Recently the indian rupee joined the elite league of currencies that have their own unique symbol. The symbol is a combination of the devanagri ‘ra’ and also symbolises the roman letter R. the two stokes signifies the tricolour and the progress of the nation. here’s how u can use it in your emails and word documents. Given below are the steps to use the new Indian Rupee Symbol as a Font in your word applications: ...

Making a printed circuit board (PCB). First cut the copper clad board to size required. Sand the surface of the board to remove the layer of copper oxide that is formed due to the reaction of the copper with the oxygen in the air. Once the copper surface is shiny and clean avoid touching the surface of the copper. Eaglecad or ORCad may be used to design the schematic and the pcb design . Take a mirror image of the pcb design while using the CAM processor to generate the Gerber files . The gerber files maybe viewed online at http://www.circuitpeople.com or the .eps file maybe viewed offline using the .eps viewer take a lazer printout of the pcb layout using. this printout will be the mirror image of the actual pcb layout . Since during the transfer process the mirror image of the actual image will be transferred. Now cutout the actual PCB layout on the transperency. this will be the toner transfer . Lightly wipe the toner layer of the toner transfer with a peice of cloth and the surface of the cleaned copper clad. This will ensure that there is no dust or grime between the toner surface and the copper. Place the transfer on top of the cleaned copper clad board. Secure the layout in place with the help of a peice of tape or some glue. Using a hot clothes iron heat the toner transfer so that the toner layer from the tranfer is transferred onto the copper.(set the iron to the highest temperature possible…usually the cotton settings) Iron the transperency gently. Don’t put too much pressure on the clothes iron else the toner will smudge. too little pressure and the toner wont be transferred at all. Once you think the toner is stuck to the copper turn off the iron. let it cool down to the ambient temperature. Peel off the transperency if you got it right then you will see that almost all the toner has been transferred to the copper surface. The toner layer will form the etch resist. Now the copper clad can be put into the etching tank. ferric chloride maybe used as the etchant. although muriatic acid maybe used too. Gently ‘move’ the copper clad board through the FeCl3 solution. Once all the unwanted copper has been removed clean the PCB under running water. Remove the layer of the toner with some sand paper or a solvent such as acetone. If the PCB is meant for surface mount components then the PCB might require drilling. After the drilling is over. tin the copper surface to protect and increase the conductivity of the copper tracks. References: ...

Happy diwali to all!!! Last week i was alone at home since my parents had gone out to attend a marriage in mangalore.I was alone at home for about 10 days and had no college since there was our college ‘techfest’.i dont like attending ‘techfests’ on a shoestring budget,like the one in our college!!.there only a few things which fit into my definition of tech there! So I was alone & bored and to get rid of my boredom and loneliness i wanted to do some fun project.i had a few hundred bucks with me,and i had an old luminaire (called jhoomer in hindi)-it had those bayonet mounted so called ‘zero watt’ incandescent bulbs. I consider incandescents a thing of the past as they are very inefficient and are energy guzzlers-they waste a lot of energy as heat.Infact they generate much more heat than they produce light!!!So i thought that replacing the incandescents with power LEDs which consume lower power and produce much more light.Also the light is much more soothing to the eye. ...

I was desperately in need of a good pair of in-ear earphones for a long time since my JVC FX-33 marshmallows went kaput a few months ago.So I got myself a new philips she-9500 from the tech haven of mumbai aka lamington road for about 750 INR a couple of days ago. I had done quite a bit of research before buying these earphones.Here’s the review. First of all i’m no hardcore audiophile,but the audio quality is a top priority to me and i can’t bear to hear the bassless music from the silly nokia earphones bundled with my nokia n78.I a huge linkin park fan and i can hear linkin park all day long!!. The philips earphones are very good VFM earphones. The transperent blister package it came in contains the following. ...

In my earlier post i had made a gadget charger which could charge your mobile phone,ipod,or other gadgets.It was based on a rather simple chip -the humble 7805. Now lets move a step further and make a more efficient emergency charger. this charger is based on the lt1302 from linear technology. I had got as samples from linear.com samples service two lt1302 ics .the datasheet provided very promising numbers efficiency reaching nearly 87%!! wow!!!!that’s great.That means more charge gets into your gadget. ...

I have a nokia n78.I often use the gps onboard to find my way through the urban jungle of mumbai.The gps is surely a very useful tool for navigation but it tends to suck the battery juice pretty quickly. My phone can give only about 3-4 hrs of continous gps use on a full recharge.I’m a urban explorer kind of a guy so i like getting lost and found in the concrete jungle but that sometimes takes a lot of time.so much time that my battery runs out before my adventure is over!!. and so i decided to make myself a portable mobile charger. ...

These Days power leds are available very cheap.I had seen a lot of stuff on the net about the “1 watt led” and i fell instantly in love with these beauties!!These babies have a very high lumen per watt output as compared to either incandescent or the flourescent technologies.For the layman this means very high efficiency-you get more bang for your buck.But driving these things may be a bit difficult . ...

This is my first post on this blog.In this blog i plan to record my jouney in the fascinating world of elctronics and microcontrollers.Electronics is my passion and whenever i find spare time i indulge in either making electronics or breaking them. So far i have made as well as opened up a lot of electronics stuffs. From these i have gained a lot of knowledge.I would be recording all the knowledge i learn on electronics on this blog. ...