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Issue #220 November 2008
Development Continues
by C. J. Abate
What is the most striking difference between the financial crisis of 2008 and the economic problems of 2000–2001? The cause. Seven years ago, the technology sector was at the helm of the economic downturn that started in Silicon Valley and then rippled through the rest of the U.S. economy and beyond. During the last several months, however, the financial services sector has been at the center of the downturn. This means you engineers and programmers can breathe a little easier this time around. Fingers aren’t pointed at you. The mortgage brokers, short sellers, and investment bankers are in the crosshairs. For the near term, at least, they’ll be the ones losing their jobs.
One likely result of the current credit crunch will be that the companies you work for will have less access to cheap money than they did in, say, 2004. What does this mean for you? Well, the same analysts who always characterize the tech sector as “cyclical” are predicting that investment capital will be moved away from technology toward less-sensitive sectors. We like to think more positively: the business of embedded development and programming will weather the storm. It’s probable that when credit is extended to financially sound technology companies the cash will be directed toward research, development, and manufacturing (i.e., your departments), as opposed to marketing campaigns and new acquisitions. Good news for you.
The fact that Circuit Cellar has been around for 20 years proves that embedded computing has continued plodding along despite the ups and downs of the wider economy. This month, we present articles about projects that prove embedded innovation continues.
Starting on page 14, Pete McCollum describes an MCU-based data acquisition system that measures radiation and emissions from radioactive objects captured from a scintillation probe and a Geiger tube. The design gathers data and formats it for display.
Turn to page 24 for the design details of a high-tech table that responds to audio stimuli. The design features 96 tricolor LEDs, custom circuit boards, and electret microphones. The result is exciting lighting effects.
In “Digital Stompboxing,” Kit Church presents an easy-to-use digital signal processing platform (p. 32). He describes an MCU-based guitar effects pedal, but you can use this article as a starting point for a project of your own.
On page 44, Steven Nickels begins explaining how to coordinate your Ethernet applications with a well-designed time server. The system keeps a master time/date clock that is synchronized to the U.S. WWVB time code signal.
The article “Low-Cost Serial-to-USB Migration” covers a useful, do-it-yourself serial-USB solution (p. 52). The project enables you to implement an intermediate bridge for old serial devices.
Building a weather monitor doesn’t have to be complicated. On page 60, Brian Millier presents an innovative indoor-outdoor system. He covers everything from the circuit design to essential mathematical computations.
On page 68, George Martin returns to the topic of C language. He describes how to use C structures in actual applications.
Wrapping up the issue, columnists Jeff Bachiochi and Tom Cantrell take a look at sensor technology. Jeff describes noncontact sensing and introduces a handy rotary encoder (p. 74). Tom describes his trip to the 2008 Sensors Expo & Conference (p. 80).
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