[Engineering Feature] Keeping Troops Out Of Harm's Way, Technically Speaking
In one memorable scene in the 1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, the giant robot Gort picks up the body of his companion Klaatu and cradles the alien visitor in his arms. The robot then carries Klaatu back to the safety of their flying saucer for life-restoring treatment. Now, life is imitating art. A giant mobile robot developed by Vecna Technologies is able to use its arms to rescue injured soldiers from the battlefield. "I am very excited about the...
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John Edwards
[Technology Report] System-On-A-Chip Toolbox Helps Perfect Design Recipe
System design today hinges on two key steps: your ability to adequately select and analyze the available building blocks, and then stirring in the "special sauce" that makes your product unique. The more aware you are of the available building blocks you can trust, the more time you can spend perfecting the flavor of your sauce. To assist the chef, here's a list of the latest intellectual-property (IP) offerings, the tools to help with the IP selection process, and some...
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Daniel Harris
[Design View / Design Solution] Combat Software Complexity With Java Isolation Mechanisms
Exponential improvements in hardware capacity made possible by Moore’s Law have substantially expanded the size and complexity of embedded-system software. For many embedded software products, the amount of software deployed in each new revision of the product doubles every 18 to 36 months. The challenges of managing this rapid expansion of software size require innovative approaches and improved software engineering disciplines. One key to tackling the growing size and...
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Kelvin Nilsen
[Ideas For Design] Drive A Resistive Heater Element Without Adding Noise To The System
This circuit drives a resistive heater element with a low-frequency, pulse-widthmodulation (PWM) voltage source, providing heat output that's directly and linearly proportional to the duty cycle of the drive signal. The circuit's low-power and low-frequency (approximately 1-kHz) drive contributes little noise to the system, especially if the driving circuit uses a generic Darlington transistor producing relatively slow (3-µs) rise and fall times. In addition, little, if any,...
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James Henden
[Ideas For Design] Add Two Components To Power Supply To Ensure Proper Voltage Sequencing
Today's digital ICs typically demand complex voltage sequencing, a task that usually requires dedicated ICs or microprocessors. But what if your requirements are more modest? The sequencing scheme presented here requires only a single optocoupler and a resistor. Assume that the dc-dc converter's On/Off pin is pulled low to turn on and floats to remain off (see the figure). Also, in this example, the 5 V needs to turn on before the...
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Alan Adamsky
[POV: Point Of View] Examine The Thermal Implications Of Potted Versus Open-Frame Bricks
When I joined Vicor almost 20 years ago, the inventors of the brick told me that the planar surface of a base plate is optimal for removing or transferring heat and that potting provides an outstanding thermal interface around each component. When bricks first came out, in fact, all of them were encapsulated and fitted with attached base plates. Our philosophy at the time, as it is now, was to be as flexible as possible to enable designers to adapt the brick to many different...
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Tom Curatolo
[Editorial] Innovation Evident In Word And Deed At NIWeek
At an event held for editors at the recently concluded NIWeek, innovation was the topic of discussion. On the firing line were National Instruments executives James Truchard, Jeff Kodosky, Mike Santori, and Tim Dehne. When asked about innovation, Truchard made the connection between innovation and quality. Essentially, innovation brings a product, such as LabVIEW, to life. The ability to continuously innovate ensures product quality over the long term. LabVIEW 8.5,...
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Joseph Desposito
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
Dear Bob: Recently I had problems paralleling MOSFETs in a power current source for an electronic load that has to absorb the power generated by four strings of two series-connected BP585 PV modules: (MaxPower_worst-case) = 4(36 V 5 A), about 720 W. The MOSFETs operate in their linear regime, but almost all parts I can buy from my company suppliers are optimized to switching applications. (That's what their maker says, but that does not mean they cannot be...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] What's New At The Boston Embedded Systems Conference
The Boston Embedded Systems Conference has always been smaller than its west coast cousin. Scheduled for Sept. 18-21 at the Hynes Convention Center, though, this show is slightly more system-oriented. And while it has fluctuated in size over the years, it has picked up new vendors like Microchip, so expect some interesting developments in Beantown. Conference regulars will show off their newest fare, like Versalogic, which will display its latest SPX modules (see...
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William Wong
[TechView: Analog & Power] Inventor Updates A Classic 30 Years Later
Adjustable three-terminal voltage regulators made their debut in Electronic Design in an April 12, 1977 article called "Break Loose From Fixed IC Regulators" by Robert Dobkin, then an IC designer at National Semiconductor. Dobkin had adapted National's bandgap-based fixed regulator to make it adjustable via a voltage divider on the output. The divider's center tap is applied to the anode of the regulator's voltage reference (see the...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Test] Training Kit Improves Education In Electronic Instrumentation
How did you learn electronic test and measurement equipment and processes? If you’re like most engineers, you probably didn’t learn much of it in college since lab time was typically short or non-existent. Also, the emphasis then was on theoretical validation rather than instrument operation, application, specifications, and the importance of measurement methods. As a result, most of you probably learned how to use a scope, signal generator, spectrum analyzer, and other instruments on...
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Louis E. Frenzel
