标签: electronic

For engineers and scientists, notebooks are a reliable means to document their ideas, inventions, progress, and even their missteps. Some of the most notable engineers and scientists who used notebooks include Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, and Leonardo da Vinci. In fact, mankind would know very little of da Vinci’s discoveries had he not written them down in a notebook. One problem facing engineers today is that the paper-bound notebook is an inefficient means for recording information in a society driven by computer technology. It's time to upgrade the engineering notebook for the 21st century.   So what does a modern engineering notebook look like?   A modern engineering notebook, whether for an individual or a team, must be capable of synchronization through the cloud. Engineers today don’t just use PCs; they rely on mobile devices such as tablets or cell phones to document their work. An engineer must be able to track and record notes on any of these devices and have the notes seamlessly synchronize with one another. The notebook medium must also be capable of potentially having multiple engineers working within the same notebook simultaneously in order to prevent synchronization issues.     Paper- bound notebooks are great for writing in but whenever an image or graph needs to be recorded, engineers need to pull out the scissors, tape, and glue to meticulously insert the image into the notebook. Not only is inserting images into a paper notebook time consuming, it can potentially be dangerous for a software engineer working in dimly lit conditions (scissors are sharp and pointy). The use of a modern electronic notebook to add images or graphs is trivial! Many software packages have built in snipping or screen-grabber tools that allow images to be captured in seconds with only digital scissors being required!     So far an electronic engineering notebook sounds promising, but what happens when an engineer needs to insert a hand drawing? In a paperbound notebook an engineer would simply draw out the diagram, and many software packages designed to work as a notebook include manual drawing tools, but drawing on a PC can seem uncomfortable and inefficient. The use of a tablet and stylus can give an engineer the same efficiency and feel of a paper notebook while taking advantage of the digital tools available to modern engineers. The main caveat in hand drawing on a tablet is to make sure the stylus being used has a narrow tip. Otherwise, drawing feels awkward.   An electronic notebook also has the ability to attach or link ancillary materials such as spreadsheets, drawings, PDFs, or power point presentations, to name a few. The attached files can be embedded in the notebook, if one wishes, so that a page in the notebook always contains the most up to date information. Or the attached file can remain a snapshot in time. The modern notebook's electronic nature allows any type of digital medium -- whether it be camera images or even CAD data -- to be seamlessly inserted into the notebook. The capabilities of an electronic engineering notebook make it critical to engineers and scientists.   Given all these capabilities of an electronic engineering notebook, one might expect that they are already being used and wonder what software packages are available. A first thought might be to use something similar to Microsoft Word. The problem with Word, while it is very capable, is that it lacks many of the synchronization and multi-user capabilities that are required for a truly modern engineering notebook. So what else is available?   There are three different software packages that immediately come to mind that would make great first attempts for an electronic notebook; Evernote, OneNote, and Wikis. Evernote and OneNote provide an engineer with very similar capabilities although those capabilities are provided through different user interfaces and price points. Both provide PC, Web, and mobile device interfaces and allow different notebooks to be created with notes, drawings, and other useful tools. The software is setup for multiple users and integrates many of the must-have features discussed above, such as synchronization.   Wikis don’t provide the synchronization features or many of the mobile device features that are available through Evernote or OneNote but they can still be a great way to create a modern engineering notebook. A wiki can be installed on a team server and act as a body of knowledge for a project. Adding images and drawing are slightly more challenging, though. Still, a wiki can be a good solution for teams that don’t want their data streaming through the cloud or lurking on developers’ mobile devices.   One thing is certain, engineers and scientists need notebooks to keep their thoughts straight, monitor progress, collect relevant information about a project, and to share ideas. Paper notebooks no longer fit many of these needs efficiently. But an electronic notebook can prove to be exactly what engineers need to effectively track their thoughts in a digital age.   How do you manage your modern-day engineering notebook?   Jacob Beningo is principal consultant at Beningo Engineering, an embedded software consulting company. Jacob has experience developing, reviewing and critiquing drivers, frameworks and application code for companies requiring robust and scalable firmware. Jacob is actively involved in improving the general understanding of embedded software development through workshops, webinars and blogging.

