough reader of boards such as www.diyaudio.com.

I guess this has to be it for now as I need to get back to studying for another few days. After that, there’s four week’s worth of holidays which will be well spent to equal parts on sleeping, getting out of this hole or whatever it has become during the last two months (the end-of-term-tests take QUITE a while here) and of course lots of soldery stuff :3

To give a few hints – on my workbench:

• A switchmode LED driver small enough to fit inside a 2 cm flashlight head – complete with lithium ion battery management and mcu-controlled dimming and extra features.

• A dead harddrive that I am currently reverse engineering a little while trying to find a way to repair the damage to its spindle control circuit.

• The prototype for a pc-based surround-light-system to be installed on regular TFT displays

• A driver circuit for my recently finished conversion of a CCFL TFT display to LED backlighting (based around the LT3518-IC produced by Linear Tech.) There’s also a friend in Norway waiting for the same thing for the same reason – Greetings to up there, by the way ;-)

• A self-designed AVR-based LaserTag game system (though I do have to admit that it has parallels to the more present MilesTag, but hardware and software are different)

• Some smaller reverse-engineery things (I really do like figuring out how things are made and how to get them to work in my own devices or make them do things they were never supposed to do in the first place) which have now become possible, thanks to a digital scope.

• Loads of other interesting stuff, but got to keep myself focused for the moment and finish what has been left alone the most.

So enjoy your stay – I’ll be back for more in a few days.

~ice