Electronics For You
August 2014 Issue
Vol. 46 No. 8
Technology Focus
En Route to Security 3.0
In an era riddled by desire, power and technology, threats have become immeasurable and unpredictable. As a result, security and privacy have also transitioned from being straight-forward tasks to complex, unfathomable ones swept by new and emerging technologies
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Buyers’ Guide
RF Modules to Suit Your Application Everything is going from wired to wireless, owing to clutter associated with the wired systems. RF (radio frequency) communication technology is the one making this change happen. RF modules with different protocols are now used widely in electronic designs to enable wireless communication. Let us take a look at different RF modules available and some parameters to select a right one for your application
| DIY: Project
Sequential Tilt-Motion Lock Here is a project for locking and unlocking with a tilt sensor by tilting it in a defined sequence. It uses an accelerometer module to detect the tilt motion
Download source code
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DIY: Project
Mini Rechargeable Power Supply Presented here is a robust, compact and hand-held power supply that delivers 9.2V and 5V up to 1A (approx.) and 3.3V up to 500mA. It also includes a female A-type USB connector so you can power and charge other equipment such as mobile phones
| DIY: Circuit
Speed Controller for Small Cooling Fans Small cooling fans are used in some equipment for cooling semiconductor devices
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DIY: Tips & Technique
Oscilloscope as an Image Viewer Cathode ray oscilloscope (CRO) is a versatile laboratory instrument which is used to display, measure and analyse electrical signals. It is nothing but a fast x-y plotter that displays an input signal versus another signal or time
Download source code
| DIY: Tips & Technique
Use of I²C for Extension of GPIOs Raspberry Pi has a total of 26 pins on the GPIO header, out of which only 17 can be interfaced with external hardware
Download source code
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DIY: Software
Understanding Digital Camera Histograms Using MATLAB This article discusses the importance of histograms generated by high-end cameras, which help in clicking better pictures
Download source code
| DIY: Software
Building Image Processing Embedded Systems Using Python This project describes a technique to capture human faces using image processing and turn on an LED on the Arduino board. With some modification it can be used to detect intruders and set an alarm
Download source code
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Futuristic Electronics
Almost Here: Self-Learning, Self-Healing Computers Processors that mimic the human brain could be the next big disruption in computing
| Innovation
Daylight Harvesting With Automatic Lighting Imagine the availability of 60,000 units of light energy through an automatic system that monitors energy consumption to maximise efficiency. At the age of 48, Sekhar Nori, founder & CEO of Skyshade Daylights Pvt Ltd, teamed up with his colleagues to create an automated and integrated daylight harvesting system
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Technology Focus
Modular, Connected and Intelligent Define Today’s Security Products Sending an alert during an intrusion is a passé and can no longer be considered intelligent. Smart is re-defined by today’s security systems. They study behavioural, temperature and humidity patterns, come with advanced processing techniques. Let us take a look at some of the latest and intriguing security devices from around the world
| EFY Plus DVD
This Month’s DVD Contents This month’s DVD brings you GPU machine learning library and simulators along with an automation and measurement software for optical systems. If you are an enthusiast, there is a robotic research tool-kit for you. The top ten software in the DVD are mentioned below
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Industry Focus
Aerospace and Defence Industries: Offering Further Opportunities With changing policies and focus of the Central government to indigenise defence equipment, the opportunities for domestic players are gradually increasing. Read on to find out the trends in this sector
| Interview
Limitations are paving the way for ultrasound-based sensors The way people interact with the computer in a natural way has led to the evolution of natural user interfaces such as gesture, motion and touch. Sneha Ambastha of EFY spoke to Anup Tapadia, the founder of TouchMagix, on the subject
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DIY: Circuit
Wireless Door-Opening Alarm This wireless door-opening alarm works with ultrasonic waves. Its transmitter is installed near the door and the receiver at some distance
| Manufacture
Part 2 of 2: Flexible Electronics: What’s the Use Having dealt with the materials used for flexible electronics, types of flexible circuits and their integration process in first part of this article, let us now focus on the applications of flexible ciruits
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eStyle Buyers’ Guide
Tablets: When Size Matters It is safe to say that, compared to smartphones, tablet sales in India have not picked up well. While the market is brimming with tablet devices of all sizes, price range and features, not many people are going for them. The reason for that can be debated, which we shall leave for another day. Right now, let’s focus on what we need to look at when buying tablets
| Technology Focus
RF Surveillance: A Case of Homeland and Border Security Traditional techniques of monitoring individual activities and actions either by manual inspection or by CCTV cameras and the advancement in electronics and radio-frequency-based analysis has opened new avenues for threat detection
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Technology Focus
Security Testing Tools: Wapiti, OWASP ZAP and Netsparker—A Comparison With the vast use of the Internet, websites have become complex and impose increasing challenge in securing them for data integrity, confidentiality, authentication, availability, authorisation, access control, etc. Website security is especially important where critical information is stored in web applications and the transactions need to be safe, as in the case of defence and banking applications
| Embedded Design
Wireless Charging is the Future Wireless charging is no more inferior to wired charging. Better standards, integration methods and components have evolved over the past few years to make wireless charging a better technology. And it need not be confined to charging cell phones. Find out how
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Antennae Design
Differential Solvers in Computational Electromagnetics “Computational electromagnetics, computational electrodynamics or electromagnetic modeling is the process of modeling the interaction of electromagnetic fields with physical objects and the environment. It typically involves using computationally efficient approximations to Maxwell’s equations and is used to calculate antenna performance, electromagnetic compatibility, radar cross section and electromagnetic wave propagation when not in free space,” according to Wikipedia
| eStyle First Look!