I had a bit of a scare recently. It made me stop and think, and the thought at the forefront of my mind was: "If I were to lose my left arm, how would this impact my ability to create my electronic hobby projects?"   Yes, I know that there's more to life than electronic hobby projects, but that really was the first thing that popped into my mind (and I use the term "mind" in its loosest sense LOL).   So here's how this all came about. About five months ago, I arose from my bed and meandered into the bathroom to get ready for work. Whilst brushing my teeth, I happened to notice that my left elbow was badly bruised.   When I say "badly bruised," it's hard to convey just how bad it was -- it looked as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to the little scamp. If I took my right hand and clasped the entirety of my left elbow, then that was the extent of the bruising.   I couldn't recall banging it on anything, and there wasn't any pain, but it did look pretty scary. On the other hand, bruises do tend to appear now and again, so I decided to wait and see what happened. Over the course of the following week, the bruise went through the usual color cycle -- from brown to red to purple -- and eventually it almost faded away.   But a week or so later it was back again! So I went to the doctor, who took some blood and sent it off for analysis to see if I had arthritis or anything obvious. The results came back negative, so the doctor said to wait and see if anything else happened.   Which brings us up to about a month ago, when one of the guys who works in the building where I have my office said "Your elbow is still bruised -- it's been that way for months now -- you really should have it looked at." Now, he'd had a scare with a blood clot a while back, so he's hyper-sensitive to stuff like this, but what he said made sense, so I ambled back around to my doctor's again.   This time, my doctor referred me to a left elbow specialist. Apparently there aren't as many of these around as you might expect; it seems that most elbow specialists succumb to the siren song of the more glamorous right elbow, because that's where all the adulation and money is to be made.   After examining me, the left elbow specialist said "That's funny." This made me quite proud, because I'd come to the same conclusion myself without the benefit and expense associated with years of medical training. The upshot of all this was that he set me up with an appointment for an MRI to take place on Monday (three days ago at the time of this writing). He also presented a list of possibilities, most of which had long names I didn't understand, but one of which certainly caught my attention -- I'm sure you can guess what this was.   This past weekend -- the one just before the MRI -- I spent a happy time working on my Vetinari Clock hobby project. This little rascal is based on the use of antique analog meters.   Now, if you look at this YouTube video that I just posted recently, you'll see the first elements in the wiring harness starting to appear.   Surprisingly enough, I haven't wandered off into the weeds; this is all relevant to the story at hand (no pun intended).   So I had the MRI first thing on Monday morning on the way into work. I'd forgotten how noisy those things are -- and also how they cram you in; it's lucky I'm not claustrophobic. Later that afternoon, I received a call from the nurse at the left elbow specialist's office asking if I could come in the next day because the doctor wanted to discuss the results with me in person.   Now, you can call me a "Nervous Nelly" if you wish, but this did seem to be rather enthusiastic of them -- I'm more used to weeks of delay when it comes to communications from doctors and suchlike, so same-day response made me wonder. Generally speaking, I'm a "glass half full" type of guy, but I must admit that I started wondering as to what the future held.   On Monday evening, whilst lying in bed, my mind turned to the wiring harness I'd been working on over the weekend. I don't know about you, but the inside of my head tends to be a bit chaotic, with ideas popping into existence and ricocheting around my skull with gusto and abandon.   My first thoughts were how tricky it was to do this sort of thing with two hands. Then I started going through all of the individual actions -- stripping wires, soldering contacts, gathering and bending groups of wires, restraining them with ties -- all the time pondering how one might achieve these tasks with only one arm at one's disposal.   My conclusion was that most of the tasks I take for granted would become major pains in the rear end if I tried to perform them using only one hand. On the other hand (again, no pun intended), others have surmounted far worse situations before me, so I determined that -- if the worse came to the worse -- I would learn the tricks of the trade and work my way around any obstacles.   I also thought of an episode from the classic TV series MASH -- the one where a soldier who was looking forward to a career as a concert pianist after the war lost the use of one hand. He was in despair, until one of the doctors -- Charles Winchester III as I recall, but it may have been Hawkeye -- played some recordings and/or gave the soldier some music created especially for one-handed pianists. As a follow-on from this, I also considered the real-world story involving hard rock drummer Rick Allen , who has played with Def Leppard since 1978, and who overcame the amputation of his left arm in 1985.   It also crossed my mind that sometimes even having two arms is barely sufficient for requirements. Being a big science fan, I of course thought of The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. This is a really good "First Contact" tale in which the aliens -- called "Moties" -- have a large arm on one side of their bodies for heavier work, and two smaller arms on the other side for use in more detailed and delicate tasks.   I'm not sure if I'd like the Motie arrangement myself -- although I can see how it could be rather advantageous -- but I guess you'd get used to it over time. Actually, when you come to think about it, having two arms on each side would be quite handy (yet again, no pun intended). For example, you could be eating a meal using two of your arms to hold a knife and fork, while using your third arm to be texting on your smartphone, and still have an arm left over to scratch any itches that might arise.   Of course, should this somehow come to pass, the downside of my spontaneously growing two extra arms would be that I'd have to purchase a whole new wardrobe of Hawaiian shirts, but we digress... As it turned out, my left elbow specialist was just being ultra-efficient; he prides himself on offering way better service than you could hope to receive from a regular old right elbow practitioner. Although there is fluid in my elbow, and although we still have to track down exactly what's going on in there, the MRI has ruled out anything that would require radical surgery.   Phew! I have to say that I ended up feeling like I dodged a bullet there. But even after I discovered that everything is OK, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about how difficult it would be to cope with only one hand. All I can say is that, for those of us who still have the use of both our arms, it behooves us to take a moment to ponder just how fortunate we are.

