Author: Chris Gammell

Chris Gammell is an engineer who talks more than most other engineers. He also writes, makes videos and a couple podcasts. While analog electronics happen to be his primary interests, he also dablles in FPGAs and system level design.

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Blogging Economics Music Politics Renewable Energy

“Hot, Flat and Crowded” By Thomas Friedman — A short review

I love public libraries because it’s like having Amazon.com minus the pesky notion of paying for a book. However, the downside is you don’t get to keep what you’re reading–especially if it is a popular book that other people want before you can renew it. As such, I’m going to review what I’ve read of this book so far, because it’s just that good.

For background, Thomas Friedman also wrote “The World is Flat”, a book detailing how the economy and the world has changed since the September 11th attacks, both good and bad. In that book (written in 2005) he details the benefits of outsourcing and globalization and actually downplays the notion of globalization as an enemy, instead framing it as an opportunity that requires a competitive nature in workers and corporations. While that book was written before there was the possibility of recession, the book explains the rapid growth that is occurring overseas which will likely collapse along with the credit markets. I highly suggest reading that book if you have not, it is a great introduction into Friedman’s writings and is a good preface for the book reviewed here.

Onto the main event. Let’s decode the title of this book:

  • Hot — Not too hard to figure this one out. Global warming is not just a potential threat anymore, it’s real, it’s dangerous and it’s here to stay (or is it?)
  • Flat — See the previous paragraph. The world is quickly trying to elevate more people into the middle class than ever before. This is putting a serious strain on all resources of the planet, including the atmosphere.
  • Crowded — Barring a major war, outbreak or famine, the world population keeps on growing. Add to the mix better drugs, a higher focus on health and longer life expectancies, the people that are here will probably stick around too. Overpopulation is yet another drain and strain on the planet’s resources, multiplicatively so if those people are in the middle class.

Of these, I would put forth that only the “hot” portion has any solution, and at that, reduced consumption and switching to renewable energy will likely only go as far as retaining the current temperature of the earth. For the “flat” and “crowded” parts, the best case scenario is that we find ways to accommodate more and more people entering the middle class and the world in general by changing our perceptions of allowable consumption in the middle class (and any class for that matter). Most notably, Americans who have become accustomed to a particularly wasteful way of life (as chronicled by Duncan)may have to re-assess how they consume products; while it would be nice to think we will do this with conservation in mind, more realistically we will be forced to do this because of the laws of supply and demand are going to make previously cheap products much more expensive.

How do we do it, you ask? With a “green revolution”. This means an economy that is based around locally produced energy that is both renewable and environmentally friendly. Even though it sounds a bit new-agey to conjecture that renewable energy can save the world, it really starts to make sense when you look at current world issues. Here are some problems that a green economy can fix:

  1. Energy supply and demand — The best ways to bring down energy costs is to either flood the market with it (energy) or tell the energy producers you don’t need it. Since the world as a whole will not likely give up our digital and analog electronic gadgets anytime soon and our energy usage will likely increase, it would behoove us to begin making cheap and renewable energy. Since oil doesn’t seem to be an option as cheap energy anymore, we should probably start looking at new exciting options, like solar cells made out of black silicon.
  2. Petropolitics — If we don’t end up going out and figuring out how to make renewable energy, we’ll continue shipping boatloads of money to countries that hate us. Like I had written about these oil barons before, why not hit them where it hurts? In the wallet.
  3. Climate Change — Al Gore knows it and told a lot of the world. There is undeniable climate change happening every day we continue to dump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Reduce coal and oil usage and the amount we dump into the air will go down.
  4. Energy Poverty — Without energy, it’s hard to do a lot of things. Most of us would go check into a hotel if the power went out for more than a week. However, one third of the world lives in energy poverty, meaning they cannot even come close to pulling themselves out of monetary poverty; health standards are proven to drop dramatically when people live this way.
  5. Biodiversity Loss — Human consumption of natural resources is threatening damn near every species on the planet, up to and including humans. If we don’t want to have only cockroaches and squirrels running around a polluted planet with us, we need to set up more sanctuaries and reduce

I unfortunately didn’t get to read about all of Friedman’s ideas, but plan to read more as I get my own copy of this book. (More of the basis of his ideas can be read from his entries in the NY Times and Foreign Policy magazine)

I will leave you with one of my favorite statistics and quotes that Friedman puts in the (beginning of the) book; Moisés Naím also writes in Foreign Policy about the Chinese and Indian middle class that is emerging and how “the total population of the planet will increase by about 1 billion people in the next 12 years, [but] the ranks of the middle class will swell by as many as 1.8 billion”. Just think about that for a second. 1.8 BILLION more people leaving the lights on, eating cheeseburgers, driving SUVs and doing everything else they’ve been sold as “the American Dream” (or at least way of life). They can’t be stopped and they are constantly told through advertising that they deserve whatever they want. Something has to change, and fast (besides the economy). I want to find solutions for new renewable energy and I hope you do too; but a quick thing that will help everyone is if you switch those lights off at home when you’re not using them, so be sure to do that too.

