Tag Archives: Elektor

Elektor Weekly Wrap-Up: Publishing Process Video, Inside May 2012, & a New Book on LEDs

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What your plans for this weekend? Any projects in the works? Before you start soldering, consider what Elektor staffers have been working in this week. Perhaps you’ll want to start designing with the goal of submitting your project to the Elektor Lab. Check out the video below for details.

If you don’t have a project yet, no worries. The currently available May issue is chock full of interesting articles and projects.

May Issue Intro Video

My friend and colleague Wisse Hettinga does a wonderful job each month introducing the newest issue of Elektor. This week he released the May intro video:

Inside Elektor May 2012

Here is the table of contents for the latest edition of Elektor:

  • Embedded World 2012
  • The RL78 Green Energy Challenge has begun
  • Embedded Linux Made Easy (1)
  • Platino Controlled by LabVIEW (1)
  • Preamplifier 2012 (2)
  • Lossless Load
  • Inside Pico C-Super
  • Mounting nixie tubes
  • E-LABs INSIDE
  • Minty Geek’s Mark Brickley
  • QuadroWalker
  • Electronics for Starters (5)
  • AVR Software Defined Radio (3)
  • Component Tips: MOSFETs + extras
  • Energy Monitor
  • SHT11 Humidity Sensor Connected to PC
  • RAMBOard-Serial
  • Retronics: Elektor Logic Analyser (1981)
  • Hexadoku
  • Gerard’s Columns: Reliability

New Book on LED Designs & Projects

Ask anyone under 20 to mention a light source and you’re likely to hear “el-ee-dee.” It just goes to show that LEDs are succeeding the light bulb at a terrific pace. Now ask any high school kid to mention an electronic component. You’ll hear the same acronym again. Kids positively adore LEDs: they’re cheap, simple to connect, and allow all sorts of things to be personalized, tweaked, and adorned with bright colors, preferably in strings and flashing too.

Editor Jan Buiting at Elektor this week signed off the production of a small book on LEDs specifically aimed at young people. The idea is to help them learn about these fantastic devices. The book is packed with entry-level projects that can be built straight off on a breadboard. With one-stop shopping in mind, Elektor will also be selling a nice parts kit that belongs with the book that will enable readers to gain some hands-on experience working with LEDs.

The new book and the associated kit are expected to come on sale by June 1, 2012. Check the Elektor webpage www.elektor.com/products/books.255.lynkx at that time.

CircuitCellar.com is an Elektor group publication.

Elektor Weekly Wrap-Up: Project Generator, 32-Bit Linux on an 8-Bit MCU, & Computer Vision Simplified

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Last week Elektor staffers put in a long workweek of, well, a little bit of everything: lab work, news reporting, and book launching. Let’s start with the lab.

Elektor’s Project Generator Edition

The Elektor Lab’s workers were finishing up their final lab duties relating to Elektor’s upcoming double summer edition—the Project Generator Edition, PGE.

Elektor Lab staff preps for the summer issue

Thijs Beckers reported: “Extra attention is paid to the quality of this year’s projects, after upping the standards already in the selection process. We set an ambitious goal for all of us, lab workers and editors alike, to bring you articles and circuit ideas from the utmost quality, with crystal clear details and lots of PCB layouts. All of this would of course be unfeasible without our highly respected freelance contributors and experts, who we are grateful for their efforts in supporting this year’s extra-thick magazine with fresh and exciting projects and circuits.”

Getting read for the "Project Generator Edition"

32-Bit Linux on an 8-Bit MCU

Elektor editor Clemens Valens reported last week about an interesting project by Dmitry Grinberg. Clemens said Dmitry ported a 32-bit operating system to an 8-bit microcontroller lacking most of the features needed to actually run the OS. Seem odd? Learn more here.

A 32-bit OS ported to an 8-bit micro

Computer Vision Simplified

Elektor announced Wednesday a new book on the topic of computer vision. Fevzi Özgül’s Design your own PC Visual Processing and Recognition System in C# is intended for “engineers, scientists and enthusiasts with developed programming skills or with a strong interest in image processing technology on a PC.”

The book, which Özgül wrote using Microsoft C# and utilizing object-oriented practices, is a practical how-to guide. He covers essential image-processing techniques and provides practical application examples so you can produce high-quality image processing software. Click here for more information.

CircuitCellar.com is an Elektor group publication.

 

Weekly Elektor Wrap Up: Preamplifier 2012, Pico C, & a Webshop Hunt

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It’s time for our Friday Elektor wrap up. Our Elektor colleagues were hard at work during this first week of April. Here’s quick review.

Elektor Preamplifier 2012: The Sound of Silence

Elektor has a 40-year history of high-end audio (tube and solid state) coverage: projects, books, circuit boards, and even DVDs. The latest project is the Preamplifier 2012, which was designed by renowned audio specialist Douglas Self, with Elektor audio staffer Ton Giesberts doing the board designs and testing on Elektor’s $50,000 audio precision analyzer! It achieves incredibly low noise figures using low impedance design techniques throughout, but still based on an affordable and easy-to-find opamp: the NE5532. The Preamplifier 2012’s most notable characteristics are its ultra low noise MC/MD section (get out your vinyl records) and the remarkably low-value pots in the Baxandall tone control (like 1-kΩ).Douglas Self and Elektor Audio Labs already stunned the audio community with their NE5532 Op-amplifier a while ago with 32 NE5532 op-amps basically paralleled on a board producing 10 W of extremely high-quality sound. Simply put: they know what they’re doing!You can read about the seven-board design in the April 2012 edition. In fact, why not follow the series?