I recently got an email from someone we'll call Martin (because that's his name). Martin's message was short and sweet. In its entirety it read: "You need to see this!"   Martin is obviously a man of few words who likes to make each one count. Happily, he also included two links to the most amazing 3D electronic sculptures created by an artist called Gislain Benoit.   The first was to this clock , which took Gislain three years to create. One really interesting aspect to this is that Gislain has no truck with things like microcontrollers; instead, he works with discrete components. This clock, for example, comprises 1,161 diodes, 340 transistors, 346 resistors, 60 red LEDs, 3 dual-digit 7-segment displays, and 6 magnetic switches.     But the thing that really sets Gislain apart is that he also eschews printed circuit boards. As we see in the image above, the 1,916 components are soldered together to form a complex three-dimensional structure, after which the entire creation is sealed in a leaded glass frame.     Can you spot anything unusual in the above image? You're right; there are no controls for setting and adjusting the time. I personally think this part is really clever. Gislain uses "an elegant handcrafted piece of magnet" that he "hovers" over specific locations to control electromagnetic micro-switches embedded in the circuit. As he says on his website: "The 'Time Adjusting Magnet' has a chrome handle tip and its magnet side is covered with velvet."   The second link in Martin's email was to another of Gislain's electronic sculptures -- "The Tower." This not-so-little beauty comprises 1,415 LEDs, 393 transistors, 333 resistors, 6 single-digit 7-segment displays, and 6 magnetic switches.     The entire creation stands 60 inches tall and weighs-in at 60 pounds. My understanding from what I read on Gislain's Techno-Logic-Art.com website is that he's implemented this little rascal using a form of DTL (Diode-Transistor Logic), where the diodes are of the light-emitting flavor. I only wish I could see a video of this in action.   Also on his website, Gislain says: "My long-lasting dream project is to design an arithmetic calculator." Ooh, now there's a 3D electronic sculpture I'd really like to see!   I must admit that this has given me a lot of food for thought. At the moment I have my hands full with my own projects -- like my Vetinari Clock and my Inamorata Prognostication Engine -- but I can certainly see one of these 3D electronic sculptures in my future.   I really do have to finish my existing projects before starting any new ones (I do, I do)... but it wouldn’t hurt to start performing some simple experiments to implement logic functions predominantly using LEDs, would it? However, I have to say that my DTL skills are a tad rusty these days. Do you remember how to implement digital logic gates and registers using LEDs?