Scared by all of this? That wasn’t the point of this post, but it scares the heck out of me too. Go out and read this book and leave some comments about what you think about the future of the world.

Categories
Renewable Energy

Is black silicon the way to make cheaper solar power?

I came across an article today talking about how black silicon will revolutionize solar power. The idea developed at Harvard (and now at a company called SiOnyx) is basically to blast the surface of a silicon wafer with a high intensity laser for a very short interval. This short time “melts” the silicon and when it comes back together it has a structure allows the structure of the silicon to absorb more light. They also utilize a new type of doping, (doping is insertion of low quantities of specific elements, such as phosphorus, into silicon in order to change the properties of the silicon. Depending on the type of dopant the silicon may want to release an electron or absorb one); the laser process likely allows better penetration of the dopants into the silicon, which usually are accelerated into the silicon with HUGE magnets. There aren’t specifics about the entire process, but as you can see in the picture below, the silicon seems to stretch upwards creating cones of silicon. I would guess that the process is similar to carbon nano-tubes where they also use a laser to blast the carbon. It also makes sense that the process would work for silicon given the similar structure between carbon and silicon.

Courtesy of SiOnyx

Again, I don’t know the specifics of how the final product works better, but my guess would be that the cones are much better and capturing light, due to the higher surface area. When the light hits these more sensitive nodules, the energy “knocks” an electron loose (just as in regular PV cells), which then contributes to the overall current coming from the cell. Also of note is how the dopants shift the sensitivity of the silicon to a lower wavelength. In this case, it is shifting it down into the red and infrared regions of the spectrum, which allows for more energy to be absorbed by silicon, as opposed to reflected. This also is the namesake characteristic of this technology, because in theory “black” silicon would absorb all light (as opposed to a theoretically worthless “white” silicon that would reflect all light). The higher amount of cells hit by light (due to more surface area) and the greater sensitivity to low wavelength light such as infrared (which our bodies interpret as “heat”) gives this new silicon a much higher overall absorption and translation into usable electrical energy.

I like this idea because it lets existing solar facilities be transformed easily into solar cell facilities. This new capacity could then be absorbed by local micro-factories, putting the solar arrays together and hopefully driving the cost to the consumer down. As more and more fabrication facilities are shut down due to a possible recession, they could quickly be modified to start outputting less complicated solar cells in higher volumes. The SiOnyx equipment would provide the final processing necessary to have the higher efficiency panels.

I only know what I have read online, but I like what I have seen thus far (plus I tend to trust researchers from Harvard more than just some schlub off the street). It seems feasible in the short term and has much broader appeal and use than ideas like “dancing to save the world“. Check out the above article and if you have any thoughts, please leave them in the comments.

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Analog Electronics Digital Electronics Engineering Learning Life Work

How to get a job as a new electrical engineer grad

I was going to call this post “A portrait of an electrical engineer as a young man (or woman)” but decided against it. I’ve got nothing on James Joyce, neither in loquaciousness nor confusing writing.

Anyway, I have been pondering what kind of employee I would hire out of school for an electrical engineering position. There are some basic skill sets that will allow just about any young engineer to succeed if they have these skills (the best situation) or at least appear they will succeed if written on their resume (not the best situation). Either way, let’s look over what a new grad should have on their utility belt before going out into the scary real world.

