A crystal oscillator pulses a relatively large electromagnet. ... Fun fact: atmega chips contained in many of Arduino models have an operating mode specifically for clock-type devices.

It is one of our favorite chips, and the brains behind the Arduino UNO and its clones, and it’s getting a tweak (PDF). The ATmega328 and other megaX8-series chips have undergone a subtle desi… ...

Starting a crystal oscillator fast in an IoT node is an art: the high Q needed for stability means they take milliseconds to get going, just to transmit a 128μs Bluetooth LE packet, and power is at a ...