About Active and Passive Components and Portable Hard Drive

Online electronic stores like Conrad are a treasure trove of electronic components and products catering to your home, office, gardening and hobby needs by selling everything from a simple electromagnet and electronic toys to computer accessories and home tools. Among these there are certain electronic components which come of use at home as well as in your professional life. Let us discuss in brief three of such components, namely, Passive and Active components and Portable External Hard Drive.

Active and Passive Components: Active components are electronic components which need some source of power to function. Some common examples of active components are transistors, bipolar and field effect ones and integrated circuits. These active components are used to augment signal power whereby the signal is sent through one end of the device and the amplified version sourced from another connection. A DC Voltage from a battery constitutes the power source in general. Components which do not need any power or energy source to operate in a field of application are Passive ones. Here, the energy is preserved in the form of voltage or current. Capacitors, resistors, diodes and inductors are some examples in this case.

Portable External Hard Drive: Portable external hard drives or simply portable hard drives are one of the most coveted computing accessories these days because of the additional storage capacity it proffers you with. They act as great back-up devices for your computer while being light in weight and convenient enough to carry everywhere you go. They can be connected to a number of PCs to meet your purpose of sharing files, while its data archiving capability is quick and convenient.

For all your electronic needs, Conrad is a one-stop online shop dealing with top brands. So browse through the wide array of electronic and computing products at http://www.conrad-uk.com/

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How to Use Oscilloscopes and Multimeters

As a professional dealing with electricity issues, two handy tools to help you wade through your job smoothly are an oscilloscope and multimeter. While a multimeter can solve a variety of your problems by its versatile nature making it capable of measuring currents, voltages, resistances and checking into the functioning of transistors and diodes, the former only measures voltage. However, oscilloscopes look into their area of task much more meticulously as they look into the changes of voltages with time. Such tools can be best bought from online stores like Conrad which have a large display of them and deal with top notch brands such as VOLTKRAFT, Fluke, Proxxon, Tektronix and the likes. Here is a quick guide on how to use each of these tools.

Using Oscilloscopes

In order to measure electronic waves or circuit with the help of oscilloscopes you require linking the ground connector of the test lead of the tool to one of the ground points of the circuit to be measured. The probe’s tip then needs to be touched upon the point in the circuit which you wish to test. For a Cathode Ray Oscilloscope you can use the scope for measuring the waveforms when the amplitude control and the timebase control are modified to obtain the square wave. For safety reasons it is advised not to make a direct connection between the electrical outlet and the probe.

Using Multimeters

For using a multimeter you first need to be familiar with the various parts that it possesses. This includes the dial, the pointer, arc shaped lines depicting the various ranges of maginitude, a knob, jacks or inserting test leads, fuse and battery compartments, test leads and a knob called Zero Adjustment. Since the multimeter can be used for measuring a number of things separate functions go for them. For instance, the Volt function is to be used for measuring voltage, the OHM function for resistance, the Amps function for measuring Amperes and so on.

For all your electronic needs, Conrad is a one-stop online shop dealing with top brands. So browse through the wide array of electronic and computing products at http://www.conrad-uk.com/ce/

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Hygrometer, Wireless and Digital Weather Stations- Different Types of Weather Stations

Although it might sound weird but having a wireless or digital weather station at home does come of help more often than you might imagine. You might have just planned a picnic on a bright sunny day depending on the weather forecasts given on the radio only to be disappointed with torrents of rain spoiling all the fun. Possessing a weather station gives you benefits of not only making your outing plans accordingly but also to take safety measures from before. The added advantage comes along with the fact that unlike general weather forecasts these weather stations for personal use gives you exact weather reports for your area. Here are some common types of weather stations available at electronic stores like Conrad.

 

Wireless Weather Stations: These are a handy lot of weather stations with no cumbersome wires to form connections around your residence. They comprise sensors which are capable of sensing the weather outside and transmitting the report to the storage place and the display and are operated by batteries.

Digital Weather Stations: If you want your weather station to do a job at par with a professional, invest a greater amount to get a digital one. It gives you a more meticulous update along with added features such as notifying you through alarms about upcoming storms or cyclones for greater safety.

Home and Professional Stations: A Home Station is used in homes as well as small offices and is capable of measuring a number of things such as wind, solar radiation, rain and the likes. It has barometer, rain gauge, anemometer, hygrometer all rolled into one. Professional weather stations have some additional capabilities in the form of measuring temperature of water and soil, soil moisture, ultraviolet and others. Both Home and Professional weather stations than their wireless counterparts.

Conrad has a number of weather station exhibits at its online store. To browse through our collection, visit us at http://www.conrad-uk.com/

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How To Choose Between Oscilloscopes and Multimeters

If you are an engineer working in a firm or an electrician undergoing regular electrical machinery testing jobs, multimeters and oscilloscopes can come extremely handy in your professional overtures. While oscilloscopes measure wave lengths and voltages in great details, multimeters are capable of measuring a number of things such as resistance, current, voltage as well as proper functioning of transistors and diodes. But which one would be more suitable for your work and how to choose them? As a dealer of a wide gamut of electronic products of brands such as Proxxon, Hameg, Tektronix and the likes here are a few tips from Conrad to help you choose the right tool for your work.

