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45

% o

f m

em

be

rs b

eli

ev

e m

oly

bd

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ite

or

gra

ph

em

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ill

rep

lace

sil

ico

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s th

e c

on

du

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r o

f ch

oic

e.

Neben dem geringen Ressourcenverbrauch und den niedrigen Stckkosten hat ein Mikrocontroller noch ein-

en groen Vorteil: Seine Einfachheit. Mit einer MCU knnen Sie etwas ziemlich schnell zum Laufen bringen!

Platform-denken

heeft de

toekomst.

Vergeet discrete

elektronica en 8-bit microcontrollers, of 32-bits M

CU

s als het er op aan kom

t. De toekom

st gaat over gratis (nou ja,

goedkope) en onbeperkte (nou ja bijna) hardw

are.

A MiCRoCoNtRoLLER iS A SpECiALizEd, iNtE-gRAtEd Chip thAt pERfoRMS SiMiLAR fUNC-tioNS to A pC. itS opERAtioN, howEVER, iS tAiLoREd foR A SiNgLE dEdiCAtEd tASk CoMpAREd to A pC typiCALLy USEd foR MANy gENERAL-pURpoSE tASkS. MiCRoCoNtRoLLER pERfoRMANCE iS LiMitEd to thE oN Chip phySiCAL RESoURCES. thE pC, iN CoNtRASt, iS CoMpoSEd of MANy high-pERfoRMANCE iNtEgRAtEd CiRCUitS ANd iS bEttER SUitEd foR gENERAL-pURpoSE tASkS.

60

% o

f m

emb

ers

sold

er a

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aily

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e 6c

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62% of members contribute to open-source hardware projects.

89% of members work on MCU-based projects in their spare time.

80

% o

f m

emb

ers

know

C la

ng

uag

e.

La necesidad de controladores pequeos y simples para proyectos peque-

os y simples no ha desaparecido. A

n puedes comprar m

icrocontrola-dores 8051 y PIC

, o sus equivalentes en macros para FPG

A, aunque la

ltima tendencia es hacer extraas incrustaciones de hardw

are que sera m

s apropiado hacer sobre CPU

s con rutas de datos ms am

plias. Los com

piladores han mejorado hasta el punto en que no es com

pletamente

absurdo meter un program

a en C en un PIC

de gama baja, aunque

el hardware prem

ia todava ajustar el cdigo a mano cuidadosam

ente.

Engineers who came up in the late 80s and early 90s were part of the IC Generation. In contrast, todays young designers tend to think in terms of platforms, not chips. En-ter the Platform Generation, which comprises male and female EEs, programmers, DIYers, artists, open-source contributors, and electron-ics enthusiasts from a wide variety socioeconomic circumstances and academic backgrounds. The ties that bind are electronics, curiosity, and innovation.

Si v

ous

avez

des

sig

naux

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la p

artie

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re e

ux. Il vero sacro calice della

progettazione con FPGA passare da un qual-che modello ad alto liv-ello direttamente al co-dice FPGA. Solo in questo modo possibile proget-tare un sistema utilizzan-do del codice C, simulare lintero sistema sul pro-prio computer e scaricare con estrema facilit il co-dice nella FPGA. Ebbene, questa tecnologia esiste ed disponibile in varie forme gi da diversi anni

Th

e C

ir

Cu

iT

Ce

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ar

25

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02 CIRCUIT CELLAR / 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE / circuitcellar.com

C O N T E N T S

CC25

04 EDITORS LETTER

06 CIRCUIT CELLAR TIMELINE

08 CONTRIBUTORS

11 THE PAST

12 In the Beginning, There Was Light, by Steve Ciarcia

16 Inside the Box Still Counts: A Quarter-Century of Making It Work, by Ed Nisley

24 Long-Time Readers Chris Elmquist John D. Horrocks

Kurt Stach Brian Corrie Charles Mancuso Clarence Buersmeyer Donald L. McGarry

28 A Look Back: Twenty-Five Years of Embedded Designs, by Dave Tweed

34 Notable Contributors Aubrey Kagan Jan Axelson Mark Csele Mike Smith Monte Dalrymple Shlomo Engelberg Bruce M. Pride

Brian Millier

46 Design Challenge Projects

53 THE PRESENT

54 Dangerous Times: A Review of Embedded Security Risks, by Patrick Schaumont

60 On Robust Engineering: Design Tips for Ensuring System Reliability and Success, by George Novacek

70 User Interface Tips for Embedded Designers, by Curt Terwilliger

74 Member Skills & Preferences


C O N T E N T S

76 Mixed-Signal Designs: Twenty- Five Mistakes Youll Make at Least Once, by Robert Lacoste

86 Essential Embedded System Design Principles, by Bob Japenga

92 Electrical Engineering: Tricks and Tools for Project Success, by Jeff Bachiochi

97 Q&A: Embedded Today Ayse Kivilcim Coskun Chris Cantrell David L. Jones Gerard C. A. Fonte Joe Benge Marc Vaz Rebecca Yang Tom Kibalo Vincent Himpe

107 THE FUTURE

108 The Future of eLearning for Engineers, by Marty Hauff

111 The Platform Generation: Thinking in Terms of Platforms, Not Chips, by Clemens Valens

114 The DIY Electronics Revolution: The Present & Future of Open- Source Hardware, by Limor Fried

118 Leaders Look Ahead Steve Sanghi (Microchip Technology) Stefan Skarin (IAR Systems) Jeff Kodosky (National Instruments) YB Lee (WIZnet) Jean Labrosse (Micrium)

126 The Future of Rapid Prototyping, by Simon Ford

129 The Future of FPGAs, by Colin OFlynn

132 Do Small-RAM Devices Have a Future?, by John Regehr

134 Member Predictions

136 8 Bit Is Dead, Long Live 8 Bit, by Tom Cantrell 140 Tech the Future Helen Li Ko Ihara Stephen A. Edwards Zack Gainsforth Matthew Oppenheim Hans Henrik Skovgaard Peter Montgomery Chris Gammell

144 CIRCUIT CELLAR TABLE OF CONTENTS: 19882012

150 CIRCUIT CELLAR AUTHOR INDEX: 19882012

Circuit Cellar 25th Anniversary Issue

Head Office:Circuit Cellar111 Founders PlazaSuite 300East Hartford, CT 06108 USAPhone: 860.289.0800circuitcellar.com

Memberships: Circuit CellarP.O. Box 462256Escondido, CA 92046 USAE-mail: [email protected]: 800.269.6301circuitcellar.com

US AdvertisingStrategic Media Marketing, Inc.2 Main StreetGloucester, MA 01930 USAPhone: 978.281.7708Fax: 978.281.7706E-mail: [email protected] Advertising rates & terms available on request.

Copyright NoticeEntire contents copyright 2013 by Circuit Cellar, Inc. All rights reserved. Circuit Cellar is a registered trademark of Circuit Cellar, Inc. Reproduction of this publication in whole or in part without written consent from Circuit Cellar, Inc. is prohibited.

DisclaimerCircuit Cellar makes no warranties and as-sumes no responsibility or liability of any kind for errors in these programs or schematics or for the consequences of any such errors. Furthermore, because of possible variation in the quality and condition of materials and workmanship of reader-assembled projects, Circuit Cellar disclaims any responsibility for the safe and proper function of reader-as-sembled projects based upon or from plans, descriptions, or information published by Circuit Cellar.

The information provided by Circuit Cellar is for educational purposes. Circuit Cellar makes no claims or warrants that readers have a right to build things based upon these ideas under patent or other relevant intellectual property law in their jurisdiction, or that readers have a right to construct or operate any of the devices described herein under the relevant patent or other intellec-tual property law of the readers jurisdiction. The reader assumes any risk of infringement liability for constructing or operating such devices.

Circuit Cellar is a publication in the Elektor International Media network.

Circuit Cellar 2013Printed in the United States

The TeamFOUNDER: Steve CiarciaEDITOR-IN-CHIEF: C. J. AbatePROJECT EDITORS: Ken Davidson, David TweedASSOCIATE EDITOR: Nan PricePUBLISHER: Hugo Van haeckeASSOCIATE PUBLISHER: Shannon BarracloughART DIRECTOR: KC PrescottGRAPHIC DESIGN: Joyce ScheerCONTROLLER: Jeff YancoCUSTOMER SERVICE: Debbie LavoieADVERTISING COORDINATOR: Kim Hopkins

The Past, Present, & Future of Embedded Technology

We achieved three main goals by putting together this issue. One, we properly documented the history of Circuit Cellar from its launch in 1988 as a bi-monthly magazine about microcomputer applications to the present day. Two, we gathered immediately applicable tips and tricks from professional engineers about designing, programming, and completing electronics projects. Three, we recorded the

thoughts of innovative engineers, academics, and industry leaders on the future of embedded technologies ranging from rapid prototyping platforms to 8-bit chips to FPGAs.

