Electronics For You Plus - Febbraio 2016

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February 2016
Vol. 04 | No. 10
ISSN-2454-4426
EDITOR
Tech Focus
: RAmESH CHOPRA
EDITORIAL
: EDITORIAL SECRETARY
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38
Teach Your Drones

To Do More Than Fly
20 Artificial Intelligence
A Beautiful Artificial Mind
126
Electronics Mart Ads
130
Product Categories Index + Attractions During 2016
48 Telecom
131
Advertisers Index
Gate-Level Simulations: An Increasing Trend
30
Tech Focus
A Sunrise Peppered With Drones
44
Innovation
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Software And Tools To Enrich Your Digital

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78
5G: The Next-Generation Network
56
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Printed, published and owned by Ramesh Chopra. Printed at International

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Regulars
Diabeto: A 360-Degree DiabetesManagement Solution
26 Embedded
HYDERABAD
UNITED STATES
Choosing The
Right Bench
Power Supply
Feedback
Q&A
Useful Websites
Tech News
Make in India: Industry News
New Products
First Look
Business Pages Ads
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64
06
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110
115
CHENNAI
TAIwAN
Buyers Guide
Test & Measurement
Do-IT-Yourself
The Latest In Scopes
73 Manufacture
Wearable Devices: Essential Inputs for Design

Engineers (Part 2 of 2)
76
EFY Plus DVD
Event
India Electronics Week 2016: The New-Age

Electronics Show
87
Make in India
Market Survey: Keeping An Eye on Indias

Surveillance Industry
95 Making Arduino Shields Using Fritzing

97 Lossless Image Compression Using MATLAB
98 RGB Colour Generator
100 Infrared Motion-Sensing Relay Switch
102 PIN Diode Based Fire Sensor
104 Fridge Temperature And Humidity Indicator
106 High-Impedance Audio Buffer With JFET
108 Plus-Minus 5V Supply From 9V Battery
eStyle
112 Buyers Guide: Buying A 127cm FlatPanel TV
114 Do-It-Yourself: Ten Things You Can Do

With Your Old Android Device
EFY Plus DVD

Signal Processing With Sonic Visualiser ..................I
R: A Data-Analysis And Statistical-Computing Tool ... IV
Let Us Learn how to Program 8085 ......................VII
Interviews
70
certiFications:
We can even create our own medical
device and test it on our neighbour
Kalyan Varma, vice president - Business stream
72
MicrocontroLLers:
Most connected devices are nodes at the
last centimetre of networks sanjay Gupta,
director, automotive Bu, nXP semiconductors
Products at tuV rheinland - tuV rheinland

(india) Pvt Ltd
Please send payments only in favour of EFY Enterprises Pvt Ltd
FEBRUARY 2016 | ELECTRONICS FOR YOU PLUS
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FEEDBACK
YOUR SUGGESTIONS
EFY NEW LAYout DESigN
The new layout of EFY January issue
is amazing. It is very attractive. EFY
covers the latest technology and new
products. I love DIY section and open
source materials in every issue. I am
very thankful to EFY!
Samiuddhin
Through email
EFY. Thanks for the feedback! Your
feedback is important to us for improvement and to make a difference
in a better way. We highly appreciate
your support for the benefit of our
readers and look forward to hearing
from you in the future, too.
helpful. It is great that I could work

on a number of projects based on DIY
section. I request you to increase the
number of articles that include details
on the working of sensors.
I also request you to include a
quiz section based on the articles and
interviews in the current volume.
Mohammed Shan H.
Through email
EFY. Thanks for the feedbacks and
suggestions!
FREQuENcY ShiFt KEYiNg

In Frequency Shift Keying Communication Simulator article published in
thANKS!
I thank EFY circulation team for their
swift action and support. I made a
complaint regarding non-receipt of
December issue. I received the issue
within three days!
V. Nagaraj
Through email
EFY. Thanks for the feedback!
FiRSt LooK
In eStyle First Look section in December 2015 issue, specification for
OnePlus X by OnePlus is wrongly
mentioned. It should be 2.3 quad-core
system on chip, instead of 2.3 quadcore CPUs.
Ravichandra Metri
Through email
EFY. We normally get all data from
the original manufacturers website.
Specifications printed in the article
are clearly mentioned on OnePlus
website.
Quiz SEctioN
I am a subscriber to EFY and it is very
6
FEBRUARY 2016 | ELECTRONICS FOR YOU
Spot An Error
AWARD Winners
In Things You Wanted to Know Q&A
section of December 2015 issue, under
Q2, details related to the Bluetooth
module and Bluetooth dongle including
Figs 1 and 2 are wrong. Fig. 1 should be
HC-05 module. Fig. 2 should be Bluetooth
dongle and not as mentioned in the third
paragraph. Also, there is no figure of
BT 24 module as explained in
the second paragraph.
Darshan Shah
From electronicsforu.com
Circuits and
Microcontrollers
I will try making Ultrasonic Radar
Model Using Microcontroller
ATmega128 circuit published in
February 2015 issue. Thank you for
sharing the information!
Briju
EFY. Thanks for the feedback!
In Motion Detector Using NE555
Timer article published in August 2015
issue, what is TP0 to TP2. Where can I
get the PIR module?
Rakesh Kumar
EFY. TP0 through TP2 are test points.
Voltages given in Test Points table
may be helpful for beginners during
troubleshooting. PIR modules are easily
available in electronic component shops.
In New Delhi, you can get these from
Lajpat Rai Market. PIRs like HC-SR501
modules are easily available online on
websites such as www.ebay.in
I liked 12V Battery Absorb and
Float Charger circuit published in
September 2015 issue. Which tool is
used for designing the PCB? Can you
send the complete kit of this project?
Praveen
EFY. We used gEDA software for
designing the circuit and PCB layout.
The complete kit of this project is not
available with us right now. However,
you may check www.kitsnspares.com
for similar projects.
In Joystick Based Stepper Motor

Angle Controller using AVR MCU article
published in December 2015 issue, there
is mismatch between Figs 1 and 4. In
Fig. 4, pins 5 and 6 of LCD should be
connected to ground and PC1 of MCU,
respectively. In Fig. 1, VR1 should be
connected to 5V and pin 15 of LCD should
be connected to 5V through resistor R2.
Ramakanta Mohanta
Rakesh
Through email
In the PCB layout of Sensing Peripheral

Devices with MC1489A Receiver circuit
published in December 2015 issue,
jumper J2 shorting the tracks of RC1 and
RC2 is wrong.
Samiuddhin
EFY. There is no source code used

in this article. However, Multisim
simulation file is used that is already
included in the DVD accompanying
the relevant EFY Plus.
December 2015 issue, the simulator

code is not given.
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
Q&A
THINGS YOU WANTED TO KNOW!

Ques. How to operate
60Hz electrical
appliances at 50Hz?
Momtaz
ans. First of all try to contact the

manufacturer of the appliance for
safely operating at 50Hz with the
manufacturers approval. The manufacturer may have a solution.
It is possible to purchase 60Hz
sine-wave power systems that take
240V 50Hz on input and produce 115V
60Hz on output. These solutions are
generally very expensive, and it is usually more cost-effective to replace the
tool or appliance.
Visicomm Industries manufactures, sells and rents a broad range
of rotary and solid-state frequency
converters and changer products rated
from 1kVA to 5000kVA.
A frequency converter can be
for single or three phases and can
sometimes also change voltage, thus
functioning as a power converter from
60Hz to 50Hz, from 50Hz to 60Hz and
from 50Hz/60Hz to 400Hz. It can also
be used for continuous duty or for
testing products designed for export.
Q2. wHat are tHe considerations in sMps design?
please provide links or
e-Books for tHe saMe.
Mahesh kumar
a2. In an SMPS design, you have to

consider power output, input conditions, thermal and heat-sinking issues,
component quality, PCB area, layout
and footprint, performance testing and
much more. Please follow the link for
more details: electronicdesign.com/
power/7-critical-steps-switching-powersupply-design
You may refer to the following
SMPS books: Switch-Mode Power Sup8
plies by C.P. Basso, Switching Power

Supply Design by A.I. Pressman, and
Modern DC-To-DC Switchmode Power
Converter Circuits by R.P. Severns and
G.E. Bloom.
You can also find a complete
e-guide on SMPS design from the
following link: http://caxapa.ru/
thumbs/348441/Switchmode_Power_Supply_Handbook_3rd_edi.pdf -handbook and http://www.smps.com/
Knowledge/Articles/Step-by Step_Flyback_SMPS_Design.shtml
You can design an SMPS circuit
based on the following online simulators freely available: www.poweresim.
com and www.ti.com/lsds/ti/analog/
webench/power.page
Q3. wHat types of acceleroMeter sensors are

availaBle in tHe Market?
wHat points sHould Be
considered wHen Buying
an acceleroMeter?
pamarthi kanakaraja
a3. There are various types of accelerometers available in the market based
on various sensing principles. These
are capacitive, piezoelectric, piezoresistive, Hall effect, magnetoresistive and
heat transfer, etc.
Consider the following points when
buying an accelerometer:
Analogue versus digital. This is
determined by the hardware that is being interfaced with the accelerometer.
Analogue style accelerometers output
a continuous voltage that is proportional to acceleration, whereas digital
accelerometers usually use pulse width
modulation (PWM) for output.
Number of axes. For most projects,
two axes are enough. However, if you
want to attempt 3D positioning, you
will need a 3-axis accelerometer.
Maximum swing. If you only care
about measuring tilt using Earths grav-
ity, a 1.5g accelerometer will be more

than enough. If you are going to use the
accelerometer to measure the motion of
a car, plane or robot, 2g should give
you enough headroom to work with.
For a project that experiences very sudden starts or stops, you will need one
that can handle 5g or more.
Sensitivity. With more sensitivity,
you will get more accurate readings.
Bandwidth. For slow-moving
tilt-sensing applications, a bandwidth
of 50Hz will probably suffice. If you
intend to measure vibrations or control
a fast-moving machine, you will need
a bandwidth of several hundred Hz.
Impedance/buffering issues.
Mainly involving analogue accelerometers, use a low-input offset rail to rail
op-amp as a buffer to lower output
impedance.
Q4. How can one develop

a digital speedoMeter
using a sensor attacHed
to tHe front or rear
wHeel tHat also displays
distance (kM) and speed
(kMpH)?
aman Madan
a4. Please refer Microcontroller

Based Speedometer-Cum-Odometer
article published in EFY magazine in
November 2008 issue. In the article you
will find the following features: digital
readout, speed displayed in kmph, distance travelled displayed in kilometers,
readings saved in non-volatile memory
(EEPROM), home-brewed speed transducer/sensor, self-reset to zero after
completion of 99,999.9km and easy-tobuild-and-fix onto the bike.
Answers compiled by EFY senior application engineer,

Nidhi Kathuria. Letters and questions for publication
may be addressed to Editor, Electronics For You,
D-87/1, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase 1, New Delhi
110020 (e-mail: editsec@efy.in) and should include
name and address of the sender
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
USEFUL Websites
GETTING STARTED WITH DRONES
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones are something that fascinates most of us.
This month we have some websites that will help you know more about these drones
Compiled by nira j sahay
diydrones.com
robotshop.com
DIY Drones is a community

based on Ning social networking
platform, and anybody who
registers (it is free and easy)
can post their own blog entries.
It is explicitly built as a social
network for drone lovers. There
are different groups that discuss
drones on this website. It also
offers facilities to create a meet-up
page for local drone fans.
This site is all about helping

beginners with buying and flying
quadcopters and other multirotors.
In general, it focuses on building,
buying and discussing drones. It
is run by CHI Associates (Craig
Issod), who have decades of
experience in building online
communities and forums. Starting
in April 2013, a number of major
upgrades and features were
introduced and www.droneflyers.
com became a go-to site for
consumers desiring information
and education on new drones.
RobotShop is one of the worlds

leading sources for personal and
professional robot technology that
help increase pleasure, knowledge,
liberty and security of individuals.
They specialise in personal and
professional robot technology
and offer a wide range of robotic
products and services in this sector.
The site has a section on learning
how to build a drone. So if you
are looking to get into drones
and UAVs, then the tutorial series
available on the website will help
you understand the emerging field
of UAVs and guide you through the
process of building your own UAV
using off-the-shelf parts.
www.droneflyers.com
www.robotshop.com/blog/en/make-uavlesson-1-platform-rtf-arf-kit-custom-13989
www.diydrones.com
myfirstdrone.com
droneflyers.com
dronezon.com
MyFirstDrone has been building,

buying and flying quadcopters
and various other RC drones and
model aircraft for the past several
years. Tutorials on this website aim
to help you in buying all parts, to
building and learning how to fly a
quadcopter in no time.
www.myfirstdrone.com
10
www.dronezon.com/latest-uavs-newsdrone-uses-research-innovation
DroneZon is all about the

world of drones, multirotors
and quadcopters. The site
is full of drone videos, UAV
news, interviews with drone
companies, drone DIY tips and
learning materials on drone
technology for beginners. It also
shows you how drones are been
used commercially and in other
areas of our lives.
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
Tech NEWS
TECHNOLOGY UPDATES
Drone that can catch another

by firing a net at it
Drone catches another by firing a net at it (Image courtesy: www.brunchnews.com)
Engineers from Human-Interactive

Robotics Lab (HIRoLab) at Michigan
Technological University have filed
a patent for a prototype for a dronecatching system that fires a net to take
other unwanted aircraft down.
They have named the project
Robotic Falconry and have said
that the drone, equipped with a net
shooter, can intercept and physically
remove any intruding multi-rotor
drone from private airspace. It can
be autonomous or remote-controlled
while tackling a drone.
According to the researchers,
the net-shooting technique can
be effective when force-landing
unmanned intruders that would
otherwise put the public at risk.
Drone that can do donuts, figure-eights around obstacles

Getting drones to fly around without hitting things is a
huge task. Obstacle-detection and motion-planning are
two of computer sciences trickiest challenges, because
of the complexity involved in creating real-time flight
plans that avoid obstacles and handle surprises like wind
and weather.
Two teams of researchers from MITs Computer
Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have
developed software that allows drones to stop on a dime to
make hairpin movements over, under and around some 26
distinct obstacles in a simulated forest.
One team has shown a small quad-rotor doing donuts
and figure-eights through an obstacle course of strings and
PVC pipes.
In a second CSAIL project, PhD student Anirudha
Majumdar showed off a fixed-wing plane that avoids
obstacles without any advance knowledge of the space,
and even in the face of wind gusts and other dynamics.
The approach was to pre-program a library of dozens of
14
distinct funnels that represent the worst-case behaviour of

the system, calculated via a rigorous verification algorithm.
Researchers are teaching drones to fly autonomously without ever crashing

(Image courtesy: www.news.mit.edu)
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
Tech News
Polymer super suit designed using

solar energy
The Grossman group of MIT has developed a transparent
polymer that can store energy by using a solar cell and
release controllable heat at any time. This newly-engineered
material depends upon the Sun, which is a practically inexhaustible source of energy and stores energy in the form of
chemical energy, releasing it later as heat.
The layer-by-layer solar thermal fuel polymer film comprises three distinct layers
(Image courtesy: www.news.mit.edu)
Jeffrey Grossman, lead researcher, has said that the

product could be a boon for the clothing industry, and
provide humans with a new type of protective wear. The
team also explained that this concept first came to their
mind while analysing the concept of harvesting solar energy
for long-term usage, as required in various sectors.
Conventionally, solar energy is converted to electrical
energy and serves as an environment-friendly renewable
energy source, but the researchers wanted to come up with
something new and innovative by using similar ideas.
Designer crystals for next-gen

electronics
Liquid is often seen as the kryptonite of electronics, known
for damaging and corroding components. This is why a
new process that uses vapour instead of liquid to grow
designer crystals could lead to a new breed of faster, more
powerful electronic devices.
The method is invented by an international team of
scientists from University of Leuven in Belgium, National
University of Singapore and CSIRO. For the first time,
researchers have shown how designer crystals known as
metal organic frameworks can be grown using a vapour
method that is similar to steam hovering over a pot of
hot water.
The crystals are the worlds most porous materials, and
if applied to microelectronic devices, could significantly
boost their processing power.
16
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
Tech News
Bandage to automatically deliver

medicine to a wound
Researchers from MIT have developed a new type of
bandage that incorporates electronics and drug reservoirs
to monitor and care for a wound. The durable hydrogel
bandage is supple and flexible, allowing for full range of
movement even if it is applied to a knee or an elbow. It
also has a few innovative features such as temperaturemonitoring electronics that automatically release medicine
to fight infections.
Smart bandage has embedded electronics to track and treat wounds

(Image courtesy: www.popularmechanics.com)
The smart wound dressing is made of a rubbery

hydrogel matrix that is 90 per cent water, one designed
specifically to replicate the qualities of human tissue. The
gel creates a strong bond with materials such as titanium,
aluminium, silicon, ceramic, gold and other substances that
are commonly used to build electronics.
Titanium wire runs through the gel to make the
bandage conductive, allowing a number of electronic
devices to be embedded, such as semiconductor chips. LED
lights are also used; these can flash when a wound reaches
a certain temperature or drug reservoirs run low. Medicine
reservoirs are drilled into the hydrogel and travel to the
wound via channels cut in the matrix.
Wireless, dissolvable sensors to

monitor brain
A team of neurosurgeons and engineers has developed
wireless brain sensors that monitor pressure and temperature inside the brain and are then absorbed by the body, so
that there is no need for surgery to remove the devices.
Developed by scientists at Washington University
School of Medicine in St. Louis and engineers at University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the implants can be used
to monitor patients with traumatic brain injuries.
The devices are made mainly of polylactic-co-glycolic
acid and silicone and can transmit accurate pressure and
temperature readings as well as other information.
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
ELECTRONICS FOR YOU | FEBRUARY 2016
17
Tech News
The researchers tested the sensors in baths of saline
solution that caused these to dissolve after a few days.
Next, they tested the devices in the brains of rats. Having
seen that the sensors are accurate and dissolve in the
solution and in the brains of rats, researchers now are
planning to test the technology on humans.
Bio-inspired LEDs glow using proteins

