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Issue #219 October 2008
What Makes an Engineer Tick?
by C. J. Abate
This month, you will read two articles by designers who have published with us in the past. During the last four years, both Neal Martini (“DIY Signal Generation,” p. 12) and Peter Montgomery (“Dynamic Animatronic Remote (Part 2),” p. 42) have presented articles about interesting projects. This isn’t anything new. As I recently told a first-time author who was preparing an article for an upcoming issue, we have dozens of repeat writers—designers who found presenting their ideas to the Circuit Cellar community to be a rewarding, career-enhancing experience. Many of you long-time readers could probably list the names of several talented designers who have published more than one helpful article. But have you ever wondered what makes those designers tick? Sure, you’ve read the short bios at the ends of their articles, but have you ever wanted to know a bit more about how they became engineers, how they developed and coded their designs, or what designs they’re planning for the future?
If so, consider subscribing to Circuit Cellar News Notes, which is our free monthly interactive electronic newsletter. In addition to in-depth interviews with working engineers, the newsletter features a variety of useful content ranging from reader polls and product sample announcements to information about embedded community events. Go to www.circuitcellar.com/newsletter to sign up and read the latest installment.
After reading this issue, you may want to learn more about one of the engineers. If so, feel free to e-mail me your questions. If there’s demand for a particular interview, we’ll make it happen. It doesn’t get any more interactive than that!
This month, Neal Martini describes how to create a signal source for RF applications. The design generates frequencies from 0 to 3 GHz with a frequency accuracy of less than 200 Hz.
If you’re interested in USB connectivity, turn to Jeff Bachiochi’s special feature about Microchip Technology’s line of USB PIC microcontrollers (p. 24). With Microchip’s 8-, 16-, and 32-bit USB MCUs, embedded host and On-The-Go (OTG) solutions are at your fingertips.
Starting on page 42, Peter Montgomery presents the final article in his series about his animatronic remote. He covers the software and menuing code associated with the project.
In a detailed article titled “Automated Data Mining,” Matt Pennell and Aaron Thomas describe how they designed an amazing embedded server application to help them with their travel plans (p. 50). The WIZnet W5100-based system uses an online travel search engine to look for flights.
Authors Phil Laird and Jeff Shewan recently built a robust hardware platform to run rule sets for old pinball machines (p. 62). The custom design emulates the hardware for nearly 500 pinball machines.
As usual, our columnists touch on a wide variety of topics. Ed Nisley covers the topics of combined audio-digital circuitry and GPS technology (p. 34). In his second article of the issue, Jeff Bachiochi explains how he tackled an RS-232-port-related problem with an innovative serial terminal solution (p. 58). Robert Lacoste describes the process of reproducing old cable shielding experiments and then explains the results (p. 70). And finally, beginning on page 78, Tom Cantrell introduces you to infrared noncontact temperature sensing. Perhaps his article will lead you to implement an infrared noncontact temperature-sensing IC in your next design.
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