Electronics For You July 2012 Issue Vol. 44 No. 7 Technology Focus Innovative User Interfaces Device makers are focusing on making user-interfaces easy, clean and intuitive. As more and more technology surrounds our life, it should blend with the environment, be less blatant and mingle naturally with users
Circuit Ideas Smart Bicycle Light With this circuit built, boxed up and installed in your bicycle, you can look forward to safely riding your cool bicycle at night. The circuit ensures that the bicycle lights remain ‘on’ for a little while after the bicycle has come to a standstill.	Circuit Ideas LED Voltmeter Four μ741 op-amps are used here to measure the voltage ranging from 3V to 12V DC. The voltage measured is displayed on eight LEDs.

Futuristic Nanorobotics: Are You Game To Pop A Robot? Recent technological developments indicate that doctors might one day start prescribing nanorobots as pills for serious ailments!	Construction Touchscreen Control for Wheelchair A wheelchair is a chair with wheels, designed to be a replacement for walking. The device comes in variations where it is propelled by motors or by the seated occupant turning the rear wheels by hand. Wheelchairs are used by people for whom walking is difficult or impossible due to illness, injury or disability. Download source code

Software Section Electronic Voting Machine Demo Program Elections in India are conducted almost exclusively using electronic voting machines. These devices are praised for their simple design, ease of use and reliability. Presented here is a demo software that shows how a typical electronic voting machine works. Download source code	Circuit Ideas Simple Morse Code Trainer Morse code contests are still held in some parts of the world. Practising the Morse code with a simple Morse key kit is interesting.

Circuit Ideas Versatile Object Counter Object counters are extensively used in industries. Normally, these are made of expensive microcontrollers or processors.	Circuit Ideas Solar Lamp with Variable Power Supply and Charger A simple circuit of a solar lamp with variable power supply and charger is described here. It is useful where mains power failure is frequent. The power supply can be used for testing electronics projects and also charging your mobile phone battery.

EFY Report What’s the Business Case for Green Electronics While many manufacturers have already switched on to green electronics, others are still thinking over what’s in it for them. Take a look at the incentives and cost of going green, as also some success stories	Manufacture How Digital TV Manufacturers Can Tackle Chip Complexities A unified modeling-verification-emulation validation approach backed with domain expertise in audio/video and SoC architecture holds a strong promise

Buyers’ Guide Is Your Smartphone Really ‘Smart’? You have plenty of options across various smartphone brands, but just as with any other consumer device, these are likely to leave you confused	Embedded Sandy, Ivy and Haswell: Tock, Tick, Tock A rundown of Intel’s CPU microarchitectures to clear the mist surrounding them

Innovation EMO: A Plug-in Emission Monitor For Vehicles Using the EMO device from Logica, drivers can reduce their vehicle emissions by up to 15 per cent simply by improving the way they drive. Apart from reduced emissions, they also benefit from fuel savings since better driving habits lead to improved vehicle mileage	Test & Measurement Top 6 Trends in Test & Measurement The new generation of consumer electronics devices converge Internet connectivity, wireless communications, high-fidelity audio and HD video into a single device. To keep up with the times, different strategies have been adopted by test and measurement manufacturers and design houses. Take a look

Trends Consumer Electronics Ever-larger TV screens with pin-sharp images in brilliant colour, 3D viewing with and without glasses, lightweight yet fast ultrabooks, IT and telecom devices with network capabilities, for the home and on the move–IFA 2012 trade fair (to be held in Berlin, Germany, from 31st August to 5th September) presents trends from every part of the consumer electronics industry. Take a look	Career Sky is the Limit in Telecom India has about 920 million telecom subscribers, adding about twelve million subscribers on a monthly basis. So telecom is clearly one of the fastest growing industries in India. Does one still need a better reason to make career in telecommunications engineering?

Interview "The primary challenge in implementing NFC in India is interoperability" FIME is a consulting and market integration services provider for secure chip based applications, tokens and devices within the telecom, e-payment, transport, e-identity and logistics sectors. Prakash Sambandam, managing director of FIME India, recently spoke to Dilin Anand of EFY about cards, near-field communication (NFC) and the challenges faced in India	Technology News Wearable Robot Companion Loneliness can hurt the human mind but what if you have a robot companion always there for you? Well, researchers at Yamagata University, Japan, are developing a robot called MH-2, which is a wearable miniature humanoid that sits on your shoulder and can be remotely inhabited by your relatives or friends from anywhere in the world.

First look! . Android-Based Media Player . Compact Digital SLR Camera . Smartphone With 41MP Camera . Compact Security Camera . Android 4.0 Tablet Below Rs 6500 . Compact Desktop PC . Wired Keyboard-Mouse Combo . Portable scanner . GizMo ByTes	Buyers’ Guide Budget Laptops Expensive things are not always the best. Amidst a plethora of brands and specification points, doing some good research and planning can easily get you a superb value-for-money laptop

Construction Simple Line-Following Robot Generally, line-follower robots are microcontroller-based. Here we describe a linefollower robot without microcontroller for those who are not familiar with microcontrollers.	Security One-Time Pads in Cryptography Learn how to use one-time pads, how to set up secure one-time pad communications and how to deal with its various security issues

Technology Telepresence Redefines Remote Meetings Telepresence is not just videoconferencing. From the feeling of entering the room to the sensation of being at the same table, and simplicity of starting a meeting, the focus is solely on the experience of the participants	Interview "Modeling and simulation help to design a perfect combination of automotive subsystems" At MathWorks’ second annual India user conference in Bengaluru, customers and technical experts discussed the capabilities of MATLAB and Simulink for design, modeling and simulation. Jalaja Ramanunni of Electronics For You had a chance to speak to Steve Miller, technical marketing manager, physical modeling, MathWorks, who explained how physical modeling capabilities enable automotive engineers to identify and fix problems early in design, rather than late in development when testing the final hardware

Useful Websites Do-It-Yourself Repair and Troubleshooting Here is a collection of some really good websites that teach you how to easily fix consumer electronics and IT hardware problems	Industry News 4G to cover half the world by 2017 Though Airtel is currently the only telecom provider in India to offer 4G mobile network in Kolkata and Bengaluru, 4G network will cover half the world by 2017—according to Ericsson’s annual report. This would mean that high-speed Internet access would be a common phenomenon, making it easy to download videos and play games on the go.

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April 2013

Issue Vol. 45 No. 4