[Engineering Feature] Regulatory Compliance Means Going The Extra Green Mile
Just when you thought you were beginning to understand Europe’s environmental regulations, the European Union turns the tables and will change them again. In the process, these requirements will become much more complicated, more costly, and—for product designers—more challenging. Adding to this growing complexity is the emergence of environmental restrictions that target the electronics industry from China, Korea, and India (...
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Ron Schneiderman
[Technology Report] Take The FPGA Plunge
FPGAs are expensive... and hard to use... and too slow... and difficult to program... and hard to debug... and they draw too much power... and require register-transfer-level (RTL) wizards. That’s the conventional developer widsom, at least. But before you run for the exits, sit and relax, because the conventional wisdom is wrong. Yes, FPGA design will likely take you out of your comfort zone if you’ve never handled an FPGA or ASIC design. But even novices can...
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William Wong
[Leapfrog: First Look] Chip Drives Liquid Lenses To Stretch Battery Life In Cell-Phone Cams
Maxim Integrated Products has teamed up with Varioptic to pioneer a complete package for digital still and video camera and cell-phone makers that want to replace powerhungry, noisy hard lenses with liquid lenses. The problem with hard lenses? Focusing them involves physically moving the lens elements with motors— most recently voice-coil affairs that drain batteries and tend to leave distracting noises on video soundtracks. What’s a liquid...
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Don Tuite
[Design View / Design Solution] Trailblazing SuperSpeed USB Design And Verification
The eagerly awaited revision 3.0 of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) specification offers 10 times the speed of USB 2.0 even as it maintains backward compatibility with USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 devices. Early adopters ramping up their USB 3.0 (known as SuperSpeed USB) developments are testing this nextgeneration peripheral interconnect, which offers 5-Gbit/s data rates over copper. Developers are grappling with sophisticated physical-layer (PHY) features, ...
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Matthew Dunn
, et al.
[Ideas For Design] An Easy Way To Roll Your Own Programmable Power Supply
Adjusting the output voltage of a power supply is a feature typically reserved for highly integrated handheld power-management units (PMUs) with multiple integrated power supplies. You can implement this feature, however, with any power supply by adding a single resistor and an inexpensive digital-to-analog converter (DAC) (Fig. 1). While this technique isn’t new, the equations to select...
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Marc Davis-Marsh
, et al.
[Ideas For Design] Proximity-Sensing Intercom Uses Standard Programmable SoC
Designers can use specialized ICs as a simple way to add touch-sensing capabilities to a circuit. For instance, the Cypress CapSense devices can handle several touch buttons and a touch slider. In some designs, however, one button might suffice. One example is a “touch-to-talk” intercom application. In this case, a mixed-signal programmable system-on-a-chip (PSoC) will do. The PSoC has digital blocks that can be configured as a sensitive proximity detector and...
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Chris Paiano
[Editorial] Though Attendance Was Down, 2009 International CES Still Shines
Early reports from the 2009 International CES this month in Las Vegas placed the number of attendees at more than 110,000, down from last year’s 141,150 total. But I didn’t notice that much of a difference. I was solidly booked with appointments for three full days, and announcements at the show were stellar. Plus, it was tough to get from one place to another with crowds of people everywhere. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), which runs CES,...
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Joseph Desposito
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
Hello to Mr. Bob Pease! In the datasheet for the LM135/LM235/ LM335, there is no mention of capacitive bypass (minimum acceptable, maximum acceptable). This publication also did not say anything: www.national.com/appinfo/tempsensors/files/temphb2.pdf. (I apologize for this omission. You are right. This info should have been...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: Embedded] Sixense Sensor Provides Real 3D Positioning
The Analog Devices Sharc gets a workout inside Sixense Entertainmentâ??s 3D sensor system, which will be at the heart of a new class of game controllers. Nintendoâ??s Wii popularized 3D wireless controllers, but its accelerometers only provide relative motion information. Sixenseâ??s patented TrueMotion game controller delivers absolute 3D position and orientation information (see the...
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William Wong
[TechView: Wireless] Automatic Digital Antenna Tuning Fits Multiple Wireless Applications
Peregrine Semiconductor’s DuNE technology solves one of the orneriest problems in RF design—antenna impedance matching. In every wireless application, an antenna has to be connected to the radio. That invariably means the imposition of some kind of impedance- matching circuit between the transmitter/receiver and the antenna. Impedance matching is essential for maximum power output/ input, minimum voltage standing-wave ratio (VSWR) ...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Engineering Essentials] Conforming With Worldwide Safety And EMC/EMI Standards
Many designers think meeting the worldwide safety standards for power supplies in mains-powered products involves following a simple checklist to ensure their designs don’t run into distribution problems in some countries due to a lack of dotted i’s or crossed t’s. But that’s a naive perspective. The truth is that most designers need some serious hand-holding during their first several designs. This task can’t be addressed with a checklist and a positive...
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Don Tuite
[Electronic Design Products] BSI Technology Takes A Major Leap Forward
Since their efforts were first reported in June 2008, CMOS image sensor specialists at OmniVision have been very busy perfecting their backside illumination technology (see â??BSI Technology Flips Digital Imaging Upside Downâ?? at www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online 19160). Teaming with semiconductor...
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Mat Dirjish
[Electronic Design Products] Demand More From Your Switch Suppliers And Reap Savings
Is your company looking to shorten design cycles and bring products to market faster? Are you looking to reduce supply chains and the number of suppliers you deal with? Have you considered offloading portions of your product design, freeing up your designers to focus on the more critical aspects of creating new products? Itâ??s very common for the user interface to your product to include a self-contained sub-assembly or module that plugs into a ...
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David Webber
[Lab Bench] Make Security Your New Year's Resolution For 2009
The number of networked devices at this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was mind-boggling. No area was spared. Automotive wireless connectivity ranged from the delivery of real-time traffic information to Internet access. Cars already feature a growing number of networks for everything from engine control to passenger entertainment. Many of these wired and wireless networks are isolated more often than they are tied together. This...
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William Wong
[Analog/Mixed-Signal Design] Using Delta-Sigma Can Be As Easy As ADC (Part 4)
Based on the amount of e-mail I received after Part 3 of this series (Nov. 7, 2008, p. 18; www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online 19948), many of you have already guessed that an incremental integrator is really just a delta-sigma modulator (DSM). Well, you’re right! It actually is a continuous-time delta-sigma modulator....
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Dave Van Ess
