Collin's Lab: Digital to Analog Converter 

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!

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!

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Seen this 5 times now and think its absolutely awesome!

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

Excellent demo. Great work!

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.

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

amazing! ive never seen someone describe electronics so well!

The best teachers are on youtube, I always confirm

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

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!

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

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.

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

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

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.

thanks again Colin, keep the videos coming! :D

Good pun there! "DACs pretty cool"

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

Collin should have his own channel.

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

Holy***, well done man .

Cool informative video, Thanks!

Great video! THANKS!

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.

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

A beautiful information

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

this video is designed very good :)

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

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

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

the end made me laugh lol . but yes collin def needs his own channel.

DACs Pretty Wild Man

Thanks needed this for college :D

DACs so cool bro!

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

More Collin, MORE!

thanks, very interesting info!

I want more Collins lab and circuit skills

Very neat! Thanks!

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

Dac video was awesome :3

thank you colin

This hurts my brain, but is AWESOME!

dacs very cool and entertaining

MUCH Better learning compared to the most of the universities!

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.

all teachers should be like Coliin :)

Thanks so much for the vid.

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

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

Niice one Coliin !

oh please never change

really cool

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.

DACS PRETTY AWESOME BRAH.

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

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

I remember doing this before sound cards were created. I'd make an R/2R ladder and use my parallel port to drive it.

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

Dac is awesome almost as awesome as your comb over

@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.

10,000th viewer! awesome job collin!

Collins for president!

I love Dac

dude your oil lamp is wicked.

very interesting

DAC was cool!

@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

can we control the output voltage

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

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

You rule!

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""

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

genius!!

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

legend... nuff said...

@hyper080 FYI there shift registers

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

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

where are hardcover bound (non cheap spiral bound) graph notebooks like this found, especially in that kind of blue color. where is that type of notebook found/available?

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

Dacs a good video. ;)

will it works in high frequency like 1mhz?

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.

Even easier would be to get a VGA to composit, and that should be a lot cheaper too, as VGA is already an analog signal. Check you pc's DVI port, and see if it is a DVI-I port. If it is a DVI-I port, it has four small holes, around the large rectangular hole. Then get a DVI-I to VGA adapter, they should be around 2-5$ and then get something like this: goo "dot" gl "slash" 9JON6 . It is a vga to composit (the yellow round plug)

No problem :)

how much is the delay in the void loop??

dac's pretty cool, brah.