  1. Conceptual models of passive components — This has been one of the most helpful things I have learned since I have left school…because this kind of thinking is not taught in classrooms (at least it isn’t in the curriculum). The idea is to conceptualize what a component will do, as opposed to what the math is behind a certain component or why the physics of material in a component give it certain properties. Why does this matter? When you’re looking at a 20 page schematic of something you’ve never seen before, you don’t care what kind of dielectric is in a capacitor and how the electric field affects the impedance. Nope, you care about two things: What is the value and how does it affect the system. The first question is easy because it should be written right next to the symbolic notation. The second is different for each type of passive component you might encounter. Let’s look at the common ones
    • Resistors — The  best way I’ve found to think of resistors is like a pipe. The electrons are like water. The resistance is the opposite of how wide the pipe is (if the resistance is higher, the pipe is smaller, letting fewer electrons through in the form of current). Also, the pressure (voltage) it takes to get water (electrons, current) through a pipe (resistor) will depend on the thickness of the pipe (resistance). Well whaddaya know? V=IR!
    • Capacitors — At DC, a capacitor is essentially an open circuit (think a broken wire). If you apply charge long enough (depending on the capacitance), it can consume some of that charge; after it is charged it will once again act like an open circuit. When considering AC (varying) signals, the best way to think about a capacitor is like a variable resistor. The thing controlling how much the capacitor will resist the circuit is the frequency of the signal trying to get through the capacitor. As the frequency of the signal goes up, the resistance (here it is called “impedance”) will go down. So in the extreme case, if the frequency is super high, the capacitor will appear as though it is not there to the signal (and it will “pass right through”). Taking the opposite approach helps explain the DC case. If the signal is varying so slowly that it appears to be constant (DC), then the impedance of the capacitor will be very high (so high it appears to be a broken wire to the signal).
    • Inductors — Inductors have an opposite effect as capacitors and provide some very interesting effects when you combine them in a circuit with capacitors. In their most basic form, inductors are wires that can be formed into myriad shape but are most often seen as spirals. Inductors are “happy” when low frequency signals go through them; this means that the impedance is low at low frequencies (DC) and is high at high frequencies (AC). This makes sense to me because if the signal is going slow enough, it’s really just passing through a wire, albeit a twisty one. An interesting thing about electrons going through a wire is that when they do, they also product tiny magnetic fields around the wire (as explained by Maxwell’s Equations). When a high frequency signal tries to go through the inductor, the magnetic fields are changing very rapidly, something they intrinsically do not want. Instead it “slows” the electrons, or really increases the impedance. This “stops” higher frequency signals from passing through depending on the inductance of the inductor and the frequency of the signal applied. Looking at the how they react to different frequencies, we can see how inductors and capacitors have opposite effects at the extremes.
    • Diodes — I think of diodes as a one way mirror…except you can’t see through the one way until you get enough energy. The one way nature is useful in blocking unwanted signals, routing signals away from sensitive nodes and even limiting what part of a varying signal will “get through” the diode to the other side.
    • Transistors — I always like thinking of transistors as a variable resistor that is controlled by the gate voltage. The variable resistor doesn’t kick in until the gate voltage hits a certain threshold and sometimes the variable resistor also allows some energy to leak to one of the other terminals.
  2. C coding — Sorry to all you analog purists out there, but at some point as an engineer, you need to know how to code. Furthermore, if you’re going to learn how to code, my personal preference for languages to start with is C. Not too many other languages have been around for as long nor are they as closely tied to hardware (C is good for writing low level drivers that interpret what circuits are saying so they can talk to computers). I’m not saying higher level languages don’t have their place, but I think that C is a much better place to start because many other languages (C++, JAVA, Verilog, etc) have similar structure and can quickly be learned if you know C. Even though the learning curve is higher for C, I think it is worth it in the end and would love to see some college programs migrate back towards these kinds of languages, especially as embedded systems seem to be everywhere these days.
  3. How an op amp works — I set the op amp apart from the passives because it is an active component (duh) and because I think that it’s so much more versatile that it’s important to set it apart conceptually. I’ve always had the most luck anthropomorphizing op amps and figuring out what state they “want” to be in. Combining how you conceptually think about op amps and passives together can help to conceptualize more difficult components, such as active filters and analog to digital converters.
  4. The ability to translate an example — A skill that nearly every engineering class is teaching, with good reason. Ask yourself: are homework problems ever THAT much different from the examples in the book? No. Because they want you to recognize a technique or a idiosyncrasy in a problem, look at the accepted solution and then apply it to your current situation. Amazingly, this is one of the most useful skills learned in the classroom. Everyday engineering involves using example solutions from vendors, research done in white papers/publications and using even your old textbooks to find the most effective, and more importantly, the quickest solution to a problem.
  5. High level system design — This is similar to the first point, but the important skill here is viewing the entire picture. If you are concentrating on the gain of a single amplification stage, you may not notice that it is being used to scale a signal before it goes into an analog-to-digital converter. If you see a component or a node is grounded periodically, but ignore it, you may find out that it changes the entire nature of a circuit. The ability to separate the minutiae from the overarching purpose of a circuit is necessary to quickly diagnose circuits for repair or replication in design.
  6. Basic laws — It is amazing to me how much depth is needed in electrical engineering as opposed to breadth. You don’t need to know all of the equations in the back of your textbook. You need to know 5-10; but you need to know them so well that you could recite them and derive other things from them in your sleep. A good example would be Kirchoff’s laws. Sure, they are two (relatively) simple laws about the currents in a node and the voltage around a loop, but done millions of times and you have a fun little program called SPICE.
  7. Budgeting — There are many important budgets to consider when designing a new project. In a simple op amp circuit, there are many sources of error and inefficiencies. Determining and optimizing an error budget will ensure the most accurate output possible. Finding and determining areas that burn power unnecessarily must be discovered and then power saving techniques must be implemented. The cost is another consideration that is usually left to non-engineering, but is an important consideration in many different projects. Finding cost effective solutions to a problem (including the cost of an engineer’s time) is a skill that will make you friends in management and will help you find practical solutions to many problems.
  8. Math — Ah yes, an oldy but goody. Similar to the passive components, having a conceptual notion of what math is required and how it can be applied to real life situation is more important than the details. Often knowing that an integral function is needed is as important as knowing how to do it. And similar to the basic laws, you don’t need to know the most exotic types of math out there. I have encountered very few situations where I need to take the third derivative of a complicated natural log function; however, I have needed to convert units every single day I have been an engineer. I have needed simple arithmetic, but I’ve needed to do it quickly and correctly. Sure, you get to use a calculator in the real world, but you better learn how to use that quickly too, because your customers don’t want to wait for you to get out your calculator, let alone learn how it works.

