/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>1043339
Digital signals are pulses of 1s or 0s, so they look like square pulses with varying time of the high or low states on an oscilloscope. They are interpreted as such, so they can easily send binary information, i.e. 1011 or high-low-high-low is interpreted as number "11" etc.Voltage level of low is usually 0 V, voltage level of high depends but common values are 5V or 3.3V. To read digital signals you need a clock (a symmetrical 50% duty square pulse that never changes a bit) that will go along the signal so the interpreting circuit knows when the next state of the signal is supposed to start. Imagine you get one milisecond of continous 5V, how else would you know how many HIGH states in series is it supposed to represent without a clock telling you how many ticks you went through?

Analog signals don't have any significant values, or rather all of them can be significant. Typical analog signals are audio signals that are sent to the speaker: its not a bunch of 1s or 0s, its a very complicated superposition of waves of varying frequencies and amplitudes that directly converts into sound. Sound itself is analog signal too, though mechanical, not electrical. Reality itself is analog and in electronics we try to approximately convert it to digital because digital processing is much more clearer and less prone to noise, losses, parasitic properties and other unwanted effects. However some information is inevitably lost in the analog-to-digital conversion process.