.Headphones from Sennheiser .MTS Introduces MBlaze Power Wi-Fi .Intex Launches Multi-media Speakers .Videocon Introduces VPhone .Arise Launches Android LED TVs
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Useful Websites
Solar Energy: Stay Up-to-Date Our planet Earth receives a huge amount of energy from Sun in the form of radiant light and heat. Solar photovoltaic cells and the panels built around them are becoming extremely popular source for harnessing these energies. Here are some of the sites which can enlighten you on the topic
| EFY Plus DVD
Create Virtual CPUs Using CPU Sim CPU Sim is a software that lets you create CPU architectures of your choice, create and edit assembly languages, and run them on the simulated CPU using machine language
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DIY: Circuit
Battery-Discharge Measurement Circuit Battery-life measurement for a portable system is a time-consuming task and many methods used for it do not give reliable results
| DIY: Circuit
Perfume Vaporiser Adaptor An electric perfume vaporiser slowly vaporises liquid perfume in a bottle using an electrical heating module. A wick transports the liquid from the bottle into the heating zone on top by capillary action
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Career
Plenty of Jobs Unfold for PCB Designing Lack of quality designers and preference for VLSI and embedded bring many new opportunities to the field of PCB designing. In this article, we cover the kind of opportunities available in India, the skills expected and pay packages offered, plus some suggestions from industry experts
| Test & Measurement
What’s New in In-Circuit Testing In-circuit testers are transforming into all-in-one electrical test controllers. The latest ICTs can be used for not only manufacturing defects but also to test functional failures, and even parametric testing
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Interview
"There is also a major shift in the software controls happening in T&M" Sudhir Tangri, country general manager, Keysight Technologies India Pvt Ltd, speaks with Rahul Chopra and Pankaj Vashisht of EFY on what transforms test and measurement equipment. On September 19, 2013, Agilent Technologies announced plans to separate into two publicly traded companies through a tax-free spin off of its electronic measurement business. The new company, Keysight Technologies, began operating as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Agilent on August 1, 2014 with a full separation anticipated in early November 2014
| Interview
Embedded forms of USB will be very important for connecting modem chips to baseband processors Some time ago, Dilin Anand from EFY spoke to Terry Moore, CEO, MCCI, a system engineering company which specialises in delivering USB system software to tier-1 silicon or semiconductor firms. MCCI chaired the committee that set up Mobile Broadband Interface Model (MBIM) specification and they also helped set up NCM specification, besides being principle author of the WMC family specifications
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Technology News
Huge fan of ‘selfies?’ You should try ‘dronies’ Drones are the helicopter-like flying devices that the military has used for years for surveillance and monitoring
| Industry News
Central budget encourages indigenous manufacture In the Central government’s budget announced recently, there was no change in the customs and excise duties applicable for electronic components, except for the removal of (a) the special additional duty (SAD) on components used in manufacturing PCs and (b) the customs duty on LCD/LED panels of 48.26cm (19-inch) and below and on cathode ray tubes (CRTs)
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New Products
Vector signal generator Rohde & Schwarz presents its new R&S SGT100A, the smallest and fastest vector signal generator that covers the frequency range from 80MHz to 6GHz
| EFY Plus DVD
Simulate Your PIC Microcontroller Using gpsim In this article, we explore the features and advantages of gpsim by analysing the step-by-step procedure to simulate PIC microcontroller using this tool. gpsim is available for Linux operating system on the DVD accompanying this month’s issue of EFY Plus
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EFY Plus DVD
Magic: An Interactive VLSI Layout Tool Magic layout tool has the capability to incorporate expertise about design rules and connectivity directly into a layout system in order to implement some powerful interactive operations
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Issue...
Smart Robos
Solar Electronics
EDA Tools for Circuit Design
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