A new type of hybrid light emitting diode (HLED) termed
BioLED has been developed by a team of German-Spanish
scientists. It features protein cascade coatings in the form
of rubber to make the LEDs glow. Drawing inspiration from
natures bio-molecules, the scientists developed this hybrid
lasting solution. They developed a fast and reversible

thermo-responsive polymer switching material that
can be incorporated inside batteries to prevent thermal
runaway. The material consists of conductive graphenecoated spiky nanostructure (nano-spiky) nickel particles
as the conductive filler, along with a polymer matrix
having a large thermal expansion coefficient. These
nano-spikes have high electrical conductivity and high
thermal sensitivity.
In order to conduct electricity, the nano-spikes must
be in close vicinity. As temperature rises, the polythene
stretches, causing the spikes to move apart from each other
and thereby break electrical contact.
While experimenting, when the battery was heated up
to 70C, the polythene film quickly expanded like a balloon,
shutting off the battery. But when the temperature dropped
down to 70C, the polyethylene shrunk, particles came in
contact and the battery started regenerating electricity.
Disneys robot can climb walls

Disney Research Zurich, along with ETH, an engineering,
science, technology, mathematics and management university, has developed a robot that can climb walls.
Rubber with red, green and blue luminescent proteins are used to produce
the BioLEDs (Image courtesy: www.materialsgate.de)
device that introduces luminescent proteins into a polymer

matrix to produce luminescent rubber. It uses luminescent
proteins to convert the blue light emitted by a regular LED
into pure white light. The rubber is used to cover the LED
to convert the light.
Manufacturing of LEDs involves inorganic components
such as cerium and yttrium that are already in short
supply and hence would not be sustainable for long.
BioLEDs are easy to manufacture, are bio-degradable and
can be efficiently recycled and replaced. These also come
with less than ten per cent loss in luminous efficiency for
over 100 hours.
Lithium-ion battery that automatically

shuts down before over-heating
A research group comprising chemical engineers from
Stanford University has developed a lithium-ion battery that
automatically shuts down before over-heating, and starts
charging once the temperature falls.
Zhenan Bao, team leader at CE research group at
Stanford, and postdoctoral scholar Zheng Chen, turned
to nanotechnology to look for a reversible and long18
VertiGo, a wall-climbing robot including ground-wall transition

(Image courtesy: www.disneyresearch.com)
It is called VertiGo and is capable of making a nearseamless transition from the ground to a wall. It is also
capable of mind-boggling wall-riding owing to a pair
of tiltable propellers that provide thrust onto the wall,
effectively sucking it against the vertical surface.
With two steerable wheels, VertiGo can be operated as
a radio-controlled car. But, unlike the radio-controlled car,
VertiGo has two infrared distance sensors mounted on the
front to estimate its orientation in space.
The robot has potential use in entertainment, such as
providing visual effects, but is also a general technology
for locomotion on walls with possible other uses such as
industrial inspection.
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
artificial intelligence
A Beautiful ArtificiAl Mind
ay Kurzweil, American author,

computer scientist, inventor and
futurist, once said, Artificial intelligence will reach human levels by around
2029. Follow that out further to, say, 2045,
we will have multiplied the intelligence,
the human biological machine intelligence
of our civilisation a billion-fold.
Deepak Halan
is associate
professor at School
of Management
Sciences, Apeejay
Stya University
Fig. 1: ELIZA, an
interactive program,
was based on a
very basic level of
AI (Image courtesy:
www.scaruffi.com)
20
Evolution of AI
The human race has fantasised about
thinking machines right from the time of
classical Greece. Homers Iliad talks about
robots that were made by Greek God
Hephaestus. While some of these robots
were like humans, others were mere
machines such as the golden tripods that
served food and wine at feasts.
With the advent of modern computers
it became feasible to create programs that
performed difficult intellectual tasks. The
first half of the 20th century saw British
mathematicians and philosophers Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead
publish Principia Mathematica, which
revolutionised formal logic.
In 1923, Karel Kapeks play R.U.R.
(Rossums Universal Robots), staged in
London in 1923, was the first to use the
word robot in English language. Much
later, in 1956, John McCarthy created the
phrase artificial intelligence (AI) while
looking for words to describe the key
topic of a conference. The same year saw
the demonstration of the first running AI

program, Logic Theorist (LT), written by
Allen Newell, J.C. Shaw and Herbert Simon, who were eminent personalities from
Carnegie Institute of Technology, USA.
In the decade spanning 1952 to 1962,
Arthur Samuel from IBM wrote the first
game-playing program, for checkers, with
enough ability to challenge a world champion. In 1965, Joseph Weizenbaum from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),
USA, created ELIZAan interactive program
that was capable of participating in a discussion on any subject in English language.
The first national conference of American Association of Artificial Intelligence
(AAAI) was held in 1980 at Stanford, USA.
By 1990s, key advances had taken place in
all areas of AI, with noteworthy achievements in machine learning, intelligent
tutoring, case based reasoning, multi-agent
planning, scheduling, uncertain reasoning,
data mining, natural language understanding and translation, vision, virtual reality,
games and many other topics.
And, it was in 1997 that Deep Blue, an
IBM supercomputer, beat the current world
chess champion, Garry Kasparov. By late
1990s, Web crawlers and other AI based
information extraction programs became
indispensable in the widespread use of the
World Wide Web.
An introduction to AI
AI is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, more so, intelligent computer programs. In simple terms,
if a computer performs a function which
if a human was to do would be called
intelligent, then we can say the computer
has intelligence.
Intelligence is a combination of knowledge and reasoning power since reasoning
power construes facts that are unknown
to knowledge. This criteria for AI is a very
challenging task given that computers
work on binary logic. When a computer
only knows yes and no, it is demandWWW.EFYMAG.COM
experience and can actually solve
problems or give advice based on
what it has learned.
Some application areas of AI

Fig. 2: IBMs Deep Blue chess machine, which
defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov
(Image courtesy: www.scaruffi.com)
ing to achieve results that are not

strictly defined.
For example, if we had to create
an AI thermostat to cool a house,
the program would need to have
knowledge of all seasons, weather
conditions like El Nio and passage
of time, plus it must be able to understand concepts like warm, cool or
too cold, apart from other aspects.
While we do not really realise it,
the simplest human functions translate to thousands of lines of computer code. Most current AI systems
are designed for only a few specific
applications. One of the most popular examples of an AI application
was a chess program running on
Deep Blue, IBMs massively-parallelcomputing system.
Deep Blue managed to defeat
world chess champion Gary Kasparov because it could search 50 to
100 billion positions in the three
minutes that each player had, to
make their move.
AI applications can be bucketed as knowledge based or expert
systems. A minor knowledge based
system could be a series of conditional statements, such as:
IF
the animal is a bird
it does not fly
it swims
it is black and white
THEN it is a penguin.
As this system becomes more
complex, the time it takes for a computer to arrive at an intelligent outcome becomes unacceptably high.
Expert systems try to solve this issue
by acquiring more knowledge from
a human being by asking questions.
Over time, the program learns from
22
AI is being used in all spheres of

everyday life in developed countries.
Given below are some key areas.
Online shopping. e-tailing sites
such as www.amazon.com deploy a
process called collaborative filtering
to compare a customers purchase
patterns with those of other customers and provide suggestions. AI can
take such processes to the next level
to increase loyalty.
In the near future, we can expect
semi-autonomous agents surfing
the Web to help us, that is, their
creators with diverse tasks. Intelligent bots will shop for you online,
do your financial transactions
and more, without your intervention. You would only be required
to provide the bots broad inputs
with respect to what you want to
get done. Websites such as www.
AskJeeves.com are using AI in the
hope of making the Internet a more
intuitive place, where you get things
done the same way you would do in
the real world.
e-broking. In the Internet trading
environment, an e-broker is a system where clients are the prospective buyers and sellers. Each client
has a particular wish-list. In security
trading, a buyer can specify type of
product, number of lots, maximum
purchase price, expiry date, time
and other details.
The seller can specify product,
number of lots, minimum selling
price, expiry date, time and the like.
The system preserves a database of
outstanding requests from prospective buyers and sellers.
For a buyer, the system screens
and shortlists a reasonable number
of sellers for further analysis. The
system matches buyers and sellers
in the shortlist. For each buyerseller pair, the system makes use of
a set of rules and comes up with a
rating for the pair. It ranks possible

sellers according to the ratings. Topranking sellers are recommended to
the buyer.
In such a brokerage system, AI
techniques are applied to the shortlisting stage and the matching stage.
The amount of computation increases sharply with a rise in the number
of clients and requests. The focus
of research is therefore on efficient
strategies and algorithms so that the
system can respond to clients requests within a short span of time. A
security trading system is expected to
complete several thousand transactions every day and the system has to
answer in just a few seconds.
Bioinformatics. AI is critical
for the evolution of bioinformatics.
Presently, molecular biologists are
involved in some notable datacollection projects. Latest genomesequencing projects are producing
a huge volume of data linked to the
function and structure of biological
molecules and sequences.
Other complementary highthroughput technologies, such
as DNA micro-arrays, are swiftly
generating big amounts of data that
are too overpowering for traditional
methods for biological data analysis.
Understanding of this rich data
could deeply impact our interpretation of life at the molecular level.
However, the illustration of biological
knowledge is a very daunting job
and increasingly demands more potent and refined computational tools.
AI and other heuristic methods
(in particular, machine learning,
data mining, cluster analysis, pattern recognition and knowledge representation) could possibly offer key
solutions for the fresh hurdles posed
by the progressive transformation of
biology into a data-massive science.
Some key areas where AI approaches are specifically encouraging and turning out to be fruitful are
for prediction of proteins structure
and function, semiautomatic drug
design, interpretation of nucleotide
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Fig. 3: Aibo, a robotic dog with intelligent

features and autonomy (Image courtesy: www.
digitaltrends.com)
Fig. 4: A musician performing with robots

inspired by AI (Image courtesy: www.
classicalite.com)
Fig. 5: Haley Joel Osment played a robot

in Steven Spielbergs movie A.I. Artificial
Intelligence (Image courtesy: www.
spielbergfanclub.com)
sequences and knowledge acquisition from genetic data.

There is no doubt that application of AI to computational molecular biology demands exceedingly
interdisciplinary and complementary
skills, and these are seldom provided for in most current academic curricula. Interdisciplinary is
interesting, however, unless AI and
computational biology communities
collaborate closely, development of
new methodologies and algorithms
is likely to lose pace.
Gaming. Another big area in
which AI plays a vital role is the
gaming industry. In the 1990s, we
saw the first attempts to mass-produce AI based toys and games in the
form of Tamagotchi dolls, Giga Pets,
first widely-released robot, Furby
and much more. Later an enhanced
type of domestic robot, Aibo, a
robotic dog with intelligent features
and autonomy, was launched.
AI has also been applied to video
24
games in the form of video game

bots, which are designed to stand
in as opponents when people are
either not available or are not desired. In a game called Left 4 Dead,
AI based director decides where enemies brood and how maps are laid
out to be more or less demanding at
various points of play.
It is important for gamers to feel
that the characters that are inside
the game are almost real. Certain
games are based on neural networking technology, which is used to create characters that learn as the game
progresses. Characters in a fighting
game, for example, could be taught
battle skills in the same manner as
the humans.
Then there are computing
machines available in the market,
which can play master-level chess
with you. These are based on some
level of AI and use aggressive
computation force in evaluating
hundreds of thousands of different
positions. To beat a world champion by sheer computing force and
known reliable heuristics requires
evaluation of as many as 200 million
positions per second.
Music and AI. Since long, music
has evolved with technology. Computer-science engineers have been
trying to make computers match the
activities of skilful musicians, using
AI. Composition, performance, music theory and sound processing are
some of the major areas on which
research in music and AI is on.
Also, efforts to model music cognition with AI are generally looked
upon as methods of improving
our understanding of both human
psychology and intellect. Once an
effective model of the music listener
has been accomplished, it can be
improvised into a more complex
model consisting of the listener,
performer and composer, all put
together. It then becomes a selflearning AI system. For example, a
composing program can get all the
required input information from its
environment by listening to musical performances. Also, this more

sophisticated model can be very
insightful in terms of understanding
the behaviour of musicians.
Conclusion
Haley Joel Osment played a robot
created with the ability to have emotions, dreams and desires in Steven
Spielbergs movie A.I. Artificial
Intelligence, a sci-fi adaptation of
Pinocchio story.
There has been a certain level of
resistance to AI due to the fear of
the world being taken over by machines, as the gap between humans
and machines becomes narrower.
However, there is also the belief
that a machine can never be as
good as a human being in making
business decisions.
There is a school of thought that
believes that human-level intelligence can be achieved by writing
large numbers of programs but most
AI researchers believe that new and
creative fundamental ideas are required. While it cannot be predicted
by when human-level intelligence
will be achieved, we do not really
need to simulate conscious human
thought as such.
The emphasis today is on
developing computers that can be
operated intuitively with minimum
human involvement. This demands
a system that can crunch data on a
platform and in a device-agnostic
manner. Ideally, development of
meaningful AI will demand that machines obtain some form of human
consciousness to create useful and
powerful assistants.
While there has been rapid progress in hardware, storage and parallel-processing architectures, the field
of artificial consciousness remains in
its infancy stage. And much like the
human body, this system is expected
to carry out its functions and adapt
to its users requirements without the
need of the user to go into minute
details of its functioning.
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embedded
Gate-LeveL SimuLationS:
An Increasing Trend
ate-level simulation (GLS) is used

to boost the confidence regarding
implementation of a design and
can help verify dynamic circuit behaviour,
which cannot be verified accurately by
static methods. It is a significant step in
the verification process.
GLS overcomes the limitations of static-timing analysis and is increasing being
used due to low power issues, complex
timing checks at 40nm and below, design
for test (DFT) insertion at gate level and
low power considerations. For DFT, scan
chains are inserted after the gate-level
netlist is created; GLS is often used to determine whether scan chains are correct.
Technology libraries at 45nm and
below have far more timing checks and
complex timing checks than older process
nodes. GLS may take up to one-third of
the simulation time and could potentially
take most of the debugging time. It is run
after RTL code is simulated and synthesised into a gate-level netlist. It requires a
complete reset of the design.
Reasons for running GLS are reset
verification, X optimism in RTL, timing
verification on multi-cycle/asynchronous
V.P. Sampath is an
active member of
IEEE and Institution
of Engineers India
Ltd. He is a regular
contributor to
national newspapers,
IEEE-MAS section,
and has published
international papers
in VLSI and networks
RTL
Test bench
Verification
Linting
Logic
Equivalence
Check
Synthesis
Gate Level Netlist

ATPG pattern
26
Simulation
STA
Fig. 1: Gate-level
simulation flow
paths and basic heartbeat test.

