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Issue #235 February 2010
Choose Your Own Design Adventure
by C. J. Abate
When I was a child, I read a few of the books in Bantam’s “Choose Your Own Adventure” series. The point was to make decisions that would influence the course of the tale. Decisions were presented in a simple format. Example: To do X, turn to page 5. To do Y, turn to page 10. As a book’s main character, I’d drive the story by turning to certain pages and then reading on. Some choices led to situations in which the main character was rewarded. Other choices led to negative scenarios, such as the main character’s death. Thus, each book had a few possible endings. Hmm. That’s kind of like each issue of Circuit Cellar (except for the death part).
Let’s say that while reading a project-centric article you become so interested in a part that you immediately go to the manufacturer’s website. That’s one adventure. Now imagine that instead of checking out the part you decide to get more information by emailing the author. That’s another adventure. The great thing about Circuit Cellar is that each issue provides the possibility for dozens of engineering adventures. You’re in charge.
I urge you to approach this issue in the spirit of choosing your own adventure. Are you ready? Let’s begin.
Turn to page 16 to learn how to build an RFID-based monitoring and control system. Brian Millier describes how he designed a wireless control system for a liquid nitrogen tank. To learn how to start an FPGA-based embedded design, jump to John Clayton’s article on page 24. He covers topics ranging from custom development environments to HDL coding/synthesis tools. For more FPGA-related content, check out Bruce Land’s article on page 46.
Skip to page 30 to learn why Tom Cantrell says many MCU suppliers are “betting” on the ARM Cortex-M3. Are you with them? On page 38, Ed Nisley presents a “totally featureless clock” design, which requires you to first build a WWVB simulator.
Are you fascinated in the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) but put off in the complicated math? You aren’t alone. Go to page 54 for Monte Dalrymple’s useful presentation of the AES. If you’re confused by the topic of forward error correction (FEC), refer to Robert Lacoste’s article on the subject (p. 62). It’s a great introduction to the subject.
Jeff Bachiochi wraps up the articles section of the issue with the first installment of his “Sun Tracker” article series (p. 68). This project enables you to tell time with a mixture of old and new technologies. Sundials, sensors, and MCUs. Now that’s a bill of materials bound to lead to an amazing design adventure.
As usual, we have a lot of handy information packed in a single issue. You can’t build all the projects and test all the theories at once, so choose your adventure wisely. There’s no rush. You can always return to the issue to start a new journey.
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