The issues content is gathered in three main sections. Each section comprises essays, project information, and interviews.

In the Past section, we feature essays on the early days of Circuit Cellar, the thoughts of long-time readers about their first MCU-based projects, and more. For instance, Circuit Cellar's founder Steve Ciarcia writes about his early projects and the magazines launch in 1988. Long-time editor/contributor Dave Tweed documents some of his favorite projects from the past 25 years.

The Present section features advice from working hardware and software engineers. Examples include a review of embedded security risks and design tips for ensuring system reliability. We also include short interviews with professionals about their preferred microcontrollers, current projects, and engineering-related interests.

The Future section features essays by innovators such as Adafruit Industries founder Limor Fried, ARM engineer Simon Ford, and University of Utah professor John Regehr on topics such as the future of DIY engineering, rapid prototyping, and small-RAM devices. The section also features two different sets of interviews. In one, corporate leaders such as Microchip Technology CEO Steve Sanghi and IAR Systems CEO Stefan Skarin speculate on the future of embedded technology. In the other, engineers such as Stephen Edwards (Columbia University) offer their thoughts about the technologies that will shape our future.

As you read this issue, ask yourself the same questions we asked our contributors: Whats your take on the history of embedded technology? What can you design and program today? Which technologies will be relevant in the future?

C. J. AbateEditor-in-Chief


All Electronics Corp. www.allelectronics.com . . . . . . . . . 131

ARM, Ltd. www.arm.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Bitscope Designs www.bitscope.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Earth Computer Technologies store.earthlcd.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Newark element14 www.element14.com . . . . . . . . . . . . C3

EMAC, Inc. www.emacinc.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

Humandata, Ltd. www.hdl.co.jp/en . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Imagineering, Inc. www.pcbnet.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Labcenter Electronics www.labcenter.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Micro Digital www.smxrtos.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Microchip Technology, Inc. www.microchip.com. . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Pico Technology www.picotech.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . C2

Pololu Corp. www.pololu.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

Renesas Electronics Corp. www.renesas.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Saelig Co. www.saelig.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

SEGGER Microntroller Systems www.segger.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C4

Total Phase, Inc. www.totalphase.com . . . . . . . . . . 32,33

Not a supporting company yet? Contact Peter Wostrel ([email protected], P: 978-281-7708, F: 978-281-7706) to reserve your own space for the next edition of our members' magazine.

O U R N E T W O R K

S U P P O R T I N G C O M PA N I E S

United KingdomWisse Hettinga+31 46 [email protected]

USAHugo Van haecke+1 [email protected]

GermanyFerdinand te Walvaart+31 46 [email protected]

FranceDenis Meyer+31 46 [email protected]

NetherlandsHarry Baggen+31 46 [email protected]

SpainEduardo Corral+34 91 101 93 [email protected]

ItalyMaurizio del Corso+39 [email protected]

SwedenWisse Hettinga+31 46 [email protected]

BrazilJoo Martins+55 11 4195 [email protected]

PortugalJoo Martins+351 [email protected]

IndiaSunil D. Malekar+91 [email protected]

RussiaNataliya Melnikova+7 (965) 395 33 [email protected]

TurkeyZeynep Kksal+90 532 277 48 [email protected]

South AfricaJohan Dijk+27 78 2330 [email protected]

ChinaCees Baay+86 21 6445 [email protected]



1994 1995 1996 1997 1998


1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 19931988 Steve Ciarcia starts the ball rolling (Inside the Box Still Counts, #1)

EdNisleysdebut(HighSecurityonaBudget:BuildaVideoHandScanner/Identifier,#1) TomCantrellsfirstarticle(RISCvs.Reality:AnExerciseinAcronyms,#1) KenDavidsonlooksattheX-10PL513powerlineinterfacemodule(PowerLine-BasedComputerControl,#3) JeffBachiochisfirstarticle(RS-232EconomicTradeoffs:BoardSpacevs.PartsCountvs.PartsCo$t,#5)

1989 Resultsfromfirstreadersurvey(FirstINKReaderSurvey,#7) JohnEnginvestigatestheuseoftheSCSIbuswithanAppleMacasthehost

(AnIntelligentSCSIDataAcquisitionSystemfortheAppleMacintosh,#9) Mark Dahmke on tracking and receiving data from satellites (Tracking

Soviet Television Satellites, #10) EdNisleyoncache(CacheCraziness,#11)

1990 SteveCiarciacommentsonanalogtechnology(AnAnalogStateofMind,#13) JohnDybowskionbuildingapowerfulremotecontrolforaPC(ONDItheON-LineDeviceInterface,#16) TomCantrellonnewLCDdevices(GoodbyeCRT,HelloLCD,#18) MarkusLevyinvestigatesanalternativetoEEPROMandSRAM(DesigningwithFlashMemory,#18)

1991 SteveCiarciaonportablePCtechnology(WhyPortable?,#20) CurtisFranklinpredictsthecomingofsmall,lightpersonalcomputers(TowardsMorePersonalComputing,#20) EdNisleysdatafortheFurnaceFirmwareProject(TheFurnaceFirmwareProjectConcludes:HardDataforHomeControl,#21) EduardoPerez&DapangChenonusingaDSPchipforhigh-speedcalculations(NumericalApplicationsUsingDSP,#22)

1992 Jeff Bachiochi on electronic ID technology (Electronic Identification, #24) TriciaParksonthefutureofhomeautomation(TheStateofHomeSystems,#25) IRhomecontrolbyEdNisley(InfraredHomeControlGateway,#26) GuidelinesforusingPLDs(DesigningwithProgrammableLogic,#28)

1993 Circuit Cellar goes monthly! (#31) TomCantrellonLEDtechnology(SmartLEDs,#31) H.BradfordThompsononapathtomultitaskingunderDOS(PCParent-ChildProgramming,#36) MikePodanoffskyonOOP,thenewestcraze(Object-OrientedProgramminginEmbeddedSystems,#36) SteveCiarciaontheraceforPCpower(TheRaceforPower,#39)

1994 AVMuxprojectrevisited(ControlYourAudio/VideoConnectionswiththeAVMux,#45)Circuit Cellars50thissueTomCantrelloncompasstechnologyformicro-basedapplications(KnowtheWaytoSanJose?,#53) DaveTweedsfirstarticle(DesigningReal-TimeEmbeddedSoftwareUsingState-MachineConcepts,#53)

1995 DavidRees-ThomascreatesasimulatorfortheMotorola6805family(SimulatingMicroprocessorInstructionsinC,#54) Howapplicationscanbenefitfromtheuseoffuzzylogic(FuzzyLogicforEmbeddedMicrocontrollers,#56) TomCantrellprovidesacomparisonofspeedandhandlingtipsandtricks(ASaabStory:ATaleofSpeedandAcceleration,#57) FredEadysfirstarticle(TakeYourPIC:ALookatthePIC16CxxFamily,#65)

1996 UpdatinganImageWisereceiverbyaddinganHCSTVdisplay(FirmwareFurnace(Part1):GettingVid-LinkinSync,#66) RichardNewmanonthecallerIDbasics(CallerIDFundamentals,#69) IngoCyliaxbuildsasmallcontrollerforahexapodrobot(ModularRobotControllers,#73)

1997 Tom Cantrell describes micropower impulse radar (MIR) technology (Radar Love, #79)FredEadyonnetworkingembeddedanddesktopPCs(SweetSolution,#79)Detectingaudiotones,cross-correlation,andFIRfiltering(DSP-BasedCanadianTimecodeReceiver(Part1),#83)JanAxelsononserialEEPROM(UsingSerialEEPROMs,#84)IngoCyliaxongeneticprogramming(GeneticAlgorithmsforFPGAs,#85)CraigPatakydescribesmovingDOSprogramsintoWindows(InterprocessCommunication,#87)

1998 Design98,SponsoredbyMicrochipTechnology SteveCiarciaandJeffBachiochidesignanentryandexitsystem(Gotcha!AlarmingtheAlarmSystem,#95)

1999 Design99Competition,PoweredbyMotorola GeorgeMartinsfirstLessonsFromtheTrenchescolumn(Off-the-ShelfDataAcquisitionUsingVisual