Part 1: www.elektor.com/110650

Part 2: www.elektor.com/110651

Part 3: currently in editing for June 2012 edition.

NE5532 Opamplifier: www.elektor.com/100124

Pico C Webinar Announcement

Elektor announced this week that it will run a new webinar via element14 on the Elektor Pico C meter, which was featured in the April 2011 editions. The Pico C meter can measure small capacitances. In February 2012 the device was upgraded with new firmware.

According to an Elektor news item, UK-based author/designer Jon Drury will run the webinar slated for Thursday, April 19, 2012. He’ll cover a unique way of giving the original instrument a much wider range while also extending its functionality, all with new software and practically no changes to the existing Pico C hardware. Microcontroller fans, including AVR enthusiasts, can also learn how to adapt the software for different calibration capacitors. Elektor staffers are reporting that Jon may also give a sneak preview of his PicoLO oscilloscope and Pico DDS generator.  You can register at element14.

“E” Hunt!

In other news, Elektor is challenging you to find hidden Easter eggs in its webshop. Find eggs, get a discount. Click here to get started.

 

 

Tech Highlights from Design West: RL78, AndroPod, Stellaris, mbed, & more

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The Embedded Systems Conference has always been a top venue for studying, discussing, and handling the embedded industry’s newest leading-edge technologies. This year in San Jose, CA, I walked the floor looking for the tech Circuit Cellar and Elektor members would love to get their hands on and implement in novel projects. Here I review some of the hundreds of interesting products and systems at Design West 2012.

RENESAS

Renesas launched the RL78 Design Challenge at Design West. The following novel RL78 applications were particularly intriguing.

  • An RL78 L12 MCU powered by a lemon:

    A lemon powers the RL78 (Photo: Circuit Cellar)

  • An RL78 kit used for motor control:

    The RL78 used for motor control (Photo: Circuit Cellar)

  • An RL78 demo for home control applications:

    The RL78 used for home control (Photo: Circuit Cellar)

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS

Circuit Cellar members have used TI products in countless applications. Below are two interesting TI Cortex-based designs

A Cortex-M3 digital guitar (you can see the Android connection):

TI's digital guitar (Photo: Circuit Cellar)

Stellaris fans will be happy to see the Stellaris ARM Cortex -M4F in a small wireless application:

The Stellaris goes wireless (Photo: Circuit Cellar)

NXP mbed

Due to the success of the recent NXP mbed Design Challenge, I stopped at the mbed station to see what exciting technologies our NXP friends were exhibiting. They didn’t disappoint. Check out the mbed-based slingshot developed for playing Angry Birds!

mbed-Based sligshot for going after "Angry Birds" (Photo: Circuit Cellar)

Below is a video of the project on the mbedmicro YouTube page:

FTDI

I was pleased to see the Elektor AndroPod hard at work at the FTDI booth. The design enables users to easily control a robotic arm with Android smartphones and tablets.

FTDI demonstrates robot control with Android (Photo: Circuit Cellar)

As you can imagine, the possible applications are endless.

The AndroPod at work! (Photo: Circuit Cellar)

Weekly Elektor Wrap Up: Design West, RL78 Challenge, a Robot Kit, & More!

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Last week was busy for the international Elektor staff. In San Jose, CA, the team announced along with Circuit Cellar and Renesas the launch of the Renesas RL78 Green Energy Challenge, met with members at the Design West conference booth, held meetings with various clients, and reviewed the latest and greatest embedded technologies.

Along with IAR Systems, Renesas is challenging engineers around the world to enter the RL78 challenge and build energy-efficient, low-power applications using the RL78 MCU and IAR toolchain. Winners can take home a share of $17,500 in Grand Prizes from Renesas, and the Grand Prize winner will also win a free trip to Renesas DevCon in October 2012.

RL78 Kit

Traffic at the conference booth was steady as usual. Members and clients visited to discuss the Elektor group’s magazines (Elektor, Circuit Cellar, and audioXpress), books, kits, and projects.

As for exciting embedded technologies, staff reported on new 8-bit MCUs from Microchip Technology, interesting compiler-related announcements from companies like IAR Systems, Intel’s seven-Atom “industrial orchestra,” and more. (Keep watching CircuitCellar.com for more reports on Design West announcements and events.)

Intel's "Industrial Controller in Concert" featured seven Atom processors, four operating systems, 36 paint ball hoppers, and 2300 rubber balls, a video camera for motion sensing, a digital synthesizer, a multi-touch display, and more.

Visit Elektor’s news page for information posted last week about a two-legged wireless robot kit, a solar-powered Wikipedia Server, and more.

CircuitCellar.com is an Elektor group publication.