MIT engineers build clever power point

Arcs in electrical installations are usually the result of loose contacts or damage to cables and conductors. To reduce the risk of a fire, modern houses can use an arc detection switch (AFCI: Arc Fault Circuit Interrupter). This is a device that will interrupt defective circuits when it detects a potentially dangerous electrical pattern. But according to MIT, the present generation of AFCIs are too sensitive and switch off the current to a power point even though the electrical signals are not actually dangerous.

The current surge demanded at power-on by a circuit presenting a large capacitive load to the power supply can destroy the power supply or trigger its short circuit protection. In both cases the result is the same: the circuit will not start. A solution is to insert a soft-start circuit to control the inrush current. This soft-start circuit with many additional features was designed to protect an audio amplifier and you can build it too.

High precision op amps enable system designers to create circuits that condition signals (amplify, filter, and buffer) while maintaining the precision of the original signal. When information is contained in very small variations of the signal, it is critical that op amps in the signal path perform their operation while contributing very little DC and AC error. The precision of the total system depends on maintaining the precision of the signal path.