Basic,Circuit Cellar Online) JeffBachiochionJTAG(JTAG:WorkingwithCoolPID,#104) Aaron Feen on Ethernet connectivity (Embedded Ethernet Fundamentals, #107) JimLyleonUSBclassesanddrivers(USBPrimer,#107)

2000 PIC2000,aDesignChallengewithMicrochipTechnology Design2K,SponsoredbyPhilips StuartBallonaninexpensivewaytoprogramAVRs(BuildanAVRProgrammer,#115) ADIY,low-costpowersupplyproject(BuyingPower,#118) TomNapierontestingdatatransmission(ApplicationsPNSequences,#124) Mark Balch on using an SDRAM controller (SDRAM: The New Embedded Solution, #125)

1990 2000 2001 2002 Interface1990 2000 2001 2002 Interface,1990 2000 2001 2002 , #16)1990 2000 2001 2002 #16),1990 2000 2001 2002 , #18)1990 2000 2001 2002 #18)1990 2000 2001 2002 1990 2000 2001 2002

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007Microchip2003 2004 2005 2006 2007Microchip Technology2003 2004 2005 2006 2007Technology 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 ogram2003 2004 2005 2006 2007ogram A2003 2004 2005 2006 2007AVRs2003 2004 2005 2006 2007VRsAVRsA2003 2004 2005 2006 2007AVRsA (Build2003 2004 2005 2006 2007(Build an2003 2004 2005 2006 2007an A2003 2004 2005 2006 2007AVR2003 2004 2005 2006 2007VRAVRA2003 2004 2005 2006 2007AVRA Pr2003 2004 2005 2006 2007Programmer,2003 2004 2005 2006 2007ogrammer, #115)2003 2004 2005 2006 2007#115)(Buying2003 2004 2005 2006 2007(Buying Power2003 2004 2005 2006 2007Power,2003 2004 2005 2006 2007,Power,Power2003 2004 2005 2006 2007Power,Power #118)2003 2004 2005 2006 2007#118)2003 2004 2005 2006 2007(Applications2003 2004 2005 2006 2007(Applications PN2003 2004 2005 2006 2007PN Sequences2003 2004 2005 2006 2007Sequences,2003 2004 2005 2006 2007, #124)2003 2004 2005 2006 2007#124)2003 2004 2005 2006 20072003 2004 2005 2006 20072008 2009 2010 2011 2012 / 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE / circuitcellar.com2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 / 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE / circuitcellar.com

Mark Balch on using an SDRAM controller (SDRAM: The New Embedded Solution, #125)

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012Mark Balch on using an SDRAM controller (SDRAM: The New Embedded Solution, #125)

1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 19931988

1990

T I M E L I N E


1994 1995 1996 1997 19981988 1989 1990 1991 1992 19932001 Driven to Design challenge, Sponsored by Zilog

Design Logic 2001 design challenge, Powered by Atmel Ultra-Low Power Flash MCU MSP430 Design Contest, Sponsored by Texas Instruments Steve Ciarcia introduces Circuit Cellars electronic edition (Electronic Evolution, #126)

2002 PSoC Design Challenge 2002, Sponsored by Cypress MicroSystems Mad Dash for Flash Cash, Sponsored by Microchip Technology Smart tech project: a solid-state brake light (Smart Auto Brake Light Eliminates Turn Indicators, #148) New sensor technology presented by Tom Cantrell (Sensors and Sensibility, #148)

2003 Renesas H8 Design Contest Zilog Flash for Cash Z8 Encore! International Design Contest Fred Eady on USB connectivity (Mission Possible: Achieve Cheap USB

Connectivity, #157) Motorola E-Field Sensor Contest & Flash Innovation 2003

2004 AVR 2004 Design Contest, Sponsored by Atmel Jeff Bachiochi covers USB in embedded designs (USB in Embedded Design, #165) PSoC High Integration Challenge, Sponsored by Cypress MicroSystems Zilog 2004 Flash Nets Cash Design Contest Steve Ciarcia comments on new technology: TiVo (To TiVo or Not to TiVo, #167) Wireless Design Challenge, Sponsored by Freescale Semiconductor

2005 Fred Eady explores embedded Wi-Fi (Embedded Wi-Fi with TRENDnet, #174) M16C Design Contest, Sponsored by Renesas An introduction to ZigBee (Zeroing in on ZigBee (Part 1), #175) Jeff Bachiochi on VoIP (A Fresh Look at VoIP,#180) Advice for improving analog and RF circuitry (Analog Tips and Tricks, #181) Alberto Ricci Bittis award-winning PSoC-based data manager design (The Silicon Wallet, #183)

2006 DIY microcontroller-based HERMS (Home-Brewed HERMS, #191) DesignStellaris2006 Contest, Sponsored by Luminary Micro Tom Cantrell covers using the Internet as a long RS-232 cable (Device Surfer, #192) Atmel AVR Design Contest 2006 Greg Cloutier explains how to build an analog scope companion (ARM Scope, #197)

2007 C language tutorial (Hello World Want Cookie, #198) Steve Ciarcia saves a life with his HCS (A Home Control Event Worth Remembering, #199) Circuit Cellars 200th Issue! Tom Cantrell introduces new MEMS technology (Thanks for the MEMS, # 208) Home photovoltaic system planning and installation (Solar-Powering the Circuit Cellar (Part 1), #209)

2008 Robert Lacoste on antenna technology (Antenna Basics, #211) Kripasagar Venkat on multiplication and division for MCUs (Efficient Micro Mathematics, #212) Ed Nisley details triac behavior (Triac Behavior, #213) George Martin presents his DIY solar system (Living & Working Off the Grid (Part 1), #216) Jan Axelson on how to design a USB virtual COM port device (Create a USB Virtual COM Port, #217)

2009 Jeff Bachiochi sheds light on solid-state storage media (Access SB Memory Cards, #222) Hanno Sander presents his innovative balancing robot (Vision-Guided Robotics, #224) Tom Cantrell addresses the status of 8-bit chips (A Really Simple Plan, #224) Power grid frequency monitor project (Frequency Sensing Made Simple, #231) Elektor International Media and Circuit Cellar join forces

2010 A look at the PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 (SoC with a Capital P, #234) DesignStellaris 2010, Sponsored by Texas Instruments WIZnet iMCU Design Challenge Guido Ottavianis mobile robot sensing system (A Sensor System for Robotics Applications, #236) USB and the enumeration process (Application Communication with USB (Part 1), #239) Circuit Cellar and Elektor co-host the NXP mbed Design Challenge George Novacek debuts new column The Consummate Engineer (#240) Robert Lacoste on when capacitors behave like inductors (Parasitic Components, #245)

2011 Circuit Cellars 250th issue CC Electronic Toolbox app appears on the cover of the July issue (#252) Richard Wotizs Embedded Unveiled column debuts (#254) Bob Japengas Embedded in Thin Slices column debuts (#255) DesignSpark chipKIT Challenge powered by RS Components and Allied Electronics Curt Terwilligers award-winning smart electronic load project (The (VI)sualizer, #257)

2012 George Novacek prepares for a scarcity of parts (Microelectronic Component Obsolescence, #260) Renesas RL78 Green Energy Challenge 2012 Patrick Schaumonts Embedded Security column debuts (#262) Mark Pedley details electronic compass technology (eCompass, #265) Ed Nisley explores the Arduino boards built-in power supply (Arduino Survival Guide, #269) Circuit Cellar celebrates 25 years

DesignStellaris 2010, Sponsored by US

George Novacek debuts new column The Consummate Engineer (#240)

Robert Lacoste on when

1990 2000 2001 2002 Connectivity, #157)

1990 2000 2001 2002 Connectivity, #157)

1990 2000 2001 2002

1990 2000 2001 2002 Motorola E-Field

1990 2000 2001 2002 Motorola E-Field Sensor

1990 2000 2001 2002 Sensor Contest & Flash Innovation 2003

1990 2000 2001 2002 Contest & Flash Innovation 2003

2004 1990 2000 2001 2002 2004 AVR 2004 Design Contest, Sponsored by 1990 2000 2001 2002 AVR 2004 Design Contest, Sponsored by Atmel1990 2000 2001 2002 Atmel Jeff Bachiochi covers USB in embedded designs (USB in Embedded D1990 2000 2001 2002 Jeff Bachiochi covers USB in embedded designs (USB in Embedded Design, #165)1990 2000 2001 2002 esign, #165) PSoC High Integration Challenge, Sponsored by 1990 2000 2001 2002 PSoC High Integration Challenge, Sponsored by Cypress MicroSystems 1990 2000 2001 2002 Cypress MicroSystems 1990 2000 2001 2002 1990 2000 2001 2002 1990 2000 2001 2002

