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.

Categories
Part Review

Part Review: LM741

We all have to start somewhere.

I’ve been thinking about my posts as of late. Moreso, how I can offer something of substance to readers. At least substance that is usable on a daily basis. What do EEs want to read when they get to this site?

I came up with part reviews. I started something similar at my other project, Electricio.us. Spec sheet analysis is a critical skill for any analog engineer. It’s also is time consuming and hard to keep up with. So why not have a few choice parts highlighted on here? I don’t plan on reviewing the newest and hottest parts…but maybe the most useful. So let’s start with the LM741.

a uA741 op amp in action on a breadboard

A 741? These are parts I joke about, not parts I use on an everyday basis. But like I said, we all have to start somewhere. I’m sure many of us started using this part in electronics labs and at home in hobby projects. It’s the quintessential beginner op amp and it was one of the first ever designed.

LM741 datasheet from National Semiconductor

Pros:

  • Cheap — Being made by multiple vendors (necessarily called the LM741 but probably containing the number 741 somewhere in the title) really can help with cost.
  • Standard pinout — Sometimes even more valuable than having something cheap in the first place, being able to find a drop-in replacement can be a godsend when in a bind. This has been doubly true with the economic downturn. Sure, the part being out for 42 years doesn’t hurt either. People managed to figure out it’s pretty popular since it first arrived on the scene and duplicated this trailblazing part’s pin assignments.
  • Nulling circuit — As we’ll see in the “cons” about this part, the offset voltage is horrible, but the tuneability of the part is a nice feature if you have to use this part. The “offset null” pins give you access to the 1K emitter resistor circuit, basically allowing you to drive the input voltage on one side of the op amp higher by giving a different resistance for the bias current on the input stage. This effectively raises the voltage on one side of the input or the other (inverting or non-inverting). Pretty neat stuff!
  • Bandwidth — For an old part, the bandwidth on the 741 is 1.5 MHz. This is set by the internal capacitor, which acts as a pole inside the circuit and limits how fast the circuit can respond. This is extra interesting because the 741 was the first part to ever do this inside of the IC itself; previously you had to set the compensation capacitor externally. At 1.5 MHz, this old geezer of a part can still get up and move like a jackrabbit.

Cons:

  • Offset voltage — As you can see above, the nulling circuit is necessary because the offset voltages can get pretty extreme on the inputs of this op amp. “So what?” you say. Well, this causes issues when any kind of precision is required. If you put in a 1 volt signal into an LM741 that is set up in a buffer configuration, the 5 or so mV of offset voltage between the inputs will get passed directly to the output! That’s .5% of your signal right off the bat! And if there is any gain in the circuit (i.e. it being set up in an inverting or non-inverting configuration), then your offset gets multiplied by whichever gain you apply to the circuit! That means for a gain of 10, your 1V input signal now has an output offset of 50 mV! Say goodbye to DC accuracy!
  • Offset voltage drift –Even if you decide to “dial in” an offset null resistance on the proper pins, this is only accurate at the temperature you were at while correcting the offset. For every degree change, there is another 15 uV of voltage offset.
  • Bias current — We all know that in an ideal model of an op amp, you assume there is no current flowing into the inputs terminals. Well, that’s never really the case, and having any current flowing into the terminals can cause DC offsets once that current flows through resistors (such as in a non-inverting amplifier configuration). The standard bias current spec’d on this part is .1 to 1 uA. That’s nothing to write home about, especially if you care about DC accuracy. The downer on this poor spec is that there isn’t an internal “knob” to help with the bias current; you just have to deal with it and try to design around it.
  • PSRR — Though it’s not the worst I’ve ever seen, the PSRR on this part isn’t great either. At a typical value of 77 dB (use 80 for easy math) that means that any noise appearing on the power rails will show up 10^-(80/4) times on the output. So if you see a 1V transient on a 15V supply rail (gah! huge!), then you will have a 10 mV spike on the output. This can cause some serious noise problems down the line and most op amps I’ve been looking at these days have been well north of 100 dB PSRR.

This part is old, no way to overlook that. But it is still relevant part and is the basis for many parts that exist today. That’s pretty impressive some 40 years later. The downsides show the part’s age but are a symptom of the technology and the time this part was developed. The transistors are BJT, compared to the MOSFET based parts of today; many of the specs are guaranteed to be worse on this fact alone (though not the speed nor the power handling ability).

If you have a simple need for an op amp and you know how to properly account for all the shortcomings in this op amp, it’s a fine choice. Like I said above, it’s low cost, easy to use and plentiful in supply. And if history has shown anything, it’s that this part is not going away anytime soon.

So this was my first part review. I think in the future instead of running down the list of a lot of the specs like I did here, I would focus instead on one or two of the spectacular properties of a chip or the extremely underwhelming properties of a chip. Comparing all the middle of the road specs is a waste of everyone’s time. I wanted to make sure I covered a few things here as a baseline for future reviews though. I’d also like to step outside the bread and butter parts of an analog electrical engineer’s part drawer (the op amp) and review other types of components.

