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Issue #206 September 2007
Blogs & Video
by C.J. Abate
During the past year, I’ve received numerous e-mails from readers who’ve begun using two inexpensive technologies to chronicle and show off their projects: blogs and video. Every other week or so, I receive an e-mail from a reader who points me to a web site or video file that showcases an interesting new project. A great example is Miguel Sanchez’s vertical plotter project, which you can view at www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmB14M78CWU.
Blogging about your projects and presenting your peers with short videos are effective ways of sharing your ideas and receiving useful feedback about your designs. I encourage you to give it a try, and when you do, be sure to send us an e-mail with a link to your work. We’d love to have a look. If your project intrigues us, we might approach you about the possibility of writing an article for the magazine.
This month, in addition to our usual batch of interesting columns, we’re featuring seven great articles that will keep you in design mode until the new year.
On page 10, Alexander and Jordan Popov describe an intelligent power supply setup for an embedded system. Read this article before you begin testing your next design.
Dale Wheat’s PIC-an-LCD design is a PIC-based serial LCD controller (p. 18). As you’ll see, the chip is programmed in C and can work with most alphanumeric LCD modules.
In “High-Performance Motor Controller,” Daniel Ramirez explains how he uses a USB interface to issue high-level commands to his motor controller from his laptop (p. 26). It’s your turn to give it a try.
Are you ready for some 1-Wire solutions? In the second part of his “1-Wire in the Real World” series, Steve Hendrix finishes explaining how he built a 1-Wire master (p. 42). Now you can put a 1-Wire solution in play even if it’s in a “hostile” environment.
On page 52, Aubrey Kagan begins a new series of articles about the art of protecting an embedded design. This month, he focuses on the topics of power supplies, inputs, and ground.
Once you’re confident that you can protect your designs, check out Stuart Ball’s article entitled “Pulse Generation” (p. 58). He encourages you to try a continuous rotary knob in your next design instead of a keypad or buttons.
Wrapping up the feature article section of the magazine is Thiadmer Riemersma’s article about embedded scripting (p. 62). He explains how to harness the power of the Pawn scripting language. As you’ll see, it’s possible to extend your firmware without changing it.
Happy reading.
Remember: if you try your hand at a design that’s similar to any of those covered in this issue, be sure to write about the experience and shoot a short video. We want to see what you’re up to!
One last note. Keep in mind that the submission deadline for the Microchip 16-Bit Embedded Control Design Contest is October 16, 2007. That means you have about a month and a half to finish up your designs and submit your entries. With $15,000 in total cash prizes up for grabs, this is sure to be a highly competitive contest. Good luck!
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