2003 2004 2005 2006 20072012 2003 2004 2005 2006 20072012 George Novacek prepares for a scarcity of parts (Microelectronic Component Obsolescence, #260)2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 George Novacek prepares for a scarcity of parts (Microelectronic Component Obsolescence, #260) 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Renesas2003 2004 2005 2006 2007Renesas RL78 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 RL78 Green Energy2003 2004 2005 2006 2007Green Energy Challenge 2012 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Challenge 2012 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Patrick Schaumonts 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Patrick Schaumonts Embedded Security2003 2004 2005 2006 2007Embedded Security column debuts (#262)2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 column debuts (#262) 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Mark Pedley details 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Mark Pedley details electr2003 2004 2005 2006 2007electronic compass2003 2004 2005 2006 2007onic compass technology (eCompass, #265)2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 technology (eCompass, #265) 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Ed Nisley explores the Ar2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Ed Nisley explores the Arduino boards built-in power supply (Arduino Survival Guide, #269)2003 2004 2005 2006 2007duino boards built-in power supply (Arduino Survival Guide, #269)Circuit Cellar

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007Circuit Cellar celebrates 25 years

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 celebrates 25 yearsCircuit Cellar celebrates 25 yearsCircuit Cellar

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007Circuit Cellar celebrates 25 yearsCircuit Cellar

2003 2004 2005 2006 20072008 2009 2010 2011 201272008 2009 2010 2011 20127 CIRCUIT CELLAR2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 CIRCUIT CELLAR2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 / 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE / circuitcellar.com2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 / 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE / circuitcellar.com

celebrates 25 years

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 celebrates 25 years

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

T I M E L I N E

8 CIRCUIT CELLAR / 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE / circuitcellar.com8 CIRCUIT CELLAR / 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE / circuitcellar.com

C O N T R I B U T O R SJeff Bachiochi (p. 92) has been writing for Circuit Cellar

since 1988. More than 290 of his articles appeared in Circuit Cellar between 1988 and 2012. His background includes

product design and manufacturing. His column From the Bench appears monthly.

Tom Cantrell (p. 136) has been working on chip, board and system design and marketing for many years. From 1988 through 2012, Tom published more than 280 articles in Circuit Cellar on a wide range of topics such as early 8/16/32-bit microcontrollers, RISC, FPGAs, embedded wireless, USB, sensor technology, and energy harvesting.

Steve Ciarcia (p. 12) founded Circuit Cellar in 1988. He is an author, electronics engineer, and computer consultant

with experience in process control, digital design, product development, and more.

Simon Ford (p. 126) is Director of Online Tools at ARM and co-creator of mbed (mbed.org), the development platform for rapid prototyping with microcontrollers. Before starting mbed, he was Technical Lead for the ARMv7/NEON architecture now found in most smartphones and tablets. In his spare time, Simon is setting up Makespace (makespace.org), a workshop for building (almost) anything.

Limor Fried (p. 114) founded New York City-based Adafruit Industries in 2005. Fast Company named her one

of 2011s most influential women in technology, and she was awarded the Electronic Frontier Foundations Pioneer Award in 2009. Limor earned a Bachelors in EECS and a

Masters of Engineering from MIT.

Marty Hauff (p. 108) has worked as a practicing electron-ics engineer, PhD researcher, post-graduate educator, engineering design consultant, academic board member, and technical trainer. He is well recognized within the elec-tronics design community due to his many training videos, presentations, and articles. Marty is currently engaged with Altium in the development of its next generation of training and eLearning material.

Bob Japenga (p. 86) has been designing embedded systems since 1973. Along with his best friend in 1988, he started

MicroTools, which specializes in creating a variety of real-time embedded systems. Bob has been awarded 11 patents in

many areas of embedded systems and motion control.

Robert Lacoste (p. 76) lives near Paris, France, where he runs his consulting company, ALCIOM. He has more than two decades of professional experience with embedded systems, analog designs, and wireless telecommunications. Roberts column, The Darker Side, appears every other month in Circuit Cellar. Elsevier/Newnes published his book Robert Lacostes The Darker Side in 2009.

9 CIRCUIT CELLAR / 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE / www.circuitcellar.com

10 CIRCUIT CELLAR / 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE / circuitcellar.com10 CIRCUIT CELLAR / 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE / circuitcellar.com

C O N T R I B U T O R SEd Nisley (p. 16) is an electrical engineer and author liv-

ing in Poughkeepsie, NY. His column Above the Ground Plane appears every other month in Circuit Cellar. More

than 160 of Eds articles appeared in Circuit Cellar between 1988 and 2012.

George Novacek (p. 60) is a professional engineer with a degree in Cybernetics and Closed-Loop control. Now retired, he was most recently president of a multinational manufacturer for embedded control systems for aerospace applications in Canada. George wrote 26 feature articles for Circuit Cellar between 1999 and 2004. His column The Consummate Engineer appears monthly in Circuit Cellar.

Colin OFlynn (p. 129) has been working with embedded systems for more than a decade. His experiences have

ranged from network architecture projects to high-speed PCB design and layout. Colin lives in Halifax, Canada, where

he most recently started researching the cryptographic properties of embedded systems.

John Regehr (p. 132) is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Utah, where he has taught courses on topics such as advanced embedded systems, sensor networks, and Android projects. He holds a PhD and an MS in Computer Science from the University of Virginia, Charlot-tesville. John earned a BS in Computer Science and a BS in Mathematics at Kansas State University.

Patrick Schaumont (p. 54) is an associate professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

at Virginia Tech, where he works with students on research projects relating to embedded security. Patrick has covered

a variety of embedded security-related topics for Circuit Cellar: one-time passwords, electronic signatures for

firmware updates, and hardware-accelerated encryption.

Curt Terwilliger (p. 70) runs the Design/6 consultancy. He won First Place in the 2010 NXP mbed Design Challenge. Curt has worked in design and management at several Silicon Valley technology companies. He holds two patents, and earned EE degrees from MIT and Stanford.

Dave Tweed (p. 28) is a hardware and real-time firmware engineering consultant who has been working with

embedded processors since 1976 (starting with the Intel 8008). His system design experience includes computer

design from supercomputers to workstations, digital telecommunications systems, and the application of em-

bedded microcomputers and DSPs. Dave is a Circuit Cellar project editor and long-time contributor.

Clemens Valens (p. 111) is Editor-in-Chief of Elektor Online and head of Elektor Labs. He runs the Elektor-Projects.com virtual lab, where members can collaborate on projects and start designs of their own. Clemens is interested in sound synthesis techniques, rapid prototyping, and the popularization of technology.


PASTProject: HandScannerDesigner: Ed NisleyDate: 1988

Project: Low-Power Data Logger Designer: Steve Ciarcia Date: 1990

Project: Wireless Wearable TransceiversDesigners: Mathew Laibowitz

& Joseph ParadisoDate: 2004

In 1988, Ed Nisley introduced the HandScanner system that could identify individuals with im-ages of their hands. The design took digital TV images of hand prints and then analyzed them. It comprised three main parts: the scanner hard-ware, firmware on an ImageWise board, and software for image anal-ysis and recognition. The software would grab a hand image, analyze the image, and then compare the data against a database of authorized hands.

MAIN PARTS Heavy-Duty 8 Disk Drive Box IBM AT ImageWise Video Digitizer

In 1990, Circuit Cellars founder Steve Ciarcia de-signed and built an innovative low-power data logger for his home control system (HCS). He designed the device around a CMOS 80C52-BASIC processor. The designs uniqueness is due to its timing section. I actually designed two different timing sections that could control the same ba-sic processor and I/O sections, Ciarcia explained. There is a microprocessor in the con-trol section of a data logger because it is usually the most cost-effective means for per-forming the task of reading and recording data.

More and more designers are incorporating wireless RF links in their electronics projects. In this 2004 project, Mat-thew Laibowitz and Jo-seph Paradiso used an embedded RF device in a wearable badge platform to facilitate social interac-tion at large events. You can follow their lead by selecting a short-range RF device and imple-menting it in the design of your choice. If done properly, adding wireless connectivity to your devices will help make them more appealing to the vast majority of end users.

MAIN PARTS Dallas Semiconductor

DS1213C Socket OKI 6264B Battery-Backed

Clock/Calendar Siemens SDA0808 ADC

MAIN PARTS Chipcon CC1010 Transceiver


ad, I was on the dock of a dusty old warehouse in Nashua, NH, bargaining with the dealer for a Sanders unit. He seemed like a nice fellow who really wanted to unload this junk to as many happy experimenters as there existed. He even threw in an extra set of driver boards to help spread the word. Grinning profusely, I drove home with a giant terminal stuffed in the back seat.

