inside a pacemacker, i took one apart - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: oz2cpu
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2025, 02:55:09 pm
content: I had a bit fun looking inside a pacemacker,really fancy designed.made a little video about it here :

author: SteveThackery
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2025, 06:04:53 pm
content: Fascinating!

author: Terry Bites
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2025, 06:13:35 pm
content: Yeah, but that dead guy in the old barn. What a f**kin' messs.So much blood.

author: oz2cpu
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2025, 07:28:55 pm
content: no one was harmed in the process of collecting the displayed units

author: mawyatt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2025, 08:01:44 pm
content: 3 decades ago worked with Bill, he was a brilliant CMOS designer,managementwanted to "promote" him intotheirranks but he wanted to stay technical. We worked together on the 1st CMOS SAR floating point ADC which employed sub-threshold logic and capacitor ratios, later ADI wanted to license this butmanagementdidn't, another outstanding decision!!Bill had enough ofmanagement, resigned, and went on to Medtronics and designed the custom chips they utilized in their Pacemakers. He said they didn't use chips from others , but preferred to design everything themselves due to the legal and moral issues of a chip failure!!Reminds of the early undersea fiber-optic repeaters that Bell Labs/Lucent developed, every electronic component from resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors and ICs were custom in-house developed and manufactured for reliability reasons.Anyway, interesting how some companies approach reliability, in "failure is not an option" applications! BTW if we ever get a Pacemaker, going to insist on a Medtronics one that has Bill's CMOS chipsBest

author: KE5FX
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2025, 08:40:26 pm
content: I'll hold out for one of thePu-238 jobs. I'm not putting lithium batteries inside my chest, those things aredangerous!

author: Haenk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2025, 09:00:42 pm
content: Quote from: KE5FX on September 18, 2025, 08:40:26 pmQuote: "88 year half-life". That should be plenty enough for most of us

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2025, 09:04:20 pm
content: Quote from: mawyatt on September 18, 2025, 08:01:44 pmNote that normal IC manufacturers (TI, etc.) have a disclaimer in their boilerplate forbidding use of their product in life-critical applications without express consent, for obvious reasons.Medtronics’ approach is both ethical and rational.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2025, 09:27:33 pm
content: Quote from: oz2cpu on September 18, 2025, 07:28:55 pmBeen making friends with your local undertaker / crematorium then.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2025, 09:31:02 pm
content: Quote from: Haenk on September 18, 2025, 09:00:42 pmHmm, I might opt for the Lithium battery with all those high density ICs. PU-238 might have been ok for those 1970s discrete transistor jobs but I'm old enough to remember the grief that Intel had with soft errors in their DRAMs due to trace radioactive elements in their CERDIP packages.

author: mawyatt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2025, 02:31:03 am
content: Quote from: Gyro on September 18, 2025, 09:31:02 pmOld enough here to also remember and directly experience that!!Wasn't just intel it was all the US memory sources, however memory from Japan didn't have soft errors!! It was intel, too their credit, that found the source was the ceramic from 3M that had traces of radioactive material, and alerted everyone. Memory from Japan used ceramic packages from Kyocera which didn't have radioactive contamination. 3M cleaned up their ceramic and US memory was just as "hard" as Japans. US didn't have inferior memory chips as everyone was led to believe, it was the ceramic package!!!Best

author: Terry Bites
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2025, 03:03:50 pm
content: so you say.....

author: UnijunctionTransistor
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2025, 03:43:21 pm
content: Have you got a clue for the date of manufacture for this pace maker?

author: voltsandjolts
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 19, 2025, 03:59:14 pm
content: They all seem overcomplicated to me.Surely all that's needed is a 555.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2025, 04:23:57 pm
content: Quote from: voltsandjolts on September 19, 2025, 03:59:14 pmWhy would you say that? The output of a pacemaker is not a simple periodic waveform. There is a “test” mode with a constant frequency available to a medical test. Most units operate “on demand”.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2025, 04:34:09 pm
content: All we need to get to the moon is also a 555, and those f*ers are spending billions.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2025, 05:00:58 pm
content: Quotechuck in a wireless charger and walk past yer local porsche dealer when ya needs a top up

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2025, 06:05:51 pm
content: Before I retired, several of the scientists at work would participate in radiation safety surveys of the building, after hours, when a change had been made to the x-ray machines on site.Once, an colleague older than I refused to participate, which was unlike him, but he took me aside and placed the survey meter on his chest to demonstrate why.He had recently done a "stress test" at his cardiologist, which included injecting a radionuclide that had not yet decayed.The dose rate at his chest was sufficient to interfere with the survey, but it was not as high as that described in the article about Pu cited in the post above.