If you have any you would like to see reviewed in the future or have any thoughts about this review, be sure to leave a note in the comments.

Thanks to 畢業了吧 for the photo

Categories
Analog Electronics Work

Where Are Technical Areas in the US?

I was recently talking to my girlfriend about if we ever moved and needed to find jobs, where the most likely place would be to find work as an electrical engineer. It was interesting talking out cities that may or may not sync up with places she could find a job. Now, I don’t have much interest in leaving my current job, and while I hope to work on my own some day, I’m still quite dependent on employers for my livelihood.  So I did the fast/easy thing and went to Indeed.com and checked available positions under “electrical engineer”. Simple enough. So where are the technical jobs these days? (obviously this data is meant to change over time)

A map I made over at MapBuilder.net

    1. San Diego, CA (1059)
    2. Houston, TX (970)
    3. San Jose, CA (723)
    4. New York, NY (670)
    5. Santa Clara, CA (571)
    6. Phoenix, AZ (564)
    7. Washington, DC (543)
    8. Austin, TX (539)
    9. Sunnyvale, CA (529)
    10. Chicago, IL (472)
    11. Dallas, TX (471)
    12. Fort Meade, MD (424)
    13. Atlanta, GA (384)
    14. Los Angeles, CA (377)

The number in the parentheses are the number of positions listed online. It’s fair to assume some significant number of those are repeats (Indeed.com is a scraper, not some manual entry site), but we can assume that all the cities listed have a proportionate number of repeat listings. It’s also interesting– but not surprising–to note that certain areas are dense enough with jobs and location (i.e. silicon valley) that three of those cities (3, 5, 9) only show up as one tag.

Now, this isn’t to say these are the best jobs or the easiest to fill nor does it even point out how varied the positions can be! For example, an embedded developer and an analog system engineer might all be under the title “electrical engineer“. If you have experience working on electronics on an oil rig you’re much more likely to get a job in Houston than Fort Meade, regardless of how many jobs are available in either location. But these numbers do  point out where there is a considerable enough chunk of industry to have this many job listings.

So I ask you to respond in the shiny new comments section: are these really the only areas employers are hiring these days? Is there a significant long tail that I’m not seeing on Indeed? (i.e. 30 more cities with 250 listings each?) Are there any obviously booming spots that are left off the map? What about outside the good ol’ U S of A? I know there are a couple of readers, writers and witty commenters from outside my home country. Looking forward to your responses!

Categories
Blogging

A New Comment System

I was reading about the latest WordPress 3.0 release, yet another step forward in open source software. I was eager to try it, so I updated last night. But the more interesting thing in the midst of my reading was a program also by the folks that make WordPress; more specifically, I was reading a sarcastic essay written by Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress. He was writing about how comment systems were in serious need of an update and was pushing for the comment system implemented in IntenseDebate. So I gave it a shot, and that’s what’s running the comments now.

To be honest, I’m just playing catch up; but we’re also reaping the benefits of a more mature comment system (the article was from Aug ’09). I like it so far! Here’s how I think people on this site can take advantage:

  • Reply directly to comments made by others — No more calling out names, now it’s a hierarchical format that shows your reply directly below theirs.
  • Login is easier — IntenseDebate let me create a Facebook app; not that I wanted to for personal gain, but now you can use Facebook to login to the comments here if you like. I won’t take your info, I really don’t want it, I promise. You can also login with Twitter, IntenseDebate, WordPress.com or it will just pull your photo in if you happen to use Gravatar (another Automattic creation, the same people that do WP).
  • Subscribe to comments — I usually “set it and forget it” when it comes to commenting on sites. Once I’ve dropped off my two cents, I usually don’t care to stick around and refresh or I completely forget I commented somewhere. The comments subscription is easy and won’t overwhelm your inbox. Plus you can reply back to any replies you get through email.
  • Voting — I don’t want this site to be a popularity contest, but sometimes you see a comment you really like. Now there’s a up/down arrow next to comments you think are really good so they’ll rise to the top. Similar to a reddit or more relevant ChipHacker. I like the “democratic” view of commenting–just because you’re the most recent doesn’t mean you should show up first. Even if you’re not planning on commenting, take a minute to click on comments you agree with.
  • CommentLuv — This is a plugin that will pull your latest blog post title into your post automatically. It’s a simple way to show what you’ve been writing about even if you don’t want to write “PLEASE LISTEN TO ME AND VISIT MY SITE” in every post. I doubt that anyone on the internet ever does that kind of thing though. With this new plugin, it’s no big deal.
  • Sharing — I really don’t think many people are submitting my posts to social media sites, but this is also integrated as a plugin (previously it was a plugin at the bottom of the post, not in the comments). If you feel the urge, I encourage it! (no pity submissions, please)

The whole point of Matt’s article was building community. While I don’t expect people to visit a site that I named after myself everyday, I hope that this new tool will help others interact when they see an interesting tidbit on here. I mean, people still read Joel’s thoughts on software, and he doesn’t even have comments! See? I’m one step up already!

