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Current Issue <script language=JavaScript src=http://www.circuitcellar.com/absolutebmxe/abm.asp?z=1></script> Issue #216 July 2008

Table of Contents | Article Code | Crossword | Forums | Electronic Edition Log-in

Feature articles <script language=JavaScript src=http://www.circuitcellar.com/absolutebmxe/abm.asp?z=12></script> <script language=JavaScript src=http://www.circuitcellar.com/absolutebmxe/abm.asp?z=11></script> ◊ 'Net-Enabled Alarm Clock
◊ Internet Information Retrieval: Target And Display Web Site Content
◊ Launch Control: Build A Coil Gun Controller And Launcher
◊ Card Connection: Magnetic Card Data Decoding And Transmission
◊ Create A Modbus Slave
◊ PSoC Design Techniques (Part 1): Build An Eight-Channel Mixer
◊ Sound Effects Processing

COLUMNS
◊ LESSONS FROM THE TRENCHES Living & Working Off The Grid (Part 1): Planning & Design
◊ FROM THE BENCH Electric Motor Technology: Theory, Construction, And Requirements
◊ SILICON UPDATE MIPS For The Masses

Priority Interrupt <script language=JavaScript src=http://www.circuitcellar.com/absolutebmxe/abm.asp?z=5></script> Steve Ciarcia A Real Rube Goldberg Solution
by Steve Ciarcia

Since we have a large foreign readership, let me start by explaining the title of this editorial. Rube Goldberg was an engineer in the early 1900s who became a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist. He is best known for drawing cartoons depicting “Rube Goldberg Machines.” A “Rube Goldberg” is an extremely complicated apparatus or series of connected devices with the sole purpose of performing a single simple task in an extremely convoluted way. Today, whenever engineers are involved with an overly complicated piece of hardware or tortuous software, they will call it a Rube Goldberg. The bad news, of course, is when you actually need to make one of your own... Read it now!

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