Back then, the difference between big computers and little computers was that big computers needed big interfaces and little computers often needed only little ones. Rather than a refrigerator-sized unit, I built an 8-bit, parallel-port driven vector generator in less than half a cubic foot. The Sanders display itself was essentially equivalent to an oscilloscope driven in the XY mode (see Photo 2). The controller I built was technically nothing more than two 8-bit D/A converters (one X and one Y) tuned for the Sanders units deflec-tion range, some added slope timing controls so you could see the screen trace between end points, and a blanking signal generator. Needless to say, the display worked wonderfully. I could draw complete pictures on the screen using a simple technique of describing end points and drawing lines (called vectors) between them (see Photo 3).

Around the same time I started reading a new mag-azine dedicated to computerists called BYTE, and I be-gan corresponding with the then editor-in-chief Carl Helmers as well. When I told him I had a vector graph-ics display suitable for microcomputers, he asked if I would write an article about it. While I had never writ-ten anything more than technical manuals, I agreed to try. In the resulting article, I described the physical as-sembly of the vector graphics display and the program for generating a line drawing of the Starship Enterprise on the screen. A neat first try if I do say so myself.

Because I was a complete neophyte who trusted people beyond belief back then, I also decided to do a favor for the one person who had helped solve my dis-play problem. I sent a copy of the unpublished manu-script to the surplus dealer who sold me the terminal and explained that a DIY project would be featured in an upcoming issue of BYTE demonstrating how eas-ily an interface could be built for his product. To my surprise, about five weeks later, as I was browsing through a computer magazine considered to be a BYTEcompetitor, I came across the vector graphics article Ihad written. It had the surplus guys name on it along with mine as coauthor! In the middle of the article was an ad for a complete graphics controller kit based on the article, as well as the Sanders Terminals. Say what?

After a few frantic phone calls, I found out that the magazines were archenemies and learned how poli-tics between publications is sometimes a nasty fact of life. This surplus guy turned out to be fast friends with Wayne Green, the competing publisher who had a per-sonal feud going with BYTE, owned by his ex-wife Vir-ginia Green. Apparently, publishing my article first in 73 Magazine was a scoop intended to embarrass BYTE.When I confronted them with this discovery, they made profuse apologies and immediately sent half of the article fee (remember: coauthors). They said they regretted not notifying me properly and then told me I should feel gratified to see it published nonetheless. Yeah, right.

I called Carl Helmers to apologize for being a jerk with this surplus guy. Through that experience and conversations with others, I learned such stuff was old hat and that the two organizations had been playing

Past Present Future

Photo 3: Unlike raster-scan TV sets or LCDs today, the drawing technique I used in my first project was analog vector graphics and the displays were essentially big XY-input oscilloscopes. The driver electronics consisted of two 8-bit DACs with a defined delay slope between setpoints.

Photo 2: The surplus Sanders Associates analog displays were essentially big oscilloscopes. By having the computer continually send a series of analog XY values to the display, it would draw lines between these points. As you can see, line drawings can be quite versatile.


hide the manuscript and whos publishing it first for quite a while. Bad attitude and subterfuge were part of the standard operating pro-cedure. In fact, Carl was the one who apologized to me over the whole situation. He promised to publish the vector graphics article if I rewrote it.

Needless to say, I did the rewrite and the new article turned out to be a smashing hit among the reader-ship. Of course, the other publica-tion would never talk to me again because I had joined the enemy. Carl then asked me to write a se-ries of three projects, which were equally well-received. Shortly thereafter, we agreed on a regular project presentation each month called Ciarcias Circuit Cellar. That was 35 years ago! Of course, that was before I had to make a living at it, before all the dot bombs, and before everything computer-relat-ed became ultra-serious. Back in 1977, I was working as an engi-neer for Control Data Corporation and microcomputers were still con-sidered a novelty. They definitely didnt interest a big computer com-pany like Control Data, and it ac-tually was considered a negative if you even brought up the topic. Any personal interest in the subject had to be kept low key, bordering on secret. Of course, some friends just cant keep secrets.

While I am known best for many years of straight hardware design projects, my earliest BYTE articles were laced with humor and stories describing the whys and what fors associated with my monthly creations. One particular BYTE ar-ticle in 1977 went beyond that premise. I described my life at Con-trol Data after I had made the mis-take of telling my work associates that I had a personal computer. In short, they wanted to use my new Z80 computer to predict gambling odds at jai alai games (ahead of its time, but completely legal, mind you), and the article described how we set the computer up in a mo-tel near the jai alai fronton (the court) to shuttle the numbers. The article started: The follow-ing story is true. The names have

been changed to protect the inno-cent but, frankly, there arent any innocent parties. Up until then, I had stayed under the radar with my BYTE articles; but since Control Data expected to review its engi-neers potentially publishable work, that really blew the lid off. Needless to say, confronted with the pros-pect of a corporate career towing the party line and censorship, we parted company.

Even though I immediately started a job with another local company, I didnt stay there long. BYTE was on a winning streak and so was I. Unlike most other articles at the time, Circuit Cellar projects were commercial grade and intend-ed to be built and used. It didnt take a lot of project presentations to recognize a growing demand for the actual components. In early 1979, I started a company called Micromint with a partner in Long Island (whom I later bought out) to sell kits and support Circuit Cellar projects.

So what about the magazine? We havent gotten there yet. Theres a bit more to the story. For the next bunch of years, my entire focus was on producing engineer-level projects to publish in BYTEwith commercial-grade products as the spinoff for Micromint. It was a vicious, albeit glorious, cycle. The greater the sophistication of Ciar-cias Circuit Cellar projects, the more BYTE was dependent upon keeping the column running and the more engineers and workers I needed at Micromint to manufac-ture and support current and past projects. Any sane engineering manager would do a single product design on an 18-month cycle. We were making six to eight products a year! The good news was that while we were filling the piggy bank from all this activity, by default we were also creating the ingredients to potentially to do it all ourselves as well.

More importantly, in order to keep raising the wow-factor of Cir-

cuit Cellar projects (like video digi-tizers and 64-processor Mandelbrot generators), I had to enlist some exceptional talent. The name of my column was Ciarcias Circuit Cel-lar, but it never would have suc-ceeded or ultimately turned into this magazine without the dedi-cation and expertise of Ed Nisley, Ken Davidson, and Jeff Bachiochi as part of the technical team that made it all work.

During the same decade all this was going on at my end, BYTE was experiencing significant changes as well. Originally conceived for ex-perimenters like me, BYTE even-tually morphed into a magazine that covered all aspects of com-puting. Its great success didnt go unnoticed for very long and it was purchased in the early 1980s by McGraw-Hill. For a few years, they left BYTE management and edito-rial direction alone, but eventually got overly obsessed with competi-tors like PC World and PC Maga-zine. Consequently, they decided to change BYTEs editorial direction to be more and more PC-centrices-pecially no more Robert Tinney cov-ers. As you might guess, a hard-ware hacker column (their term) like mine was incompatible with their new commercial view of life. One of the Circuit Cellar projects was indeed a full IBM PC-clone, but I wasnt ready for generic com-puting yet. When asked if I wanted to stay on and review equipment instead of making hacker (their word) projects, I smiled and de-clined.

There were more than a few dis-affected individuals at BYTE and there was a ready pool of expertise if I wanted a third alternative. Dur-ing the meeting with BYTE man-agement, I asked if theyd have a problem if I started a little news-letter while I finished out my con-tract. Sure, Steve. What do we care? was their reply. Gotcha! A couple years before, then-BYTEpublisher, Dan Rodrigues, had left to come join me in Connecticut and


Past Present Futurerun Micromint. His first statement upon hearing about BYTEs redirec-tion was How about we start our own magazine? We had the staff, the expertise, the credibility, the support, and most importantly, the money. It was time to go for it.

The first issue of Circuit Cellarmagazine (initially called CircuitCellar INK for trademark reasons) was published in January 1988. And, the first issue theme, Inside the Box Still Counts, was my way of saying that us hardware guys arent going away quietly. Either we were completely successful at keeping it under BYTEs radar or they were so enamored with them-selves that they never noticed us. No one ever asked Whats this?