Hope to hear from you in the comments, especially if you have other ideas for better interaction. Let us know if you like the new system!

Categories
Economics Engineering Interview

A Talk With An Electronics Industry Analyst

I recently had the opportunity to ask some questions to Mike Demler, electronics analyst and writer at The World Is Analog. He has many years of industry experience, culminating by recently joining DIGDIA, a strategic consulting service that helps with market analysis and business planning. Let’s see what he had to say:

Chris Gammell: Can you please explain your background?

Mike Demler: Explaining it may not be that easy, but I’ll give it a try.

I grew up in the city of Buffalo at the peak of the U.S. space program, and had an early interest in science. My parents nurtured that a lot, and my Dad always had some TV parts around from his part-time repair business. Those were the influences on my decision to study electronics in high school, and then as an EE student at the University of Buffalo.

In the summer after my junior year, I vividly remember reading the book “Analog Integrated Circuit Design” by Alan Grebene. It’s probably more accurate to say I tried to read it, as I know I didn’t comprehend it all so I kept borrowing it from our public library. I very much wish that I had a copy today. I was fascinated by the combination of electronics and physics involved in actually being able to create something in silicon, and that’s when I decided what I wanted to do… I wanted to design integrated circuits.

It wasn’t easy, as UB was about as far as you could get from silicon valley both geographically and academically, but through lots of luck, some independent study, the help of our department chairman and being in the right place at the right time… I got my first job as a Product Engineer for Texas Instruments in Lubbock, TX. That was my launching pad. Someone once told me that ‘TI’ stood for Training Institute, and it certainly was for me. I completed an MSEE at SMU after moving to Dallas, then went back to NY and the GE R&D Labs. We developed some very advanced (for the time) analog technology there, and my TI experience prompted me to move on to GE-Datel where I commercialized the semiconductor process and led development of a new ADC product line. After GE once again exited semiconductors, I took on a similar role starting the semiconductor product line at Unitrode-Micro Networks. I was working there when I wrote the book “High-Speed Analog-to-Digital Conversion”.

Starting up new product lines led me from engineering to sales, marketing and business development. It was during the dot-com startup/IPO boom, and I moved into EDA at that point. I worked for small pre-IPO companies like Meta-Software, then did a startup in Antrim Design Systems that moved me to California. I have also worked for Cadence and Synopsys, and completed an MBA a few years ago. Now I work as an industry analyst, focusing on new disruptive technologies in mobile wireless.

CG: How does your experience in the EDA industry and the semiconductor industry affect your work now?

MD: I’d say that it gives me a unique perspective on the role of those components in the broader electronics ecosystems, such as the wireless industry. When I was in EDA I worked for a while on vertical market strategies. Though they wish it was otherwise, EDA is a small component in a much bigger picture, and most design tools are not easily differentiated by end-market application. Now I get to have the higher-level view of where the customers of the customers are going, and I try to provide insight on how it all fits together both top-down and bottom-up.

CG: What kind of companies do you interact with as an analyst?

MD: I mostly focus on the wireless industry, and currently I am working on an analysis of the Android ecosystem. The variety of companies is almost endless, especially since I try to provide that unique point-of-view from chips to consumer electronics, to services and applications, networks, etc. There are big companies like Cisco, Intel, Qualcomm, Motorola, HTC, LG, Verizon, AT&T…. the list goes on… to numerous small companies, some that are behind the scenes that you are unlikely to hear of unless you are in the industry.

CG: How soon before a product comes out do you get to hear about it?

MD: I don’t get that much special advanced notice of future products, but I think that one of the values I provide is that because of all the sources of information I have, I can tell where things are going ahead of time. Companies sometimes provide advanced information under NDA, that could be from one quarter to a year before you see it in a product. You can also learn what sources of “unofficial” information to trust. The most pointless advanced information I get is when a PR rep send me an unsolicited press release “under embargo” before a major trade show or conference. I haven’t seen one of those yet that was a big deal.

CG: What kind of impact can your work have on the industry? Are there consequences to being right or wrong about your industry predictions?

MD: I wouldn’t presume that I influence the industry in general, but I can have an impact on individual companies that use my research and insight. I stay away from far out predictions, and you won’t see any press releases from me that say “DIGDIA forecasts X million users of Y in 2014”, that you see every day from other analyst firms. Those forecasts are vaporware designed to get repeated on the internet. If I am right about trends and I point out important factors in one of my strategic analyses it improves my credibility. If I am wrong, then not.

CG: Your blog is called “The World is Analog”. How do you view the role of analog in devices today and what role do you think they’ll have tomorrow?

