Why shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars on various home control systems (HCS) when you have the skills and resources to build your own? You can design and implement sophisticated Internet-enabled systems with free tools and some careful planning. … Continue reading →

German engineer Jens Altenburg’s solar-powered hidden observing vehicle system (SOPHECLES) is an innovative gas-detecting mobile robot. When the Texas Instruments MSP430-based mobile robot detects noxious gas, it transmits a notification alert to a PC, Altenburg explains in his article, “SOPHOCLES: … Continue reading →

Guido Ottaviani designs and creates innovative microcontroller-based robot systems in the city from which remarkable innovations in science and art have originated for centuries. By day, the Rome-based designer is a technical manager for a large Italian editorial group. In … Continue reading →

When I first saw the Intel Industrial Control in Concert demonstration at Design West 2012 in San Jose, CA, I immediately thought of Kurt Vonnegut ‘s 1952 novel Player Piano. The connection, of course, is that the player piano in … Continue reading →

Richard Alan Wotiz—a multitalented electronics engineer, inventor, and author—provided the international embedded design community with creative projects and useful electronics engineering lessons since the early 1980s when he graduated from Princeton University. Sadly, Richard passed away unexpectedly on May 30, … Continue reading →