Circuit Cellar was conceived and designed to follow the same suc-cess track of the original BYTE. If you take a close look and compare the mastheads of an early CircuitCellar and an early BYTE (circa 1980), youll see that Circuit Cel-lar was run by the same key peo-plesome experienced individu-als indeed. They included BYTEs publisher, circulation manager, fi-nancial controller, lead columnist, support team, cover artist, and na-tional advertising representatives. Circuit Cellar was on national news-stands with the publication of its second issue. With Tinney covers, the Nisley, Davidson, and Bachiochi support team, and the significant expertise of Dan Rodrigues, Jean-nette Dojan (who later became my wife), Tom Cantrell, Dave Tweed, and many others, we were on a mission. We were neither an under-capitalized small publication with publish-or-perish goals nor a large-company, big-budget extravaganza with inflexible P&L targets. Instead, we were a gathering of eagles de-scending from a cloud of vultures whose sole purpose was to once again publish the best computer applications magazine around.

What was true then is still true now. The essential ingredient in any successful publication is great content and a dedicated core audi-ence. The core audience consists of readers who personally identify with the purpose and value of a

publication. In the extreme, publi-cations with strong identities even develop unique personalities that core readers form lasting relation-ships with. Depending upon a pub-lications purpose, the composition and necessity for a dedicated core audience varies. I dont generally think of PC World or TV Guide as being particularly concerned about core audiences. But, a technical magazine like Scientific American,which is designed for a minimum level of scientific understanding and interest, has almost a cult fol-lowing. Publishers have to be care-ful when they change their goals. Unlike time-critical news or event-based magazines, core-audience-critical technical publications have to be constantly aware of their prime directives so that they dont dilute or ignore the core audience while in a frenzy to meet financial objectives. Circuit Cellar kept its eye on the ball even when it meant doing it ourselves. Realize that no one is celebrating BYTEs 25th an-niversary.

A circulation manager once de-scribed the delicate process of circulation revenues to me in the following way: Think of carefully breaking an egg in the center of a spinning turntable. At the cen-ter is a well-defined, boundaried area (the yolk) surrounded by an almost infinitely expandable un-boundaried area (the white). Meta-phorically speaking, the yolk is the core readership and the white is the publications general-interest audience. Expansion and contrac-tion of readership and revenue is dynamic. The rotation rate of the turntable represents a complex compromise of editorial, reader, and revenue objectives. When the platter spins at a reasonable rate,

following a well-planned path, the yoke will remain intact and the white will expand out uniformly. However, if an abrupt change in ob-jectives spins the platter very fast or with sudden acceleration, the situation changes radically. Initial appearances can actually misrep-resent actual results. The white will indeed expand out very quickly and appear to demonstrate substantial gain; but left unchecked, this ap-plied energy can rupture the yoke and cause the core audience to spill out at the same rate of expansion.

Reader profiles are not just emo-tionless demographics. A special-ized magazine like Circuit Cellarhas a vested interest in a cohesive and dedicated core audience. And that has always dictated our moti-vation and direction. Circuit Cellars uniqueness is that its readers are also its authors. While we are of-ten disparagingly called techies, we truly have a nonsuperficial readership. And experience shows that most of you are also experts at the center of innovation. As core readers, you are in good company! Successful technical magazines are those that have forged a proper balance between business and edi-torial objectives. I, for one, have always been dedicated to keeping Circuit Cellars direction consistent with its significance. For 35 years, I have been proud to be a techie, and I make no bones about it!


PAST


Past Present Future

Inside the Box Still Counts

Photo 1: Combining a TV camera, a prototype 8031-based video digitizer, and an IBM PC with custom firmware and software produced a digital hand scanner for Circuit Cellar 1. The alu-minum case came from an external 8 floppy drive!

Cellar 7: the fixed-point math rou-tines for Steves Mandelbrot Engine array processor. The engine was a rack of 64 Intel 8751 single-chip mi-crocontrollers that easily outpaced an 8-MHz IBM PC/AT with an 80387 math coprocessor, with results drawn on an IBM EGA display. My firmware traded space for time in a big way, with the innermost 64-bit multiply macro expanding from 300 source lines into 3-kB lump of program code without a single loop.

I debugged that firmware by pro-gramming the Mandelbrot calculation on an HP16C calculator, running it in 64-bit fixed-point mode, and verify-ing the bit-by-bit accuracy of my re-sults. Yes, it worked!

Although Firmware Furnace dealt with what Steve dismissed as a sim-ple matter of software, the code al-ways required a hardware substrate. Unique code running on purpose-built hardware sometimes produced unan-ticipated consequences.

For example, the Radioactive Randoms column in Circuit Cellar 14 timed the pulses emitted by a Geiger counter. Because the pulses came from particles emitted by radioac-tive elements, they had inherently unpredictable timings that served as the basis for truly random numbers. I explained several methods of mea-suring time intervals on a BASIC-52 processor, starting with a simple BA-

SIC program and ending by creating a new interpreter keyword. That was actually the point of the column, as modifying a ROM-based language was a thinly documented technique at the time.

Fast forward two decades to a call from a lawyer involved in a patent suit involving hardware methods of random number generation based on radioactive decay. Although I measured time with software, that column was apparently one of the earliest written examples of creat-ing random numbers by measuring decay intervals. I definitely didnt invent the concept of radioactive random numbers, but Circuit Cellardocumented the technology.

Some time when Steves in a good mood, ask him about the pat-ent squabble involving the IR Master Controller. The firmware I described in Circuit Cellar 2 captured and played back arbitrary IR remote control sig-nals for the IR Master Controller proj-ect. The litigation, however, revolved

around the serial port that trans-ferred the captured IR data to an IBM PC; we thought that was an obvious feature. It seems Circuit Cellar pre-sented the first implementation of a PC-connected remote control.

Fortunately, I still had my original notebooks, although I spent quite some time helping the lawyers sort through cartons of paper as we sat on the basement floor. I never expected the IR Master Controller would be such a breakthrough!

Circuit Cellar 31 marked the start of an exploration into the ISA Bus found in IBM-compatible PCs. Over the course of the next 15 columns, which appeared on a monthly sched-ule, I designed, breadboarded, and wrote about the hardware on the ISA Bus expansion board in Photo 2 and explored the software techniques re-quired to use everything from simple switches and seven-segment LED displays, all the way to a bitmapped 640 200 graphic LCD panel.

Photo 3 shows the dark side of

Photo 2: A breadboard for the ISA bus backplane provided the basis for an extended series of columns showing how to inter-face a wide variety of hardware to a stock PC. The hardware may be simple by todays standard, but youll find it in many microcontroller projects.

Photo 3: Because I designed and built the hardware month by month, I couldnt use a printed circuit board, so each connec-tion required a point-to-point wire, cut to length, stripped, and soldered. I now use the remnants of those Wire-Wrap spools, but for much smaller projects.


that series: every single interconnec-tion required a hand-soldered point-to-point Wire-Wrap wire. WW wire makes great soldered joints, but, looking back on those columns from this distance in years, I would agree with you: I must have been crazy.

Around that time I bought a shiny new HP 54602 oscilloscope with an RS-232 serial output module, so I could produce tidy screen shots like Photo 4. The HP sales reps tried to sell me an HPIB module, because it was faster and better. However, that module required an HPIB interface card plugged into the PC backplane with a corresponding driver program, which seemed overly restrictive. Over the years Ive captured screenshots from that oscilloscope using Win-dows, OS/2, and Linux on PCs with ISA, EISA, PS/2, VESA, PCI, PCI-E, and, most recently, no expansion slots at all. I can occasionally foretell the future with perfect accuracy!

Those particular pulses emerged from a series of columns exploring Intel x86 protected mode program-ming at the bare-silicon level. The first column followed the convoluted boot process that invoked protected mode and the series ended with a multitasking supervisor controlling several protected-mode programs and a small DOS-compatible program running in Virtual 86 mode. The rising edge of the external interrupt shown in the top trace of Photo 4 activated a V86 interrupt handler, which emitted the pulse in the middle trace about 50 s later. The gaps in the bottom trace showed the overhead required to switch from 32-bit protected mode into 16-bit V86 mode and back again.

All the firmware for those columns ran on an 80-MHz 80486DX2 proces-sor. Id expect somewhat better perfor-mance on a contemporary 3-GHz CPU.

Then it was time for a break. The next few years included a long-lead-time project that produced our very own Larval Engineer, whos now a sophomore EE student.

Photo 4: These signals came from a program running

in Virtual-86 mode: the external inter-

rupt signal on top, the interrupt handlers re-sponse in the middle,

and the background loop on the bottom.

Photo 5: Although power line noise con-tinues to plague X10

communication, none of its competitors in

the home-control mar-ket remain standing.

Photo 6: The tem-perature of NiMH cells increases dramatically

when they reach full charge. Your control

circuit must detect the voltage peak and turn

off the charging cur-rent to avoid cooking

the cells.

