Best explanation of a DAC I've ever seen.

after watching entire lectures on this, I still wasn't getting the principal concept of how a DAC/ADC works, how it's all about matching the curve with the right voltages. Best video of all time!

This is great beyond comprehension, or at least my explanation of how useful this is for me right now and great to find.

Awesome tutorial as aways! I really love the way you explain these things in such simple terms. I've learnt more from you in 4 and a half minutes than I have in an hour with a teacher. Can't wait to see more videos!

After 20 some videos... I find this gem of simple understanding!!!!! Thank You!

Fantastic,,Now it is easy to understand DAC conversion...Very good tutorial

Excellent video. I love programming the 16F PIC series microcontrollers and anyone familiar with them will know that the majority of these PICs lack a basic DAC. It seems that the opinion is once you have converted an analogue quantity into a digital value you very seldom want to go back to the analogue side of things. At least, maybe that's how things turn out in the industrial world for which PICs are well suited. Using the knowledge acquired in this tutorial many of us will now be able to give our microcontrollers the ability to act like DACs, even extending it to 16 or 24 bit capability with the larger type.

i think that the best part of your videos are that when you assemeble or review or open a kit!

Seen this 5 times now and think its absolutely awesome!

Holy crap! This design is freaking perfect! You are a genius.

Excellent demo. Great work!

amazing! ive never seen someone describe electronics so well!

Miss colins lab. This got me into electronics like 10 years ago

I wish I had an electronics Professor like you back in the days!

Bruh we dont even need college anymore everything is on the internet

Great video, as usual. I really like your style of explaining. And I think I actually understood how it works^^

This helped alot in my understanding of electronics! Thanks!

that's a pretty sweet oscilloscope you got there ... and awesome vid, nice explanation

Collin, you are great at explaining stuff :) I just figured out how a computer turns electricity into lights and sounds.

Holy***, well done man .

thanks again Colin, keep the videos coming! :D

Awesome Video, keep up the videos... from the looks of it all of us makers are wanting more and more to feed our brains...... brains....... feed our brains.

cool as long as you understand it, keep it up coliin

The best teachers are on youtube, I always confirm

Great video! THANKS!

I just made one over the past couple days and voila, it works! I used twenty-five 150 Ohm resistors :) It overdrives the baselines and makes the bass sound like an overdrive gutar but mids are normal. I'm glad it works, first hardware project ever. I couldn't write all pins at once, so I had to toggle each individual pin and comparing the byte to 128,64,32,16,8,4,2, and 1. I didn't check the KHz on a toggle test yet, but its playing everything except the high end. Maybe my DAC cut the highs.

DACs Pretty Wild Man

collin be my teacher! your video submissions are so informative!

Good explanation of how a DAC works. Note that as the number of bits in the ladder increases the tolerance of the resistors becomes more important. Using economically available 1% resistors 5 bits is no problem, 6 bits will likely have good results, and 8 bits will rarely be monotonic (which is bad for controls). Also, you can add 8 effective bits to your DAC by using PWM on the LSB of this ladder. 6 bit ladder with 1% resistors and 8 bit PWM = 14 bit monotonic DAC.

This video is awesome! Just like all the other Collins vids

thank you for your video. great explanation. why the 10k and 20k?

Woooow men!!! this is incrediblee!! thnx4this!! Congratulationss!!

A beautiful information

The old Radio Shack Color Computer used a similar circuit and a comparator for an analog to digital comparator. The analog voltage in was compared to an analog voltage from this type of DAC circuit. If the input voltage was higher than the voltage coming from the DAC, then the number written to the DAC was increased. Similarly, the number was decreased for lower voltage. The process continued until a suitable number was found to represent the input voltage.

Cool informative video, Thanks!

One of the coolest videos I've ever seen user get an immediate sub

More Collin, MORE!

Wow Collin sounds so natural in this video, very refreshing compared to his usual awkwardness Collin FTW!

thank you colin

Nice Video! very well explained like sesame street for electronics.

DACs so cool bro!

Dac video was awesome :3

Very neat! Thanks!

thanks, very interesting info!

I have no idea what he's talking about.. but I still think it's awesome!

@mirandabone U are right! I also miss the weekend projects. Where have they gone?

Dacs REALLY cool.. lol Collin, you're awesome lol!

I tried it and got mine to work on the first time. You can turn one pin on at a time too

Thanks! I wasn't sure if a DVI to VGA dongle would work!

Thanks needed this for college :D

this video is designed very good :)

oh please never change

dacs very cool and entertaining

DACS PRETTY AWESOME BRAH.