Each of these skills could be useful in some capacity for a new electrical engineer grad. There are many different flavors of engineering and the skills listed above are really modeled off what would be good for an analog system engineer (who develop commercial or industrial products). However, a future chip designer and even a digital hardware engineer all could benefit from having the skills listed, as it is sometimes more important to be open to new opportunities (especially given the possibility of recession and potential shifting of job markets).

Did I miss anything? Do you think there are other skills that are necessary for young electrical engineers? What about general skills that could apply to all young engineers?

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Categories
Analog Electronics Economics Supply Chain

DC powered home

Either my readership has extended to people at multinational corporations or the idea is intrinsically viable enough to actually work! Either way, I’m happy.

Junko Yoshida of EE Times reports that Sharp Corp and TDK corp have both displayed home mock-ups that include DC modules running of of solar cells and do not require any AC/DC or DC/AC conversion (thereby saving power wasted on the conversion process). This is reminiscent of when I asked if DC can power an entire home. They cite instances of using DC power to directly use in LED home lighting, flatscreens and various other commercial products.

Looks like the idea is catching on, I can’t wait until it becomes possible for everyone!

Categories
Engineering Health Life Work

Standing up while working

I had an opportunity to go to a conference last week where I stood in front of a booth for 4+ hours. By the end I was chugging coffee to stay awake and my lower back hurt so bad that I had to lean on the table in order to appear that I was still functional as a presenter and engaged with people that came up to talk to us. I really couldn’t believe how much things have changed. When I was working night shift in the fab, there would be nights where I would stand for 8+ hours of a 12 hour shift, oftentimes standing in front of a machine, modifying something on a touchscreen. I know this could have been even worse and that many people deal with even longer and more strenuous hours, but the difference between my old work environment and my current one is pretty glaring to me.

So once I was back in my comfortable office chair in my cube, kicking back, staring at my computer monitor and once again chugging coffee to stay awake, I realized I have to change something. Even though I enjoy many parts of my job, the computer is a necessity and I have to deal with working on one, sometimes for hours at a time. Like any brash young man, I decided to act first, ask questions later: I hoisted my monitor up on a shelf above my desk, placed my keyboard on top of an unused garbage can turned over and put my computer mouse up on a couple boxes, all roughly at my eye or arm level. I now had a makeshift standing workstation and looked like a certifiable geek. Now that the action was complete, I ask: why would someone want to stand while working? A little Googling resulted in a fine piece of supporting information on why someone might want to stand while working. Allow me to summarize and expand upon these ideas:

  1. It’s healthy — Intuitively, standing makes more sense than sitting at a desk. Evolution has shaped humans so they can hunt, gather, assemble, reproduce, eat, sleep, etc. There wasn’t too much time spent developing as creatures that push buttons while hunched over in front of little screens (obviously this will be the future of the human race). Standing makes sense from many health perspectives, so let’s dive even deeper into this concept.
    1. Bloodflow — Similar to the point above, the human body wants to exist in a straight line, where the heart does not have to pump blood around 90 degree angles (your knees, etc). There are also less places for blood to pool when you are standing (your feet, perhaps) and less chances of circulation being cut off to extremeties (fingers, toes). The tradeoff between potential pooling of blood in the feet (which can be walked off) versus better overall circulation is definitely worth it.
    2. Posture — Slouching is SO easy when you are sitting in a comfy office chair, even one of the posture enhancing chairs that go for $800+. I happen to be an expert at slouching in my seat so I don’t need any help from a chair.
    3. Alertness — If you invent a time machine and go back a few hundred thousand years and I bet you won’t see a caveman rolling around in a desk chair, hunting his prey. Sitting makes me sleepy and I hope to eventually wean myself off of coffee as a result of standing up while working.
    4. Concentration — This has been the most surprising side effect for me thus far. I can basically see everyone who walks by, as opposed to hearing them before. One might think this would distract me from my work, but either I am becoming indifferent to seeing people pass me or the increased bloodflow and endorphins reaching my brain are telling me that it’s ok to keep reading a paper on an op-amp or whatever I happen to be perusing.
    5. You won’t get sick — Seth Roberts is a professor emeritus from UC Berkeley who has been doing self-experimentation for 12 years for self gain and in conjunction with his research. Along the way he some how correlated standing while working to a marked reduction in the number of colds per year. This alone is enough reason for me to try it.
  2. Visibility — I am 6 feet tall, exactly. Standing does two things for me. First, it allows me to see out the windows that would usually be blocked by my cube wall. This may come back to bite me on a dreary winter day in the Great North, but I’m willing to risk it. Second, the unintended consequence of being noticed by others, including management. This is not a concern of mine either way, but I think it’s interesting nonetheless.
  3. Accountability — Again, the height of my monitor is enough that it just shows over the top of the cube walls. I’m not saying I’ve ever been a devious employee, but allowing others see what I am doing on your computer definitely has me checking CNN and Reddit less frequently (wasn’t much to begin with). If I do decide to take a break, I look at what I want to see (headlines) and get back to my work. With a tightening of belts throughout the industry and the looming possibility of recession, now is a great time to work extra hard and show your company just how valuable you are.

To be honest, I haven’t been standing while working for very long nor do I know if it will last. If even half the benefits listed above are true, then it will be worth looking silly at work until my co-workers get used to me standing while working. Have you ever considered doing something like this? If so, please let me know in the comments.

Categories
Analog Electronics Blogging Health Learning Life Music Politics

Why start a namesake site?

Tonight, I’m using every bit of my being not to post something political (watching the VP debate). The tension in this country is so thick you can cut it up and serve it. Anyway, instead I will post a question (to myself).

Why did I start ChrisGammell.com?

I’ve written before about why I started a blog, but never why I decided to make it a namesake site (using my real name, all over the place). The main reason is branding. Pure, simple and maybe a little bit selfish. It’s actually a lot of work to get people to know your name. It’d be much easier to start a blog titled “AnalogElectricalEngineering.com” or something like that. That would be great for the average Analog Electrical Engineer, but not so much for Chris Gammell. In that case, I would have to work extra hard to let people know who I am and what I do. So why else? I like trying to be an individual (even if it complete individuality may not be possible). I love the idea that people are reading my ideas. I like the attention, sure, but moreso, I like contributing to society, even a little bit. Perhaps it’s a characteristic of Generation Y, but I enjoy it and I’ll spend some late nights to help out if I can. Yet another reason is that I enjoy challenging myself to learn knew things. True, I feel a little guilty blogging about things I’m not a master of, but if I spend some time researching, I can usually point readers in the right direction, even if I’m not completely sure. The best point is where I define a problem for myself online and then figure it out and get to post it later.

It’s a risk, for sure. First off, if I publish some bogus articles, people will know it. Moderators, readers, editors, professionals, everyone is really a critic on the internet. But I’m ok with that because when someone corrects me (hopefully in a civil manner) it’s an opportunity to learn. Plus my ego isn’t so big that I think I know everything (or anything). Beyond the simple idea of being wrong, I’m also giving direct access to a lot of information about myself and my life, even if it is my professional life. I justify the lack of anonymity by thinking about having people coming back and reading my ideas because they recognize my name. If I can inspire some confidence in my ideas, then I’m doing alright. Finally, I take great care to not reflect badly upon those that know me, nor those that are associated with me. In my thus-far short career as an analog engineer, I’ve found that referring other people is a power that should be respected. Not only should you be careful who you refer to others but also how you interact with others so they will someday refer you.

Short and simple, I started a namesake site because of my ego. I keep it going because I love the direction it’s taken me in. I love that blogging is helping me define myself outside of my job, even if it is similar to my job (which I also love).

Why do you blog (or not blog)? Respond in the comments, please!

Categories
Analog Electronics Digital Electronics Engineering Renewable Energy

Power Saving Techniques

Two things will make people want to use less power: not giving them much to start with and making it prohibitively expensive. Both of these scenarios seem to be dovetailing right now with the shrinking of many devices and energy becoming an ever more expensive and sought after.