Figure 1: A silicon IR photodiode actually

detects everything from deep IR through

violet light, so your receiver must handle in-band interference.

Notice the perfect match between high-

pressure sodium lamp emissions and photo-

detector sensitivity.


Above the Ground PlaneShortly after the turn of the millen-

nium, Steve called again: Would I be interested in writing a column explor-ing analog and RF stuff to show that designing a working gadget requires more than just digital circuitry and programming? That sounded like fun and, after the usual search for a title, Above the Ground Plane was up and running.

We decided that most engineers and designers know at least the broad outlines of those topics, so pre-senting the peculiarities and gotchas would be useful. In what had become the Circuit Cellar tradition, of course, that examination generally required hardware, firmware, and test equip-ment: everything must work!

The first Above the Ground Planecolumn in Circuit Cellar 127 revisited an annoyance of long standing: X10 power-line control. I described 8051 firmware that generated the pre-cise timing required for X10 signals back in Circuit Cellar 5, but Photo 5showed the analog noise accompany-ing the 120-kHz X10 signal received at the far end of the house from the transmitter. Obviously, a decoder designed for pristine digital pulses would produce poor results!

Real-world examples of why you must understand noise can be found at the Trinity College Fire-Fighting Home Robotics Contest in Hartford,

CT, where teams from around the planet often discover that their ro-bots operate differently in the contest arenas than on their workbench. It seems autonomous robots encoun-ter problems with everything from batteries to motors to sensors, with an occasional loose wire thrown in to confuse frantic debugging sessions. I think my columns about robot-specif-ic problems and presentations at the contest have helped their robots get better each year, but the fact is that they learn best through hard-won ex-periences.

Batteries, in particular, pose a continuing design challenge, so Ive explored many aspects of their care, feeding, testing, and behavior over the years. Photo 6, from Circuit Cel-lar 201, shows the dramatic tempera-ture increase when NiMH cells reach full charge. Even when your project uses a charge control IC, you must understand what happens when things go wrong: I cooked those cells so you wont.

For many years, the Trinity College gymnasium had high-pressure sodi-um lighting that provided a good bal-ance between visual color rendition and energy efficiency. Unfortunately for robots using simple IR sensors, HP sodium lamps produce an intense IR emission at the worst possible wavelength for silicon photodiode de-tectors. Many teams discovered that

the overhead banks of 1-kW high-pressure sodium lamps swamped their robots puny 50-mW IR LEDs: carefully tuned sensors produced random glitches. The spectral curves in Figure 1, from Circuit Cellar 157, show that a silicon photodiode in-tended to receive infrared signals can even respond to a violet LED.

Analog circuits introduce com-plexities unknown in digital logic, because even simple capacitors may not behave as youd expect from equations based on ideal circuit models. Photo 7, from Circuit Cellar261, shows that the voltage across three parallel SMD capacitors doesnt decrease as the signal frequency in-creases. Those three valleys mark the frequencies where the capacitors form parallel tank circuits with their parasitic inductances, leading to the peculiar situation where the imped-ance of a capacitor actually increases at higher frequencies.

Sometimes you can put analog complexities to good use, though, as the board in Photo 8, from Circuit Cellar 163, demonstrated. That circuit converted a GPS-locked 10-MHz refer-ence frequency to 11.25 MHz, which served as the clock for an 8031-based power-line frequency monitor. The two black cylinders near the middle

Photo 8: Converting a GPS-locked, 10-MHz reference to 60.000 Hz

required frequency multiplication and division, with 1-pF gimmick ca-pacitors made from RG-174 coaxial

cable in the band-pass filters.

Photo 7: Placing three capacitors in

parallel does not produce the smooth frequency response

predicted by the low-frequency equa-tions. Instead, each

capacitor behaves as an inductor above its

self-resonant frequen-cy; each valley shows

one resonance.

Past Present Future


of the board are 1-pF gimmick ca-pacitors made from lengths of RG-174 miniature coaxial cable, trimmed to the exact capacitance required by the filters that isolate the third har-monic of the input signal. Coaxial cables generally carry signals from one board to another, but thats not all they can do!

Many readers have told me that seeing such arcane details helped resolve mysterious problems they encountered with their own proj-ects: our original goals for Above the Ground Plane were right on target.

The More Things Change...Its worth remembering that the

first single-chip microcontroller, the Texas Instruments TMS1000, ap-peared in 1974, barely a decade be-fore Circuit Cellars first issue went read-only. Early Firmware Furnace columns used microcontrollers in the Intel 8051 family, because they were (relatively) cheap and (reasonably) available in the mid-1980s, barely five years after their introduction. Even the Microchip PIC dates back to 1975, with the first EPROM-based PICs appearing a decade later.

The first IBM Personal Computer arrived in 1981, with the least expen-sive version sporting 16 KB of memory on its system board. Single-chip mi-crocontrollers of that era had, at most, a few kilobytes of EPROM program memory and less than 256 bytes of RAM, so writing microcontroller pro-grams in assembly language crammed the functions into the space avail-able. Although you could compile a program for the comparatively spacious IBM PC, hardware-specific functions generally required at least a dab of assembly language coding.

A pleasant side effect was that one person could comprehend everything: the CPU architecture and its instruction set, the overall system schematic, and all of the software. Many people did exactly that, producing a Cambrian explo-sion of programs and hardware gadgets capable of accomplishing tasks never before possible. Microcontrollers, in particular, provided cheap and convenient control for very small projects that simply couldnt be built without computer control, many of which appeared in my columns.

Alas, both PCs and microcontrollers became more complex over the years as the relentless application of Moores Law laid more and more transistors onto each silicon wafer. Ever-expanding hardware capabilities and memory allowed (or, perhaps, encouraged) increasing software complexity, to the point where any project involving a computer required multidisciplinary teams and no one person quite understood how the whole project worked.

The architecture of contemporary PC operating systems and languages eliminates contact with the underlying hardware, even as the hardware has become both smaller and more powerful. Although an experienced designer can work around those restrictions, using a PC for low-level bit twiddling simply isnt practical, especially for small projects. Worse, the process of compiling a program for a particular system involves so many moving parts that Ive seen entire articles devoted to the care and feeding of a projects software stack.

But the need for small, simple controllers for small, simple projects hasnt gone away. You can still buy 8051 and PIC microcontrollers, or their equiva-lents in gate-array macros, although the newer ones tend to have bizarre hardware encrustations that would be more appropriate on CPUs with wider data paths. Compilers have improved to the point where stuffing a C program into a low-end PIC isnt completely absurd, but the hardware still rewards care-fully hand-tweaked code.

Photo 9 shows one of the Arduino microcontroller boards Ive been using for many of my recent projects. The processors, from the Atmel AVR micro-controller family, date to the mid-1990s, with a compiler-friendly architecture producing good performance with high-level languages. Barely more than breakout boards wrapped around the microcontrollers, Arduinos provide a convenient way to mount and wire to the microcontroller chips. The hardware may be too expensive to incorporate in a product, but its ideal for prototypes and demonstrations.

Even better, a single person can still comprehend all of a projects hardware and software, if only because the projects tend to be human-scaled. The Ar-duinos open-source licensing model fits well with my columns readily avail-able hardware and firmware: you can reproduce everything from scratch, then extend it to suit your needs.

...The More You LearnI never returned to that authors seminar series at the library; they were

obviously writing about entirely different worlds, ones they made up as they went along. My task was much simpler: explain (or at least attempt to explain)

Photo 9: The Arduino microcontroller project provides a convenient basis for small-scale projects like this NiMH cell tester. Simple interconnections work well with low-speed signals and low-current hardware, but analog gotchas always lie in wait.


how the real world works. Well, at least the sliver of the real world relevant to folks who build gadgets that everyone else takes for granted.

That makes finding column topics almost trivially easy, because everything I build involves an interesting and some-times challenging topic. For example, a friend asked me to build a very special clock that displayed the time in big blue digits, but only the correct time. If the clock couldnt display the correct time, it should display nothing at all. She didnt want an alarm, blinking dots, a radio, buttons, or anything other than the time. Her Totally Featureless Clock became the basis for four columns, although not one described how to build the clock itself.

Circuit Cellar 235 described a low-power transmitter sim-ulator that let me debug the receiver during daylight hours when RF propagation across the continent didnt deliver enough energy to the receiver. I discussed the WWVB data encoding, its AM modulation scheme, and the filtering re-quired to produce a matching signal. Photo 10 shows the signal delivered to the antenna, with a coverage area bare-ly the size of my electronics workbench.

