All Things Embedded

I recently got hold off one of these hand held programmers which allows you to have up to four images (hex files) ready to go without having a pc or power point!.

CCS Hand held programmer.

My product uses a PIC12F675 and up until now I have been programming my devices either at production and/or for custom settings, using a Picstart Plus programmer.

All well and good if you are as ‘geeky’ as we are, but how about for field updates by someone who has no idea about microcontrollers etc.

This is where this ‘you beaut’ product from CCS Inc. comes in very handy. Your ’support’ team need only to know how to connect to the field device and this unit does the rest at the push of a button!.

I am very impressed with said unit and will update you on more features in a future post.

This has been an extremely busy year for me, despite the GFC. That said, I have not yet ‘reaped’ from my efforts yet.

Around March this year I was approached by a partner company to re package a design I had done nearly 14 years ago for a new product to be launched this year. Back then I was still “cutting my teeth” on micro controller based products and hence the outcome was a conservative but (even if i say so myself!) yet relatively (all these caveats!) reliable product. (I base this on the fact that over this period, 12000 units were sold with less than 100 returned, not necessarily because of bad design but more oft than not, physical abuse).

Now fast forward to the 21st Century…ok, so the old product was simple and reliable and used a particular (now patented) sensor mechanism but, this sensing technology I decided, was not suitable for the new design. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the recent features added to Microchip’s foray of micro controllers is the peripheral pin select (PPS) functionality. A very powerful addition allowing you to map physical pins to most of the on chip peripherals ‘willy nilly’.

This feature is available across the PIC18 and PIC24 range and makes board layout a breeze. (Note, not all PIC18/24’s support this feature, see specific data sheet to see if the device has it)

Read more about this very powerful feature….

Link

Supercapacitor

Imagine a battery that you could charge instantaneously. What applications might that suggest to you?

How about the electronic equivalent of the centuries old flywheel? The basic principle of the flywheel is to store energy, for instance in a tramcar when it is braking, rather than waste energy as heat in a crude braking mechanism, a flywheel is employed to take the otherwise wasted energy (normally wasted as heat) and store it in a flywheel. Read the rest of this entry »

Next time you are watching Wimbledon, NFL or the Cricket and they put on one of those fantastically clear slow motion replays spare a thought for the humble ADC (Analogue to Digital convertor).

These devices play an intrinsic part of modern day living.

You will find these in mobile phones, HDTV, telephones, radios, in fact almost anything that makes use of audio/visual media will be certainly using an ADC.

Read the rest of this entry »

As each day goes by, yet another mobile and (increasingly) wireless device hits the market. Anything from mobile phones to remote data collection devices (e.g. Zigbee endpoints)

This is all well and good, but powering these suckers and keeping them powered for anything up to 15 years or so is causing real head scratching in the embedded world. So what’s the solution? Read the rest of this entry »

This article is sure to ruffle a few feathers I’m sure. But basically it argues for ingenuity over the focus on pure academic qualification.

I am living proof of that as well as many of you out there, that you do not necessarily need a degree in this industry, to be a successful engineer!.

So what are the attributes that make a successful engineer?

Here are some that I consider when hiring potential candidates…

Read the rest of this entry »

When things don’t go as planned it can cost you money, loss of face or even loss of lives. But the thing is, when failure is staring you in the face, what can you do about it? and what can you learn from it.

During my time in the embedded industry I have thankfully, enjoyed many successes (I wouldn’t still be in the industry otherwise!) but along the way I have made some mistakes but gained a heck of a lot out of the experience. Read the rest of this entry »

Wow!, hot on the heels of my announcement of Microsoft’s ‘Dare To Dream Different Challenge‘ comes Atmel’s offer to win a FREE ‘CryptoController Development Kit’ !.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Think you have a great idea for an embedded device?
• Got what it takes to drive the hard yards and come up with something that may change someone’s quality of life?
• Like a slice of either U$73,000 in the professional category or U$23,500 in the hobbyist category?

Then the “Microsoft Dare to Dream Different challenge” competition just announced by Microsoft is just the ticket. Read the rest of this entry »