He’s a 29-year-old hardware designer tweaking a snippet of code as he waits for a bus in downtown Bangalore. She’s a 38-year-old conservationist sitting at a Tokyo sushi bar and editing a hardcopy of a low-power lighting system. He’s a 30-year-old, London-based professor listening to Thom Yorke on his MP3 player while soldering a new circuit. He’s a 65-year-old retiree fingering through the part bins at a Radio Shack in Palo Alto while his grandson toys with a new satellite radio receiver in the front of the store.

What do all of these seemingly different people have in common? They’re all contemporary embedded designers, and they’re all part of the Circuit Cellar community.

Since the initial development of the silicon chip, the face, habits, and work ethic of the embedded engineer have changed. The community is no longer populated by a select group of middle-class, culturally homogenous, university-trained, predominantly male, electrical engineers. Today, young coders are branching out into the field of embedded design, and retired hardware designers are starting second careers as software gurus who blog about code languages in their spare time. This trend knows no borders. It’s happening in North America, Europe, and beyond.

This excites us. Not only does it make for a more diverse magazine that features compelling articles written by an interesting group of designers, but it also bodes well for the future of our increasingly interconnected global community. Can anyone deny that we’re on the verge of some major breakthroughs in the fields of microcomputing, wireless communication, and robotics design? Picture thousands of enthusiastic designers from culturally diverse backgrounds developing the groundbreaking technologies of tomorrow. If that’s not exciting, I don’t know what is.

Nowhere are the skills of contemporary embedded designers displayed more prominently than in our magazine and on our web site. Read through our articles and study the hundreds of designs posted on our various contest sites. If after doing so you come to only one conclusion, it should be this: there’s a heck of a lot of high-level designing going on.

Circuit Cellar magazine is always a great place to start your search for information about new projects. This month, Greg Cloutier describes how he a built a handy analog oscilloscope companion (p. 14). The LPC2138-based system ensures the precise calibration of his oscilloscope.

On page 22, Samir Lohani walks you through the process of designing a digital instrument panel for a diesel engine. The system enables you to view essential engine-related data on your PC or any portable Bluetooth-enabled system.

Do you want to know what it takes to build a modular security system? Take a look at the PIC18F4580-based multitiered design developed by the team of Camosun College students on page 32. It’s an innovative upgrade for any basic home or office monitoring system.

I know that after reading this issue you’ll still be hungry for more, so you should also check out the amazing systems developed by the winners of the Atmel AVR 2006 design contest (www.circuitcellar.com/avr2006/). It’s wonderful to see the wide variety of cutting-edge systems from such a diverse group of designers.

Do you have what it takes to design, build, and run a system? If you’re looking to put your skills to the test, check out our newest contest sponsored by Luminary Micro (www.circuitcellar.com/designstellaris2006/).

cj@circuitcellar.com