Sure, there are people out there trying to create and harvest more energy. Either through more drilling, more wars, more acquisitions or new technologies. But eventually, people start to question why we are using so much energy in the first place. Instead of running device batteries into the ground quickly, why not draw less current? Instead of putting a bigger more expensive battery on a device in the first place, why not come up with new techniques to conserve power? Instead of paying high prices for energy and polluting the environment, why not conserve energy in our devices so that we don’t need as much energy overall?

Here are some of the methods that designers use in increasing numbers to reduce power consumption

  1. New chips — The basic idea is the same for any chip: Try and have the same or better performance of today’s chips with incrementally less power.  Most often, the best way to do so is to reduce the number of electrons it takes to store a value or drive another circuit (or whatever your task may be). However, there is a lower limit to how few electrons are required to complete a task (one, duh). How do we get less electrons doing these tasks?
    • Smaller geometries — Moore’s law tells us that process technologies will allow a doubling of technological ability every 18 months. This could even be a faster rate than previously thought, according to one of my favorite futurists, Ray Kurzweil. As fabrication facilities race to leapfrog one another to the next smallest process technology, they also help to reduce the number of electrons running through a device. If you look at the path of an electron along a trace on a microchip or op amp, it resembles a “tunnel” that electrons flow through. As process technologies get smaller and smaller (32 nm, anyone?) there is less room for electrons to flow through and thus, less power is used.
    • New materials — If you have less electrons flowing through a semiconductor, that means the total current flowing through the semiconductor is lower (current is defined as the number of electrons [measured in charge] flowing past a point for a period of time i.e. Coulombs per second). While less current can also mean less noise (fewer electrons bumping into other molecules and heating them up), it also means that if there is more resistance in a connection between two points, it will be harder for the electrons to travel that distance. As such, semiconductors are now made with new doping compounds (the molecules they force into silicon) or they forgo the silicon and try entirely new materials (Gallium Arsenide is a good example). These new materials allow for more efficient transistors and lower power consumption in devices.
    • New architectures — National Semiconductor has been pushing a new, more consistent power metric called “PowerWise“; it is targeted towards the mobile market and the “green revolution”. While this is a bit of a marketing move, it also helps to highlight their most efficient products across the different product types (LDOs vs Switching Regulators vs Op amps, etc).  Some of these newer, higher effeciency products use new architectures, as in the case of some of the switching regulators
    • Lower supply voltages — This one affects me on a more regular basis. Sure, the lower potential across a junction will drive less current in the off state (Iq) and will have less noise due to lower potentials; but this also throws a wrench in the works if you’re trying to find parts that will drive some significant currents or have any kind of large allowable input voltage ranges to a circuit without bootstrapping the supplies.
  2. PWM — Pulse Width Modulation (or PWM) is an easy way to reduce power in LED lighting situations. The idea is based off the fact that the human eye cannot determine the continuity of a light signal if it is below a certain frequency; instead, pulsing an LED on and off quickly will translate to the human eye as a lower intensity than an LED lit continuously. This idea is used regularly in portable electronics to dim the “backlight” of a laptop screen, cell phone, GPS device, etc. The duty cycle is the time that a device is powered divided by the total time it is on; usually it is given as a percentage. So if an LED is lit for 1 seconds and then off for 3 seconds (1 second on divided by 4 seconds total), the duty cycle is 25. In that example, the LED would appear to be one quarter as bright as a fully powered LED, but will also save a little less than 75% of the power normally required. The power saved can never be the entire difference between the normal case and the PWM case because some amount of power is required in order to switch between the on and off states.
  3. Microcontroller/Code Improvements — One of my favorite new blogs, written by Rick Zarr of National Semiconductor, has two great posts about the energy content of software. In it, he points out some of the ways that software can intelligently shut down portions of the code in order to reduce redundant processes and save on processing power. However, the points that I really like are the ones  he makes about making the simplest possible solution that will still get the job done well. This could mean cutting out some software libraries that were easier to just include in a project or learning how to properly construct a software project. Other techniques could be a combination of better coding and PWM: putting a device to “sleep” for a set period of time only to have it wake up at set intervals to see if it is needed.
  4. Going Analog — One last great point that Rick makes in his first post about energy saving techniques in software actually relates more to hardware. Instead of using a DSP, an ADC and some coded FIR filters, why not pull the filter back into the analog domain? Sure, it’s a little more difficult at the beginning but there won’t be any quantization errors (the error that comes from approximating a real signal with a digital signal). Analog engineers can do the same task with an active filter as digital engineers can do with a digital filter for many simpler applications. With the lower part count and the lower strain on the system of not converting a signal from analog to digital and back again, designers can save some significant power.

