op amps

Robot Room’s David Cook shows how an LED and op amp, along with a resistor and cap, can be built into an amplified color sensor. Unfortunately, even under the best conditions, photodiodes (and reversed LEDs) don’t provide a lot of current flow. The output of the photodiode needs to be amplified for the light-detection signal […]

Instructables user laserjocky built this function generator for a term project in school. It’s capable of producing a square, triangle, and approximate sine wave up to a frequency of around 300kHz. Op-amps are designed with negative feedback in mind and are typically slower, but they can be used for making voltage comparisons. I chose to […]

Each month this year, we’re exploring a different electronic component, delving into what it is, how it works, and how you use it in projects. Last month we covered resistors, and before that we looked at batteries. This month we examine operational amplifiers, often called op amps. An op amp is an electronic component used […]