Thanks so much for the vid.

Thanks that helps . I did think on those lines . But you are applying 5V ( 1) at different points on the ladder and 0 s too depending on the value outputed . That is what confuses me . Also lets say the least value is 00000001 then the voltage is going to be very small indeed. Wiki has good info to . Thanks again

I want more Collins lab and circuit skills

This hurts my brain, but is AWESOME!

MUCH Better learning compared to the most of the universities!

I TOTALY LOVE YOUR MUSIC! IT SOUNDS LIKE MY GRANDFATHERS OLD CASIO KEYBOARD :D

Love how he just draws the circuit! Even with squared paper I find it hard to draw a circuit! I need a ruler or piece of software if I'm going to do a neat job lolo.

Collin should have his own channel.

Good pun there! "DACs pretty cool"

@eclipsestorm1975 There are times where you can add more increments in between because it can increase you data transfer. In radio communications, this is the trade off that reduces accuracy and makes your signal more likely to get screwed up along the way.

legend... nuff said...

3:22 Will the output voltage measure differently if for a single DAC value we measure from the T-intersection at the 4th bit?

Hey any possibilities that you will talk of how to make a soldering nozzle like the one that you use on every single video? I have many and never have found the one that you work with! Thanks in advance! Mark.

Hi Colin thanks a bunch , if the the pins are all 1 s what is the votage out? I cant work out the voltages for the different binary values. Help!

Looking at the out put wave it looks very much like the output from pwm, i could be wrong im self taught :) but could that set up be used in a similar way to a pwm setup?

Clear and educational,but how can you modulate the 0 or 1 in each pin using the R to R deck? It was told that current flows in each branch of the circuit ""isotopically""

Nice video I am sure you know a lot about computer engineering.

really cool

Dac is awesome almost as awesome as your comb over

Hi Collin, how can you control the frequency of the output ? if any value between 0 and 255 represents 0 to 5 volts, that means it would modulate the amplitude of the wave, but what about the freq ?. Just trying to understand, anyway Great videos !!

whoah! can i use that to create a pure sine wave? that would be great!

@maribakumon 0-255 is 256 different values (2^8)

similar to computer chips recognizing ones and zerors, we sense pain or pleasure wat is life and reality? you gave me a hint thats its a system of resistors and what not. thank you!

Is there a possibility of a video on how Analogue to Digital conversion? How to make a ADC.

@judgenap i dont know much about about electronics and that stuff, but the highest your analog signal you can get is , if im correct, the highest voltage you can get out of 1 pin -> the voltage youre working with. in collin's case this is 5v. if he passes his 5v(as a 1 signal) trough all 8 pins, he should give out 254(11111111) which equals to 5v

genius!!

I have seen that old Digital Video Stabilizers (made in the 80s for private home VHS copying) also works at removing copyright restrictions on DVDs. If the signal is converted from Digital to Analog, would the DVS work to remove the restriction encoded in the signal from the DVI out? .

woah.. u made it look like a piece of cake !!

can we control the output voltage

I love Dac

It a microcontroller, a very small & cheap ($15 but you can get $2 cut down versions) computer that can interface to electronics you want to control or receive data from & also it connects to USB. You can also get "shields", boards that plug into it & provide functionality, such as Ethernet shield, SD Card shield, etc. Microcontrollers have been around for ages (longer than PCs) but until recently needed expensive hardware & software to develop with so weren't really that good for hobbyists.

Niice one Coliin !

@Jtother777 Best idea they ever had.

Collins for president!

Use a demultiplexer in combination with this. It saves arduino pins and the output is buffered.

all teachers should be like Coliin :)

@hyper080 FYI there shift registers

I know that LCD TVs that provide analog connections convert the signal to a digital one, so the hardware can form a picture. VGA is also converted to digital on LCD monitors. So, is it possible to convert HDMI to S-Video with similar components? I have a 12" Color TV that I use to preview old VHS Tapes before I capture them for clients. However, I can't play the captures from the PC to the TV. My video card only has DVI or HDMI outs and the HD screen poorly represent the old footage very well.

You change the frequency by how fast you change the voltage of the output.

Cool! Could you please also do a video on analog to digital converters?

@konsul2006 i totally agree. he reminds me of my 10th grade physics teacher i had and that was one of my favorite classes

@k1ngdeth Maker Faire... Makershed may carry it as well...

Can you do a tutorial on analog to digital conversion? I have an idea, but I want the coolness and verification of Collin

What DAC is the best for listening to Classical music?

No problem :)

Can you provide a link to your code?