testmeasurementZONE Archive of engeniusBLOG
Apr 21, 2008 at 00:00
A former employer once demanded that I scrap my timeworn landline telephone and fax. He insisted that I convert my home office to VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and PC-hosted faxing. The cost savings would be substantial, he promised, reminding me that he was footing the bills. Indicating to my boss that Internet service in my neck of the woods wasn't entirely satisfactory and reliable, I declined, and he ultimately agreed. Thankfully I'm still a POTS (plain old telephone system) user. I digress. The proposed VoIP scheme would have involved the company VPN (virtual private network), making my telephone service entirely dependent on what had already proven to be a poorly managed corporate IT department. Not a pretty picture. Besides, with unlimited POTS calling service already in place in my home office, I could use my landlines for personal and private use after business hours. There were also times when I would field calls, both business and personal, after... -- Click Here to Read More >>Posted in test&measurementZONE
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Mar 31, 2008 at 00:00
As an enthusiast of classic British sports cars, I was initially disappointed to learn that India's Tata Motors had inked an accord with Ford Motor Company for the purchase of Jaguar. Then I learned a bit more about the company with such an unlikely moniker. Although not as venerable as Jaguar, Tata Motors has been selling cars since 1954, and today the company has agreements with the likes of Daimler Benz and Fiat and other mainstream carmakers. Tata also ranks second in India's growing passenger vehicle market, and employs over 1400 engineers and scientists, many of whom are developing environment-friendly electric and hybrid vehicles. Some of Tata’s latest designs run on biofuels and hydrogen. Needless to say, these cars are a far cry from Jaguar triple-SU-carb petrol guzzlers that I got acquainted with in the late 1950s. In today's changing world, everyone is affected by oil prices, pollution, and climate change. The fact that Tata is an India... -- Click Here to Read More >>Posted in test&measurementZONE
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Mar 24, 2008 at 00:00
Piloting a small boat along the coast of Maine is a joy, but it's also a job. You've got to know where you are at all times. There are literally thousands of islands, strong tidal and river currents, many rocks and shoals, and magnetic anomalies that induce compass errors. And then there's the fog. From sea smoke to the proverbial pea soup, it can descend in moments, enveloping everything in a damp shroud that defies the senses. Just as in engineering, coastal piloting involves tradeoffs. One of my preferred sailing buddies is an EE who, like myself, knows that you cannot rely on any one system. When we sail together, we plot a dead reckoning course on our paper charts, update it at every opportunity, and check our position frequently with visual fixes, beacons, GPS, and LORAN (LOng RAnge Navigation). LORAN? Yes indeed. Although slick GPS nav tools overshadow most everything else these days (and there are some fine GPS receivers with built-in high-resolution full-... -- Click Here to Read More >>Posted in test&measurementZONE
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Feb 25, 2008 at 00:00
“Old Stewball was a racehorse, and I wish he were mineHe never drank water, he always drank wine.” - LeadbellyEvery spring in northern New England, crystal clear streams and brooks meander, rush, and madly crash towards the sea when snowmelt occurs. It's one of nature's bounties, and I always look forward to the experience at winter's end. In Maine, where I live, water is also big business. Nestlé Waters North America taps a lot of groundwater in my state, and sells its bottled water under the name Poland Spring Brand Natural Spring Water. You've probably had some. Nestlé Waters says its product is "a light blend of minerals," and if you peruse the company's literature you'll read about Polan... -- Click Here to Read More >>
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Dec 17, 2007 at 00:00
Is off really off? When you leave your home, do you leave your TV set on? Do you unplug the ac wall adapter every time you take your cell phone with you? Even if you switch your TV off, most sets continue to draw current. Did you know that US households pay more than $1 billion annually to keep TVs and appliances in standby? Many products waste as much electricity when they're supposedly off -- in a ready-to-go mode -- as when they're on. A few years ago a European study showed that the power dissipated in digital converters for satellite receivers was virtually the same in both active and standby modes (averaging about 20 W). This was wasted energy primarily from inefficient standby operation and excessive no-load power. Some DefinitionsStandby power is dissipated when a product isn't performing its primary function (eg when a TV is ready to be turned on by a remote control). No-load refers to the power us... -- Click Here to Read More >>Posted in test&measurementZONE
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Nov 05, 2007 at 00:00
New York City's infamous taxicab drivers are up in arms. In the past few weeks they've gone on strike twice, protesting the installment of Global Positioning System satellite receivers and transponders in their cars. The Taxi Workers Alliance, representing about 20% of the city's 40,000-plus cab drivers, doesn't want GPS equipment in its cars.
New York City fathers, on the other hand, want every last cab to be equipped with interactive GPS units, video systems, and credit card readers. Indeed, under the city's new tech-savvy rules, taxis will be required to have this gear on board to pass vehicle inspection.
If the cabbies think New York City's new rules are onerous, wait until they encounter DARPA. If the Defense Department's Advanced Research Project Agency has anything to do with it, legalized GPS tracking is just the beginning of their problems.
Dull, Dirty, and Dangerous
In the 2001 National Defense Authorization Act (Public Law 106-398)... -- Click Here to Read More >> Posted in test&measurementZONE
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Oct 08, 2007 at 00:00
I indulge in chocolate. Not much, mind you. Just a few ounces with lunch every day. My family stocks our larder with one-pound bars of the 72% cocoa stuff, buying it whenever we’re in Boston or New York near a Trader Joe's store.
With due respect to women in the audience (many of whom seem to wax wacky over the mere mention of the word chocolate), I enjoy good dark chocolate both for its taste and its purported health benefits. I don't think I make a big deal when eating it, though. Not too much ceremony. No sighing and protracted mmmm sounds.