In reset verification, GLS can verify system initialisation and show that the reset
sequence is correct.
In X optimism in RTL, an RTL simulator may optimistically assign zero or
one to a value that a GLS would identify
as X (unknown).
In timing verification on multi-cycle/
asynchronous paths, static-timing analysis
cannot identify asynchronous interfaces,
and has constraint requirements that impact false and multi-cycle paths.
In the basic heartbeat test, some verification teams may want to run a limited
sanity check to verify the functionality at
the gate level. As GLS runs much more
slowly than an RTL simulation, it potentially has significant impact on the verification
closure cycle.
Cadence incisive enterprise simulator
has several features such as zero-delay simulation, built-in delay mode control functions
to reduce simulation time, selectively disabling delays in sections of the model where
timing is not currently a concern, detecting
potential zero-delay gate loops, correcting
race conditions that occur in zero-delay
mode, disabling timing checks for the entire
simulation or for selected blocks, controlling the number of timing check violations,
using multi-snapshot incremental elaboration to improve elaboration performance,
using wave dumping only if required, avoid
or use selectively command-line options that
provide additional information and access to
objects for debugging.
Incisive also offers a timing file that lets
you turn off the timing for particular instances in a design. Palladium XP accelerator/emulator can offer speeds 10,000 times
faster than simulation. If full debug access
is needed, a switch can provide it. There is
also an option (-ZLIB) that can compress
snapshots and save disk space, while letting users set the level of compression.
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embedded
Running GLS
GLS execution strategy

In highly-integrated products, it is
not possible to run gate simulation
for all system on chip (SoC) tests
due to the simulation and debug
time required. Therefore the vectors
28
Simulator Flow
STA Flow
STA Tool
GLS Netlist
Generates
Violation Report
STA Tool Generates

Timing Report and SDF
SDF with no
timing issue
Check for
Errors in report
ERRORS
Generate SDF
No
GLS Timing SIM
SDF
The use of static tools to reduce GLS

time should be used before running
zero-delay information, especially for
linting. Static-timing analysis can provide information that is used to start
GLS early in the flow.
There are many reasons for running
GLS, some of which are given below:
1. To give confidence in verification
of low-power structures, absent in
RTL and added during synthesis. It
is a probable method to catch
multi-cycle paths if tests exercising
these are available. Power estimation is done on the netlist for
power numbers
2. To verify the power-up and reset
operation of the design and to
check if the design has any unintentional dependencies on initial
conditions
3. To verify DFT structures absent
in RTL and added during or after
synthesis. Scan chains are generally inserted after the gate-level
netlist has been created. Hence,
GLS is often used to determine
whether scan chains are correct. It
is also required to simulate ATPG
patterns. Tester pattern simulations
are done on the gate-level netlist
4. To help reveal glitches on edgesensitive signals due to combination logic; using both worst- and
best-case timing may be necessary
5. To check special logic circuits and
design topology that may include
feedback and/or initial state considerations or circuit tricks
6. To check if design works at the desired frequency with actual delays
in place. It is a probable method
to find out the need for synchronisers, if absent in design. It will
cause X propagation on timing
violation on that flop
No
SIM PASS
Yes
Yes
Fix the design issue and

validate it in STA again
Designers
Work on Real
Design Fix
Modify/Update
SDF
Temporarily
Temporary fix of known timing issues
to start GLS SIM early and focus on
new unknown GLS issues
No
Original
SDF Used
Yes
Design Tape Out
Fig. 2: Gate-level simulation and static-timing analysis flow
that are to be run in GLS have to be

selected judiciously.
Possible candidates for such vectors are test cases involving initialisation and boot up, and all blocks
of the design must have at least one
test case for GLS, test cases checking
clock source switching, cases checking clock frequency scaling, asynchronous paths in design, test cases that
check entry/exit from different modes
of design and dedicated tests for timing exceptions in the STA.
GLS targets the maximum desired
operating frequency of the design.
Some signals that are critical for GLS
debug can be preserved during synthesis. A list of all synchroniser flops
is generated using CDC tools.
Asynchronous paths where timing checks need to be turned off are
analysed and a complete list of such
flops is prepared, which also includes
reset synchronisers. Timing checks are
turned off on all such flops to avoid
any redundant debugging, otherwise
these will cause X corruption in GLS.
This work should ideally be done
before the SDF arrives. It may happen
that the names of the synchronisers
in RTL and the netlist are different.
All such flops should be updated as
per the netlist. Also, correct standard cell libraries, correct models of
analogue blocks and more should be
picked for GLS.
Unit-delay GLS for test bench
cleanup setup is done for unit delay
GLS and test cases that are planned

to be run on gate level are run with
this setup to clean the test bench.
This is done because unit-delay
simulations are relatively faster and
all test bench/testcase-related issues
can be resolved.
Running unit-delay GLS is recommended because one can catch most
of the test bench/testcase issues
before the arrival of SDF. After SDF
arrives, focus should be more on
finding the real design/timing issues.
So one must make sure that the time
does not get wasted in debugging
test-case-related issues at that time.
GLS challenges
The challenge in GLS is X propagation debug. X corruption may be
caused by a number of reasons such
as timing violations, uninitialised
memory and non-resettable flops.
There generally are uninitialised flops
in design which due to the architecture are guaranteed not to cause any
problems. There is a need to find
out all such flops in the design and
initialise these to some random value
(either zero or one) so as to mimic
silicon. It gives a clear picture of how
the design will behave at the desired
frequency with actual delays in place.
Although GLS has its own set
of challenges like set-up issues
and long run time, among others,
it is still very much a part of the
sign-off process.
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tech focus
A Sunrise
PePPered With drones
W
Janani
Gopalakrishnan
Vikram is a
technically-qualified
freelance writer,
editor and handson mom based in
Chennai
Robo-Fly being developed

by the US Army (Image
courtesy: US Army)
hen I started work on this story

at the close of 2015, the USAs
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was voicing serious concerns
about the number of drones expected
to be bought by people during the 2015
Christmas sales. Ranging from simple US$
20 toys to high-end quadcopters, FAA was
expecting a million unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, aka drones) to be sold. The
concern is palpable, because these new
aircraft, if not flown responsibly, could
cause a lot of trouble for airlines. So much
so that FAA has launched a beta application called B4UFly, which helps drone
users to abide by flying regulations, especially to stay away from prohibited zones
where their little aircraft could cause harm
to real big ones.
We are not sure how many drones
really got sold over Christmas holidays,
but it is evident that drones represent a
real, solid trend. At one time, drones fell
into two categories: either these were used
in classified, military operations or were
toys. Now their applications are more
real-world.
In July 2015, a little drone flew 55km
across Appalachian Mountains to deliver

medical supplies to a healthcare centre in
Wise County, Virginia, USA. The place is
not easily accessible and doctors usually
stock up for a month at a stretch, leading to a lot of waste. This FAA-approved
drone delivery has seeded hope in the
minds of many of the areas citizens, who
look forward to more such humanitarian
drone missions.
From delivering medicines and commercial parcels to transporting organs,
following clouds, spraying crops, shooting
candid sports videos and surveying real
estate, drones are attempting to become
part and parcel of our lives, like cars and
mobile devices once did. And soon these
really might dot our skies, every day.
This prospect has put scientists and
activists on full throttle. There is a lot of
concern about the safety and privacy problems posed by these drones and the need
for proper regulations to overcome these.
Fortunately, there is a lot of research and
development happening to make smaller,
smarter, more useful drones. In this story,
let us take a peek at some such won-droneful developments.
Drones turn into Mr Fix-Its

University of Leeds, UK, has undertaken to
develop drones that can be used to autonomously fix city infrastructure such as
mending potholes or changing streetlights.
The idea is to have drones automatically
survey the citys infrastructure, so problems can be spotted and fixed even before
these are visible to the human eye. The
project will take a three-pronged approach
to solving this challenge.
One area of research, dubbed as Perch
and Repair, will aim to develop drones that
can perch atop high structures to fix stuff
like streetlights.
Another dimension is Perceive and
30
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tech focus
Patch, that is, drones that can
autonomously inspect, identify and
repair potholes in roads.
The third is Fire and Forget robots, which can operate perpetually
within live utility pipes, handling
tasks like inspection, repair, metering and reporting.
The multi-million-pound project
is actually deeper than it appears to
be. It will involve not just advanced
research in drones and robotics,
but also include development of
advanced simulators like airflow
simulators to study air pollution,
tackle the problem of aging water
pipelines and more. The project
will also study the environmental and social impact of having a
robot workforce always on duty in
the city, trying to achieve the task
with minimal disturbance to the
citys dwellers.
A trick or two learnt from flies

and birds
Think small, flying, fast and agile,
and insects are the first creatures
that come to mind. How challenging
it is to vanquish a fly that irritatingly hovers around you, buzzing
into your ears! So close by, yet so
tough to swat. Well, it is no surprise
then that with similar goals, drone
researchers are turning to nature
for inspiration.
Insects are able to fly swiftly in
and out of even the trickiest of spaces without colliding into anything.
This is a capability that UAVs must
have, if these are to work autonomously and coexist with humans.
One way to achieve this would be to
More exciting applications...

ETH Zurich recently demonstrated drones building a rope bridge as part of their Aerial
Construction Project. The researchers navigated quadcopters between two sets of
scaffolding. Thereafter, the drones were able to survey the distance, figure out how to
build the bridge and with the help of motorised spools, tied together ropes to make a
7.3-metre(24-feet)-long bridge, without any human intervention.
Flying machines spanning

load-bearing links
(Image courtesy: ETH, Zurich)
Robot scientists from across Europe have joined hands under the auspices of Aerial
Robotics Cooperative Assembly System (ARCAS) project to develop drones that can
fly in a coordinated way to share the weight of heavy building materials. This will help
deliver heavy payloads to difficult areas not reachable by cranes, which often pose
risks to human workers.
Drones are expected to be very helpful for farmers, too. Stevia, the sugar substitute
maker, considered deploying drones with lights over their farms to promote crop growth
at night, too. A contest held last year in Maryland, USA, challenged students to develop
drones that could prevent infestation of corn crops. Some interesting designs involved
drones that landed on infested crops and pulled out insects with mechanical arms.
NASA has shown how UAVs can be used to hunt hurricanes, while Lockheed Martin
showed how these can help in detecting and predicting avalanches, volcanic eruptions,
wildfires and other natural disasters.
Conservation Drones is an organisation focused on using drones for environmentalconservation activities such as protecting chimpanzees in Tanzania and tracking
Sumatran orangutans.
IBM is developing a drone called IRIS+, which can play table tennis. IRIS+ can
automatically track the trajectory of a ball coming to its side of the table and return the
ball to the other player.
equip the drones with digital cameras that capture a 360-degree image
of what is around them. However,
this goes against the form factor
and weight requirements, which are
critical for drones.

So scientists at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich,
Switzerland, have now developed
an insect-inspired motion sensor
For More
Test and Equipment Stories
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32
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tech focus
More bio-inspired drones...
extra energy. He is now studying the multi-modal mobility of birds
The US Army is working on Robo-Fly, which will one day relieve
and other creatures, which comfortably move between water, land
humans from the life-threatening job of espionage. Using
and sky, to develop drones with similar capabilities.
piezoelectric materials, they have developed a fruit-fly-size microrobot that can flap its wings without a motor. The prototype wings David Lentink and his team at Stanford University, USA, have
designed bird-inspired wings for drones. Unlike the rigid wings of
that they have made are just 3mm long, and are made of leadhelicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, these special wings can flap like
zirconium-titanate, a material that bends and flaps when voltage
a birds and fold back on impact, enabling these to recover instantly
is applied to it. They have also used the same material to design
after a collision and continue flying like birds do. The wings are
a set of tiny robotic legs (like a millipedes) that can crawl when
made of carbon-fibre and Mylar film. Each wing consists of two
voltage is applied to these. It might be 10 to 15 years before these
parts, one arm wing and one hand wing, hinged together with a
wings and legs actually turn into spying insects.
3D-printed wrist joint that enables the hand wing to fold back over
Mirko Kovac, director of Aerial Robotics Laboratory at Imperial
the arm wing. The arm wing is further attached to the body by a
College London, believes in turning to nature for answers to drone
shoulder joint. When the wings flap, a centrifugal force is created,
challenges. By studying the perching of birds, he has developed
enabling smooth flight. On collision, the wings fold back without
a pigeon-size drone that can fly to the side of a building and
any damage, recover instantly and start flapping again. All this
comfortably perch on it. Basically, mechanical forces resulting from
happens passively, without requiring any electronics. This would
the impact cause the drones two arms to fly forward and make a
make drones lighter and more reliable, too.
grabbing action that holds onto the brickwork without spending any
for UAVs. The artificial eye measures just two cubic millimetres
and weighs just two milligrams. It
features a lens on top of all three
electronic photodetectors in a triangular pattern. The device combines the measurements of these
photodetectors to determine the
speed and direction of any motion
in its field-of-view. This is similar to how the segmented eyes of
insects capture their environment to
avoid obstacles.
The team has also developed

algorithms to process signals
from these devices, which will be
programmed into onboard chips to
compute relevant parameters like
distance to objects, time until potential collision and so on.
The artificial eye has been
tested under varied conditions like
poorly-lit rooms, bright and sunny
outdoor spots, and it seems poised
to outdo the original itself, as results
show that it is able to detect mo-
tion three times faster than actual

flying insects.
Autonomy is a matter of
perception
If drones are to be really useful, delivering parcels, spying enemy territories, entering danger zones ahead
of fire-fighters and first-responders,
and more, these need to be aware
of their environment and capable of
flying autonomously. Drone makers across the world are investing
Other efforts to make drones self-aware...

avoidance system for drones, which uses only two mobile
When drones suddenly run out of power or lose the global
phones worth of onboard computing hardware and real-time
positioning system (GPS) signal, these crash land. In order
image processing, according to an Institute of Electrical and
to prevent such situations, University of Zurich has developed
Electronics Engineers (IEEE) report. The solution is based on
drones with improved safety features. The drones have a camera,
stereo filtering from a pair of 376 x 240 pixel resolution, 120
acceleration sensors and an orientation system that emulates
frames-per-second cameras spaced 34 centimetres apart. The
the human visual system and sense of balance. When a failure
drone focuses its attention on pixels that are about ten metres
situation is detected, the drone tries to regain balance and, when
away and nothing else. It saves these pixels in its memory and
that is not possible, it surveys its surroundings, builds a 3D
the next image adds more pixels to it, gradually helping the drone
model of the environment and tries to find a safe place to land. All
to build a 3D map of what lies ahead. This technique is called
image processing and control runs on a smartphone processor
pushbroom stereo detection. With a little bit of ironing out, this
onboard the drone, which enables the drone to act independently
method could help drones to fly autonomously, at lower costs.
without requiring instructions from an operator.
Last year, DJI launched a new multi-modal sensing system While remote-controlled drones are capable of flying at great
speeds, autonomous ones still move quite slowly in order to make
called Guidance, which empowers drones like the companys
the required obstacle-avoidance calculations. However, birds and
Matrice 100 with autonomous obstacle-avoidance capabilities.
insects are able to fly very fast, without crashing into anything.
Guidance consists of an array of five ultrasonic rangefinders, a
This fact has inspired Defence Advanced Research Projects
set of integrated visual cameras running advanced algorithms
Agency (DARPA) to fund the development of small, lightweight and
and an onboard processor to make sense of all data. Guidance
autonomous drones that can fly at speeds greater than 70kmph,
enables drones to hover in place, maintain their positions and
manoeuvring adeptly to avoid obstacles. Rising to the occasion,
avoid obstacles, without GPS support.
Draper Labs and a group at MIT have started work on software
Andrew Barry, a PhD student at Massachusetts Institute of
systems that will help avoid obstacles at such high speeds.
Technology (MIT), USA, recently developed an obstacle-
34
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tech focus
efforts in this direction.
Ascending Technologies, for
example, has been working with
Intel to develop solutions for obstacle avoidance. Intels RealSense
360-degree-depth camera module,
which is less than four millimetre
thick, weighing around eight grams,
has been effectively combined with
powerful microprocessors and smart
algorithms to improve the perception capabilities of drones without
affecting payload and flight times.
AscTec FireFly, for example, uses
Intel cameras to auto-fly through
forests without crashing into trees.
AscTec Neo, a research UAV, which
will be available in 2016, will have a
more advanced sensor ring with six
Intel RealSense cameras, which will
give it a 360-degree view essential
for autonomous navigation.
Five little drones

flying in the air...
One little drone hit me on my head.
Mummy called the police and the
police said, No more drones bumping on the head.
Soon, this scene might be more
real than you think. One of the
biggest worries on the minds of
authorities and people is the risk of
drones interfering with public routine. Imagine drones disturbing the
flying of real aircraft, bumping into
people, crashing on windscreens of
cars and so on.
While companies are trying to
make drones more self-aware and
safe, organisations like FAA are
trying to control the flight of these
little electronic birds to avoid any
mishaps. FAA is taking several
steps in this direction, declaring
no-fly zones, putting a bar on the
height within which drones can be
flown, prohibiting the use of drones
near airports, checking and controlling commercial usage of drones
and so on.
To aid FAA in this potentiallymammoth task, NASA is developing
a drone-traffic-management system
36
that can track thousands of drones,

evaluate their flight plans and control where these can or cannot go.
The project involves four phases,
of which the first phase is almost
ready for testing by FAA. The system will use geo-fencing to prevent
drones from going where these do
not belong.
In a recent media report, Parimal Kopardekar, NASAs principal
investigator for drone traffic management, explained that there are
two types of geo-fences; one is a
no-fly-zone type, where you should
not go inside the geo-fence. This
will be used to keep drones away
from airports, for example. The
other kind of geo-fence would keep
drones from getting out.
The system will enable users to
file flight plans, which will be evaluated and accepted or rejected if these
do not work out. Ideally, the system
will also enable anybody to simply
point a smartphone at a drone flying
in the vicinity and find out what it is
up to. This is very important to instil
confidence in people and avert the
risk of spying drones.
When you actually point your
phone at a drone, the answer could
be quite surprising, because drones
are up to a lot of things today.
Drones with follow-me capabilities
can track players and shoot videos that will help them improve
their playing.
Drones can plant seeds on high
mountains and dangerous forests to
improve the green cover. These can
monitor farms and improve watering cycles. And well, Amazon hopes
these can deliver parcels, too.
However, it is evident from the
kind of research happening across
the world that this is still far away.
It took a long time for robots to start
working cooperatively with people. So you can imagine how long
it might take before drones start
flying safely in the midst of people,
cars, buildings and all the chaos of
our cities!
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Teach Your Drones