MD: My point of view in “The World is Analog “ goes back to my answer to your first question. At the risk of being seen as a technology bigot, everything is in reality analog. That is not to say that I don’t appreciate the aspects of design that are digital, or computer science in general, etc. but nothing works unless you build it, and all devices are governed by the (analog) laws of physics. Digital is just an abstraction of the underlying analog behavior. Those analog physical aspects of a design are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore even in digital design; factors such as dynamic voltage variation, power management, statistical process variation, etc. On the other hand, analog circuit functions are enhanced by digital controls, and that inter-dependence will continue to grow going forward.

CG: What do you see as the future for electronics? What kind of devices will people own in 5, 10, 20 years from now?

MD: Electronics will continue to grow and enhance so many aspects of life. The 5-year horizon is what I am focusing on, which will be dominated by ubiquitous wireless connectivity to the internet. This is going well beyond smartphones–to other areas of consumer electronics, energy management, home security, and health and medicine. Those describe some of the broad categories of devices people will “own”. I also see bioelectronics, I suppose you can call it call it bionics, as one of the big growth areas. Today we have devices like pacemakers that help to control heart function, but imagine how nano-electronics and smart wireless sensors can be used to monitor and control other body functions. Transportation is another area where we are just beginning to see what embedded electronics can do. I think the cars that can automatically parallel park are amazing, but people seem to take an advance like that for granted. We will see more “connected vehicles”, with real time 4G wireless connections for information, traffic control and numerous other functions.

CG: It seems that you have transitioned to the business side of things from your early days in engineering. How do you interact now with managers, engineers, marketers and others in the electronics world?

MD: Well, I’ve been in all of those roles, so hopefully it helps me to better understand where people are coming from when I interact with them.

CG: Where do you view the industry itself going? Will all electronics end up in Asia? Will things ever move back towards the US?

MD: There is no “moving back”. It’s like Thomas Friedman wrote in “The World is Flat”; manufacturing will always go to the lowest cost location. Everyone needs to take a global view in every industry today.

My greatest concern is education. By growing up during the Apollo space program, I benefited from a societal focus on developing advanced technology. The U.S. needs to work harder to develop more scientists and engineers amongst our own citizens. I hope that environmental concerns might stimulate the current generation of students in a similar way, but I can’t say I’m optimistic at this point.

CG: Is there a maximum growth potential for the market? Won’t people stop needing devices? What happens then?

MD: No, the market for electronics devices will grow many times over where it is today. I don’t limit that statement to mean only consumer electronics devices. We can only carry or interact with so many. But the connected world is only beginning to be developed; for in-body, in-home, in-vehicle, in the environment.. the list is endless.

Many thanks to Mike for taking the time to explain his view on the (apparently analog) world. As you may have noticed from other posts on here about talking to various professions, I’m very curious about the electronics ecosystem.  I find it fascinating how different job functions look at similar situations, especially when those people are selling or buying products from one another. The customer in one scenario often turns around and becomes a supplier to someone else. The interdependencies are intriguing. You may also notice that I have been targeting people that write for their own sites or for their companies sites. While I intend to focus on the less well-known positions eventually, why not show off the great content they have already written on outside sites? Be sure to click through to their relevant posts from the links above.

Two questions:

  1. Do you (the reader) enjoy seeing these perspectives? I know I always appreciate the freshness that other perspectives add to this site, but am not sure that others feel the same.
  2. Do you have any questions for Mike specifically? These can be questions about the future of the industry (though I thought he gave some good explanations on the direction) or his past experiences or really anything!

Please leave your notes or questions in the comments area!

Categories
Analog Electronics Conferences Digital Electronics

Final Thoughts On The Embedded Community

This is part 3 of 4 in a series about ESC Chicago and the Sensors Expo and Conference. See previous posts about Day 1 and Day 2.

I imagine if a doctor was diagnosing the medical condition of the embedded community, he would walk into the tiny exam room, take one look at the embedded community sitting there in its socks and underwear on the crinkly disposable exam table cover and say:

“Yup, still fragmented.”

What do I mean by this? It means that even with my posturing about the need for community AND my lack of expertise in the topic, there are some undeniable rifts in the embedded community. And they will always be there. Why?

