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If you want to succeed in this field, you got to have some really good contacts. Designing a product idea is one thing, getting it into full blown product and a usable commodity in the field is the other. For that an embedded systems developer needs to do much more than design.

Lets face the fact that most developer or engineers do not have in house prototyping machinery. This includes PCB fabrication and stuffing/soldering. Also we need to source components, which, most of the times can not be found from local market. Therefore, you need someone out there to search and buy electronics components and send to you. You need to know your supplier well.

To know if he is reliable. Ask him if his already sent some components before. If there is an URL of his company. Is there any other guy to cross check what he is telling you. By the way most of the Chinese people I came to know during the process were extremely helpful and honest. The only problem has been communication issues and non-technical nature of their education as for technical marketing you do need to have technical knowledge and experience. (continue reading…)

I just started to use Cadsoft Eagle for PCB design some weeks ago. I tried many times in past but somehow left in between due to lack of interest. This time, however, I had a project in hand and the client requirement was to do it in Eagle. I am more used to the Diptrace software and I have reasons to like it. But Eagle is also a very popular PCB design software so I desire of using it.

In Eagle, I specially liked the schematic section as it looks very pretty at the end. It looks surely much more professional than drawn in Diptrace. Most of the hobby projects on Internet with pretty looking schematics you will see are designed in Eagle. Eagle saves its library files in XML format. So one can copy/paste a chuck of XML in the file to create a new footprint. Then can edit the part in the library editor of Eagle. (continue reading…)

A few years back I was a part of heated discussed in my company about Smart Grid technology. Basically, our company was asked by a government institution in power sector to do all this. I, along-with one of my colleague, were on our way for a survey for a small demo to be presented before some government officials which could show them the “goodies” of Smart Grid. To demonstrate them how it can control billing, have advanced fault indications, energy harvesting, solve our greatest issue the energy theft and other features.

We spent days selecting the platform for demo as well as for long-term production. We prepared a list of several vendors offering solutions of smart meters. Suddenly the whole project got frozen due to lack of interest from the government agency. All our efforts were in vain. We, as a private company, could not invest resources in something which did not seem fruitful, at least for the time being.

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Open Source Software vs Open Source Hardware

In the field of open source software, a community develops new program or makes addition to an existing program. Similarly, this type of approach is also used in open source hardware. But the difference between the open source software and hardware is that the development of software is free of cost, while in case of hardware, the physical developments are not easy and require some sort of investment.

Economic Advantages

• Open way of Product Development without Market Research: Open source hardware approach also helps to know about the customer’s needs and preferences without any market research. Consumers of specific product show their interest in a product and also indicate that what type of new product they want. For example their demands is 10 mega pixel cameras with zoom in and zoom out functions similarly Wi-Fi connectivity in a mobile etc. provides information about consumers demands and expectation about mobile devices. We have seen different innovative ideas through this channel. This type information and ideas enables companies in providing of best marketable products. This is also playing a vital role in products development. (continue reading…)

Alarm monitoring is a popular field where multiple network node, some times called agents, get information from attached sensors and transmit it onto the network where one or multiple servers called network monitoring system(s) (NMS) are listening to these alarms. The NMSs gather the info, calculate the statistics and present them in a way which is easily readable for human operators. The operators, then, are able to take quick decision based on these statistics.

This practice is very common in large networks where every single server, router or any other device typically keeps its own MIB (management information base) file and maintains it according to device condition. The device, other than doing it specific job, also send alarms which are typically called traps to the NMSs. However, the field has extended to general purpose small embedded devices as well for multiple applications like, power monitoring, environment and security to name a few.

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It’s always challenging for us to manage embedded projects when we have small resources. The key to do it is to choose what to do when and our experience is here to rescue us out of difficult situations. The procedure in this post is for typical microcontroller based projects with little to average complexity. This scheme assumes that you have at least some experience with such projects and you have at least one relevant hardware development kit or a previously designed hardware which has some features common with your new project. It’s not about soldering DIP-only components on veroboard rather its a professional way for relatively experienced designers. Off-course there may be better ways to execute such a project. You can suggest if you like.

