Electronic Design Update: July 30, 2008

Electronic Design UPDATE e-Newsletter |   July 30, 2008 ADVERTISEMENT THE BALANCE OF POWER HAS SHIFTED.
The new leader in the power connector industry is the same name you trust for your interconnect solutions – Molex. Only Molex offers the broadest line of power products with superior current densities. Our new EXTreme Power™ line features flexible design configurations that can be customized to your application. So, when you need to pack maximum current capacity into a small space, turn to Molex.
Click here. editor's view |Ham Radio's Rejuvenation By Don Tuite, Analog/Power Editor
Hypothesis: Doing away with the code requirement last March has completed a rejuvenation of ham radio that was triggered by the World Trade Center attacks and Katrina. I’m looking for reader comments yea and nay. Read the full article... lab bench online | Carrying A Corsair: A Trip With A Memory Stick By William Wong, Embedded/Systems/Software Editor
Technology Editor Bill Wong takes a trip with just a memory stick. Read the full article... engineer's resource | New Product Showcase: TI's Multi-architecture Roadmap

TI's Multi-architecture Roadmap John Dixon, Product Manager for Low Power Processors at Texas Instruments, talks about TI's multi-architecture roadmap for 2009. Read Pacing: A Performance Enhancing Feature of PCI Express Gen 2 Switch Devices A new feature called Read Pacing is now available on Gen 2 PCI Express switches. This technology that opens up new avenues for enhancing performance in systems with multiple I/O streams. To learn more about Read Pacing please click on the thumbnail above. (NOTE: This webcast contains audio, so please hit the mute button on your volume control if you cannot listen to audio at this time.) Your Ideas For Design Can Win $500 Send us your Ideas for Design and we'll pay you $150 for every Idea for Design that we publish. In addition, the year's top design as selected by our readers will earn an additional $500, with two runners-up each receiving $250. You can submit your Ideas for Design via e-mail to [email protected], or you can mail your material to: Ideas for Design Electronic Design 45 Eisenhower Dr., Suite 550 Paramus, NJ 07652 Click here for our guidelines on Ideas for Design. IFD of the week |

VHDL Code Offloads LED Blinking Task To A CPLD

An earlier Idea For Design (Hardware-Based LED Blinking Control Eliminates Software Overhead) described a very interesting way to offload the software overhead required for a microcontroller to drive LEDs that indicate operating states to the user. That article discussed the use of memory-mapped LED control registers, buffers, and a clock source, all used to blink an LED without burdening the microcontroller code with the task. This article expands on that Idea For Design, discussing how to implement a hardware-based LED driver in a complex programmable logic device (CPLD) using VHDL code. Read the full article...

Lauro Rizzatti, vice president of marketing and GM of EVE-USA, shares the news of EVE's ZeBu-Personal, an affordable way to get emulation capabilities onto every engineering workbench. (Note: The video may take a minute to open. Click only once.) Click here to see other exhibits we've covered.

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The three winners will get an all-expenses-paid trip to the Infineon and Auto Electronics Contest Award Ceremony at Convergence 2008. In addition, your winning design will be featured at the Infineon booth during the show. Submit your entry by August 15, 2008.
See you at CONVERGENCE 2008, Booth 409.
For complete contest rules or to take the design challenge, go to http://autoelectronics.com/contest/rev-up Engineering TV | Mechatronics Hydraulic Test Station The Master of Science in Mechatronic Systems Engineering (MSMSE) program at Lawrence Technological Institute in Michigan provides engineers with advanced scientific and engineering knowledge in an emerging high-technology field, being Mechatronic Systems Engineering. In this video, Mark Schmidt, a lab technician in the Mechanical Engineering Department, details one of the tests required for undergraduate students, a closed-loop hydraulic test Station. Students are expected to assemble the system from scratch, which includes voltage input signals, hydraulic valves, an actuator that has an LVDT displacement transducer, and a data-acquisition system.

news from the editors |

Multistandard Wireless Accelerator Enables Emerging Basestation Technologies

A famous cartoon coyote once called Apetitius Giganticus wanted to catch a roadrunner that sometimes went by Accelerati Incredibilus. The coyote always used some outdated technology to try to catch the roadrunner, who relied on speed and simplicity to avoid becoming lunch. Read the full article...

Handheld Real-Time Spectrum Analyzers Nail Interfering Wireless Signals Fast

Complex wireless technologies make measurement a real challenge with their short bursts and non-deterministic timing. There’s the 625-µs Bluetooth hop interval and the 70-ns hop interval of Ultra-Wideband (UWB), not to mention the short packet bursts of 5 ms for wireless local-area networks (WLANs), 359 µs for Bluetooth, and 10 µs for UWB. Read the full article...

Software Options Make Good Spectrum Analyzers Even Better

New options are available for Anritsu’s popular MS271xB economy microwave spectrum analyzers (see the figure). The three available models have upper frequency limits of 7.1, 13, and 20 GHz. They also have a 10-MHz demodulation bandwidth and support the most common 3G cell-phone and WiMAX standards. Read the full article...

LabVIEW-Based Systems Monitor Health Of Chinese Megastructures

The China Earthquake Administration has selected a structural health monitoring (SHM) system from CGM Engineering Inc. to help engineers conduct research on seven recently constructed megastructures. Read the full article... quick poll | What kind of infotainment system do you want most in your next car?

• Navigation system
• Internet access
• Rear-seat entertainment
• Increased memory for audio/video
• Safety/security features
• Other

Click here to take the poll. Remember to scroll down; the poll is at the bottom of the page.

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White LEDs Take A Quantum Leap In Brightness And Efficiency

Improving LED manufacturing technologies, the company claims new records for the brightness and efficiency of white LEDs in the laboratory. Under standard conditions with an operating current of 350 mA, brightness peaked at a value of 155 lm and efficiency at 136 lm/W. Read the full article... product picks online | Half-Bridge MOSFET Drivers Raise The Voltage Bar Rugged SBC First To Enlist MPC8640/MPC 8640D Processors 25-W Supplies Measure 3 By 1.4 Inches Moisture Analyzer Sets Speed/Accuracy Records Motion Systems Shorten Development Cycles upcoming industry events | LinuxWorld Conference & Expo
San Franscisco, Calif.
August 4-7 NIWeek 2008
Austin, Tex.
August 5-7 IEEE Nano 2008
Arlington, Tex.
Aug. 18-21