The design of a high-speed IC random number source macro-cell, suitable for integration in a smart card microcontroller, is presented. The oscillator sampling technique is exploited and a jittered oscillator which features an amplified thermal noise source has been designed in order to increase the output throughput and the statistical …
The ARM Cortex™-M processor family is an upwards compatible range of energy-efficient, easy to use processors designed to help developers meet the needs of tomorrow’s embedded applications. Those demands include delivering more features at a lower cost, increasing connectivity, better code reuse and improved energy efficiency. The Cortex-M family …
An embedded system is a computer system designed for specific control functions within a larger system, often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. By contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal computer (PC), is designed to …
The Laser TV Project Some people use electronics to build something they need, others just want to find out if something can be done. These projects are often the most fun to read about because of their unusual character and the creativity needed to accomplish the (sometimes bizarre) goal. The …
Linux on AVR Every once in a while something comes along that changes the way you look at things. A project posted last week by Dmitry Grinberg was such a thing for me. The project in itself is already pretty strange: porting a 32-bit operating system (OS) to an 8-bit …
MCU Development Board Benchmark – The Winners The February issue of Elektor contained an article on the MCU Development Board Benchmark that I introduced in an earlier post. In the article the benchmark was developed slightly further and it ended with a request for comments from the readers. The article …
KwikStik follow-up In a previous post I tried to get something going with Freescale’s Kinetis KwikStik. Here is a short follow-up on Green Hills’ Multi IDE that is included with this kit. As mentioned in the original article I had a hard time getting a trial license for this software, …
KwikStik? KwikStuk! During a recent electronics show my attention was drawn by a strange small orange device on display at the Freescale booth. It turned out to be the Kinetis KwikStik and a very enthusiastic Freescale employee immediately showed me its features and explained that it was fully compatible with …
A benchmark for development and evaluation kits The other day a colleague asked me if I was interested in reviewing the TMS570 MCU Development Kit. This is a kit for playing with the TMS570LS20216 ARM Cortex-R4F microcontroller and when I looked at the picture of the kit available on the …
Reverse engineering? The new Wiring S board In the fall of 2008 I started researching Arduino for an introductory article for Elektor. In that article I wrote that Arduino can be seen as a simplification of Wiring. The Arduino environment is very much like Wiring but slightly simplified and the …
RS Components presents new website If you design your own electronics circuits you have to select the best parts for your design. This can be very time consuming especially if you do not know where to look for them. For me problem parts are electromechanical parts, connectors, push-buttons, that sort …
Open World Forum 2011 Saturday 24 September I joined two of my colleagues at the Experiment Day of the Open World Forum in Paris. Since it took place not far from the Crazy Horse I had no difficulties in finding the venue. My colleagues had come the day before by …
Everything you always wanted to know about klystrons and traveling wave tubes (but were afraid to ask) Most of the time this blog is about embedded electronics, but if I come across something interesting that is electronic but not directly related I will talk about it here too. Therefore, this …
Wireless audio over 2.4 GHz Just before the summer my contact at Texas Instruments had the excellent idea to sent me a CC85XXDK-HEADSET development kit. This is a PurePath Wireless Headset Development Kit to evaluate the new wireless audio products from TI based on the CC85xx family of RF micro-controllers. …
