Relays continue to be useful and popular, but in low-power, battery operated applications they tend to be power wasters. The following relay economy circuits reduce coil power significantly by simply ...

Last column, I wrote about various applications where fire alarm relays could be used to integrate a commercial fire alarm system with other electrical systems at a customer’s site to provide them ...

The real core of engineering, in addition to technical expertise, is the ability to articulate the inevitable tradeoffs and pros/cons of design alternatives, and then weigh these relative to each ...

An RC circuit in series with the coil allows full-current turn-on for reliable relay operation, then reduces the current to save power. Fellow engineer Sanjay R. Chendvankar of Mumbai, India, recently ...

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 ...