  1. Too many vendors with their own pieces of silicon
    • Guess what? Companies like making money! Amazing, right? I can name at least 5 monstrous companies that produce independent silicon chips, almost always with similar cores that rhyme with “schlARM”. They have their niche areas and peripherals that are used in that segment; examples areas that a vendor might try to target are motor control, display processing, low cost, low power or RF. But in the end, the very things that distinguish them from their competitors and therefore allow them make money, also drives the community apart.
  2. Too many closed doors
    • Another problem on the vendor side can be the amount of information provided to the people working on their chips. Without open access to the information, users are forced into the “camps” of the vendors in order to access features buried within the silicon. Less mobility between chips means more fragmentation.
  3. Too much software
    • Well what about abstraction? For those out there that are more on the analog side of things, abstraction is writing code that isn’t controlling something directly. Think about it like you’re a teacher. You care a lot about turning the lights off in your classroom and want to teach your kids about why it’s important in order to save energy. In a non-abstracted case, you would tell each of the kids to turn the lights off when it’s their turn. Perhaps Wednesday it’s Johnny and Thursday it’s Susie. So you tell them directly. Abstraction in the simplest sense would be assigning Bobby to remember whose turn it is each day of the week. That way, you only have to tell Bobby to have someone turn off the lights; it’s the same every time. Bringing it back to processors and the embedded community, if things were abstracted, you could always tell “Bobby” to do the same thing and he would have close to the same response each time. Well there is such a thing that even the layman such as me is familiar with: operating systems. But this isn’t like the PC world where the choices have been culled down to a select two or three. There are embedded versions of larger OSes (think Win CE or Embedded Linux) and RTOS (Real Time Operating Systems) which are an even lighter version of their half cousins named previously. Beyond that there are superloops and other small implementations. The point is, there are a lo00000t of choices for software for a looooot  of different processors. It’s fragmented. But why all the trouble? Why do we need so many choices?
  4. Too many market segments
    • It’s true. That’s why embedded has been growing steadily for the past 20 years and will likely continue to keep growing. There are a lot of  different needs! I guarantee you that engineers working on high-reliability industrial controls don’t care that much about Android. Sure, it could work, but it’s a new OS with lots of potential bugs and doesn’t really fit the needs. Similarly, handset makers don’t want to use reliable code from 10 years ago because all the reliability in the world doesn’t make a flashy new interface for mobile, web-enabled handsets. Chip vendors pick and choose to play to specific segments, as do the software vendors, creating hundreds of potential combinations; it’s much more likely that whatever current developers are working on though is a much smaller combinatorial subset. And so the fragmentation continues.

I know that analog is my niche and that there are some very compelling cases for using it in different areas of electronics. But I’m not stupid; there was a reason I took interest in the embedded space and why you should do the same. Everyone will continue to expect more from their devices, whether scientific, consumer or somewhere in between; if you’re on the internet reading this post, you’re likely used to the benefits of Moore’s Law and will continue to be.

What I’m trying to say is that there is value in learning about embedded systems; learning about some component of embedded computing is better than ignoring it. As software continues ascending into further levels of abstraction (think Python instead of C), there will be fewer people around that know how to reach down into silicon and flip a bit. Knowing how to do so not only will help you in your day to day tasks, but could make you a very employable engineer/programmer.

And who knows, perhaps embedded design will be the next black magic, much like analog is considered today!

Categories
Blogging Conferences Digital Electronics Learning

ESC Chicago and Sensors Conference and Expo, Day 2

Wow.

What a whirlwind day. I started at 7:30 am and I ended at 10:30 pm, my mind still reeling. I was talking Beagle Boards and Agile processes in the morning and discussing the media (with the media) and visiting hackerspaces in the evening. But the best part about it? I felt like there were a lot of people around me that cared about similar stuff to what I do.

I am lucky enough to work with some of these people as well. But the nerd population in Cleveland isn’t at the critical mass that occurs at conferences nor at hackerspaces. So yesterday was a great opportunity to converse on some of the topics I love with people who were interested to hear it (in person of course, I realize there are many great people who “listen” to me on this site…thanks!).

The theme I kept finding throughout the day (or perhaps was seeking), was figuring out where the communities are and why hardware engineers (or even embedded engineers) don’t seem to congregate in one place. This started in the morning talking to James Grenning, a consultant and coach on Agile methodologies; I got talking to him and found that many of the same issues I’ve seen in trying to find analog communities, he has also seen in the embedded community. “Where are they?” we ask. “Why doesn’t there seem to be as much involvement online from the electronics community?”. James specializes in bringing Agile to the embedded community; easy to find people to speak with about the Agile part, less so for the embedded folks.

Towards the end of the day, I had the opportunity to talk to the folks at Element 14, a new engineering community site. I had heard about them earlier in the day; they were on the conference floor giving away iPads and the usual conference swag.  How does a “community” site have the money to attend a conference though? I later found out that they are a subsidiary of Premier Farnell, one of the top 10 electronics components distributors and recent acquirers of the EAGLE CAD program. As of right now, I’m underwhelmed with the site itself (NI uses the same interface and it’s not all that friendly to the eye nor the user), but not necessarily the content. It seems to have some involvement right now, but not the levels that I really desire (I’m hard to please!); I do like that they have qualified “experts” on hand, but haven’t taken a good enough look at them yet to judge how “expert” they might be (assuming I could even tell something like that). I will keep an eye on Element 14 though, because of one of their innovative programs: linking manufacturers to customers. They offer beta services, as in finding and requesting feedback from users on a range of products. In terms of value a site can have for both the user and the sponsors, I believe this is a strong one.

Next I got to meet Karen Field, the head of the new EETimes community, EELife. While this site hasn’t been released yet, the article I saw on it looked like a fancy implementation of a location to share info with other engineers. In fact, it may have been a little too fancy–the release of the site was pushed out from its proposed date. Still, I’m hopeful that the site could actually bring people together. EETimes has a great following in print and online; if there’s one place that people might think to go to first, EETimes might have the name recognition to do it.

