EmbeddedRelated.com

Musings on Publication — and Zero Sequence Modulation

Jason Sachs May 30, 20141 comment

Perhaps you don’t think about it, but in order for you to read these articles, someone has to do something.

And I don’t just mean writing them. Stephane Boucher has set up this website so that it’s automatic, for the most part — at least from my end of things, as an author. When I get an idea for an article, I open up a new IPython Notebook, write my article, save it in a Mercurial repository, run a Python script to convert from IPython Notebook format to HTML, open...


How to Include MathJax Equations in SVG With Less Than 100 Lines of JavaScript!

Jason Sachs May 23, 20149 comments

Today’s short and tangential note is an account of how I dug myself out of Documentation Despair. I’ve been working on some block diagrams. You know, this sort of thing, to describe feedback control systems:

And I had a problem. How do I draw diagrams like this?

I don’t have Visio and I don’t like Visio. I used to like Visio. But then it got Microsofted.

I can use MATLAB and Simulink, which are great for drawing block diagrams. Normally you use them to create a...


Garden Rakes Revisited: The Hall of Shame

Jason Sachs April 12, 2014

A little while ago, I wrote about what I call the “garden rakes” syndrome in software, where there are little bugs or pitfalls lying around like sloppy garden rakes that no one has put away, and when you use these software programs, instead of zooming around getting things done, you’re either tripping over the garden rakes or carefully trying to avoid them. Either way, you lose focus on what you’re really trying to work on, and that causes a big hit in...


Levitating Globe Teardown, Part 2

Tim Wescott November 6, 20139 comments

Part 1 of this article was really more of an extended (and cynical) product review.  In this part of the article, I actually take things apart (sometimes a bit more suddenly than I meant to) and show you some innards.First the globe.  I knew there was a magnet in there someplace, because it's obviously plastic and it also attracts metal.  I had intended to gently part the globe at the glue bond along the equator.  I started by trying to gently flex the thing on my work...


Levitating Globe Teardown, Part 1

Tim Wescott November 4, 20133 comments

I've been kicking some ideas around for a long time for a simple and inexpensive platform I could use for control systems experimentation for the beginner.  I want something that can be controlled easily in a basic fashion, yet that provides some depth: I want to be able to present ever-more challenging goals to the student, that can be attained by fancier control algorithms all on the same device.

I'm currently looking at magnetic levitation.  It's fun, it has the potential to be...


Massive Open Online Courses ( Transforming education )

Jayaraman Kiruthi Vasan October 10, 20124 comments

Emerging trends in online education have opened up unforeseen learning opportunities for aspiring students. Eminent instructors from the best names in the industry such as Stanford, MIT and Harvard provide several courses with video lectures online.

Named MOOCs,  Massive Open Online courses are accelerating the learning process in a radical manner.  Online universities like Coursera, edX, Udacity, Khan Academy and Udemy offer courses which are professionally relevant.


It starts with an LED

Richard Dorfner May 13, 20114 comments

And slowly builds up from there.

I have been an embedded software engineer for many years. I was programming when I was a teenager before then, as a high school student involved in an NSF program called "National Science Foundation Summer Science Training Program (for High School Students)" or as we would rattle off during that summer of exquisite learning, NSFSSTP. We were taught to program in Fortran and taught the fundamentals of Calculus. It was a very enriching experience.

When it...


A part of history

Gene Breniman December 23, 2009

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the 40-year anniversary celebration of the formation of my high school's radio station (KVHS).  The current students and staff of KVHS hosted a birthday party for the radio station and invited former alumni and teachers and the public to share in the celebration.  On hand was a pretty good showing of the current and former students and teachers that helped build one of the most successful student-run radio station programs in...


Configuration Management: Why Developers are Avert to

Kunal Singh March 4, 2008

A few reasons why developers have aversion towards "Software Configuration Management Systems"

(1) They do not understand the importance of configuration management. - It is a common and logical reason. But, it is also a very dangerous sign for any organization. If their developers do not understand the importance of configuration management; then it is highly likely that developers even do not understand the other fundamentals of software development. The situation becomes worst...


Nokia in Soup Again?

Kunal Singh February 29, 20081 comment
After suffering a big blow its image due to faulty "BL-5C Batteries", Nokia seems to have landed in another trouble. Company's decision to shutdown its manufacturing plant in Germany, has sparked strong public ire towards Nokia in the country. The strong political and government support to the Anti-Nokia movement, might mean a further Erosion of Company's Image  and loss of revenue in Germany (and some other...

