2024’s Top Technical Articles and More

The week before last, the editors here at All About Circuits shared a few of our favorite articles of 2024. Now, with 2025 just a couple of days away, let’s take a look at your favorite technical articles, projects, and industry articles from the past year.

Technical Articles

From Robert Keim’s four-part series on QSPICE for LTspice users to Dr. Steve Arar’s 21-part-and-counting series on power amplifier classes, 2024 was the year of the multi-part series. In this section, I’ll present some of the most popular technical article series of the year and highlight one or more individual articles within each. Don’t worry—I’ll make sure that standalones get some love too.

The Basics of Analog IC Design

This sporadically-updating series by Nicholas St. John actually began in October 2023. Despite that, I’d be remiss not to give it pride of place—“Introduction to the MOSFET Common-Source Amplifier” was by far the most-viewed technical article we published this year. In fact, this series includes no fewer than three of 2024’s top ten technical articles.

A common-source amplifier with a current source load. Image used courtesy of Nicholas St. John; background used courtesy of Adobe Stock

To see all of the articles in this series to date, check out Nicholas St. John’s author profile.

RF Power Amplifier Classes

It’s been a year, give or take a week, since Dr. Arar began working through the alphabet of power amplifiers. This article series covers power amplifier classes from A to F, with the exception—at least for the moment—of Class AB. It includes two or more articles on each class: one article to introduce the basics and at least one more to elaborate.

The introductory articles proved especially popular, perhaps because of their broader appeal. “Introduction to the Class C Power Amplifier” was the most popular of these, but they all got quite a bit of attention—even “Introduction to the Class F Power Amplifier,” which was published only a week before the article you’re reading right now.

Current waveform of a Class C amplifier. Image used courtesy of Steve Arar

You can find a link to Dr. Steve Arar’s author profile at the beginning of this section.

QSPICE for LTspice Users

Robert Keim’s four-part series on migrating from LTspice to QSPICE definitely got readers’ attention. It also attracted positive feedback from someone on the QSPICE team, which was great!

QSPICE schematic for an LED blinker circuit. Image used courtesy of Robert Keim

A link to the first article in this series, which includes links to all subsequent articles, can be found in the paragraph above.

Standout Standalones

Not every technical article published in 2024 was part of a series (it just seems like it). Among the most popular of these was “A Simple Procedure for Creating Any Resistance Using Standard Resistors,” which was co-authored by John Woodgate and All About Circuits’ own Director of Engineering Content, Dale Wilson.

The process for selecting parallel or series resistors. Image used courtesy of John Woodgate; background used courtesy of Adobe Stock

Robert Keim’s introductory-level articles on MOSFET switching losses and full-bridge rectifiers were also heavily read.

Projects

The two most popular project articles of 2024 were “Using a Raspberry Pi Pico to Enhance a Vintage Radio Shack Microcomputer Kit” and “Building a Resistor Color Code Calculator and Ohmmeter Using Arduino.” The former article is part of Dr. Don Wilcher’s Radio Shack Classics Circuit Remix series; the latter is a standalone project by Kristijan Nelkovski. I highly recommend visiting both authors’ profiles to check out their other projects for All About Circuits.

The resistor color code calculator and ohmmeter project in operation. Click to watch the video.

Industry Articles

Industry articles about PCB design were big winners this year. For example, “The 10 Most Common EMC Challenges in a PCB Design” was the single most viewed industry article of 2024. A three-part series on the Gerber file format proved almost as popular. It was even popular with the editorial team—when we picked out the highlights of our year, Dale Wilson listed that series as one of his favorites.

NextPCB’s DFM checker and Gerber viewing tool. Image used courtesy of NextPCB; background used courtesy of Adobe Stock

Your Favorite Goes Here

Have a favorite article that didn’t make the list? Surprised by what did make it? Tell us about it in the comments!

“2024” graphic in featured image used courtesy of Canva