Although Circuit Cellar 237 included the clocks schemat-ic and firmware, I explained how to reduce noise from the LED display, adjust its intensity to match the surroundings, correct the Arduino ceramic resonators drift using precise WWVB time signals, and supply backup power from a 5 F ultracapacitor. The clock had good reception, an unobtrusive display, a self-adjusting timebase, and the ability to survive power outages without a battery. Those were the hard parts of the project, not the digital design!

Circuit Cellar 239 had the firmware that reliably extracted the time from the receivers very noisy output. and pro-duced a diagnostic data stream on the Arduinos serial out-put. Photo 11 plots the data showing the RF noise level: if youre building an RF receiver, that histogram clearly shows why daytime reception of the WWVB signal poses such a challenge. Even though Above the Ground Plane deals mostly with analog and RF stuff, sometimes firmware must do the heavy lifting.

Even if youre not building a clock, most projects involve a quartz crystal, so I took a look at crystal characterization in Circuit Cellar 241. The test fixture in Photo 12 simplifies the measurements required to build a Spice circuit model for a specific crystal, with an accuracy thats probably better than the variation between crystals in a production lot. If youre building a precise oscillator or a crystal filter, thats the data you need.

During the course of each project, I keep a running record (these days, in a comb-bound notebook that I scan into digi-tal images) and take copious pictures of the details. Then, when something interesting happens, Im already set up to document the results and thats what turns into a column. In fact, I often emerge from the Basement Laboratory to say

Photo 11: The Totally Featureless Clock pro-duced a diagnostic out-put showing the noise level. This record of 85 consecutive midwinter hours clearly shows how the daytime noise level affects the received sig-nal. The three transverse bars represent the pulse widths that carry valid data; everything else is noise!

Photo 10: This 60-kHz signal from my WWVB simulator duplicated the transmitters modulation so that I could debug the Totally Featureless Clock without waiting all night for good reception.

Past Present Future

Well, I have a column!With all that in hand, actually writing the column

is easy. The pictures tell the story, so I generally select the photos, arrange them in a reasonable or-der, and write their captions. Seeing those pictures on the page means I can write a column that ex-plains whats going on in the pictures: I think of it as Show-and-Tell for grownups.

However, theres nothing like explaining a topic that I think I understand to demonstrate beyond


a shadow of a doubt that Im totally wrong. When that happens, its back to the electronics workbench to figure out the right answer, after some research into the rel-evant equations to help me (re-)measure the data the right way.

So heres my secret recipe: I build stuff, make it work, and write about it. Easy!

Rules of ThumbIve come to rely on a few tried-and-true guidelines

when Im laying out a project. They have nothing to do with circuit design and everything to do with avoiding the sort of blunder than can derail the entire effort. Of course, I still make mistakes, but theyre usually small-er goofs that I can turn into a column.Here, try them yourself:

Remember the Fundamentals. Conductors have re-sistance, transistors dont switch instantly, batteries arent ideal voltage sources, components have parasit-ic effects, and peak CPU speed never happens. If you havent been scorched by one of those, youre leading a charmed life.

Models Are Not Reality. Everyone builds Spice mod-els, so all designs work the first time. Right? While ad-vanced modeling languages with extensive validation based on actual parts can deliver near-perfect first ver-sions, the simpler models used by the rest of us tend to omit vital chunks of reality that appear in a real pro-totype. A good model can show why your design wontwork, never that it must work.

Build One to Throw Away. Even when (you think you) have a comprehensive model, plan for a second hard-ware prototype. Once upon a time, a contract called for an inexpensive scrolling alphanumeric LED display based on seven-segment modules. I pointed out that such modules cant display words like worm or fox, but even some graphic mockups didnt carry the point. When I demonstrated the prototype, however, that one got thrown away.

Divide the Important Numbers. Always perform a sanity check on any numbers in a specification; you can often do this in your head. When battery capacity divided by average power falls far short of the required runtime, somethings obviously wrong. Should the average cur-rent dissipate 10 W in an SMD transistor, it wont do so for long. In the firmware world, dataset size divided by memory or communications bandwidth may be more in-formative than raw CPU speed.Incidentally, a spec that includes only one number (or none at all) may be a wish list, but its not a specification.

Beware Reality Distortion Fields. Entrepreneurs can wave away any objection to their vision, while engi-neers must make that vision work in the real world. The most interesting projects lie just this side of impos-sible; a great engineer can nudge both the project and the border in the right directions, while making the task look easy.

Break the Rules When You Must. Steve also ruled that I couldnt write about blinking an LED. I swear the LEDs in Photo 13 werent just blinking. The column in Circuit Cellar 129 discussed the problems involved in a DC-to-DC boost converter, including single point grounding and how parasitic inductance and capaci-tance forms a tank circuit oscillator. Really!

Contact ReleaseWhats new and different? Right now, were living in

the Golden Age of Analog and RF Hacking, with more functions in better packages requiring simpler layouts than ever before. Heat up that soldering iron, build some-thing, get it working, then explain it to the rest of us!


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Chris Elmquist St. Paul, MNThe Embedded Systems EE

Where did you learn to design and program? Self-taught. Built first computer at age 14, 1976. Was a Motorola MEK6800-D1 evaluation kit. I still have it and it still runs.

Your occupation? Principal embedded systems engineer, LogicPD (Minneapolis)

When did the term embedded became part of your vocabulary?Probably around 1989 as I transitioned from supercomputer development back to small systems and I began developing hardware and software for small systems that were embedded in other devicesmodems, intelligent multi-port serial interfaces, Ethernet subsystems, etc.

What was your first MCU project? It was probably an MC68HC11-based design that facilitated an async serial command interface to an AC power control system.

How did you come to know about Circuit Cellar in 1988?Reading Ciarcias Circuit Cellar in BYTE of course. I still have nearly every edition of BYTE magazine until it stopped carrying Circuit Cellar as well.

How do you typically read Circuit Cellar? Print magazine, all at once, and then it sits on the coffee or breakfast table and I refer to it periodically until the next issue arrives.

How have you applied something you learned in Circuit Cellar?I think I generally read about projects others are doing and think: That would be cool to do. And then I go do something similar,

but in my own way with my own design. I seldom use things verbatim from the magazines.

What are your favorite EE sights, sounds, and smells? I love the sight of seven-segment LEDs. Theres an association for me to the first power on of a home-built system and seeing those displays light up with an address + data pattern is truly rewarding. Of course, the smell of leaded solder is wonderful too. RoHS solder stinks and makes me nauseous. I also love the smell of my TI Silent 700 thermal printing terminal. I think its the smell of the plastic used in the case. But this was the first terminal I used with my first computer in 1976. When I power up that terminal, its just like being 14 again and exploring that amazing, uncharted world of microprocessors circa 1976.

What do you find most rewarding about electronics engineering?Solving problems and the simple reward of seeing something you designed actually work. Im constantly saying to friends and coworkers: Gee. Its cool when something just works.

Whats most frustrating about electronics engineering? Arrogant people. People who have been in the field for a very long time, or especially ones that have lots of education, tend to take the attitude that they are smarter than everyone else. Only they can do it right, and in my experience, seldom do. Theyre basically dysfunctional because you cant build a team with these people. They will piss off everyone else they are supposed to work with because all they do is criticize and talk down to others. In my opinion, these people do not love the field; they just love themselves.

Any advice for a young engineer just starting out? You need to be equally versed in hardware and software. You need to take a systems approach to engineering and completely understand how hardware decisions will impact the software and vice verse. Ive seen too many programs horribly screwed up because the hardware was done in a vacuum without any input from the software team or a software team that has no concept of how the hardware works and thinks they can develop their code hardware independent. Doesnt work.

What would you say has been the most important technological advance in electrical engineering over the past 25 years? Open-source software. Open-source toolchains for embedded development have brought low-cost or free development tools to the masses. No longer are we hamstrung by multi-thousand-dollar development tools that only giant corporations can afford. No longer are we trapped into having to use crap from Microsoft as our development workstation. I can use Linux and Unix workstations to do embedded development, and this gives me a reason to get up every day. CE

John D. Horrocks Bowie, MDThe Systems Engineer

Where did you learn to design and program? University of Maryland, electronic engineering from 1963 to 1968. Some graduate-level courses in engineering and computer science. Most microcomputer engineering and programming is self-taught.

Long-Time Readers

University of Maryland, University of Maryland, electronic engineering from 1963 to 1968. Some graduate-level courses in engineering and computer science. Most microcomputer engineering and

Where did you learn to design and program? Where did you learn to design and pr

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