The final solution to our energy problems will be a combination of power saving techniques and new renewable energy sources. With some of the above techniques, designers will be able to use smaller batteries that allow longer usage times and have less of an impact on the environment. Please feel free to leave comments or any other power saving techniques you have heard of in the comments!

Categories
Analog Electronics Economics Engineering Politics

Possibility of Recession

I’m sure it’s one of the first times I’ve ever thought this, but right now I’m really glad I didn’t go into finance for a career. OK, that’s untrue, even though the money is good for them, I’ve always recognized that the lifestyle stinks. But holy moly, those guys (and gals) are probably not having a great time right now, even if they’ve socked away money before this month.

As any part-time pessimist would do in rough economic times, I’ve been thinking about work and how I could be affected by an extended recession. I’m not too worried that a possible economic downturn will have me out on the street tomorrow, but of course I wonder what might happen in the near- to mid-future. Furthermore, being the perpetual optimist, I am trying to see how a recession could be good not only for engineers, but also for engineers (and others) in Generation Y. So for now, forget about golden parachutes, let’s think about silver linings:

  1. Hard times — You know what people who were around in the depression era love talking about? Hard times. You know why? Because they made it, that’s why. So listen up! They weren’t handed jobs and houses and pre-packaged suburban Lego™-kit lives. They put up with some sucky times and earned a lot of what they got. Fast forward 80 years and you have Generation Y, the helicopter parent driven careers with high salaries and lower skill levels than many engineers leaving school 20 years ago. I’m not saying I’m not grateful for the opportunities I’ve had and the work I’ve been allowed to do, I’m just saying that a wake up call could help our generation in some subtle ways. Who knows, maybe in 80 years we’ll be the ones telling the young whippersnappers how good they have it.
  2. Weak dollar — I hear a good deal on NPR about how the credit crunch is the most worrisome aspect of a flailing economy and I agree it can really hurt companies if they do not have access to capital. Poor cash flow through one business can affect the next and the next and so on because companies are not capable of buying the products they need to get their job done. However, something a lot of economists are failing to mention is how the bailout and the economy in general is pushing the dollar to new all time lows. For engineers, with jobs being outsourced daily, this can be somewhat good. It has been cost effective to send manufacturing jobs overseas and even some design jobs, but that has been because of discrepancies in currency (no thanks to the Chinese government). If the value of the dollar drops off, it’s unlikely that textile mills will be popping up in Cleveland like they do in Malaysia or India. But maybe a few more manufacturing jobs will stick around. And maybe a manager or two will think twice about the equivalent cost of sending a design job overseas where they might have to spend some extra time fighting the language barrier.
  3. More start-ups — Somewhere along the way, bright young entrepreneurs who can’t get jobs at their local global conglomerate because of a hiring freeze end up saying “Hey, I can start a company! I’m already not making money, it wouldn’t be any different!” Don’t believe me? Google started in 1998. It flourished through the entire tech bubble mess. Yeah, there’s an example for you. Hard times, especially when it’s hard to get loans or credit, make the environment particularly well suited to software start-ups, where fixed costs (factory equipment, raw material, Swingline staplers) are much lower than they would be for a widget making facility.
  4. Repair — Some of the best lessons I’ve ever learned in electronics was trying to fix something that was already broken. I’m trying to fix a broken piano right now and it’s already been an enlightening experience. In the spirit of all things renewable, why not fix the gadgets we have instead of creating new ones we don’t need (“Oh look, this refrigerator has GPS!”). As the world goes more digital and parts get smaller, there’s less troubleshooting and more “throw out that board, put in a new one”. But even having younger engineers analyze failures on a system level can have a positive effect on their understanding of said systems.

I would love to tell you that everything is hunky dory and that the economy will have a continually positive growth rate forever. But seriously, that’s politicians’ jobs to lie about that. I’m just saying that in the event of a recession, people deal. I’m not planning on going all grapes of wrath and trying my hand at farming in the dust bowl, but I feel (perhaps overly) confident that I’m flexible enough to weather any economic storm brewing on the horizon. Do you think you are? Let me know in the comments.

Categories
Analog Electronics Learning Life Politics Supply Chain Work

The Great North

This blog started when I moved back to Cleveland. Really, it was a little bit sooner, but it got going full time once I was settled in back in May. Since I’ve been back, I’ve actually really enjoyed it. There are some things I miss about Austin (where I used to live), but I am happy with my decision, most notably because of my job. I feel like I am part of the minority that is moving back North, that others in my generation are more likely to head south at the first opportunity.

Is there any reason to live in the north anymore?

