connectorZONE Archive of engeniusBLOG

When it comes to motor sports, contemporary kids think of NASCAR and Dale Earnhardt, but I come from a generation where Formula One open-wheel racing was king, and Jim Clark and Tazio Nuvolari were racing icons. Ah, those were the days. Gasoline at 18 cents a gallon fueled our dreams.

I digress. Though I haven't followed F1 racing since my youthful treks to Watkins Glen every autumn for the genre's US venue, I am aware that technology's impact on racing cars today is every bit as pervasive as its effect on consumer electronics, medical electronics, or just about anything that packs an embedded controller these days.

Mechanical Engineering

Forward-looking F1 car designers are summoning revolutionary changes, but not all innovation relies heavily on electronics. Significant is the development of an energy recove...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

In his 1970 book Future Shock, futurist author Alvin Toffler espoused the idea that someday, when almost everyone would be using credit cards instead of cash, muggers and robbers would likely prey on poor people constrained to paper currency.

What Toffler failed to envision was the PC and ubiquitous networked computing. How could he have foreseen ATMs on street corners, PayPal, on-line banking, and credit card scanners at virtually every retail establishment, restaurant, and gas pump? Toffler thought he hit the nail on the head when he claimed it would be safer to carry plastic than a wad of cash.

Is it safer? In February of last year, discount stores TJ Maxx and Marshall's reported that customer information from some 46 million credit cards and debit cards was stol...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

While RF engineers literally interpret the term CW to mean continuous wave, or an unmodulated RF signal, radio operators associate it with Morse Code.

Since the earliest days of radio communications, individual CW Morse operators could often be distinguished by their singular way of sending. Radio operators, commercial and amateur, used various types of manual radiotelegraph keys. These keys contributed to unique habits that affected sending speed, timing, and dit-dah character spacing. Operators would often reach stride while sending at speed, and this contributed to a unique rhythm or swing.

Even today, seasoned CW receiving operators can often tell who is at the key at a distant transmitter just by listening to the remote operator style or fist. An operator’s fist can give away his or her identity just as surely as a government assigned callsign.

As an FCC-licensed Amateur Radio operator, I frequently use CW and I'm actually a member of the Click Here to Read More >>

The DSP project I'm working on uses an Analog Devices ADSP-2181 chip, housed in a 128-lead TQFP (thin plastic quad flat pack) surface-mount package. If you need one of these 16-bit devices, chances are you'll have to accept a Pb-free RoHS-compliant (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) metric version, as the earlier leaded-solder-suffix part numbers are now unobtainium, unless you can find some new/old stock languishing on a distributor shelf somewhere.

Thankfully, the RoHS folks in Europe have saved me from poisoning. My ADSP-2181s are now Pb-free, and are essentially certified to be devoid of cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, PBBs (polybrominated biphenyls), PBDE (polybrominated diphenyl ethers), antimony compounds, and bromine flame-retardants, too. Of course, these ICs do have quantities of iron, nickel, silver, gold, magnesium, palladium, and beryllium. Tin is also predominant as a finish plating. Knowing these precious meta...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

My pal Jared is a darned good BSEE circuit designer. He knows more about electronics than any electrical engineer I've ever met. What's more, he's got the right approach, reducing challenges to fundamentals, and then tackling problems with whatever software and hardware tools he can lay his hands on. His favorite tool, of course, is a pad of graph paper.

Jared has worked at the design bench for more than 25 years now, and along the way he made time to earn an MBA. Notwithstanding that, he shuns the management side of engineering, preferring to bring circuits to life on the bench. As he puts it, "I won't make my briefcase my grief case."

Until recently, Jared's employer was a major aerospace company. But, since a merger downsized that operation, Jared found employment elsewhere. He now works for a company that specializes in high-speed bus products.

Jared says he was hired, in part, because he has lots of experience designing ASICs based on Xil...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

With the holiday season upon us, for lots of us toys now figure in our thinking. Yes, there's news about those nasty tainted toys from China. But, on an upbeat note, playthings of all sorts let us shower affection on our children, and that's a good thing.

Some say that the only difference between men and boys is the cost of their toys (I suspect this maxim applies equally well to women). I admit I subscribe to this adage.

My own toys have a decidedly retro aspect to them. My spouse claims that's how I re-live that part of the past that was especially good to me. Judging by the Chrysler Group's success with its PT Cruiser automobile, and GM's Chevy HHR, I know I'm not alone.

What my wife doesn't understand is that I like my ancient toys because they speak to me about an era where things were less transitory. I view most of today's toys as momentary diversions; many are electronic widgets that quickly become obsolete.

That rubs me the wrong way...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

Chubby drivers are influencing carmakers. Yes, that's right. Car companies around the world are designing bigger vehicles, despite the quest for better fuel mileage. Sadly, they're satisfying overweight car buyers.

Although automobile fuel efficiency is up, and the newest cars deliver better gas mileage than ever before, automobile weight is steadily increasing. The 2008 models are considerably heavier than predecessors.

Although carmakers won't admit it, industry observers say heavier cars are designed to accommodate a gush of obese drivers and passengers. Look around: obesity has increased sharply for both adults and children in the United States.

Data from two National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveys show that among adults aged 20 - 74 years the prevalence of obesity increased from 15% (from a 1976 - 1980 survey) to nearly 33% (in a 2003 - 2004 survey).

Since the mid-1970s, surveys also show increases in overweight child...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

When it comes to customer service, my Internet Service Provider is just next door to worthless. It has no concept of the meaning of the word service.

You see, in my neck of the Internet woods, a transition was recently completed away from Adelphia as an ISP (you know, the company that suffered top-level management fraud, shareholder wrath, grand jury probes, and an SEC investigation). The new service provider is TimeWarner Roadrunner.

Let the fun begin. TimeWarner Roadrunner commenced its service by trashing my personal Web pages (although I'm told they're backed up), bungling my ability to establish an FTP session with my site, and changing my password more than one time (without advising me). Over a three-month period while trying to resolve the problems, I've listened to streams of insipid music while waiting on hold for 45 minutes at a clip. When someone finally answers my c...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

In the 1950s, Boy's Life Magazine featured a how-to article that described a tin-can robot called Gizmo. If you were clever enough to scrounge the requisite parts, innovating when you couldn't find them, the article promised you could build and own a rendition of Gizmo. It would be an honest-to-goodness robot that could move its arms and swivel its head, flash its red Christmas tree eyes, and (hopefully) turn your friends green with envy.

I recall spending many an hour scheming about Gizmo with my next-door neighbor's kid, and endlessly tinkering in my dad's basement workshop. We cobbled together myriad scraps of metal and wood, and a few surplus dc motors, and who knows what else, in the expectation we could replicate the Boy's Life machine.

We were marginally successful. Gizmo came to life, whirring and buzzing, until one of the motor drives let loose, and the whole contraption fell apart. We sure had a lot of fun though before we gave up and move...  -- Click Here to Read More >>