To Do More Than Fly
F
Dilin Anand is a
senior assistant
editor at EFY. He
is B.Tech from
University of Calicut,
currently pursuing
MBA from Christ
University, Bengaluru
irst shown at CES 2016, Etos is

a BMW i8 with an auto-pilot
and a drone onboard. Frank M.
Rinderknecht, boss of the Swiss creative think-tank Rinspeed, intends to use
the UFO-esque drone on board Etos for
performing services such as picking up
deliveries from stores as the car drives
you home, while you relax with a book
in the drivers seat. Drone applications
have definitely gone way beyond their
initial use as aerial torpedoes, unmanned
weapons platforms and surveillance.
Financial benefits look very promising for developers of well-engineered
drones. In a recent Forbes article by
Baldwin Cunningham, it was said that
the drone economy could be as incredible as the app economy we had seen in
the last decade. To engineer drones that
can handle next-generation applications,
let us take a look at the technologies
available for you.
Propulsion
Before you try to put smarts into your
drone, you need to get your drone off the
ground. When you
select your mix of
motor and propeller,
you need to make
sure that there is
enough thrust to
comfortably pick up
the entire drone.
As an example,
a motor and propeller combination
that delivers 500
grams of thrust in a
quadcopter configuration would be
able to barely lift a
two-kilogram drone.
This is not an ideal
38
situation and so it is recommended that

the weight of your drone be less than half
the maximum thrust your configuration is
capable of delivering.
Direct current (DC) brushless motors
are the most commonly used ones here.
The Kv rating you find in these motors
signify revolutions per minute per volt. A
motor rated at 1000Kv will spin 1000 times
per volt when there is no load attached
to it. This is just a theoretical value, so it
is not recommended to test your brushless motor without a load on it. To control
speed, you can increase or decrease the
voltage applied to the motor.
Electronic speed controllers (ESCs) are
devices that let you control revolutions per
minute (rpm) of the motor reliably. These
devices are able to handle the maximum
current the motor might consume at the
exact voltage as required by the user. Most
motor manufacturers offer their own ESCs.
Some of the popular motors in the market are the ones by Lynxmotion, TMotor,
DJI and Storm. You need not look at motor
brands; you should be fine as long as the
specifications match your rpm and thrust
requirements. Some expensive motors we
came across come with better ball bearings
that promise longer life and more reliability. For example, MN3508 motor built
for aerial-photography drones comes with
ball bearings that are twice the standard
size seen.
However, electric motors come with
an inherent weakness in the form of range
and flight duration due to battery-pack
limitations. That is where people have gotten creative to repurpose tried-and-tested
technologies like internal combustion engines. Yeair is one such product that comes
with a ten cubic centimetre combustion
engine paired with running engine control.
The result? A drone with a range of over
55 kilometres!
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What is a V-tail?
About batteries and drones
You must have heard of tricopters,

quadcopters, hexacopters and
octocopters that have three, four, six
and eight propellers, respectively. V-tail
is a drone that lies between a tricopter
and a quadcopter, in that it has four
motors but the rear propellers are turned
in the shape of a V to provide for a very
acrobatic flight.
Batteries used in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are now almost exclusively lithiumpolymer. Lead-acid is simply not an option and nickel-metal hydride/nickel-cadmium
batteries are still too heavy for their capacity and often cannot provide the high discharge
rates needed in drones. Lithium-polymer offers high capacity with low weight, and high
discharge rates. Its downsides are comparatively higher costs and continued safety issues.
Lithium-ion batteries have higher discharge rates than lithium-polymer ones, but these
cannot provide the high discharge rates needed in UAVs.
Lithium-polymer batteries used in drones are rated for 20C or more, where C is the
capacity of the battery pack. The batterys voltage should correspond with the motors
we choose in our drone. Typically, a 3-cell lithium-polymer pack is used, whose nominal
voltage is (33.7) = 11.1V, with capacity depending on the size of the UAV.
Small battery packs can be of 0.1Ah (100mAh), though battery packs for mediumsize drones are in the range 2Ah-3Ah (2000mAh-3000mAh). A 10C discharge rating for a
drone battery pack of 2Ah means that the pack can be safely discharged at 102=20A
current. The higher the capacity, the longer the flight time, or the heavier the pack can be.
Average flight time for a UAV is 15 to 20 minutes since it is always fighting against
gravity. A challenge while charging a lithium-polymer battery pack is that it should not be
overcharged nor should it be discharged below 3V per cell. Proper chargers for lithiumpolymer ensure all cells in series are balanced else the pack can become unstable and
dangerous. Depending on how these are used, most lithium-polymer batteries typically do
not last longer than 300 charge cycles. Leaving these around on a full or depleted charge
all the time, running these completely dead or exposing these to high temperatures will
shorten their lifespan dramatically.
Trying to make some sense

Without proper input to the drone (or
its pilot), your drone is not going to
reliably fly anywhere. There is quite
a wide range of sensors that you can
choose from to allow your drone to
make sense of its surroundings.
Can I see. Drones also stand to
gain from technologies like Intels
depth-sensing camera technology
from 2014 called RealSense 3D,
which has the potential to enable
holographic navigation and real-time
environment monitoring.
Sonys Exmor R CMOS sensors
are used in drones as these excel
at recording in low-light conditions
and are also able to record smoother
action sequences while preventing smear from strong light sources
such as streetlights.
DJI, the current king of consumer drones, uses Lightbridge technology that enables streaming video at
760p without latency to the pilot,
while the drone itself records video
at 1080p full-high-definition.
Drones like Inspire 1 can also
shoot 4K videos and feature rotors
that can be lifted out of the view of
the drones camera, thus providing
a 360-degree view. It is no surprise
that this is the drone that lives onboard Etos car we mentioned earlier.
Considering the rise in solar
energy installations in India, drones
designed to detect small defects on
photovoltaic modules are a very
good application. Existing drones
can also be fitted with payloads for
this application, by pairing an infrared (IR) camera like FLIR TAU 640
40
Vikas Kumar Thawani, analog applications engineer, Texas Instruments India, and
Naveen Bevara, analog applications engineer, Texas Instruments India
Twitter: Is that a social network or a drone?

Twitter, the popular social network located at www.twitter.com, has been granted a patent
for a drone by United States Patent & Trademark Office. The patent allows for a drone to
be controlled via a messaging app that democratises control over the drone to a larger
group of people (probably using Twitters service).
and AscTec IR RAW data logger that

can be used with German AscTec
Falcon 8 drone. Falcon 8, considering its use in critical applications,
comes with flight-control systems
and electronics that deliver three
times redundancy.
Where am I. Vision positioning
is another technology used by DJI
drones that lets the drone have high
hover accuracy by using ultrasonic
sensors. This lets a drone hold its
position without using a global positioning system (GPS). DJIs Phantom
drone also comes with FailSafe, which
allows it to return back home in case
it loses connection with the controller.
Intelligent orientation control
allows easier control of the drone
for the pilot as it considers forward
direction of the drone to be forward
direction of the pilot and not the
direction in which the drones nose

is pointing.
Newer drones have also taken
the next step forward for positioning and have started to use Russian
GLObal NAvigation Satellite System
(GLONASS) in addition to American
GPS. Integration of better navigation
systems into newer drones has also
allowed these to be set to fly to a particular location, capture footage and
then return back home autonomously.
Am I intelligent. Talking about
autonomous drones, Zano is the
result of a very successful Kickstarter project that raised almost `
230 million. Small enough to fit in
the palm of your hand, Zano drone
comes with a smart piloting system
that lets beginners easily pilot the
drone. It also features IR obstacleavoidance as well as echo-sounding
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tech focus
sonar and high-accuracy pressure
sensors for better flight.
Drones meant for use by researchers take things a step ahead
when it comes to flight systems.
AscTec Firefly is designed with that
application in mind and therefore comes with advanced sensor
components and two ARM7 microprocessors. A low-level processor
functions as the data controller
and processes all sensor data and
sensor-data fusion, while a highlevel processor controls the flight
system as per the control algorithms
given to it. The inertial guidance
system drives this drones autopilot
with a 1000Hz update rate.
Hobbypower KK2.15 is an
update of the popular HobbyKing
KK2.0 flight controller board used
by many beginner quadcopter builders. It houses InvenSense MPU-6050
MEMS motion-tracking device designed for low-power use cases.
MPU-6050 combines a 3-axis
gyroscope and a 3-axis accelerometer with an onboard digital-motion
processor to process 6-axis MotionFusion algorithms. The device can
access external magnetometers or
other sensors through an inter-integrated circuit bus, allowing it access
to sensor data without intervention
from the system processor.
Can I communicate. Botlink
XRD (extended range and data) is
an enclosed device that allows you
to control your drone through the
mobile network instead of using
traditional radio or Wi-Fi. This technology allows beyond line-of-sight
communication, data transfer and
control through your mobile device
using mobile telemetry technology
that runs on 4G long term evolution
(LTE) connections. It also allows serious mission planning by overlaying
data of other manned and unmanned
aircraft in the area, as well as marking any military or restricted airspace
clearly. It also alerts you of adverse
weather conditions.
These are especially useful since
42
Sensors used in drones

3-axis accelerometer. This provides linear acceleration in three axes and plays a very
important role in drone stabilisation.
3-axis gyroscope. It provides angular acceleration in three axes and angular motion to the
drone.
Magnetometer. This is an electronic magnetic compass that can measure Earths magnetic
field and use it to determine the drones compass direction (with respect to magnetic north).
It is almost always present if the system has GPS input and is available in one to three axes.
Barometer. Since atmospheric pressure changes with the height from sea level, a pressure
sensor can be used to give you a pretty accurate reading for the UAVs height. Most flight
controllers take input from both, pressure sensor as well as GPS altitude, to calculate more
accurate height above sea level.
GPS. It uses signals sent by a number of satellites in orbit around Earth in order to determine
their specific geographic locations. UAVs use GPS sensors to autopilot specific route or to
automatically return to its take-off point.
Distance. Distance sensors could be used for obstacle sensing and can be ultrasonic, laser
or LIDAR based.
Vikas Kumar Thawani, analog applications engineer, Texas Instruments India, and
Naveen Bevara, analog applications engineer, Texas Instruments India
this technology enaMAJOR CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS REPORT

bles drones to fly beyond the line-of-sight
of the pilot. I figured
there has to be some
kind of software that
can give awareness, let
a drone know about
things like boundaries
Avinash Babu M.
Naveen Bevara
Vikas Kumar
senior project
analog applications
Thawani
and weather, says
manager - hardware
engineer, Texas
analog applications
Shawn Muehler, COO
design, Mistral Solutions
Instruments India
engineer, Texas
Instruments India
of Botlink, to The New
York Times.
While some drone makers now
Parting thought
have dual-control capability that lets
two users control a droneone conBut what... is it good for?
Engineers in the advanced computing
trols the flight and the other controls
systems division of IBM, 1968,
the cameraother drone makers
commenting on the microchip
like 3D Robotics enable their drones
to be smart enough to take over the
second role. You can either let the
and camera payloads are too boring
drone know the path that it has to
for you, North Dakota in the USA has
follow while you take over the camlegalised drones armed with tasers,
era or you can let it lock onto the
rubber bullets or sound canons. The
subject while you play around with
race is now on to build one.
the flight to get that perfect angle.
While surveillance and cinema
drones are applications that have
Opening a new frontier
almost been done to death, there
for consumers: the sky
are many new challenges that a
drone with the right tools can solve.
Better-engineered drones enabled
Something that looks hopeless today
by the latest technologies could
could be the next revolutionary apeasily be just the right ingredient
plicationit all depends on what the
to unleash creativity on a massive
engineer in you makes it to be.
scale. If all these sensor packages
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
InnovatIon
DIABETO: A 360-DEgrEE
Diabetes-Management Solution
Priya Ravindran
is a technical
journalist
at EFY
y parents have been living

with type-2 diabetes for over
20 years. About four years ago,
my fathers diabetes file was misplaced
by his hospital and he had to undergo all
tests again. That was when we thought, we
can actually solve this problem with the
help of technology, and we came up with
Diabeto. These are the words of Shreekant
Pawar, chief executive officer, Diabeto Medtech India Pvt Ltd, on being asked about
what prompted the invention of Diabeto.
So what did they do?
They came up with a solution for
diabetes managementa package to test
blood-glucose levels, analyse test results,
and get expert opinion and care, all from
the comfort of your home. Read on to
find out Diabetos journey from inception
to fruition.
Plug into your glucometer, pair

with your smartphone and you
are good to go
Easy to use, good to see
It is usual for a person suffering from

diabetes to regularly check the blood sugar
reading using a glucometer. Diabeto is a
device that can be attached to a glucometer, simply by plugging its knob into the
glucometers jack. You can then pair the
device to your smartphone via Bluetooth.
The smartphone app
for Diabeto, supporting
both iOS and Android,
takes care of the rest.
A simple-outside,
complex-inside
design
It is important to have
a device that gives the
user not just an accurate experience but
a happy one, too. With
this in mind, the team
44
at Diabeto designed this piece of hardware

that could easily be carried around and
one that fits into the palm. In the design
of a small bird, it symbolises freedom and
comes in blue and pink colour variants.
Fitting everything into this miniature
architecture and get it running, along
with complying with all prevailing electronic and medical norms, offered enough
roadblocks. It took the team three years to
complete it, but they did it in style. They
had to manufacture in China finally, as the
quality of the product in India was substandard and the time, effort and money
involved was simply making the whole
process tedious.
The birdie contains a universal serial bus port, battery, Atmega microcontroller, Bluetooth Low Energy module
and single-pole, double-throw switch.
The switch shifts between the glucometer
connection and the software universal
asynchronous receiver/transmitter for
respective functions.
How it works
On establishing a connection, the readings,
time and date stamp from the glucometer
are transferred to the app, while at the
same time also getting stored in the cloud
server, saving the trouble of entering the
readings manually. The app then asks for
details about meals (you could even upload
a picture of the meal), wellness factors, insulin units taken and comments, which you
can manually input. This additional data
gets stored along with the readings and you
can add details to past readings as well.
The next task is analysis. You can do
this using a smartphone app or Web app.
The app analyses all data stored and gives
an insight into how your health is and
what you need to do next. You can track
your mood and food, measure physical
activity, count calories from carbohyWWW.EFYMAG.COM
InnovatIon
A BIRDS EYE VIEW
AT THIS BIRDIE
Specifications
Description
Power supply
One lithium-polymer 3.7V

55mAh rechargeable
battery
Dimension
61.39 mm x 67.25 mm
Weight
About 14 grams
Communication
protocol
Bluetooth 4.0
Range
100 metres
Power consumption 821mW

Peak current
consumption
19.31mA
Flexibility offered by this little birdie takes you by surprise

Diabeto is, as of now, compatible with more than 40 glucometers that are easily available
(You can find the list on www.indiegogo.com/projects/diabeto-your-friend-in-diabetes.).
If you are using Accuchek range of glucometers, you will need a Diabeto infrared adaptor
to connect to the device.
The hardware is just a transmission device and no data is stored in it.
Access to data is governed by user identification and has a secure sockets layer
encryption.
If you want to use your own app for management, Diabeto application peripheral interface
(API) will help you transfer readings from the glucometer. The API is compatible for both
iOS and Android devices.
Made completely from open hardware, you can subscribe to 3-6-12 month packages
that offer bundled services like nutrition support. The mobile app and cloud server usage
are free to use.
Developers are working on population-tracker software for doctors, which would enable
them to monitor all their patients.
Looking inside the birdie
drates, accurately log blood-glucose

levels for monitoring and track
insulin intake.
It is always confusing to see
these figures in number displays.
The app presents this data as graphs
that help you spot your trend on
the first look; you can even convert
a particular set of data into PDF
format to document or share with
others, may be a doctor or friend.
You can set reminders to help manage your daily routine and even
consult with the teams specialists
via video conferencing.
Measure the impact of

your lifestyle
At any time of the day, take another
reading and feed it into Diabeto, or
just change the related factors on
the app. Sit down for your analysis;
but at the pace at which life is progressing, it is impossible to sit and
stare at graphs multiple times a day.
At such times, you can take a quick
46
The team at Diabeto (L to R): Jayesh Dhanwade, Vishal Chavan, Sheldon Lobo, Shreekant Pawar
and Hemanshu Jain
view at the display that gives you

three parameters:
1. Blood-glucose reading pulled
from Diabeto app
2. Standard deviation, a number
that gives better analysis on
blood-glucose control
3. Average glucose, a diabetes-control indicator parameter
Unique and with a purpose

With changing lifestyle, it is not
uncommon to see even kids being
diagnosed with diabetes today. The
visually-challenged, the hearingimpaired and senior citizens are at
the receiving end, too. Although
there is a device similar to Diabeto

in the USA, Diabeto is an innovation
from India.
Changes in hardware, suggested
by Barrierbreak, an accessibility testing centre, have been incorporated
in the model that will soon hit the
market (as of December 2015). With
alpha testing stage completed, aided
by University College London, UK,
and ChiMed, Diabeto is on its way
to help people in not just identifying the problem but managing it to
improve the users condition. The
problem with those with Diabetes is
not that they are not aware, they just
do not monitor it well enough.
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telecom
5G:
W
Dr S.S. Verma
is a professor
at Department
of Physics, Sant
Longowal Institute
of Engineering and
Technology, Sangrur,
Punjab
48
The Next-Generation
Network
ith time, generations change,

whether it is mankind or technological. But the biggest and
fastest changes have only been noticed in
the communication network generations in
the last few years. We have noticed a great
electronic change in wireless communication network generations ranging from 1G
to 2G, 3G and 4G in a very short span.
Traditionally, there are three ways the
mobile industry can add more capacity to
its network: by adding more spectrum, by
improving spectrum efficiency or by rolling out more infrastructure. Each generation is characterised by new frequency
bands, higher data rates and non-backward-compatible transmission technology.
Presently, wireless networking devices
have occupied a significant place in society due to their easy access and expanding
utility. Such devices are almost surpassing
the human number on the Earth, and it
is unimaginable to think about a place on