It is good stuff, though, I admit. In addition to its taste and texture, chocolate is a source of essential nutrients, including calcium, zinc, iron, niacin, magnesium, and riboflavin. Cocoa butter in chocolate is also believed to be an antioxidant, like the procyanidins in red wine (which I also drink daily with meals). Cocoa also contains fats that are essentially neutral, so they d... -- Click Here to Read More >> Posted in test&measurementZONE
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Sep 10, 2007 at 00:00
Bringing up hardware and software for the first time always gives me the heebie jeebies, even if it's a hobby project in my basement workshop. The same is true when I tackle a new job, such as this one at the EN-Genius Network. I'm the new kid on the EN-Genius block, as Technical Editor in charge of test-and-measurement (t&mZONE), interconnect technologies (connectorZONE), passive and not-so-passive components (rlcZONE), and PC and workstation tools (toolsZONE).
Let me briefly tell you about a direct digital synthesizer project I've been working on. It’s a case in point about the anxiety some engineers feel when bringing up a circuit for the first time. My board runs an Analog Devices AD9951 DDS chip, driven by a Microchip Technology 16F876 flash-equipped PIC microcontroller.
Whenever I finish the labor of design and board layout, etching, drilling, soldering, and shorts/opens testing, that moment of truth alway... -- Click Here to Read More >> Posted in test&measurementZONE
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Jul 30, 2007 at 00:00
Harvesting energy is in the news, again, as yet another means to save the world from ourselves. We have wind power, wave power and hydro generation as major sources and potential sources of energy -- although the fish environment extremists and the atmosphere environment extremists differ by a dam, or several, on hydroelectricity. But we're also seeing other smaller programs being developed.
A good example of the latter are the energy harvesting modules, EH300/301, from Advanced Linear Devices (ALD). They provide the ability to harvest just about any spare energy around -- at low and high voltages, ac and dc -- whether that energy is continuous or intermittent, and not even a straightforward electrical source.
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May 28, 2007 at 00:00
In the present-day world of electronics, it seems that whatever you decide to make, whatever its functionality, there will be someone wanting to buy it. From mood phones to uploading video from your camera phone to your HDTV display at home, there is a group of willing buyers...with quality, apparently, be damned.
There is nobody in our industry more concerned with the amount of RF consumers are playing around with these days than I am. And I have frequently written of my concerns and have come to the conclusion that there is a ten-year set of effects which are now beginning to be seen by researchers.
Apart from apparent effects to the head, there are also reports of male semen being reduced in both quantity and sperm count. One such study came from research at the Cleveland Clinic, a highly-respected institution -- although, as with many of these sorts of studies, the number ... -- Click Here to Read More >> Posted in test&measurementZONE
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Apr 09, 2007 at 00:00
I just received a notice from my previous cell phone carrier -- dropped a couple of months ago because they were in the wrong country and because we wanted a family phone plan, as I have explained before in these pages.
The notice was to inform me that the carrier -- Verizon Wireless -- is turning off its analog network on February 18, 2008 and it exhorts me to contact a customer service representative to arrange for a free digital phone today to upgrade to be able to use its "all-digital wireless network." I'm not going to belabor, in my horribly analog manner, the presence of the words 'digital' and 'wireless' alongside one another in the same sentence, but I was hardly impressed with the three major reasons why I should convert to digital now:
- Higher quality voice calls and faster data services
- Enhanced emergency 911 services
- Longer battery life fro... -- Click Here to Read More >>
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Feb 05, 2007 at 00:00
So, this week, Microsoft's Vista operating system has become publicly available in your local computer store, although businesses and professional groups have had it available for a while, both in Beta and the final versions.
Five years in the making, deadline after deadline missed -- sounds like a software project we are involved with at the moment -- and, finally, yet another holiday season missed by Microsoft. The launch has been very soft for one of their products despite the predictions that there will be over 100 million users within twelve months. Certainly, there have been no lines outside stores of people waiting to hand over money.
All the reviews and comments I have read so far describe the new OS as being a close replica of Apple's OS X, but Bill Gates described it in London to the BBC: "The wow starts he... -- Click Here to Read More >> Posted in test&measurementZONE
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Dec 11, 2006 at 00:00
The process of delivering news has always been changing over hundreds of years. At first the only news service was restricted to royalty, and noble houses, with the very filtered news being carried by horseback, certainly dating from the times of Ancient Egypt. The first coded messages also date from those times -- with both sender and recipient wary of strategic information falling into wrong hands, especially those messages carried back from scouts during times of conflict.
The rôle of messenger was not an entirely safe occupation...as the hapless herald who brought Brian Blessed's King Richard IV information in the original Blackadder series discovered when met with the bellowed order, "I like not this news! Bring me some other news!"
The public -- those who had any interest ... -- Click Here to Read More >> Posted in test&measurementZONE
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Oct 16, 2006 at 00:00
I am not writing here of someone whose sexual identity is in question, or having both male and female characteristics, but of a mechanism: the androgynous peripheral assembly system -- the full title of the electro-mechanical mechanism used for the docking of space vehicles.
A veritable genius of an engineer, Vladimir Syromayatnikov (often spelled, incorrectly, as Syromaitnikov) died this month (October 2006) in Moscow. He was aged 73. His death has not received the attention that it should but his life was well documented.
Syromayatnikov joined the top secret Energia Space Research Corporation based in Star City (aka Zvyozdny Gorodok) East of Moscow in 1956, after graduating from a technical university in Moscow. The immediate technical goal in that period of time was to build a clinically-efficient delivery system for the Soviet Union's growing nuclear arsenal. Many of the scientists in the Germ... -- Click Here to Read More >> Posted in test&measurementZONE
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