Here’s the thought that keeps irking me though: the corporate world isn’t great at “social”. It doesn’t help that engineers aren’t quite social creatures by nature. Sure, some companies use social media to their advantage, but a lot more are using it wrong.

I got a chance to talk to Jason Kridner about why this might be. Jason is one of the many passionate members behind the Beagle Board group, a high powered open-source hardware board based on the TI OMAP processor (though Jason explained that the Beagle Board is a separate entity in every way from TI). When I asked him why communities such as the Beagle Board developers come together, he stated it simply and succinctly: “They unite behind a common purpose”. In the case of the Beagle Board, it’s about having a high power processor on an open platform (possibly contrasted with a slightly simpler Arduino board using an AVR processor, also on an open platform). And the community shows; there are many open projects you can pull down from the GIT tree and start immediately on your Beagle Board. The ones that excite me most are the DIYdrone types of projects.

At the meet and greet later in the evening, I started talking with some conference attendees that also happened to be members of the local hackerspace. They invited me to attend one of their weekly meetings at their location. The Pumping Station 1 (PS1) hackerspace/makerspace has been around for about 2 years now and is one of the only in Chicago as of now (more are forming). It was great seeing this area of shared tools, DIY projects and a general atmosphere of collaboration, for no reason more than these people wanted to make stuff in their spare time. And one of the things I found most interesting is that many of the projects going on at the space were embedded projects! The desire to have things talk wireless almost demands that you start to delve into low level code and be able to get your device talking to another device. So while I came to learn about the broad range of sensors and embedded devices this week, I ended up finding the lower-end (in terms of system complexity) but used for unique and intricate implementations (they had built their own MakerBot to CNC parts right there in the lab…amazing!).

So what was the conclusion to my small quest for finding community among the different factions of the electronics industry? There isn’t one general location or place to gather. And possibly for good reason. It’s more like a democratic republic in that way, where members get to vote with their feet. Say a platform really starts to bog down and no one is developing on it anymore. People aren’t tied to it because the “community” is locked in; instead they just pick up and move platforms. “Don’t like the PIC anymore? Switch to an OMAP! OMAP too expensive? Switch to an AVR!” So perhaps the real need is instead an active listing of where to find all these different communities, in whatever form they take; message boards, blogs, video tutorials, anything and everything–as long as the list stays current, it will be valuable. In fact it would be much more valuable than trying to pull in every single person into one platform.

I didn’t come to these two conferences for this purpose. I could have looked for it at home while browsing the web (I’ve done that before too). But in the midst of walking among many smart people and many products made by other smart people I’ve collected hints. Where to look and who to talk to in order to find the most people interested in technology, in whatever form or level of complexity it may take.

Categories
Conferences

ESC Chicago and Sensors Conference, Day 1

The first day of the sensors and ESC conference is meant to be a symposium…think college lecture, but for 8 hours. It was an interesting first view of not only the presenters, but also the audience; the ones who cared enough to pay and attend for all 3 days (going to see only the “expo” for the next two days is free). These same lucky people will get to attend breakout sessions for the remaining days.

Since I am lucky enough to be able to attend both the ESC and the sensors conference, I thought I would run down the list quickly of what was being offered. Until I arrived this morning, I didn’t know what to expect from the sessions; once I stepped into them I was able to get a better picture of what they were really about.

Sensors:

  • Cellular/Satellite — This one I sat outside for a while listening. The idea is to have remote sensors of a pressure/strain/anything else sensors can monitor and then passing that data back through the cellular and satellite networks. Obviously the quality of service can affect data collection so I believe this symposium covered issues that measurement engineers might encounter. The scale of infrastructure required made me decide to not stick around for most of this session. Wouldn’t it be cool to monitor something over satellite link though? Like a volcano?
  • Energy Harvesting — There is interest in the sensor community about energy harvesting because of the potential to never need a power source. Now a pressure transducer that may have once needed a yearly maintenance visit can theoretically run forever on vibrational, thermal or (bleh) RF energy harvesting.
  • MEMS — Micro ElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) seem to be the most advanced topic being discussed at the conference; looking around it, seemed like there may have been a few more PhDs in the crowd than average. The most interesting thing about MEMS is that of all topics talked about in most of the other (power, signal transmission, the actual sensing), the MEMS people have managed to do it all in one place on, one piece of silicon. Also keep an eye out for the next generation of devices: NEMS (replace “micro” with “nano”).
  • Data Aquisition — This crowd was a little harder to suss out. It seemed to be a basics class, both explaining the theory and going over commonly encountered issues. I was drawn in because of my familiarity of the topic. The speaker also had an affinity for Hall Effect sensors, something I have been looking to learn more about. It was a good overview but I found that I recognized a little too much of the info for it to hold my attention.