Earth where these technologies have not
reached. People now expect a lot more applications from mobile networks, and scientists and engineers along with industries
are always working to make it happen.
1G refers to the first generation of
wireless telephone technology (mobile
telecommunications). These analogue
telecommunications standards were introduced in the 1980s and continued until
being replaced by 2G (second-generation
wireless telephone technology) digital
telecommunications.
The main difference between 1G and
2G is that the radio signals used by 1G networks are analogue, while 2G networks are
digital. Although both use digital signalling to connect radio towers (which listen
to handsets) to the rest of the telephone
system, voice itself during a call is encoded
to digital signals in 2G, whereas in 1G it
is only modulated to higher frequency,
typically 150MHz and up. The inherent advantages of digital technology over that of
analogue meant that 2G networks eventually replaced these almost everywhere.
Second-generation, or 2G, mobile telecom networks were commercially launched
in 1991. Three primary benefits of 2G
networks over their predecessors were
that, phone conversations were digitallyencrypted, 2G systems were significantly
more efficient on the spectrum, allowing
far greater mobile phone penetration levels,
and 2G introduced data services for mobile, starting with SMS text messages.
2G technologies enabled various mobile
phone networks to provide services such
as text, picture and multimedia messages
(MMSes). All text messages sent over
2G are digitally encrypted, allowing for
transfer of data in such a way that only the
intended receiver can receive and read it.
2G has been superseded by newer
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telecom
technologies such as 2.5G, 2.75G,
3G and 4G; however, 2G networks
are still used in many parts of
the world.
3G, short for third generation,
is the third generation of mobile
telecommunications technology. The
first 3G networks were introduced
in 1998. This technology is based on
a set of standards used for mobile
devices, and mobile telecommunications use services and networks
that comply with International
Mobile Telecommunications-2000
(IMT-2000) standard specifications
by International Telecommunication
Union. 3G finds application in wireless voice telephony, mobile Internet
access, fixed wireless Internet access, video calls and mobile TV.
3G telecommunication networks
support services that provide an
information transfer at the rate of
at least 200kbps. Later 3G releases,
often denoted as 3.5G and 3.75G,
provide mobile broadband access of
several Mbps to smartphones and
mobile modems in laptop computers. This ensures it can be applied
to wireless voice telephony, mobile
Internet access, fixed wireless Internet access, video calls and mobile
TV technologies.
Fourth generation, or 4G, the
next generation of mobile telecommunications technology, succeeding 3G and preceding 5G, was
introduced in 2008. A 4G system,
in addition to the usual voice and
other services of 3G, provides mobile broadband Internet access, for
example, to laptops with wireless
modems, smartphones and other
mobile devices.
Potential and current applications include amended mobile Web
access, IP telephony, gaming services, high-definition mobile TV, video
conferencing, 3D television and
cloud computing. Two 4G candidate
systems that have been commercially deployed are mobile WiMAX
standard and the first-release Long
Term Evolution (LTE) standard.
50
Expected 5G network visions

Rapid development of wireless
technologies coupled with standards
convergence herald the emergence
of fifth-generation (5G) wireless
communication. Broadly speaking,
5G is expected to provide much
greater capacity to meet growing
user demand resulting from a number of new services compared to 4G.
5G (fifth-generation mobile
networks or fifth-generation wireless systems) denotes the next major
phase of mobile telecommunications
standards beyond the current 4G/
IMT-Advanced standards. Experts
feel that 5G should be rolled out by
2020 to meet business and consumer demands.
The major difference from a
user point of view between 4G and
5G techniques must be something
else than increased peak bit rate. It
could be higher number of simultaneously-connected devices, higher
system-spectral efficiency (data
volume per area unit), lower battery
consumption, lower outage probability (better coverage), high bit
rates in larger portions of coverage
area, lower latencies, higher number
of supported devices, lower infrastructure deployment costs, higher
versatility and scalability or higher
reliability of communications.
In addition to simply providing
faster speeds, experts predict that
5G networks will also need to meet
the needs of new use-cases such
as the Internet of Things (IoT) as
well as broadcast-like services and
lifeline communications in times of
natural disasters. The Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance
defines the following requirements
for 5G networks:
1. Data rates of several tens of
Mbps should be supported for
tens of thousands of users
2. 1Gbps to be offered simultaneously to tens of workers on the
same office floor
3. Several hundreds of thousands
of simultaneous connections to
be supported for massive sensor

deployments
4. Spectral efficiency should be
significantly enhanced compared
to 4G
5. Coverage should be improved
6. Signalling efficiency should be
enhanced
7. Latency should be significantly
reduced compared to LTE
Expectations are that 5G will
provide uniform throughput of at
least 1Gbps, peaking at around
10Gbps, with a couple of milliseconds of latency, offering a highlyreliable service. 5G will provide a
truly ubiquitous unlimited mobile
experience through terminals enhanced with artificial intelligence
(AI) capabilities.
New applications are foreseen
that will facilitate domains such as
e-health and machine-to-machine
(M2M) communication. Its salient
features would include:
1. A super-efficient mobile network
that delivers a better performing network at lower investment
costs. It would address mobile
network operators pressing
need to see the unit cost of data
transport falling at roughly the
same rate as the volume of data
demand is rising. It would be a
leap forward in efficiency based
on IET demand attentive network (DAN) philosophy.
2. A super-fast mobile network
comprising the next generation
of small cells densely clustered
together to give a contiguous
coverage over at least urban
areas and gets the world to the
final frontier for true wide area
mobility. It would require access
to spectrum under 4GHz, perhaps via the worlds first global
implementation of dynamic spectrum access.
3. A converged fibre wireless
network that uses, for the first
time for wireless Internet access,
millimetre wave bands (20GHz60GHz) so as to allow very wide
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bandwidth radio channels that

can support data access speeds
of up to 10Gbps. The connection essentially comprises short
wireless links on the end of the
local fibre-optic cable. It would
be more a nomadic service (like
Wi-Fi) rather than a wide area
mobile service.
5G mobile systems overview

The 5G technology for mobile
systems is very much in the early
development stages. Many companies are looking into technologies
that could be used to become part of
the system.
In addition to this, a number of
universities have set up 5G research
units focused on developing technologies for 5G. Many technologies
to be used for 5G will start to appear
in the systems used for 4G and then,
as the new 5G mobile system starts
to formulate in a more concrete
manner, these will be incorporated
into the new 5G mobile system.
As different generations of
mobile telecommunications have
evolved, each one has brought its
own improvements. The same will
be true of 5G technology. As with
any new generation, 5G mobile
technology would need to provide
significant gains over previous
systems to provide an adequate
business case for mobile operators
to invest in it.
Facilities that might be seen with
5G technology include far better
levels of connectivity and coverage. The term World Wide Wireless
Web, or WWWW, is being coined
for this. For 5G technology to be
able to achieve this, new methods of
connecting will be required, as one
of the main drawbacks with previous generations is lack of coverage,
dropped calls and low performance
at cell edges. 5G technology will
need to address this.
Although the standards bodies
have not yet defined the parameters
needed to meet a 5G performance
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
SOME SUGGESTED
TYPICAL WIRELESS
PARAMETERS
FOR 5G STANDARD
Parameter
Suggested
performance
Network capacity
10,000 times of the

current network
Peak data rate
10Gbps
Cell edge data rate
100Mbps
Latency
<1ms
level yet, other organisations have

set their own aims that may eventually influence final specifications.
These are some ideas being put
forward for a 5G standard, but these
are not accepted by any official
body yet. The table below shows
some suggested typical wireless
parameters for a 5G standard.
There are many new concepts
that are being investigated and
developed for the new 5G mobile
system. Some of these include:
Pervasive networks. This technology is being considered for 5G
mobile systems, in which a user can
concurrently be connected to several
wireless access technologies and
seamlessly move between these.
Group cooperative relay. This
is a technique that is being considered to make high data rates available over a wider area of the cell.
Currently, data rates fall towards
the cell edge where interference
levels are higher and signal levels
are lower.
Cognitive radio technology. If
cognitive radio technology was used
for 5G mobile systems, it would enable the user equipment/handset to
look at the radio landscape in which
it is located and choose the optimum radio access network, modulation scheme and other parameters to
configure itself to gain the best connection and optimum performance.
Wireless mesh networking
and dynamic ad-hoc networking.
With a variety of different access
51
schemes, it will be possible to link

to others nearby to provide ad-hoc
wireless networks for much speedier
data flows.
Smart antennae. Another major
element of any 5G mobile system
will be that of smart antennae. Using
these, it will be possible to alter the
beam direction to enable more direct
communication, limit interference
and increase overall cell capacity.
Scepticism about 5G networks

Every new mobile standard brings
with it calls from operators for more
spectrum, and 5G is no exception.
If mobile operators want to deliver more and more capacity, they
will need more and more wireless
spectrum to do so. And, with every
generation of mobile tech, governments around the world must identify what spectrum those operators
will need, whether anyone is using
those bands and how to move them
off those, if so. And then find the
best way to sell that spectrum at the
right price and finally make sure
that all operators are meeting the
obligations that buying the spectrum imposed on them.
The history of the wireless industry is littered with tales of fouled-up
spectrum auction procedures, delays
to network rollouts, mud-slinging
between mobile companies, obligations not met and clean up procedures not followed. Spectrum is and
will remain a major challenge for
the success and early rollout of 5G.
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There is not enough spectrum in general and 5G is

a lot about optimising the
use of spectrum.
New mobile generations are typically assigned
new frequency bands and
wider spectral bandwidth
per frequency channel
(1G up to 30kHz, 2G up to
200kHz, 3G up to 20MHz
and 4G up to 100MHz),
but skeptics argue that
there is little room for
larger channel bandwidths and new
frequency bands suitable for landmobile radio.
From users point of view,
previous mobile generations have
implied substantial increase in peak
bit rate (that is, physical layer net
bit rates for short-distance communication), up to 1Gbps, to be
offered by 4G. If 5G appears, it
reflects these prognoses.
The major issue with 5G technology is that there is such an
enormously wide variation in
requirementssuperfast downloads
to small data requirements for the
IoTthat any one system will not
be able to meet these needs. Accordingly, a layer approach is likely to be
adopted. It is rightly said that 5G is
not just a mobile technology but an
ubiquitous access to high and low
data rate services.
Challenges associated with

next-generation network
There are many new techniques and
technologies that will be used in the
new 5G mobile telecommunications
system. These new 5G technologies
are still being developed and overall
standards have not yet been defined.
However, as required technologies
develop, these will be incorporated
into the new system, which will be
defined by the standards bodies over
the coming years.
There are several key areas that
are being investigated by research
organisations. These include:
53
telecom
Millimetre-wave technologies.
Using frequencies much higher in
the frequency spectrum opens up
more spectrums and also provides
the possibility of having much
wide-channel bandwidth of possibly
1GHz-2GHz. However, this poses
new challenges for handset development where maximum frequencies
of around 2GHz and bandwidths of
10MHz-20MHz are currently in use.
For 5G, frequencies of above
50GHz are being considered. This
will present some real challenges in
terms of circuit design, technology
and also the way the system is used,
as these frequencies do not travel as
far and are absorbed almost completely by obstacles.
Future PHY/MAC. This area
presents many possibilities, from
the use of new modulation formats
including generalised frequency
division multiplexing (GFDM) as
well as filter bank multi-carrier
(FBMC), universal filtered multi-
54
carrier (UFMC) and other schemes

to the management of multiple
access schemes.
All these need to be developed. Higher levels of processing
that will be available by the time
5G is launched means that multicarrier systems will not require
to be orthogonal as in the case of
OFDM. This provides considerably
more flexibility.
Massive MIMO. Although multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)
technology is being used in many
applications from LTE to Wi-Fi, the
number of antennae is fairly limited.
Using microwave frequencies opens
up the possibility of using many
tens of antennae on a single equipment because of antenna size and
spacing in terms of wavelength.
Dense networks. Reducing the
size of cells provides a much more
overall effective use of the available
spectrum. Techniques to ensure that
small cells in the macro-network
deployed as femto cells can operate

satisfactorily are required.
Requirements of 5G network
From a network perspective, 5G
requires tight and seamless interworking among existing and future
standards. Rising demand for mobile
traffic will enforce new ways of
enhancing capacity, such as dense
deployment of small cells, as well
as intelligent traffic steering and offload schemes.
Ever-growing energy consumption in wireless networks imposes
new mechanisms of energy control
and reduction. Finally, there is
a need for autonomous network
management because of network
complexity and heterogeneity.
Devices are becoming more powerful and more numerous. Beyond
devices like smartphones, tablets or
game consoles, the future wireless
landscape will have to serve cars,
smart grid terminals, health-moni-
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toring devices, household appliances

and so on. It is estimated that M2M
traffic will increase 24-fold between
2012 and 2017.
Taking e-health as an example,
remote patient monitoring using a
body area network, where a number
of wireless sensors, both on-skin
and implanted, record the patients
health parameters and send reports to
a doctor, will soon become a reality.
Therefore in order to offer e-health
services, 5G will need to provide high
bandwidth, meet stringent requirements for quality of service (such as
ultra-low latency and loss-less video
compression) and implement enhanced security mechanisms.
Work will be needed to manage
radio resources efficiently, because
of the diversity of traffic types, ranging from reports sent periodically by
the meters to high-quality medical
video transmission.
With new broadband services
and high demand for mobile data,
future wireless systems will require
much higher capacity than can be
provided today. There are three
main ways of enhancing capacity,
namely, dense deployment, additional spectrum bands and higher
spectral efficiency.
Moving towards 5G will impose
changes not only in the radio access network but also in the core
network, where new approaches
to network design are needed to
provide connectivity to a growing
number of users and devices. The
trend is to de-couple hardware from
software and move network functions towards software.
Conclusion
Despite never being able to successfully predict what each forthcoming
generation of mobile technology
would deliver in order to satisfy
future users, the industry has, nonetheless, reached some consensus on
the use cases for 5G. M2M communication is one. 5G should enable the
IoT, the future where all our onlineWWW.EFYMAG.COM
enabled objects will quietly pass on

data to our tech overlord of choice.
Facilitating the use of mobile networks by connected or autonomous
cars, remotely-controlled industrial
robots, tele-health systems and
smartcity infrastructure are also all
expected to figure large in 5G.
Industries and researchers are
actively preparing for the growing communication needs of
society, involving a combination
of existing and evolving systems.
5G will comprise the set of technical components and systems
needed to support these requirements and overcome the limits of
current systems.
5G network addresses the world
of the IoT. This changes the dynamics of wireless systems completely. It takes these from todays
interference-limited environment,
where interference from other
mobiles radiates everywhere, like
everyone yelling on the corner of a
street, and now makes radio energy
very focused like megaphones, with
everyone talking with a megaphone
to only whom they want.
We can imagine a world, possible by 2020, where almost anything
that could be connected will be
connected. Transition to 5G mobile
communications is expected to
include offloading traffic to unlicensed spectrum, improved carrier
aggregation (up to 32 carriers),
massive MIMO and support for a
radio optimised for the low-end of
the IoT market.
Before defining the road map
to implement 5G networks, a lot of
work has to be done ranging from
testing the technology to defining
performance requirements before
commercial implementation.
Global 5G research is still taking place in isolation, but this will
change. Various groups have different technology favourites, and
standardisation discussions will start
soon and technology selection will
also begin in due course of time.
55
test & measurement
The Latest In ScopeS
A
Abhimanyu
Rathore is a
content
specialist at EFY
lthough the performance of

oscilloscopes has consistently
improved over the years, their
basic functionality remains the same.
Whether the application is monitoring
a patients heart signal or debugging the
timing glitches at the output of a fieldprogrammable gate array, in general, these
display the voltage variation of the signals
connected to their input channels with
respect to time, explains Shayan Ushani,
editor at Analog Arts Inc.
There is never enough bandwidth

Hardware changes at the analogue-todigital converter (ADC) side have helped
deliver more resolution to oscilloscopes
and delivered 10-bit resolution where these
previously used to max out at eight bits.
We now see 10-bit ADCs with up
to 8GHz of analogue bandwidth. Previously, 8-bit ADCs only had up to 2GHz
of bandwidth at a full sampling rate of
20 gigasamples per second, says Akash
Srivastava, application engineer, Keysight
Technologies. Embedded scopes that
have a higher waveform update have
also seen an increase from 2GHz to 6GHz
of bandwidth.
Points to note
While digital oscilloscopes are dominating the
market now, analogue oscilloscopes still play
an important role for real-time signals and
waveform displays.
Requirement for mixed-signal oscilloscopes
began in early 2000s, but nowadays
engineers need a mixed-domain oscilloscope
to carry out frequency and time-domain
analysis simultaneously.
Phone and wristwatch based oscilloscope
have emerged as good alternatives in certain
applications.
Movement from knobs to touchscreens has
happened, but model acceptance depends on
users taste for experience.
Who needs this kind of bandwidth?