• Designs your hardware: Normally we work on development kits. If you are using a reference design, which normally happens and is a standard practice now a days, try to design around it. In this way you are basically re-using the effort made by the vendor to bring up something working. It will save lots of development time. Adjust the hardware according to your special needs. This may be the schematic change, components packages change, or perhaps one or two extra peripherals addition. When you are done and satisfied with the hardware, send it to the PCB fab. The PCB fab takes its time. (continue reading…)

A few days back I was reading an article on EEtimes. It was an interview of Microchip CEO Steve Sanghi. One question, which particularly seemed interesting, was what if MIPS is acquired? These days MIPS is said to be looking for buyers and this may be thought to hit back the PIC32 as well. But Steve Sanghi’s response was very clear and blunt: “As we said before, core is not important”…..”More important [for us now] is the development of compatible tools, services, support and libraries”….. “Core is not that critical to solutions we offer. We see no changes in our strategy in [using] MIPS” (Source EETimes.com).

Well this was interesting as well as a fact which we may notice. For example, look at the MPLAB IDE, it support 8, 16, 32 bit offerings which are way different from each other. As an another example we can notice Atmel Studio 6 which supports AVR as well as ARM-Cortex-M3. Although microcontroller is unlike PC programming where we need to handle each register but if well documented libraries are there, the programmer seldom needs to consult the actual architecture. Also the differences even lie between different families of same architecture. As example see the StellarisWare or the TCP/IP stack from Microchip. They are great pieces of firmware, very well documented and programmer can work effectively by only learning the APIs which manage the underneath hardware registers. (continue reading…)

PCB designing is an art as well as a science. This is science is for very obvious reasons as electronics is essentially one the most important fields of science. One really needs lots of knowledge of Physics and Electronics to make the components populated on a PCB operate properly. But art plays a role in the look and feel of PCB as well as that of the overall product. Here are a few tips:

The scientific objective:

• The PCB meets design requirements i.e. it actually does for what it is meant for. The DRC is well-defined and checked thoroughly.
• The PCB has shortest possible trace lengths
• Minimum vias and keep-outs
• Minimum number of layers
• Maximum trace with to reduce impedance
• Minimum cross talk and static capacitance. Your DRC should address the possible EMI issues as seen before or as pointed out by the circuit designer.
• The design meets the manufacturing constraints such minimum via size, trace width etc.

The artistic objectives:

• The design meets the mechanical layout requirements. The shape of PCB will fit into the previously decided mechanical casing. There are enough mounting holes with right sizes, placed on right places. (continue reading…)

• Whispering in ears before your colleagues always sends suspicious signals, the most dangerous being in-confidence over them. This makes them think that they are essentially irrelevant and do not worth listening your conversation which is an insult of them. what if you think that his/her participation is not necessary or you may disturb him? The easiest way is to lead yourself and the other guy(s) to the sitting room and discuss.
• Speaking too loud and roof shaking laughter may disturb and irritate somebody.
• If you are a superior in rank, there is no need to screw up your inferiors just because they have dependents at home and they can not switch their jobs.
• While sending or replying emails, making somebody unnecessarily out of loop is also not a good practice. this is similar to the situation as discussed above.
• although the work environment friendlier the better, there must be some degree of scale-ness so that the system may prevail in its usual manner.
• Similarly too much conservation may also spoil the work environment and this will make the life of workers boring and some time may cause somebody to switch his/her job.
• sharing knowledge is always a great thing to do. Keep asking and telling, it is beneficial for you as well as your organization.

Best of luck at work!

One of my previous post was about the advantages of open source hardware and its possible model. However, there are situations where open source hardware is not a very good idea.

• Small companies which can not produce something in big quantities hence can not compete in price
• You need money to run your business and do not have extra cash to put into open source hardware and have no time to wait for the community to come and help you run your business
• The design is for a specific customer who does not want to disclose his IP (intellectual property)
• The situation where the open source hardware can clearly be used for wrong-doing. Anything which is clearly going to hurt somebody must be discouraged
• You have tough competition and opening up the IP will drag you out of competition

Though it is possible to keep some designs open while the other closed, companies tagged with open source usually keep all of their designs open. However, striking right balance between open and close is necessary to serve techno-society as well as keeping the customers satisfied.