ESC:

  • Android — This one I skipped. While Android is the hot new software, I don’t see myself utilizing it unless I finally breakdown and buy a smartphone (yes, I know there are other uses); even with a smartphone, I would probably only be a  consumer, not a developer. Either way, this was the only other symposium I passed on.
  • C++ Optimization —  I felt I should go into this symposium because I know my OOP (Object Oriented Programming) can use some work. However, I quickly learned that walking in 3/4 of the day through was not the best choice for someone who needs quite so much work. While I appreciate embedded systems and I’m really at the conference to learn, I’m not looking for a job coding; I quietly slipped out during a coffee break to hit up another session.
  • Embedding TCP/IP & USB — The morning session was run by one of the executive team of Micrium, Christian Legare. Having used the Micrium RTOS before, I was intrigued by the prospect of hearing him speak; once again found myself drifting in a sea of terms–UDP,TCP, SMTP and many other acronyms ending in “P”. I decided that even though I usually am against paying  thousands to a developer for USB and TCP/IP software stacks (to be included in embedded products), it might be worth it. Seriously, just troubleshooting the software would be difficult enough, who wants to write a stack?
  • Beagle Board — I posted something on twitter about the session that made the Jason (the guy running the session) think I disliked his presentation style; in reality, I thought he was pretty good. What I was commenting on was the fact that the Beagle Board doesn’t seem quite like “open source hardware“. I hope to write more on that topic later this week, hopefully after talking to Jason. Anyway, aside from the communication snafu, I thought this was one of the better presentations of the day; most people in there got a board to continue playing with after the conference and the step-by-step linux guide was pretty thorough. While the usefulness of the board will probably be tied to the willingness of the person using it to play around, it could end up being a powerful platform. And no, I didn’t get one.

One of the topics I discussed with some engineers I met was the downside to the range of experience. At an IEEE conference, most people are assumed to be at a certain educational level. Even those who really don’t understand feel the peer pressure to fake comprehension.  But at a session you understand where they are catering to a more beginner level and there are many new topics, it seems as though each topic only gets a scraping at surface. Sure, each session had its merits and I learned some new things today, even if it was just reinforcing things that I don’t care to work on. I’m sure with the more tailored breakout sessions tomorrow, the material will be short and targeted to very specific topics.

Another thing I’m looking forward to is the Expo opening; not just for the swag either! There are going to be some live product teardowns that will expose how manufacturers accomplished their specs at the price points. While this doesn’t have a lot of direct usefulness to me (it’s unlikely many people outside of Asia will play in the consumer market for a while), the idea is intriguing. Plus I’m looking forward to seeing some new products and how I might use them.
I’ll be picking and choosing my sessions tomorrow carefully. I want to make sure I have time to get on the floor to see everything, get to the sessions that sound interesting and still meet and interact with everyone from the different industries that are attending for the next two days. Any questions or suggestions on which sessions I should get  to, please let me know in the comments!

Categories
Analog Electronics Conferences Learning

Going A-Conferencing!

I recently found out that I’ll be attending the Embedded Systems Conference in Chicago early next week. I also will be attending some of the events at Sensors Expo & Conference, which is being held in the same conference center. I couldn’t be happier that I get to attend two conferences in one shot AND that I get to visit Chicago in the process.

So why embedded systems? “I thought this was a site about analog electronics,” you say. Well, it is. But good luck making an all-analog system these days. These days, analog is more about signal conditioning, power, control and accuracy. I mean, everything is analog in the end. Even digital signals will look analog if you clock them fast enough; but the point is, digital is an important topic to know as well. Embedded systems let you interface to the fun analog systems at a lower level (think running code in C instead of a full blown implementation of Windows) so you can run your systems even faster, cheaper and using less power.

The sensors expo will fit in nicely. Sensors are what analog is built on. They are how electronics interact with the real world! So I look forward to reporting on all the new interface products that are out there.

Finally, this will be my first real conference, at least the first I’ve traveled to outside of a 30 mile radius of where I live. I’ve encountered conferences before–and the culture that they have–but never on a scale like this. It will be interesting to see an electronics conference this large. I recently read “Never Eat Alone” by Keith Ferrazzi. He has an entire chapter about the benefits of conferences, how to work them more effectively and most importantly, how to meet people. I hope to make some connections and add to the growing section on this site of interviews with people from industry.

What about you? Have you ever been to any large electronics conferences? Anyone happen to be going to these conferences? Any tips for this relatively new guy? Any new technologies I should be on the lookout for? Let me know in the comments!

Categories
Analog Electronics Blogging

Where Are All The (Electrical) Engineer Sites?

I’ve asked communities I’m a part of where all the electronics sites are. The truth is there are some out there, and the popular ones are there for a reason. They produce a lot of great content and highlight engineers and hobbyists who really contribute a lot to their respective communities. But why aren’t there more? Are electronics just innately uninteresting? I don’t think so–obviously–or else I’d have a bit of a conflict of interests. So what is it that prevents more people from publishing sites about electronics?