Srivastava says that, in todays world,
8GHz is almost a general-purpose requirement for engineers working on gigabit
Ethernet or universal serial bus (USB 2.0).
Embedded-system oscilloscopes have
a signature specification called waveform
update rate, which helps in reducing the
dead time between captured data. These
are general-purpose but are specifically
used by engineers working on capturing intermitted signals that require a fast
update rate. Detecting a glitch that just
happens once in a while requires a higher
waveform rate and higher bandwidth,
explains Srivastava.
Adding intelligence to the scope
Fig. 1: MP2100B front top
56
New PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation

(PXI) oscilloscopes come with programmable modules. Normally, all scopes that
we use acquire all data but show only an
insignificant part of that data with the
result that, what you see on the liquid
crystal display need not be what you are
acquiring. By using field-programmable
gate arrays, you can acquire data without
losing a single sample, and this makes
great sense in applications like astrophysics and medical images where you need
continuous logging, explains Raviteja
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test & measurement

OSCILLOSCOPES AVAILABLE IN THE MARKET
Manufacturer
Product/Series
Keysight Technologies
Description
Model Nos.
Bandwidth
Sample rate Record length
Ininiium S-Series 10-bit ADC; low-noise front-end

technology; touch capability
14 (seven DSO
models and seven
MSO models)
500MHz to
8GHz
20GSa/s
(2 channels);
10GSa/s
(4 channels)
100Mpts
(2 channels);
50Mpts
(4 channels)
Infiniium V-Series 160-bit hardware serial trigger;

20GSa/s digital channels; standard
500GB removable solid-state drive
18 (six DSO models,

six DSA models and
six MSO Models)
8GHz to
33GHz
80GSa/s 2Gpts
50Mpts - 2Gpts
LabNation
Smartscope
Open source USB oscilloscopes

designed to run on multiple operating systems and platforms such as
smartphones, tablets and PCs
30MHz
-3dB point
2100 MS/s -
OWON
XDS series
n-in-1 DSO
Integrates data logger, multimeter,

waveform generator, DSO and more
into one device, through its Wi-Fi module to co-share measurement data
Four (XDS3102, XDS3102A, XDS3202,

XDS3202A)
100MHz to
200MHz
1GS/s 2GS/s
40Mpts
Rohde & Schwarz
HMO1202
mixed-signal
oscilloscopes
Mixed-domain oscilloscope series ideal

for use in development of embedded
designs and analysing serial SPI buses
on digital channels while simultaneously monitoring two analogue signals
referenced to transmitted SPI data
Three (HMO1212,
HMO1222,
HMO1232)
100MHz/
200MHz/
300MHz
Up to
2GS/s
SIGLENT Technologies
SDS2000X series Available in bandwidths of 70MHz to

super phosphor 300MHz, maximum sample rate of
2GSa/s and maximum record length
oscilloscopes
of 140Mpts; most-commonly-used
functions can be accessed with its userfriendly one-button design
Eight (SDS2304X,
SDS2302X, SDS2204X, SDS2202X,
SDS2104X, SDS2102X, SDS2074X,
SDS2072X)
70MHz to
300MHz
Maximum
2GSa/s
140Mpts
Teledyne LeCroy
LabMaster
10-100Zi
100GHz
oscilloscope
With 100GHz bandwidth and 240GS/s

sampling rate, acquires the fastest
signals generated by scientists and
engineers
Eight (available in
20GHz, 25GHz,
30GHz, 36GHz,
50GHz, 59GHz,
65GHz, 100GHz
models)
20GHz to
100GHz
240GS/s
20Mpts 1024Mpts
Teledyne LeCroy
WaveMaster 8
Zi-A
Eight
Up to 30GHz bandwidth and
80GS/s sample rate; 14.1Gb/s serial
trigger; integrated 50 and 1M inputs
for true connection and
probing flexibility
4GHz to
30GHz
80GS/s
32Mpts 512Mpts
Chivukula, technical marketing engineer, National Instruments.

Another thing is that scopes
cannot show time domain because
it happens too fast for humans to
make sense of it. Let us say we have
a waveform that is rising and falling periodically. The scope always
58
shows the data with respect to the

trigger. Traditionally, the trigger has
always been a voltage level with
respect to which the waveform
is shown. Over time people have
started adding sophisticated triggers;
there are some triggers on a digital
signal where there are specific bits
that start the trigger.

Chivukula adds, In our case,
you can program a trigger. With this
we have made available the ability
to define a very custom triggera
user-defined trigger limits where
you can draw the trigger you want
and it will be where the signal is
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test & measurement

manager - marketing and
channel sales, Anritsu
India Pvt Ltd.
Testing for newer

standards
Better signal integrity
performance, noise performance, lower intrinsic
data and more stable
time base with higher
accuracy are some of the
Fig. 2: An oscilloscope represents a graph of signals
improvements seen in
amplitude vesus time
recent launches of oscilloscopes.
People who need
high signal integrity and
are working on memory
technology like double
data rate type three
(DDR3) can use scopes
like the S-series.
The V-series features
160-bit serial hardware
trigger with data rates of
12.5 gigasamples per second and a mixed-signal
oscilloscope of up to 20
Fig. 3: Display of a 10nS pulse with a 1GHz bandwidth
oscilloscope
gigasamples per second,
which is capable of anything from 8GHz to 33GHz.
acquired. This way the user will not
This is best for DDR4, LPDDR4
be limited by traditional triggers.
and USB 3.0. You need high-serial
Jitter analysis of AOCs
trigger capability to deal with technology like PCI Express 3.0, which
Evaluation of active optical cables
is symbol-coded with 130 symbols.
(AOCs) not only requires bit error
The same goes for other symbolrate (BER) measurements and eyecoded technologies like USB 3.1,
pattern analyses but also requires
adds Srivastava.
jitter analysis due to analysis at elecOscilloscopes with a high time
trical signal conversion. By using
accuracy of 12 parts per million
MP2100B along with jitter analysis
have very low intrinsic data. This
software MX210001A option, jitter
lets engineers using measurements
of high-speed, multichannel AOCs
like eye diagrams to have more
can be measured at the same time
margins available for them. Your
as performing eye-pattern and eyedevice under test has a greater
mask tests.
chance of succeeding here while
Moreover, adoption of highit may fail while testing in other
speed trigger methods supports
equipment.
high-speed data dependent jitThe last 18 months have seen
ter (DDJ) measurements, cutting
support being added or improved
measurement times by 80 per cent
for USB 3.1, High-Definition
compared to legacy models, thereby
Multimedia Interface (HDMI)
cutting overall measurement times,
2.0, Displayport 1.2 and Ethernet
explains Madhukar Tripathi, senior
60
protocol decoder. Also, compliance

applications for 10GB and 100GB
Ethernet used in backplanes were
made available.
Equipment like BERTWave
MP2100B can perform simultaneous
BER measurements and eye-pattern
analyses, and thus both equipment
investment costs and test times
are halved.
Additionally, the tracking function makes it easy to set both BERT
and eye/pulse scope functions.
Using the built-in all BER result
function supports simultaneous BER
measurement of four channels, cutting measurement time to less than
one-third that of legacy models,
explains Tripathi.
Better add-ons
Keysight launched a new probe using which engineers are able to perform power-integrity measurements.
Srivastava explains that, Earlier
we did not have a dedicated probe,
so you had to use Ethernet cables
to connect directly. The new probe
has a high bandwidth of 2GHz and
a low attenuation ratio of 1:1, which
has a reduced effect on the signal. It
only adds ten per cent to the baseline noise of the oscilloscope that it
is attached to.
National Instruments has also
brought out new probes that can
handle up to 300 volts without the
scope needing an inbuilt attenuator.
In the last 18 months, Infinium
firmware has also been completely
revamped. It now delivers a new
look and allows users to customise
displays, thus letting them create
multiple displays, eight waveforms,
tabs and a custom layout. It now
also includes the ability to launch
an eye diagram with one click on a
waveform (you previously had to
configure it).
Form factors
Form factors for devices like the
S-series from Keysight have mostly
remained the same despite the subWWW.EFYMAG.COM
test & measurement

stantial specification upgrade.
The shape of desktop instruments has not changed much over
the years. In the development of the
instrument of the contemporary era,
new-era engineers also hope that the
new technology can be applied to
professional equipment.
Latest equipment will be
integrated with a variety of functions such as touchscreens, mobile
devices, cloud connectivity and intelligent forecasting, to provide more
features than at any time in the past
and more significant technology
advantages, explains Chandmal
Goliya, director, Kusam Electrical
Industries Ltd.
UI updates
Chivukula says that the current
trend is to delink the user interface
(UI) from the device. This way, any
good that happens to the computer
also gets transferred to the equipment in use. If your computer
MAJOR CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS REPORT
Akash Srivastava
application engineer,
Keysight
Technologies
Chandmal Goliya Madhukar Tripathi

director, Kusam
senior manager Electrical
marketing and channel
Industries Ltd
sales, Anritsu India
Pvt Ltd
has the latest high-performance

processor and high-resolution
touchscreen, then your instrument
inherits it too.
You do not want to know about
where the hardware is, so in our
case we delinked the UI from the
actual instrument and that gives
you a lot more convenience. Let us
say you are working on a signal,
you can move the scope beyond our
desk and, by using wireless connectivity, get it to display the data on
your desk.
Hardly anyone uses
scopes standalone these
days. They use it together
with a function generator
and other equipment. With
the modern of way of testing, the delinked UI makes
operation easier even with
multiple products.
Education focus
Fig. 4: Display of a 10nS pulse with a 50MHz bandwidth

oscilloscope
Fig. 5: A typical spectral and oscilloscope plot of the

same signal
62
Touchscreens were already

seen in the higher-end
equipment but we have
now started seeing these
in the lower-bandwidth
segments as well with
equipment like InfiniiVision
3000-T series.
For the education
market and hobbyists, our
principals are planning to
integrate more instruments
in one unit, with Android,
Wi-Fi support and more
apps being planned, explains Goliya.
Raviteja
Chivukula
technical marketing
engineer, National
Instruments
Shayan Ushani
editor, Analog
Arts Inc.
A product like Analog Discovery developed by Digilent, Analog

Devices and Xilinx gives students
the option to discover signals from
their class itself, without having
to get equipment inside the lab. I
feel the notions of separate classes
and labs were for the 1990s or so,
where we had bulky computers
and instruments. But now almost
everything is pocketable. Consumer
electronic developments in the last
ten years have been in terms of
technology that we need to leverage for lab equipment to enable
in-class teaching for people to work
with real signals, says Chivukula.
Oscilloscopes: The last

one standing
Ushani adds that oscilloscopes are
no longer designed to only display
the variation of signals with respect
to time. Multiple functions and options are continually being added
to newer designs.
In addition, other instruments
are becoming integral features
of some of todays oscilloscopes.
Digital-signal-analysis tools such
as logic analysers and pattern
generators, arbitrary waveform
generators and other test and
measurement instruments are
among features being offered by
several manufacturers.
This trend is likely to continue until an oscilloscope is all
the test equipment that is needed
in an electronic laboratory, says
Ushani.
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buyers guide
Choosing The Right

BENCH POWER SUPPLY
T
Biswajit Das is
manager-R&D,
EFY Labs
he term bench brings about a

mental image of a DC power supply
used on an engineers or a technicians bench for innumerable power tasks.
These might be variable DC bench power
supplies that appear to be relatively simple
instruments, but engineers rely on these to
deliver stable, precise and clean voltages
and currents, regardless of load.
To identify the appropriate bench
power supply for a particular application,
one must come up with answers to several
important questions and understand the
basics of how power supplies are specified. We have to consider the following
points to save substantial time and money
later in the system configuration process.
Power, voltage and current

requirements for device under test
Different types of power supplies can have
different power envelopes (Figs 1a, b and
c). In a rectangular power envelope type
of supply, any load current can be supplied at any voltage level.
Another type has multiple rectangular
envelopes for multiple ranges that offer
the option of higher values of one parameter at the expense of the other.
Then there are those that can deliver a
hyperbolic envelope that provides a more
continuous transition than multi-range
power supplies. In this kind of supply,
one parameter is inversely proportional to
the other.
High-power output supplies tend to

have either a multi-range or a hyperbolic
envelope. To make the right selection,
take the time to evaluate the power levels
required by the application.
Parameters to be considered
Although many key power supply parameters will vary depending on each application, following parameters are critical in
all cases:
Accuracy. It determines how close the
regulated parameter is to its theoretical
value. Output uncertainty is largely due to
error terms in case of a digital-to-analogue
converter (DAC). Setting accuracy is
tested by measuring the regulated variable
with a traceable, precision measurement
system connected to the power supplys
output. It is given as (% of setting +
offset).
Resolution. It is the smallest change
in voltage or current settings that can be
selected on the power supply. The resolution specification limits the number of
settable discrete levels. A DAC with more
bits produces finer resolution. But, with
corrections for offset and gain errors,
resolution will be less than the number of
bits in the DAC. Setting resolution may be
expressed as an absolute unit value or as
a percentage of full scale.
Readback accuracy. It determines
how close the internally-measured values
are to the theoretical value of the out-
Fig. 1: (a) Versatile

rectangular power
envelope can supply
any current to load at
any voltage level,
(b) multiple rectangular
envelopes for multiple
ranges and
(c) hyperbolic envelope
provides a more
continuous transition
than a multi-range
power supply
64
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
buyers guide
put voltage (after setting accuracy
is applied).
Readback resolution. It is the
smallest change in internally-measured output voltage or current that
is discernible by the power supply.
It is usually expressed as an absolute value, but can also be given as
a percentage of full scale.
Stability. A power supplys
performance inevitably changes due
to aging. Maintaining long-term stability demands regular verification
and calibration.
Temperature stability. Power
supply accuracy is usually specified over a temperature range, often
between 20C and 30C.
Load regulation. It is a measure
of the ability of the output voltage
or output current to remain constant
during changes in the load. This familiar format is easy to understand
and verifiable through testing. It is
given as (% of setting + offset).
Line regulation. It is a measure
of the ability of the power supply to
maintain its output voltage or output current while its AC line input
voltage and frequency vary over the
full allowable range. This offers a
worst-case picture, which is given as
(% of setting+ offset).
Direct-current power supplies do
not actually produce perfect DC outputs. Output AC noise and transient
response change both load and settings. Some of the AC characteristics
are described below.
Ripple and noise. Spurious AC
components on the output of a DC
supply are also often referred to
as periodic and random deviation
(PARD).The term ripple refers to
periodic AC on the output. When
viewed in frequency domain, ripple
shows up as spurious responses.
Unlike ripple, noise is random.
Noise covers a broad spectrum, and
when viewed in frequency domain,
manifests itself as an increase in
the baseline.
Transient response. It is tested
by applying significant step changes
66
Fig. 2: Remote sense capability
to load impedance and power supply settings, and measuring the time
to settle to a stable DC value.
Required output accuracy level

It is important to review the power
supplys output accuracy and readback specifications in case of accurate control of voltage at the load for
research experimentation or device
characterisation.
Programmable power supplies
are equipped with remote sense capability. Remote sensing is required
in applications where load is located
at some distance, typically >3m
(10-feet) from the power supply output terminals. It solves the problem
of voltage drop in the leads by extending the power-supply feedback
loop to the input of the load.
The difference in voltage is based
on the amount of current and the
load lead size and length. It uses a
4-wire connection (Fig. 2) to make
sure the voltage you set on the
supply is the voltage you get at the
device under test (DUT) despite voltage drop in cables that carry current
between the power supply and DUT.
Acceptable maximum level of

noise in the supplys output
For powering a very low-voltage
circuit, or a circuit that uses or
measures very low currents, such as
a transducer detector that must pick
up millivolt or microampere signals,

noise from external sources may
cause problems.
The power supply itself is a
noise source. This noise breaks
down into two components: normal
mode and common mode. Normalmode noise, which is generated
across the power supplys output
terminals, exudes from the power
supplys internal circuitry.
Common-mode noise is Earthreferenced noise originating from
the power line and stray capacitance
across the main transformer.
Two types of bench DC power
supplies are commonly used today,
namely, linear and switch-mode.
Linear supplies are simple and
heavier because the 50Hz or 60Hz
transformer and associated filters
are physically larger. The linear
topology generates minimum noise
on the power supplys output.
Switch-mode power supplies
(SMPS) are significantly smaller,
lighter and more efficient than
linear power supplies, so these have
replaced linear supplies for higher
power requirements.
On the negative side, high
switching frequency of SMPS generates five to ten times more noise
than a linear supply. Whenever it
commands minimising noise, choose
a linear supply (if one is available)
based on power requirements.
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Number of outputs
required
BENCHTOP POWER SUPPLIES
mated test systemsthese