Practical protection against dust and water (i.e. IP protection)

Dr Cagri Tanriover July 5, 2014

Recently, I was faced with a challenge to provide IP65 compliance in a product that had to have humidity and pressure sensors on it. The tricky part was to keep the cost of the unit under $15 while meeting this requirement.

Under normal circumstances, one can put all the electronics within an IP65 enclosure that is affordable and readily available off-the-shelf most of the time such as the ones shown in this link. However, given the humidity and the pressure sensor need to be exposed to...


Getting Started With CUDA C on an Nvidia Jetson: A Meaningful Algorithm

Mohammed Billoo May 11, 2024

In this blog post, I demonstrate a use case and corresponding GPU implementation where meaningful performance gains are realized and observed. Specifically, I implement a "blurring" algorithm on a large 1000x1000 pixel image. I show that the GPU-based implementation is 1000x faster than the CPU-based implementation.


3D printing for embedded development

Ido Gendel February 19, 2024

Used mostly for creating little plastic objects, the desktop 3D printer is not an obvious addition to the embedded developer's toolbox. However, if you're looking for more reasons to get one, or already have one that's mostly gathering dust, here are a couple of embedded-related ways to get more value out of it.


Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated

Jason Sachs April 28, 2024

In 2017 and 2018 I wrote an eighteen-part series of articles about linear feedback shift registers, or LFSRs:

div.jms-article-content ol > li { list-style-type: upper-roman } Ex-Pralite Monks and Finite Fields, in which we describe what an LFSR is as a digital circuit; its cyclic behavior over time; the definition of groups, rings, and fields; the isomorphism between N-bit LFSRs and the field \( GF(2^N) \); and the reason why I wrote this series

Who needs source code?

Colin Walls August 31, 2023

Many developers feel that the supplying source code is essential for licensed software components. There are other perspectives, including the possibility of it being an actual disadvantage. Even the definition of source code has some vagueness.


A part of history

Gene Breniman December 23, 2009

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the 40-year anniversary celebration of the formation of my high school's radio station (KVHS).  The current students and staff of KVHS hosted a birthday party for the radio station and invited former alumni and teachers and the public to share in the celebration.  On hand was a pretty good showing of the current and former students and teachers that helped build one of the most successful student-run radio station programs in...


It starts with an LED

Richard Dorfner May 13, 20114 comments

And slowly builds up from there.

I have been an embedded software engineer for many years. I was programming when I was a teenager before then, as a high school student involved in an NSF program called "National Science Foundation Summer Science Training Program (for High School Students)" or as we would rattle off during that summer of exquisite learning, NSFSSTP. We were taught to program in Fortran and taught the fundamentals of Calculus. It was a very enriching experience.

When it...


What I Learned From Crashing and Burning in Grad School

Nathan Jones September 4, 20241 comment

Have you ever felt so consumed by something that it started to crowd other parts of your life? So obsessed with success in a particular area that you could hardly think about anything else? I found myself in exactly that spot in 2018 when I first started graduate school; I wanted to succeed so badly that I worked myself to the bone and I let even my marriage and my health suffer in service to it. This state of being is, believe it or not, NOT conducive to success, in neither the long-term nor the short-term. But it took two authors and one pivotal book for me to understand that, to see the pit I had dug for myself, and to begin the path back out. In this blog, I want to share with you my journey in the hopes that you can avoid the mistakes I made.


Configuration Management: Why Developers are Avert to

Kunal Singh March 4, 2008

A few reasons why developers have aversion towards "Software Configuration Management Systems"

(1) They do not understand the importance of configuration management. - It is a common and logical reason. But, it is also a very dangerous sign for any organization. If their developers do not understand the importance of configuration management; then it is highly likely that developers even do not understand the other fundamentals of software development. The situation becomes worst...


Nokia in Soup Again?

Kunal Singh February 29, 20081 comment
After suffering a big blow its image due to faulty "BL-5C Batteries", Nokia seems to have landed in another trouble. Company's decision to shutdown its manufacturing plant in Germany, has sparked strong public ire towards Nokia in the country. The strong political and government support to the Anti-Nokia movement, might mean a further Erosion of Company's Image  and loss of revenue in Germany (and some other...