The August issue of Circuit Cellar is coming next week! What’s coming up next week in August Circuit Cellar? ICs for automotive, displays for embedded, open-spec SBCs, LoRa, Smart Buildings, drone applications, EEG control interface project and more!!—this 84-page magazine cooks up a tasty spread of high-quality embedded technology articles for your reading pleasure.
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Here’s a sneak preview of August 2020 Circuit Cellar:
MICROCONTROLLERS DOING EVERYTHING
ICs for Automotive Systems
By Jeff Child
From advanced infotainment systems to driver assisted vehicle controls, the embedded electronics in today’s new car designs are being tasked to do more and more. To meet these evolving design challenges, IC vendors are developing innovative solutions for automotive systems. Circuit Cellar Chief Editor Jeff Child looks at these technology trends.
TV Commercial Killer: A Simplified Redesign
By Tommy Tyler
A couple years ago, Tommy wrote an article for Circuit Cellar about his device designed to mute TV commercial audio. In this article, he shares his revamped design that is much simpler in construction while adding more features. Controlled by an Arduino Nano MCU, the electronics are so simple that the device doesn’t even need a PCB or a power supply.
Build a Gesture-Controlled Camera Platform
By Kunpeng Huang, Siqi Qian and Xinyi Yang
It’s not easy to hold a heavy camera for a long period. With that in mind, these three Cornell students designed and implemented a 2-axis gesture-controlled camera platform based on a Microchip PIC32 MCU that maps the orientation of the user’s hand to the camera. It’s able to support a relatively large camera system, orient the camera accurately and respond quickly to user input.
RESOURCES FOR EMBEDDED ENGINEERS
Datasheet: Open-Spec SBCs
By Jeff Child
Over the past several years, the number of available open-spec single board computers (SBCs) has continued to grow. The definition of “open spec” can vary, but for our purposes we’re looking at a loosely defined requirement to check off most open source boxes—ranging from community resources to strong open source software support to open schematics and open licensing. This Datasheet section updates readers on these trends and provides a product album of representative of the most popular open-spec SBCs.
Making Heads or Tails of RMS Measurements
By Robert Lacoste
Although it goes by many names, the Gaussian function appears everywhere in statistics. In this article, Robert takes a look at the math of the Gaussian function in the context of coin toss data analysis. He then shows why this is significant in electronics by linking the function to RMS (root mean square) measurements.
Graphics and Displays for Embedded Systems
By Jeff Child
The sphere of applications that can exploit high-resolution, touchscreen display technologies keeps expanding thanks to the evolution of easy-to-integrate display modules designed for embedded use. Circuit Cellar Chief Editor Jeff Child delves into the latest technology trends and product developments in graphics, video and displays.
LoRa (Part 6): A MachineQ Example Continued
By Bob Japenga
Bob continues his article series on LoRa. Last time he looked at an LoRa installation using one of MachineQ’s two starter kits. Here, in Part 6, Bob explores creating your own back-end for the MachineQ network.
MORE PROJECT ARTICLES WITH ALL THE DETAILS
Build a Joystick Interface for Flight Sims
By Jeff Bachiochi
Flight simulator programs are a great way to get the feel of flying, but using a mouse or keyboard keys lessens the reality of the experience. In this project article, Jeff builds a joystick interface device that can wirelessly control aircraft on a flight simulation program. He uses trusted model airplane radio control (RC) electronics.
EEG Error Correction Interface
By Rebecca Bell, Emma Kaufman and Chloe Kuo
The engineering of brain-computer interface (BCI) devices is a fascinating area. EEG measurement is a key tool in these endeavors. In this project article, these three Cornell graduates built an EEG error correction interface in which users influence which way a conveyor belt travels based on their calculated anxiety levels.
Writing Drone Applications for MAVSDK/PX4
By Raul Alvarez-Torrico
Previously, Raul has written articles introducing Ardupilot and PX4 for drone development. Here, he follows that trend with an intro to crafting drone applications with the MAVSDK MAVLink library and the PX4 autopilot ecosystem. He discusses how to set up a development environment and install a basic toolchain including PX4 and MAVSDK software.