rarely require changes
after setup. However, more
manufacturers now offer
power supplies equipped
with both front- and rearpanel connections. This
simplifies transition from
bench experimentation
to high-speed automated
testing, because the same
power supply suits both
environments.
Make/brand
Product
Description
In many cases, a single output will be sufficient; howev- AIM-TTI Instruments Power supply, 3CH, 2x (0 to 35V/0 to 3A
or 0 to 15V/0 to 5A)
35V, 5A, adjustable
er, multi-output supplies can
plus 2.7/3.3/5.0 @ 1A
(QL355TP)
sometimes deliver several
important advantages.
Triple-output power supplies typically contain two
0-30V, 0-3A
ARKSEN
Precision variable
higher-voltage outputs for
adjustable dual-mode DC power supply
(A-003-PT-30145)
analogue circuits (to power
multi-voltage circuits or to
create bipolar power supplies
for testing bipolar analogue
Channel1 0V to 30V, 3A
B&K Precision
Benchtop power
DIY bench power
circuits) and a third output
supplies 0-30V/0-3A Channel2 0V to 30V, 3A
supply
intended to power a digital
0-5V/0-3A program- Channel3 0V to 5V, 3A
mable triple (9130)
circuit. For greatest flexibilA good power supply is
ity, make sure that all three
very useful when workB&K Precision
Benchtop power sup- Channel1 0V to 60V, 3A
outputs are programmable.
ing with electronics, but
plies triple-output DC Channel2 0V to 60V, 3A
If the DUT requires indiit can be costly. Any ATX
power supply 60V/3A Channel3 0V to 5V, 3A
vidual isolated power supply
(Advanced Technology
(9132B)
sections, a decision must
eXtended) power supply
Channel1 0V to 30V, 1.5A
Keithley Instruments
Benchtop
be made to either configure
can be plugged into the
Channel2 0V to 30V, 1.5A
Inc.
triple-channel DC
multiple isolated supplies or
adaptor and can output
Channel3 0V to 6V, 5A
programmable
buy a multi-output supply.
3.3V, 5V, 12V and -12V.
power supply w/GPIB
The catch is that multi-out(ATX is a motherboard
(2230G-30-1)
put supplies can either have
developed by Intel in 1995
MASTECH
Variable triple-output, Dual adjustable outputs:
isolated outputs or output
to improve on previous de
0-30V and 0-5A
0-30V; 5A, LED
channels tied to a common
facto standards.) It can be
Fixed output: 5V and 3A
display
point on their low side.
converted into a variable
(HY3005F-3)
When outputs are connected
bench power supply. You
to the same common point,
can add female headers
these are not suitable to
and banana jack (for appower circuits that are isolated from
pliances
that
draw more current) as
computer interfaces over the years
each other.
output, or even a USB port.
with instrumentation. Two of the
For applications that require
For powering some DC motors,
most popular have been IEEE-488,
powering circuits up and down in
you can add variable output with an
also known as general-purpose ina specific sequence, a multi-output
LM317, controlled by a potmeter. Alterface bus (GPIB), and RS232 serial
supply with independently controlthough an ATX power supply should
communications. Network interfaces
lable outputs is usually better than a
have a short-circuit protection built
(for example, Ethernet) and USB
set of individual supplies.
in, you can add output fuses as a
interfaces have also been used.
For applications that require
safety measure. Make a case with
One question to consider is:
sourcing of more voltage or current
plexiglass as it is nice to see the
Would a digital I/O interface make
beyond a single outputs capability,
cable management inside.
it easier to generate fault status
some multi-output power supplies
In the same way you can comoutputs or control an external relay
allow outputs to be combined in
bine LTC3780, which is a powerful
or status lamp?
series or in parallel. Non-isolated
130W step-up/step-down converter,
Placement of output
multi-output power supplies cannot
with a 12V 5A power supply to creconnectors
parallel the two outputs. To ensure
ate an adjustable lab bench power
flexibility, look for a multi-output
Front-panel connections simplify fre- supply in the range of 0.8V-29.4V
power supply with isolated outputs.
and 0.3A-5A approximately.
quent access and are more common
You may add any standard make
with bench power supplies. RearInterfaces needed
microcontroller and LCD to make it
panel connectors are generally conlook like a modern power supply.
sidered superior for rack based autoThere have been numerous types of
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
67
buyers guide
The future
Design and validation engineers
need to power their DUTs safely
and easily during manual tests or
automated sequences. They are frequently under pressure to perform
tests quickly, and their test benches
are often crowded.
Our customers told us they
want a Keysight-quality bench
power supply with modern I/O,
a compact footprint and excellent
bench usability, says Kari Fauber,
general manager, Keysights Power
and Energy Division. We built the
E36100 series to meet the needs of
R&D and design validation engineers who face increasing pressures
to produce high-quality designs
quickly and who want to power
their devices with confidence,
he adds.
The E36100 series adds five
new models with up to 100V or 5A
output to Keysights extensive portfolio of bench power supplies. Its
compact form factor (2U, -rack)
saves space on the bench or in the
rack, and standard LAN (LXI Core)
and USB interfaces make it easy
to connect the power supplies to
a computer. An intuitive onscreen
menu system makes it easy for
engineers to perform manual tasks
quickly, and over-voltage and overcurrent detection helps them protect
their DUTs.
E36100 series models come
standard with measurement capabil-
Fig. 3: Typical DIY power supply
68
Different types of bench power supplies

Battery eliminator (B&K 1502). These units are inexpensive and handy when one needs
to work on battery-operated equipment as these allow one to work on the equipment
without having to find necessary batteries.
Constant-voltage supply (B&K 1686A). These provide adjustable and constant voltage
and their maximum output current may be proportional to the output voltage, rather than
supplying the rated current at any output voltage.
Constant-voltage/constant-current supply (B&K 1621A). Probably the most popular type
of lab power supply is a constant-voltage/constant-current supply. In addition to supplying
constant voltage, these also supply constant current. When in constant-current mode, the
power supply maintains the set current regardless of changes in the loads resistance.
Multiple-output supply (B&K 9130). Multiple-output power supplies have more than
one DC output; often two or three. These are useful and cost-effective for systems that
require multiple voltages. An often-used power supply for circuit development is a tripleoutput supply. One output supplies 0V-6V intended for digital logic. The other two supply
(typically) 0V-30V, which can be used with bipolar analogue circuitry.
The supply has a number of useful features. Outputs can be set to timed operation; after
a time interval has passed, the output turns itself off. Voltage limits are settable for all
channels, so your prototype electrical design can be protected from an accidental overvoltage setting. The two 30V channels can be connected in series or parallel for higher
voltage or current, respectively. There are also storage registers for saving up to 50
instrument states for easy recall later (useful for repetitive testing).
Programmable supply. Programmable power supplies are sometimes called system power
supplies, as these are often used as part of a computer-operated system for testing or
production. Two of the most popular computer interfaces have been GPIB and RS232 serial
communications. Ethernet and USB interfaces have also been used. These can be controlled
with a computer rather than pushing front-panel keys. This is very useful especially when
doing more complex setups like generating dynamic voltage steps using list mode.
Multi-range supply (B&K 9110). Most conventional power supplies operate with fixed
voltage and current ratings, for example, 90W/30V/3A. For all other voltage/current
combinations, output power will be less. Multi-range supplies are different in that these
recalculate voltage/current limits for each setting, forming a constant power hyperbolicshaped boundary as shown Fig. 1(c). 100W/60V/5A is an example of this type supply. Any
voltage/current combinations that lie on the hyperbolic curve are possible, for example,
20V/5A or 60V/1, 66A, and in each case, the supply operates at maximum power.
Benefits of this architecture are clear. A multi-range supply offers greater flexibility in output
ratings and allows users to substitute several fixed rating with a single multi-range supply,
thus saving cost and bench space.
ity for very small currents, a highcontrast OLED display that makes
it easy to view the screen from
anywhere, even from
sharp angles, support
for BenchVue software,
IVI drivers and SCPI
commands, threeyear warranty and
Keysights worldwide
support.
PeakTechs newlydeveloped, linearregulated dual-channel
laboratory power supply (2 x 0-30V/0-5A
DC/5V/1A fixed) with
a modern design and
the latest technology is provided

with a blue LED display for fast
and accurate reading of voltage and
current values. Output voltage and
current limit for the main channels
are each continuously variable and
can be connected independently
from each other in series or parallel
mode. Thus, with outputs connected in series, the maximum
output voltage rises to 60V DC and
outputs connected in parallel double the maximum output current
to 10A DC. This device combines
easy handling and high efficiency
to offer universal applications in
research, development, electrical
engineering or training.
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IntervIew
Certifications:
We Can Even Create Our

Own MediCal deviCe And
test it On Our neighbOur
KALYAN VARMA
VICE PRESIDENT - BUSINESS

STREAM PRODUCTS AT TUV
RHEINLAND - TUV RHEINLAND
(INDIA) PVT LTD
With connected devices being all the rage, it is more important than ever
to ensure that the devices follow regulations and are certified. This ensures
that these devices, as TUV Rheinland puts it, do not disturb and do not get
disturbed. Kalyan Varma, vice president - Business Stream Products at TUV
Rheinland - TUV Rheinland (India) Pvt Ltd, speaks with Dilin Anand from EFY
Q. Which are the common protocols

that IoT developers seem to prefer?
electrical safety, electromagnetic compatibility and material compliance.

European directives mandate compliance to all the above for IoT, while
for North American market, electrical
safety is voluntary and market-driven.
A. Wi-Fi, ZigBee and Bluetooth

Low Energy (BLE) are some known
protocols. Apart from these, there
are new protocols like IP500 by
IP500 Alliance, Thread by Thread
Group and others.
IP500 is becoming a big force
in Europe. It is related to monitoring and sensing devices as well as
building automation. It allows you
to plug-and-play the sensor anywhere without any wiring and is
manufacturer-neutral, too.
A. No! These regulations are based

on the frequency of transmission.
Local developers and manufacturers
working in the field usually do not
have any idea about local or international regulations in wireless.
Q. What are the new technologies

coming into this space in India?
Q. Do regulations also apply to

whitespace band?
A. New technologies like Wisun, OpenArea and KNX are betting

on the IoT market. KNX has done
a lot of work in India. Wi-sun has
also had a lot of interest in setting
up workshops as well as interest
groups. KNX predominantly looks
at lighting and lighting automation,
while Wi-sun is an advanced Wi-Fi
communications channel.
A. Different countries have different regulations. In some cases, it is

licence-free but still regulated for products operating on these frequencies
and in others, it is a licenced band.
Q. What are the international regulations pertaining to IoT devices?

A. Most countries have local
regulations but, for more uniform
adoption, some also adopt regulations based on European norms or
USA based FCC standards. From an
IoT perspective, regulations can be
split into four major aspects: wireless,
70
Q. Are these regulations related to

the protocols used?
Q. What is the main challenge for IoT

products?
A. If you look at protocols, the
big thing to note is the wireless communications channels or frequency
these prefer. Most choose to function
in 2.4GHz or 5GHz. This band is
also known as the industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) radio band.
The moment you touch a frequency
for communications, every country
has a regulatory barrier in place. The
challenge is to build your product
such that it follows local and inter-
national regulations both.
Q. What are the challenges faced by

engineering teams in India?
A. If you take a Bluetooth module,
you can only make a few changes
keeping in with regulations. Otherwise
you will have to rework the entire design and redo the certification. Major
intellectual property suppliers who do
this are not available in India. Getting
compliance in India and finding people
who have the expertise to understand
and implement the solutions are very
rare here. They need to be first looked
at in the form of regulatory qualifications and then protocol qualifications.
Q. How do things work for IoT health

devices where there could be a mix of
medical and wireless regulations?
A. We do not have a regulation set
up yet in India for medical devices. As
per official data, we only have a total
of 38 medical devices that are regulated, and all of these are non-electrical.
Equipment from incubators to
computed tomography scan machines,
everything is non-regulated. But, use
of radioactive materials in medical
devices is regulated by AERB.
In India, we can even create our
own medical device and test it on our
neighbour. A bill proposed to solve this
is due in the Parliament for approval.
Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation is also responsible for some
level of device regulation in India.
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IntervIew
Microcontrollers:
Most ConneCted deviCes

Are Nodes At The Last
Centimetre of networks
SANJAY GUPTA
DIRECTOR, AUTOMOTIVE BU,

NXP SEMICONDUCTORS
Future of the microcontroller (MCU) market depends on users preference

for smart and connected devices. How have MCUs advanced in response to
this preference? Sanjay Gupta, director, automotive BU, NXP Semiconductors
spoke with Dilin Anand from EFY
Q. What would you like to see in an

MCU designed for the Internet of
Things (IOT)?
A. The IoT demands two things
from MCUsminimal power consumption and lowest possible cost.
Pushing intelligence into an MCU
allows for a simple and robust radio
that can transmit and receive wireless data. Since the MCU usually
has the most resources in terms of
memory, processing power as well
as digital and analogue integration,
this configuration gives it the most
versatility, enabling it to leverage
and optimise all of its resources.
Q. Could you give us an idea of the

role of MCUs for the IoT market
from an engineering perspective?
A. In broad terms, the IoT comprises three elements: edge devices,
which often perform one dedicated
function; hubs or fusion devices,
which integrate data from edge
devices; and larger processing elements. Most connected devices are
nodes located at the last centimetre
of networks. The small nodes used
for connectivity and sensor hubs to
collect and log data are primarily
based on MCU platforms.
Q. What is the key technology trend

that design engineers look for?
A. MCUs have dramatically
dropped their RUN currents, allow72
ing these to run more often, thereby

allowing more features to be designed into the application software.
Performance-per-watt levels have
evolved in many embedded applications to enable power-efficient
designs that help conserve energy.
Energy trends and power management are thus the key technology
trends that designers are looking
for nowadays.
Q. What elements are driving lower

power consumption in the newer
generation of MCUs?
A. Many regulatory bodies have
made it compulsory for consumer
electronic companies to display energy-efficiency ratings. Sleep modes
have evolved over the years, by
optimising voltage levels and clock
frequency. Small bits of programmable logic are also being added. One
can now stitch together peripherals
the way they want within the MCU
and have it operate in sleep mode at
tiny current levels.
Low-power MCUs also reduce
the emissions radiated. Powerconsumption estimation differentiates because the average node duty
factor, fd (node activity ratio), is
different between clocked nodes and
unclocked nodes.
Q. Some engineers say that features previously seen in micropro-
cessors are now seen in MCUs.

What are your views on this?
A. Features like sleeping end
nodes, time synchronisation with
access point beacons, packet storeand-forward and so on highlight the
issues of complex system-on-chip
MCUs. These either require custom software to extract maximum
performance from their integrated
peripherals or suffer the penalties
of reduced versatility or increased
power consumption from running
more generic code.
Q. What are some exciting features

in modern MCUs?
A. Earlier this year Kinetis
MCU was recognised as one of the
industrys first development boards
to fully support mbed. mbed is an
open source project managed by
ARM that works as a platform and
operating system for Internet-connected devices.
Another focus area is to significantly speed and simplify software
development.
Further, encryption/tamper-detection features and ultra-low-power
capabilities extend MCUs reach
beyond traditional mPOS pin pads
and terminals into more powerrestricted payment applications such
as smartphone and tablet attach
readers as well as those embedded
in wearable technology.
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Manufacture
Part 2 of 2
Wearable Devices:
Essential Inputs for Design Engineers
I
S.A. Srinivasa
Moorthy is CEO,
Andhra Pradesh
Electronics and
IT Agency
Setting devices
before workout
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n the first part of this article we defined

and classified wearables, and covered
the designing and manufacturing phases
of the life cycle of a wearable product.
In this concluding part we look at the
testing and support phases, wearable system
software and development phase.
Testing phase. The third important
aspect is how the assembled board and
product is tested. Conventionally, PCBs have
test points (these are PCB pads of specific
dimensions). Testers known as beds of nail
testers test these assembled PCBs. These
testers have a set of spring-loaded nails
that are positioned against each test point.
The test electronics under the control of
test program tests every node by applying
a stimulus and checks the response of the
node and compares it with the response of a
good PCB (known as gold board).
This type of testing is good when PCB
sizes are not too small. However, most wearable devices use miniature PCBs and flex
cables, and testing of these boards calls for
special techniques. Such boards do not have
space for test pads as these are crammed
with components. So a frequently-used technique known as bead probe testing is used.
Fig. 4 shows the conventional test pad and
bead probe test pad for better understanding.
In this test method, instead of a separate
test pad (typically a pad of 40mil diameter), a bead is formed
(a solder bead of 20mil
diameter) on the PCB
trace and the tester
probe probes this point
and tests the PCB. This
enables miniature PCBs
to be tested without
much difficulty. However, to implement this
testing, designers have
to prepare the PCB with
this feature. And they
need to work with the
test engineering team of the EMS partner to

locate the probes for proper balancing of the
PCB when testing is carried out.
Another method used, when the wearable device has only one CPU (which is
normally the case), is called JTAG testing
(this needs about five to seven test points,
regular or bead probes). It is used to test
the entire assembled PCB. This technique
is popular and costs low but needs the designers time and efforts.
One challenge in JTAG method is, if the
controller IC is brand new and is being used
in the product for the first time, most chip
vendors may not have the required JTAG
test file (known as Boundary Scan Description Language or BSDL file) ready. This can
happen when the company that makes the
wearable device expects a large volume and
goes for a dedicated custom application specific integrated circuit, making JTAG testing
difficult initially.
Finally, since most wearable devices
measure very low analogue signals, these
need to be calibrated once the product is assembled completely. This is the responsibility
of the design team, and they need to train
the EMS partner on the calibration process
as well as the calibration equipment. Many a
time this is missed and product shipment is
delayed due to difficulty in calibration.
Use phase. This phase is where the product actually goes into the hands of the users.
One big challenge that designers face
is how exhaustively they have covered the
product use cases (right way of using the
product) and misuse cases (wrong way of
using the product). While most designers
are able to cover the right use cases well,
they fail to do so for the wrong use cases. In
fact, testing for wrong use cases is a unique
feature that medical device developers must
use when developing medical devices.
Most designers think that by displaying disclaimers about wrong usage they
can cover their liability. But the risk is that,
73
Manufacture
there are corner cases where products
fail despite being used correctly.
Let us take the case of a wearable
that has a magnetic-field-sensitive
sensor. In the normal usage, it does
not get impacted, but if a user wearing the device goes near an equipment that has a high magnetic field
(like a big transformer), the wearable can fail due to the sensor being
impacted by the external field. A
disclaimer cannot adequately describe this situation, and the user
may not be able to avoid going near
the system. In these cases, product
shielding needs to be designed so that
no external magnetic field can impact
the wearable device.
Second issue is the biocompatibility of the material used. Since the
wearable device will be in contact
with users skin for extended periods,
materials used should be safe and not
cause any skin problems. This poses
challenges in terms of costs and
processes. Biocompatible materials
are sometimes expensive and also
need special processes to manufacture. Designers need to factor this in
the design phase itself. This problem
is acute when the product enclosure
is metallic.
In addition, if devices have probes
that are metallic and need to touch
the skin, these invariably need special
gels to ensure good contact, and the
materials also need to be safe for use.
One of the frequently faced problems is water ingress inside the wearable devices. In many cases, initially,
the product remains waterproof but
sometimes seals that were used for
prevention of water ingress wear out
over a period of time, in turn, losing
the ability to prevent the water from
entering. Designers need to factor this
as well and ensure that proper material is selected.
Designers can define the product
usage period (useful life) so it can be
discarded once the prescribed time
is over. This works well when the
product cost is low, but if the product
is expensive, a proper mechanism of
74
Fig. 4: A conventional test pad and a bead

probe test pad
inspection and preventive check is a

must if the design has aging issues.
This is especially true in the case of
a wearable device used for medical
applications, where the product cost
is high and customers tend to use it
for a longer period.
Finally, sometimes wearable
devices may have consumables such
as gels, pads and wipes. These have
to be consistent and their tolerances
have to be within the specified
limits. Many a time, as time passes,
cost pressure takes precedence and
companies switch over to a low-cost
material, which impacts the product, leading to failures. This happens also when some critical inputs
are forgotten or missed out. This
must be kept in mind.
Support phase. Most wearable
devices are use-and-throw types at
the end of their life or when gone
faulty. This is due to the low cost of
the products and high repair costs.
Product manufacturing process in
this case uses a specialised procedure that cannot be replicated in the
repair centre.
However, when the product is
expensive (like some medical equipment), it must be supported and
would need to be repaired. If this
is a requirement from the beginning, designers have to plan and
implement this in the design phase
itself. They need to clearly define
a process, which will achieve the
same type of assembly that is done
at the manufacturing line, ensuring
product integrity and reliability.
An important support issue is
software upgrade; most wearable
devices when launched do not have
the full complement of the features
and may also have bugs. Designers
need to make provisions for the following two important aspects:
1. Provide a reliable communication mechanism through which the

software can be upgraded.
2. Provide adequate internal
memory so that if the upgrade process
fails, the product can still work with
an earlier version of the software.
Both of these provisions should
be planned in the design phase and
implemented.
Another way to tackle this issue
is to keep the software functionality to bare minimum and carry
out all complex operations either
on the central application or on a
smartphone, depending on where
the application is running. This also
ensures that cost of hardware is kept
low and the software is simple, so
that it can be tested and does not
need an upgrade, if properly tested.
With the option of software upgrade
being done in the application, largevolume device software upgrade
related issues can be reduced.
Wearable system software

