Musings on Publication — and Zero Sequence Modulation
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...
Lost Secrets of the H-Bridge, Part IV: DC Link Decoupling and Why Electrolytic Capacitors Are Not Enough
●3 commentsThose of you who read my earlier articles about H-bridges, and followed them closely, have noticed there's some unfinished business. Well, here it is. Just so you know, I've been nervous about writing the fourth (and hopefully final) part of this...
Using the Beaglebone PRU to achieve realtime at low cost
●4 commentsIntroduction I work as an engineer in a synchrotron facility. A few weeks ago, I helped the people in charge of the power supply developments to integrate a realtime control algorithm on a prototype platform: a BeagleBone Black (BBB) running...
Unit Tests for Embedded Code
●1 commentI originate from an electrical engineering background and my first industry experience was in a large, staid defense contractor. Both of these experiences contributed to a significant lack of knowledge with regards to software development best...
DSPRelated and EmbeddedRelated now on Facebook & I will be at EE Live!
I have two news to share with you today.The first one is that I finally created Facebook pages for DSPRelated.com and EmbeddedRelated (DSPRelated page - EmbeddedRelated page). For a long time I didn't feel that this was something that was needed,...
Using a RTLSDR dongle to validate NRF905 configuration
I am currently working on a system to monitor the garage door status from my flat. Both places are 7 floors apart, and I need to send the data wirelessly. I chose to operate on the 433MHz carrier, and I ordered 2 PTR8000...
Understanding and Preventing Overflow (I Had Too Much to Add Last Night)
Happy Thanksgiving! Maybe the memory of eating too much turkey is fresh in your mind. If so, this would be a good time to talk about overflow. In the world of floating-point arithmetic, overflow is possible but not particularly common. You can...
How to Estimate Encoder Velocity Without Making Stupid Mistakes: Part II (Tracking Loops and PLLs)
●1 commentYeeehah! Finally we're ready to tackle some more clever ways to figure out the velocity of a position encoder. In part I, we looked at the basics of velocity estimation. Then in my last article, I talked a little about what's necessary to...
How to Arduino - a video toolbox
I've begun producing a new series of video tutorials for the hobbyist new to the Arduino or microcontrollers in general. My videos are very pragmatic - I prefer to answer the question "what is the quickest, simplest and most affordable way...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Driving WS2812 RGB LEDs
●4 comments[quicklinks] This tutorial chapter is a bit of a detour, but I think an interesting and useful one. It introduces a bit of assembly language programming, and demonstrates bit-banging a tight serial data protocol. And it deals...
10 Circuit Components You Should Know
Chefs have their miscellaneous ingredients, like condensed milk, cream of tartar, and xanthan gum. As engineers, we too have quite our pick of circuits, and a good circuit designer should know what's out there. Not just the bread and butter...
Ten Little Algorithms, Part 1: Russian Peasant Multiplication
●1 commentThis blog needs some short posts to balance out the long ones, so I thought I’d cover some of the algorithms I’ve used over the years. Like the Euclidean algorithm and Extended Euclidean algorithm and Newton’s method —...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - 7-segment displays & Multiplexing
●1 comment[quicklinks] Doing the 7 Segment Shuffle The 7 segment display is ubiquitous in the modern world. Just about every digital clock, calculator and movie bomb has one. The treadmills at my gym have 6 or 7, each one displaying 3 or 4...
Byte and Switch (Part 1)
●1 commentImagine for a minute you have an electromagnet, and a microcontroller, and you want to use the microcontroller to turn the electromagnet on and off. Sounds pretty typical, right?We ask this question on our interviews of entry-level electrical...
Intel 8088 - A blast from the past
The Intel 8088 is an 8 bit processor related to the 16 bit 8086. The Microcomputer class consisted of wire-wrapping the chips to perfboard using sockets.I had taken computers apart, soldered, etc., but had never used wire-wrapping to construct a...
Favorite Tools: C++11 std::array
Many embedded software and firmware projects must be developed to high standards of reliability. To meet these reliability requirements, firmware project teams will consider many design tradeoffs. For example, an engineering team may avoid...
The Other Kind of Bypass Capacitor
●1 commentThere’s a type of bypass capacitor I’d like to talk about today. It’s not the usual power supply bypass capacitor, aka decoupling capacitor, which is used to provide local charge storage to an integrated circuit, so that the...
Understanding and Preventing Overflow (I Had Too Much to Add Last Night)
Happy Thanksgiving! Maybe the memory of eating too much turkey is fresh in your mind. If so, this would be a good time to talk about overflow. In the world of floating-point arithmetic, overflow is possible but not particularly common. You can...
Blogging Tutorial
This article will be updated on a regular basis based on your questions and feedback. Creating a new blog post Make sure your are logged in Click on 'Create new blog post' Although the online editor works pretty well and...
Coding - Step 0: Setting Up a Development Environment
●1 commentArticles in this series: Coding Step 0 - Development Environments Coding Step 1 - Hello World and Makefiles Coding Step 2- Source ControlCoding Step 3 - High-Level RequirementsCoding Step 4 - Design You can easily find a million articles...