Let’s go over the sour points first:

  1. It’s cold — No brainer on that one, it definitely snows more in Ohio than in Texas, but you do get the benefit of some winter sports (skiing, tubing, professional snowman making) and the picturesque nature of seeing snow on Christmas or at other times (this wears off after about two weeks). Unfortunately, the cold lasts longer than most people would like in Ohio. Back in Texas I was wearing shorts and tubing down the river by March.
  2. Gas/Heating —  This year might be the best example of expensive heating, but it has yet to play out. Oil prices are falling right now but could easily rise again in time for winter. There are some other (corny) ways to heat your house, so oil prices do not have the final say in how much we’ll be paying per month for oil north of the Mason-Dixon line. On the bright side, we’re paying WAY less for electricity than the south during the summer months.
  3. Young people — There’s kind of an avalanche effect to people migrating out of one city or into another. The more people that move somewhere, the “hotter” the scene becomes and more people want to move there. Cleveland still has a pretty vibrant night life, but it pales in comparison to Austin and some other larger cities.
  4. Urban Development — Suburbs happen. Sprawl happens. The longer a city has been around (such as those  in the north), the more people want to spread out and get their own space. This is slowly happening in the south (Dallas, anyone?), but Austin is still relatively compact. With newer, smaller, growing southern cities, urban planning can help to compact things and make them more accessible. If you are moving to a city in the north, it’s likely that a lot of the urban development is already done (though not completely).
  5. Jobs — We hear about the manufacturing jobs lost in Mid-West every time you turn on NPR. But there are also less large corporations in the north, due to some of the above listed reasons and less amiable tax laws than parts of the south.

But there is a lot of bright spots in Cleveland, even in the winter!

  1. Water — Necessary for life, right? Well some people didn’t really think about that when they were setting up new cities and towns in the southwest (I’d reference all of Arizona first). The Mid-West though? We’ve got tons of it! The great lakes are a great resource, whether for shipping, recreation, fishing or even lighting on fire (go Cleveland!). It definitely makes the summer months that much better and makes the winter months that much more bearable. Polar bear club, anyone?
  2. Infrastructure — Even though we may be a sprawling metropolis with many different cities, I will say that Cleveland has the benefit of a well developed system of roads. If you are so inclined, you can also take an AmTrak train to more destinations than you can from Austin (more track = more destinations…but to be fair you can get to most any city if you sit on a train long enough).
  3. Proximity — This was another nice deciding factor, both in where I went to school and why I wanted to move back. I can easily drive home to Buffalo in 3 hours, can drive to Columbus in 2.5, can drive to Detroit in 2.5 if I’m feeling feisty and can get to Chicago or DC in about 6. This compared with Austin having a 3 hour drive to the next biggest city (that I didn’t want to visit anyway) and a 12 hour drive to get out of the state.
  4. Airport — Similar to above, sometimes you just want to get out of town. If you can’t drive, you might as well fly. And if you’re going to fly, you might as well fly out of a hub. Even though continental decided to cut back their flights out of Cleveland, we have a great place to fly out of to get to some warmer destinations in those bleak winter months.
  5. Home Prices/Cost of Living — Thanks in part to our bozo friends in the finance industry and the overzealous DIYer house crowd, the housing market isn’t doing too hot right now. However, if you’re looking for a house, this is a great time! House prices and general food prices make for a much lower cost of living than many parts of the country, especially those with similar populations to Cleveland. Sometimes this is offset by lower taxes, but your consumption rate can be a little higher without incurring as much cost.
  6. Renewable energy — There is a lot of wind out on Lake Erie. This primes the region for becoming one of the premier renewable energy markets as we move forward with attempting our energy independence. The Great Lakes Institute for Energy Innovation is a start up at Case Western that could really help to move this forward.

I’m still really glad that I moved back to Cleveland. I only dealt with winter from Feb – April last year, so we’ll see how I handle an entire Cleveland winter. I’m not saying I’ll live in the Great North forever, but that for now, it fits me just right. Keep warm!

Categories
Blogging

New Theme

Hi Everyone,

I have been reading some ways to take a blog to the next level, linked by the ever resourceful and connected Seth Godin.

I am considering switching themes. I had a rough time of it when I was using StumbleUpon a while back and came across a few different sites that had the same theme as this one. It’s a testament to the creator of the theme, but a bad way to stand out.  As such, I’m going to embark upon making my own theme. I’m sure there will be some component of circuits and analog electronics on there. I mean, this is an analog blog, right? If you have any suggestions for me, please leave them in the comments.

I’ve also gotten tired of seeing the main column of this blog be so narrow, so I have adjusted the width and am working on adjusting all the peripheral columns and such. If you are having trouble seeing this site, please leave a comment or email me (see the contact section of the blog). Thanks for your help!