PR and marketing groups at oscilloscope manufacturers around the globe seeing the title to this column must be thinking, "Please, please, please, let this be about our competitors and not us."   Well, if you happen to be a member of one of those PR or marketing teams, you can settle down and relax. I'm talking about a hypothetical oscilloscope user manual.   Do you recall the classic line "It was a dark and stormy night," made famous by the Peanuts cartoon character, Snoopy? As fate would have it, this actually was the opening sentence to an 1830 book by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. A legend in his own lunchtime, Bulwer-Lytton became renowned for penning exceptionally bad prose. The opening sentence to his book Paul Clifford set the standard for others to follow.   "It was a dark and stormy night" is now generally understood to represent an extravagantly florid style with redundancies and run-on sentences. In fact, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was formed in 1982 to celebrate the worst extremes of this general style of writing. Contestants write a single sentence representing the worst-possible (though grammatically correct) opening sentence for a novel. Actually, I submitted the following entry for the 2008 competition.   As the hours passed, the expressions on the partygoers' faces became increasingly bemused and bewildered as my mother -- having grabbed the conversational reins with gusto and abandon using one of her classic opening gambits of "I bumped into Mrs. Forteskew-Smythe at the fishmongers the other day..." -- proceeded to inundate the gathered throng with a myriad of seemingly innocuous and unrelated details "...you remember, she was the oldest of three sisters; the youngest, Beryl, was a slut, while the middle girl eloped with a transsexual Australian taxidermist and they had two sons who couldn't bring themselves to touch any form of fruit, and..." and I could see the question forming in everyone's minds: "Can she possibly tie all of these tidbits of trivia together and somehow bring this tortuous tale to a meaningful close?"... and I cowered against the wall wearing a tight, grim smile because I knew, to my cost, that she could.   Sad to relate, I never heard anything back from the contest organizers, apart from a brief email message informing me that I could be assured that my offering would be "given the consideration it deserves." Maybe they are still mulling it over.   But I digress. All this was brought to my mind recently as I was skimming through a user manual for a piece of old electronic equipment. (No, I'm not going to tell you which one.) It wasn't long before I started to wonder if I had mistakenly gotten hold of an entry to a Bulwer-Lytton-esque competition for the worst user manual of all time.   This led me to start ruminating about possible opening sentences for a user manual. I started bouncing ideas for the worst oscilloscope user manual of all time. But before I bore delight you with my meandering musings, I'd really like to hear what you have to say. Remember that this has to be a single sentence that sets the stage for the horrors to come. Do you have any suggestions?

Two stories jumped out at me in the past few weeks. The first was the long-anticipated announcement by the United States' Federal Aviation Administration that passengers will be able to use personal electronic devices during all phases of flight, which now notably includes take-offs and landings. The policy denying their use has been frustrating for many in the engineering community (and Alec Baldwin , who is definitely not a member of the engineering community) due to the questionable technical merit of the conclusion that personal electronics can interfere with aircraft systems. The second story was about reports of Dell's 6430u laptop smelling like cat urine . Dell determined there was no biological or health hazard but instead blamed it on a manufacturing process that they've since corrected. I currently use an earlier generation of Dell's Latitude laptops and will soon be shopping around for a new one, so I'm going to have to factor this into the buying process now. Compared to battery life or weight, fragrance was lower on my criteria for a laptop, but maybe I need to reconsider. Both of these examples offer an interesting observation about test and measurement: "quality" includes more than just a pass or fail grade on target specifications. With the FAA, they were presented with scores of data, much of which came from studies they commissioned, showing no impact from personal electronic devices on the aircraft systems, yet the ban persisted. Many have speculated the real reason for the ban was to either keep your attention focused on the flight crew or reduce the amount of things that could get airborne (aside from you and the aircraft) if an emergency occurred. Either way, they continued relating the problem to wireless interference, regardless of the data, and it made (some) uninformed travelers feel good that The FAA was being overly cautious in the face of that ever-present fear of a plane crash. It will be really devastating to our reasonable minds if customers ever choose airlines that still impose the ban because they assume it will be safer. (Note: as a frequent flier, I fully support a ban on phone conversations during flight. I don't need data to tell me how annoyed I would be if that became a regular occurrence.) With the cat urine, envision the following scenario occurring at a test system verification meeting: "Our test system verifies the function of all the major electrical systems of the PC and confirms the software is loaded correctly," said the test engineer. "The only thing we haven't verified is whether it smells like cat urine, and I have this electronic nose all ready to go." "Wipe the nose! (pun intended)," said the obstinate product manager. "We've done countless focus groups, and nobody cares about the smell. Ship it!" I doubt the product manager would feel bad about that decision (which certainly wasn't made) even with the news reports. Quality is a moving target, as much influenced by trends, competitors, brand perception, or even a person's hatred of cats. You can test everything imaginable and still miss something, or test exactly what you're looking for and have no one care. And just to close the loop on these two examples, I understand you'll still be stopped from using a laptop (regardless of the smell) during take-offs and landings. Maybe it's time to make the switch towards that tablet PC after all. Luke Schreier is the senior group manager for automated test platform marketing at National Instruments. He joined NI in 2001 as an applications engineer before transitioning to product management in 2003. His focus areas in marketing have included switching, precision DC, signal connectivity, high-speed digital and mixed-signal test, and now the entire suite of PXI platform products and modular instruments. His current focus is on product strategy and lead-user activities for next-generation modular instruments and PXI platform products as well as participation in regional advisory councils and cross-industry test leadership activities. He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.