There is so much cool stuff out there but i'm just wondering if there's any good place online to find out about new IC's? Or maybe some blogs about different cool ICs. I was just browsing aliexpress and had the thought "Surely someone has a blog or something about IC's of 2019 or something".
There is so much cool stuff out there but i'm just wondering if there's any good place online to find out about new IC's? Or maybe some blogs about different cool ICs. I was just browsing aliexpress and had the thought "Surely someone has a blog or something about IC's of 2019 or something"
Aside from IEEE or some other group, you have to look at the news releases for each IC manufacturer.
There are hundreds if not thousands of IC manufacturers so "cool new ic's " isn't going to do you much
good outside of Google searches.
You have to narrow it down. Pick a specific type of ICs or just use google. Nobody here is going to be able
to answer a question like that . It's just too general.
Sorry, but I think you are barking up the wrong tree.
Sign up at Digikey.com, they send stuff out all the time (snail mail) with flyers of new chips.
Or check their website, the opening page also shows new stuff that has come out.
I've often sort of wanted a similar thing, like a hobbyist's new parts list - the problem with the manufacturer new releases, or digikey new releases, is that you get all sorts of IC's - most of which have absolutely no relevance to anything that people would be doing with arduino or hobby electronics in general.
I haven't found one. I also haven't found a satisfactory list of good hobbyist-relevant parts. When I have seen lists like that, they were listing the "common go-to" parts (generally short lists, much shorter than i'd like), rather than newer, superior parts that could be used for similar goals. Like, they all list the ULN2003. Okay, that was a pretty snazzy part a few decades ago, and there are a million tutorials that use it, but the TBD62003 uses MOSFETs instead of darlingtons and absolutely buries it. Never seen that part in a list of useful parts for hobbyists. Even though it's a pin compatible, drop in, strictly better replacement.
Even a hobby list would be really broad... Just look at the topics covered on this forum, which range from daylight following chicken coop doors to drones, from stepper motors to super low power wireless sensor nodes, from automatic greenhouses to model railways, and just about anything in between and around it. Many different chips get mentioned in the process.
Then consider that this forum covers only a specific subsection of electronics related hobbies!
DrAzzy:
Like, they all list the ULN2003. Okay, that was a pretty snazzy part a few decades ago, and there are a million tutorials that use it, but the TBD62003 uses MOSFETs instead of darlingtons and absolutely buries it. Never seen that part in a list of useful parts for hobbyists. Even though it's a pin compatible, drop in, strictly better replacement.
This shows why it is so hard to make such a list. DrAzzy's definition of "strictly better" obviously does not include cost and availability. When you pay $50 for shipping of a device unavailable from eBay the device no longer seems superior. The same is true for many other aspects - are you able to handle SMD on your own or do you need THT or breakout board? Are you able to read the datasheet of a device and write your own drivers or do you need Adafruit to do it for you? Are you able to design the antenna for the new RF device or do you need ready-to-use board? A new exciting device for one will be unusable for others. And of course people have different needs - a <1uA quiescent current boost converter is interesting for me even though it cannot provide more than 10mA of peak current. For someone else device that is unable to provide at least 1A is useless.
Along with DigiKey, there's
- Mouser.com [https://www.mouser.com/new/semiconductors/integrated-circuits-ics/n-6j73k]
- Nuts & Volts magazine has a New Products "Department" that occasionally features "Cool New ICs".
- Electronics Weekly blogs [Blogs :: Electronics Weekly]
- New Electronics - Latest Products [http://www.newelectronics.co.uk/electronics/] that includes "Cool New ICs".
You can sign up at vendors and magazines. I get spam new product announcements from ti, microchip, silabs, cypress, EE Product News, EDN, EETimes, renesas, circuit cellar, and more.
Sorting out the stuff that is usable and available to hobbyists is tougher. circuit cellar is probably closest - periodic newsletters “microcontroller watch” and “embedded boards”
Adafruit and Sparkfun are good to watch as well... blogs and “new products”...