  1. Secrets
    • Even on my own site, I don’t write about my work. I go to work for 8+ hours a day and work on some really cool stuff. I enjoy it. But there’s no way I can talk about every problem I run into. That’d be ridiculous! Now contrast that with someone who works in politics. It’s all out in the open (at least it should be), and the rest is just opinion. As long as they don’t say something that will get their boss in trouble (or more likely, as long as they agree with their boss), the site is a boon. Same for PR, marketing and lots of other sectors. Blogs and websites about their work seems complimentary. Sure they don’t share everything about the behind the scenes, but in those cases, the more info that’s out there, the better. In engineering, it’s often the secret sauce of a company that is the most important…and also the most protected.
  2. Access to Industry Info
    • So maybe you decide you’d like to write about a technology company from the outside. Lots of sites already do this kind of thing. There are tons of Apple fan sites, right? Well, yes, but again they’re writing about things that are public–or in recent times about phones that were found that weren’t meant to be public. The engineers behind the scenes at Apple can’t write about their experiences due to NDAs and trade secret protections. Nor for big companies with exciting products like Intel. Sure you can write about what’s out in the marketplace now (such as the i7), but you can’t write about how they tweaked with the design in order to make it better than previous generations. Nor can you write about the impressive geometry shrinking that is occurring to keep pace with Moore’s law and how that affects your EDA tools.
    • NOTE: I might consider industry magazines such as EETimes, EDN and Design News to be an example of companies that have access to industry info, EXCEPT I consider them as news sources about the industry and not about engineering.
  3. The Speed of Science
    • Unfortunately, real science is slow. Even pseudo-science is slow, with the new hot products being released only so often. And beyond the discoveries being announced via PhysOrg or IEEE or Engadget, what is there? Whereas there may be political sites that can subsist on just reporting the news of the latest scandal (and all the details and conjecture associated with it), science and electronics has a limited amount of new information to report upon. Without as dynamic an atmosphere, there are bound to be fewer sites reporting on the news of the industry.

Of the sites that are out there about electronics, some really stand out in my mind. The Electronics Engineering Video (EEV) Blog, Chiphacker, Discovercircuits.com and so many more. They provide great services to people, which keeps them  coming back. But what about these sites really draws people in? I’ve pondered this question in terms of what might make more people want to read my site. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

  1. Instruction
    • No doubt that people utilize the internet as an instructor for their latest projects. In fact, I’ve tailored some of my own more popular posts (about how op amps work) towards teaching people in certain niche areas. Some of the best sites out there (such as Instructables), helps people to learn about their project or the subject they are studying. The mere fact that they are offering free information (that is assumed to be correct) is a very big draw for the masses. Unfortunately, as far as competition goes, there are some major leaders in terms of “how things work” and the smaller players often fall off the map, hence fewer parties trying to explain a topic like when to use analog versus digital circuits.
  2. Personal Projects
    • These sites are my personal favorite and easy to spot as a favorite of many others. Why? Because the site continues to showcase technology applications that likely have never been seen before. No, the technology itself is pretty standard; Arduinos and other simple microcontrollers are often the basis for many of the designs. However, the application is usually different and almost always intriguing. Sites such as Make magazine and Hack-a-day showcase the latest uses of technology in novel situation

While I don’t think the hardware sites have quite reached the critical mass that software development sites have reached, I’m not worried. The hobbyist movement continues to grow and I believe the general population has been re-warming to the idea of working on electronics (at least some part of the population, that is).  Given the slow uptake of the hardware community with new media, it’s not all that surprising that we haven’t seen as many sites as we might have expected. However, I think we’ll be seeing more soon. What do you think? Have I missed any big categories of websites? Or are hardware engineers and their respective interests always doomed to remain in the shadows?

Categories
Analog Electronics Blogging Renewable Energy Sustainability

A Slightly Changed Course

Holidays have been used in the past to paste some pictures together for my background image. This time it was a change of role as well. As I’ve once stated, I don’t really like the “sustainability” title on things. It’s much too management whereas I like focusing on engineering. So I stuck to the “renewable energy” stuff, or so I said. In the meantime I’ve realized that I really don’t write about renewable energy anymore. It turned out it WAS a passing phase for me, as Cherish from “Faraday’s Cage is where you put Schroedinger’s Cat” once said in the comments of a post.

Don’t get me wrong, I like renewable energy. I like it a lot. It’s definitely important, especially given the oil snafu’s of late. But in terms of what I can add to the conversation and where I feel I fit best, I think I would choose analog electronics before renewable energy. Anyway, it doesn’t matter much; if I start writing about renewable energy a whole lot more, I’ll just change it back!

In other news, I’ve changed up the headings at the top of each page. I’ve removed some things and added another. As I’ve written about in the past, I’ve been searching for alternate sources of income. I’ve decided to offer my non-day-job time to anyone who needs help on their projects. No, it shan’t be free, but I will promise the first 3 projects 50% off my standard rate. If you have any needs for electronics projects, please look at the services I offer and how we might work together.  Then give me a shout and we’ll start working on your exciting new project together.