Multimeter or Oscilloscope?

A multimeter can do a great job in testing and maintaining general and daily electrical appliances and circuits but cannot check complicated machinery controls or other electronic design works. Moreover, while the former can depict the average level of voltages, oscilloscopes have the capacity to detect signals, changes in voltages, type of waves, compare voltages and a lot more.

How to Choose a Multimeter

In order to choose a Multimeter you have to look into the operational area for the device, the measurement functions, features like Auto Ranging and Dialing, battery life, display options and test lead lengths.

How to Choose Oscilloscopes

As in choosing a multimeter, the first things to consider while choosing an oscilloscope is also the area where you will be using it, the number of signals to be measured, the highest frequency of the signals needed and the maximum and minimum ranges of amplitude. You also require taking into account factors like whether the signals will be viewed both in the time and the frequency domains and whether they will be single or repetitive shots. However, the most important consideration remains that of choosing the right bandwidth or the input signal’s frequency range that is capable of passing with the least amplitude dissipation through the front-end analog.

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How To Solder Effectively

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Soldering is a process by which a metal of low melting point is used to attach surfaces together. Soldering is essential for most electronic work. As there are various soldering equipments available in the market which are easy to use, you can buy them and use them at home to repair your electronic equipments. Here are some tools which might prove useful to you.

A soldering iron gives you pin point precision while soldering and so you can use this tool for any minute soldering work that you need to do. Soldering gun is, however used for heavy duty work. A soldering station is much more advanced equipment which can control the temperature of the soldering tip precisely. However, it is comparatively more costly.

While soldering, you may use a laser distance meter for measurement. Laser distance meter is a hand held device which is used to measure the distance between two objects precisely. Here you do not require another person to help you out while taking measurements as it is in the case of measurement tapes.

If a wire breaks lose from the wire connector in any electronic equipment, you can use a crimp connector to solder it. Use a crimp tool for crimping the connector.

These simple tools will help you repair your electrical appliances thus saving you from the costs and hassles of buying new ones.

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How To Choose A Portable Hard Drive

So you are a movie buff, downloading movies every other day on your laptop until one day it surrenders to accommodate any more and you rush to get a portable hard drive. While purchasing the Drive from a reputed electronics distributor is essential, you also need to check out certain other things before grabbing anyone. We, at Conrad deal with a whole gamut of electronic products for all sorts of requirements, be it electromagnets and passive components for your engineering needs or software and hardware tools for office work. Here are some of our tips to help you choose the right portable hard drive. 

 

One of the first things to consider while looking for an external hard drive is the storage capacity of the same. If you are into loads of downloading of movies and videos, choosing a higher-capacity drive is the wisest thing to do. We have Hard Drives of a range of storage capacities starting from 160 Gigabytes to 750 Gigabytes to models that possess as much as 1.5 Terabytes capacity for storing. Second, check out the speed of transferring data from your computer. Those rummaging for a Hard Drive to act as storage device for large Multimedia files will do well to opt for faster transferring speeds.

However, if you want a Drive for acting as a backup for your stored files a more or less normal transfer speed will suffice. Talking about backup, it is always worthwhile to go for a Hard Drive with backup and recovery features which enables you to recover the damaged or lost data. The connectivity of the Drive is another thing that requires paying attention. For this check out the kind of Drive Interface the device has.

For a one-stop-electronic shopping experience contact Conrad UK at http://www.conrad-uk.com/

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Buying Toy Robots and Electronic Gadgets - How to Choose the Right Online Electronic Store

Are you looking for a DJ Controller for honing your DJ skills at home or accessories for your child’s model railway? The proliferation of online shopping websites is truly a boon for shopaholics, not to speak of the convenience it showers on you. There are certainly some things to consider since you just cannot rely on any store whatsoever as electronic goods require a thorough inspection before purchasing. Here are a few tips from us to help you choose the right electronic store online.

Do some Online Research: Check online for reputed electronic stores which have positive customer reviews and testimonials. Look out for complaints lodged or any negative remarks from previous customers. See whether the websites you have shortlisted operates under a secured server which can be understood by the presence of “https” before the website address on the address bar.

Customer Services:  A good online store will give priority to customer services before anything else. As an electronic store operating for quite some years, we at Conrad aim at serving our customers in every way possible. Our customer service information details are available on our website for you to get in touch in case of any queries related to our services or products.

Return Policy: What if the product that you bought does not satisfy you? Reliable online stores allow you to return the purchased product within a specific number of days post buying it. We allow our customers to enjoy a number of benefits such as 2 year warranty for all products bought, a 14 day money-back guarantee and the option of returning the product in case of any issues.

Range of Inventories: We offer a wide spectrum of inventories making Conrad a one-stop-shop for all your electronic needs. Whether you wish to purchase toy robots and model train accessories, tools for your home and automobiles or software and computing items for your office work, you will get all of them here.
For any queries on your electronic requirements, get in touch with us at

http://www.conrad-uk.com/

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