Embedded Systems Weekly – Issue 74
Issue 74- 14 October 2016
Hardware
The semiconductor industry will soon abandon its pursuit of Moore’s law. Now things could get a lot more interesting.Share on Twitter ∙ Share on Facebook
onchipUIS are part of a research group at the Universidad Industrial de Santander and have designed and taped out a RISCV implementation with Cortex M0-like characteristics.Share on Twitter ∙ Share on Facebook
The I2C bus is a high integrity, robust serial bus used for control purposes in many systems. The primary components that make up a system are at least one master and one slave. Under normal conditions, everything works fine; however, it is the abnormal conditions that generate problems. Two questions present themselves when a problem arises: Is the problem device or system related, or some combination of both? What, if anything, can be done about it?Share on Twitter ∙ Share on Facebook
Capacitance sensing has the potential to replace current user input mechanisms in consumer devices. Products as diverse as cell phones, digital cameras, MP3 players, and other portable media players are all suitable for implementing capacitance sensing.
Capacitance sensing has many benefits. It gives the user an interface with greater sensitivity and control. Capacitance sensors are easy to manufacture and reliable, and have advantages over current mechanical interfaces. However, all types of capacitance sensors are affected by capacitance changes in the surrounding environment. Changes in humidity or temperature can interfere with the operation of the sensors, in some cases stopping the sensor from working altogether.Share on Twitter ∙ Share on Facebook
Software
This could be a game-changer for the tech industry.
The end may be in sight for software patents—which have long been highly controversial in the tech industry—in the wake of a remarkable appeals court ruling that described such patents as a “deadweight loss on the nation’s economy” and a threat to the First Amendment’s free speech protections.Share on Twitter ∙ Share on Facebook
Scott W Harden builds a lot of RF circuits, and often it’s convenient to measure and log frequency with a computer. Previously he has built standalone frequency counters, frequency counters with a PC interface, and even hacked a classic frequency counter to add USB interface. His latest device uses only 2 microchips to provide a Raspberry Pi with RF frequency measurement capabilities. The RF signal clocks a 32-bit counter SN74LV8154 connected to a 16-bit IO expander MCP23017 accessable to the Raspberry Pi (via I²C) to provide real-time frequency measurements from a python script for $2.30 in components! Well, plus the cost of the Raspberry Pi.Share on Twitter ∙ Share on Facebook
EMUZ80 RPI is a CP/M emulator for the Z80 processor the Raspberry PI (2). Here is the emulator without an operating system “bare metal” operated on the Raspberry PI. This particular application will start in about 5 Seconds.
This project shows, what is possible with the Lazaus/Free Pascal-Cross-Compiler from Ultibo.Share on Twitter ∙ Share on Facebook
Misc
A game where you play an Embedded EngineerShare on Twitter ∙ Share on Facebook
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This is a demo of the Nofrendo NES-emulator Sprite_tm ported to the ESP32 in about a day. Sound is not available and the display driver is slightly hackish, but otherwise it works fine. Share on Twitter ∙ Share on Facebook
Photo by Miguel García