Software for wearable devices is
completely dependent on design consideration, functionality of the device
and controllers used. However, there
are certain generic elements that software developers need to keep in mind
when deciding the software architecture of wearable devices. Following
guidelines should be helpful when
deciding on software architecture:
1. Use a standard-platform based
architecture so that maintaining the
software is easy.
2. Even when a simple two to
three tasks functionality is needed,
use of a real-time scheduler (kernel)
allows predictable performance and
ensures consistency in data, when
data needs to be collected for a
longer duration and data volume is
high, along with time stamp. This
particular aspect is very successful
in a wearable device design, especially when healthcare functionality
is implemented.
3. For complex functionalities,
a Linux based platform is advantaWWW.EFYMAG.COM
geous. Customising the Linux kernel

by removing unwanted drivers creates
a compact footprint as well as tighter
and verifiable codes.
4. Implement the power management function specifically for your
hardware by measuring the power
consumed and understand the battery
that is being used. Many a time, using
a generic power management function
results in sub-optimal performance.
Knowledge of processor core and the
memory used is important for implementing the power management
function. A wearable devices success
mostly depends on its battery life.
5. Ensure that the software is
upgradable and also has sufficient
headroom for code expansion in the
hardware. It is advisable to have only
about 70 per cent memory to be occupied when releasing the product.
When the memory usage reaches 90
per cent, you can revise product hardware with a higher capacity.
6. Since most wearable devices
store data before these are shipped
out, ensuring a reliable mechanism
that occupies optimal space to store
data is important. For example, if the
position of 1-switch data uses a byte,
packing 8-switch data in one byte can
save huge memory area.
7. C based application is suitable
for real-time and critical time-sensitive
applications. With proliferation of
Java, designers tend to use it but for
power-sensitive and performancecritical applications, languages like C
are better suited.
Development process
While lack of a process may be fine
when the product volumes are small,
as volumes increase it is risky not to
have a process in place, especially in
the case of wearable devices. Since
most wearable devices interact with
humans, and humans use these in
their daily regimen, having design
decisions documented by following
a process will help avoid any future
litigation. Let us see an example.
You have designed a wearable
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device where you have calculated the

battery life of 2.5 years and you certify that the device will work for two
years before requiring a replacement.
If a user continues to use this, let us
say for three years, and the device
fails and the user sues the company,
you should be able to show your
documentation to prove that your device is meant to work for two years
and at best 2.5 years, and anything
beyond is not guaranteed.
Most medical devices have a
well-documented process defined
by ISO 13485 standard, and design
process documents are stored till the
product is withdrawn from the market. These files are known as design
history files. The medical device
development process is exhaustive
and takes time and effort to create
and maintain. While wearable devices need not have such a detailed
process, there are a few documents
that when created will help designers and the company to manage the
product successfully.
Given below are the essential
documents that designers need to
create and maintain for a successful
wearable device:
Product requirement document. This document captures every
product feature that will be implemented. Every feature is uniquely
numbered so that each requirement
can be tested and validated.
Material selection document.
This document captures the details
of all materials considered for product packaging and their characteristics, and the material chosen and
technical reasons for the same.
System architecture document.
This document covers product
architecture at the highest level
(as block diagrams), the specific
device chosen and the reason for
that choice. This should also cover
software architecture and software
components chosen and the reason
for choosing these.
System safety analysis document. This document analyses the
safety features and the impact on the

user and its safety. Let us say, due to
some hardware problem the wearable
device starts reading double heartbeat
as normal. In this case, the software
should have a feature that compares
the reading with standard set limits
and, if data is out of bound, raises an
alarm. This comes in handy when the
wearable measures body parameters
and users use it for their daily health
monitoring. So if wrong data is read
by the system, it should not force users to change their daily routine due
to this error.
Critical design decision document. This document captures all critical design decisions covering selection of parts to the way PCB has been
laid out, test strategy and test hooks,
among others. This document comes
in handy when the next-generation
product has to be designed or when
product revision has to be done.
Test strategy document. This is a
key document where the test strategy
adopted for testing the PCB, product
and calibration procedure and details
of the tester are recorded. It helps
in managing the yield as well as
improving productivity. Above all, in
case of failure, this document ensures
isolation of the problem found in the
manufacturing line.
Product master record. This
document captures the products serial numbers and corresponding test
results with the measurement so that
when failure due to aging happens,
the reasons can be tracked back to the
batch and the process involved. It is
typically created out of manufacturing
line and, during contract negotiation,
data capture has to be put in contract.
The primary idea behind this
article was to demystify wearable devices and the essential characteristics
these should have. While this article
does not serve as a comprehensive
guide, it does help to understand
the intricacies of a wearable device
design and how it can be designed
for success.
Concluded
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Software And Tools To Enrich Your

Digital electronic utilities
SHANOSH KUMAR
Description UMHDL setup-2.0

IDE for learning HDLs
Some popular resources
UMHDL is an educational integrated

development environment (IDE) intended for learning digital designing
with programmable logic devices.
By using hardware description languages (HDLs) through simulation,
this open source tool allows learning VHDL language. Its front-end
has an interface that allows writing
code (with syntax highlighting),
invokes an external VHDL compiler
and simulator (such as GHDL) and
displays the result of the simulation
graphically as waveforms (invoking
to GTKWave).
Finite Element Method Magnetics. This application is a Windows finite element solver for 2D
and asymmetric magnetic, electrostatic, heat-flow and current-flow problems with graphical
pre- and post-processors.
DispcalGUI. DispcalGUI is a GUI for display calibration and profiling tools of Argyll CMS,
an open source colour-management system. This software allows the user to calibrate and
characterise display devices using one of the many supported measurement instruments along
with support for multi-display setups and a variety of available settings like customisable white
point, luminance and tone-response curve. There is also an option to create accurate lookup-table ICC profiles including some proprietary 3D LUT formats. The platform also allows
checking the accuracy of profiles and 3D LUTs via measurements.
Apache OpenOffice. It is an open source office productivity software suite. It contains a word
processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), presentation application (Impress), drawing application
(Draw), formula editor (Math) and database-management application (Base).
Version 4.1.2 contains major bug fixes as follows:
Bug fixes in Writer, Calc, Impress/Draw and Base
Better WebDAV and file-locking support; OpenOffice now able to properly interact with
Microsoft Sharepoint
Redesign of PDF export dialogue for better usability on small laptop screens
Updates of underlying libraries has increased security and performance
Security vulnerability fixes applied in this version
KJWaves, SPICE3 GUI and

waveform viewer
KjWaves allows for easy modification and viewing of SPICE circuit
files. It also reads SPICE3 RAW
format (as well as GnuCap) and
creates graphs of results through an
interactive graphical user interface
(GUI). It supports waveform maths
and copying to clipboard, too.
Weka
Weka is a collection of machinelearning algorithms for solving
real-world data-mining problems.
It is written in Java and runs on
almost any platform. Algorithms can
be called using Java codes or can be
applied directly to a dataset.
openSCADA
openSCADA is the companion project to Eclipse SCADA. It is platformindependent and based on a modern
system design that provides security
and flexibility. It provides develop76
ment libraries, interface applications, mass configuration tools,

front-end and back-end applications.
TANGO
TANGO is an open source toolkit for
building high-performance and highquality distributed control systems
for small and large installations.
The toolkit design is based on the
concept of distributed devices or objects and provides native support for
multiple programming languages. It
implements a full set of tools for developing, managing and monitoring
small and large control systems.
Linux. Support and documentation is free from its large, dedicated

community of users, contributors
and developers.
Tizen SDK
LibreCAD
Tizen SDK is a comprehensive set of

tools for developing Tizen Web and
native applications. It consists of an
IDE, emulator, toolchain, sample
code and documentation. Tizen SDK
runs on Windows and this edition of
DVD has 634-bit and 32-bit versions
of the software. Tizen applications
can be developed without relying
on official Tizen IDE, as long as the
application complies with Tizen
packaging rules.
LibreCAD is a free open source

computer-aided design (CAD) application for Windows, Apple and
Shanosh Kumar is working as media consultant at

EFY, Bengaluru. He is currently pursuing MBA from
Christ University, Bengaluru
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dvd
Signal ProceSSing
With Sonic Visualiser
PRIYA RAVINDRAN
ith electronic signals becoming a way of life, it is

important for researchers
to process and then analyse these
effectively. The signal could simply
be a spectrum from MATLAB or the
graph of a song.
The software we are going to
cover in this article is an application for viewing, analysing and
annotating the contents of audio
files. In other words, this is a piece
of software developed to aid you
with signal processing. The fact
that this tool is licensed under GNU
general-public licence and runs on
Linux, OSX and Windows, makes
it easily adaptable. Take a look at
www.sonicvisualiser.org when you
have time. For now, let us learn how
to use this software to understand
electronic signals.
Fig. 1: An audio signal and its spectrum on a Russian version of the software
Analysing data in the message

The simplest way to study a signal
is to see the information it contains
at different time instants. A traditional waveform-peak display of the
input audio signal is simply a plot
of amplitude versus time, highlighting the peak and mean values. From
amplitude, we can derive information about aspects like power and
signal propagation, thereby analysing its waveform, which is the simplest way to learn from a signal.
This tool allows us to view
amplitude in linear, decibel or a
non-linear metered mode, which is
intended to make peaks more apparent than dB scale, but quiet sections
easier to see than linear scale. We
can also control gain of the display
and normalise the visible area so as
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Fig. 2: Analysing the spectrogram of a part of the signal
to ensure full-scale displacement for

the largest value in the visible section of the waveform.
A waveform may also have different channels and we can choose
to have these as individual ones, or
one channel that is a summation
of all. For stereo audio, enabling
butterfly mode shows positive peaks
corresponding to one channel and
negative peaks for the other.
Dissecting the signal to find

underlying frequencies
Most times, real-world signals are a
combination of many frequencies.
Using Sonic Visualiser, you can visualise the signal as a spectrum layer
or a spectrogram layer. The spectrum is a plot of intensity versus frequency at a given point in time. The
scale animates as audio is played,
ELECTRONICS FOR YOU PLUS | FEBRUARY 2016
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Sample use-case scenarios for Sonic Visualiser

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Create perfect sound clips for your Power Point presentation.

Become a detective and make a forensic discovery.
Boost old audio files that could be on their way to lost space.
Create a voice-recognition system.
Play some of the most-common audio formats (such as WAV, MP3, AIFF, AVR, FLAC,
OGG and RAW) as well as less-popular file types (AU, CAF, HTK, IFF, MAR, MPC, PVR,
RF64, SDS, W64, WVE and XI). Import and overlay annotation layers (CSV, LAB, MID
and TXT) on top of waveform representations. Use plugins to automatically calculate
annotations, taking into account tuning and sound pitch.
While viewing an audio

tone as an electrical
signal, there is the
advantage of knowing
where what is happening
and process it to make the
signals more pleasing
Fig. 3: Locating beats using Vamp plugin
making the experience smooth. As

the wave progresses, various frequencies can be connected by lines,
steps or blocks.
A spectrum can be considered
a vertical slice of a spectrogram (a
spectrogram describes the change in
frequency over time). Brightness or
colour of pixels indicates the phase
changes. An online course explains
a spectrogram thus, Speech is a
continuous flow: phones are not discrete or distinct from each other, but
these merge into one another, and
spectrograms assess and visualise
this continuity.
Both of these visualisations allow
us to change the scale and range of
the signal in display. We can even observe waveforms in different colours
according to frequency. A very useful
colour-rotation feature for sudden
transitions helps isolate areas with
similar signal levels. To obtain the
spectrum or spectrogram, a series of
Fourier transforms have to be applied
to the signals. We can set window
size for a frequency-time balance, fix
window overlap to decide the proportion of overlap and select window
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II
shape from a list of Hamming, Hann

(also known as Hanning), Blackman,
Blackman-Harris and Nuttall (cosine
based windows), Gaussian, Parzen,
triangular and un-windowed (rectangular) options. Hann window is the
default and should be appropriate for
most purposes.
A few layers for handy viewing

For perfect time analysis of the signal,
we can add vertical lines corresponding to a given time instant, label instants, display points differently, connect these via lines/curves or even
segment regions. A note layer that
helps group points as notes, a region
layer to apply a particular operation
on just a section of the signal and a
text-and-image layer are also present.
Often, harmonic notes lead to confusion in audio analysis, and to help
with this, this tool offers a harmonic
scale to pinpoint respective signal
frequencies. There is also a colour
3D-plot option for signals that have
groups of frequencies at different time
instants, with each group having its
own value. The plot is not editable
and appears only when a transform
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whose output is appropriate for grid

display is applied, or when importing certain types of annotation data.
For an instantaneous display of y-axis
values of a 3D plot, we can invoke a
slice layer. As Sonic Visualiser website
puts it, a slice is to a colour 3D plot
as a spectrum is to a spectrogram.
Plugins to generate new layers

and create effects
Third-party plugins can be used with
Sonic Visualiser to enhance understanding of the input signal. The
general format for audio-analysis and
feature-extraction plugins is Vamp,
which takes in audio input and generates output compatible with display of
Sonic Visualiser layers. We could also
have plugins in Linux Audio Developers Simple Plugin API (LADSPA) or
Disposable Soft Synth Interface (DSSI)
formats to create effects like compression or to generate data using controlling parameters like sine-wave tone or
white and pink noise.
Other simple, yet

indispensable features
A measure tool helps us select the
exact range of the signal we want
to work with, or maybe observe
repeatedly to detect something
amiss. A friendly and appealing
user interface lets us customise
everything from default frequency to
background colour.
Sonic Visualiser is structured
around panes and layers. Panes are
horizontally-scrollable areas that
can be stacked one above the other,
and a pane can have any number of
layers in it. Easy export and import
of audio files using export layer and
handy annotation add to the glitz.
A mini iPod
for signal processing
Processing a signal requires revisiting segments repeatedly, making
changes to portions and studying results closely. Sonic Visualiser comes
to our aid by offering a hassle-free
playback-and-pause platform. Much

like a media player, we can use keyboard shortcuts to control the signal
being viewed. It is also easy to align
different waveforms along the same
time scale and instant. This comes
in very handy while comparing signals to find differences between similar-looking ones or when viewing
multiple files concurrently. We can
even time-stretch playback, slowing
it down to as little as ten per cent of
the original speed, while retaining a
synchronised display.
Version 2.5 released in October 2015 works on Pentium4 and
AMD64 processors. Developed at
Centre for Digital Music, Queen
Mary, University of London, and
partially funded by many organisations, this months DVD gives you
the package for easy download.
Let us begin our experiments with
audio signals.
Priya Ravindran is a technical journalist at EFY
Are You into the Business of LED Lighting?

Heres a Good News for You
Presents
BAZAAR
An excellent platform to get noticed
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Section Highlights
Dedicated Section on LEDs & LED Lighting

In Conversation with Industry Experts
Product Focus
New Product Launches
Upcoming Market Trends
Government Guidelines & Policies
III
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R: A DAtA-AnAlysis And
stAtisticAl-computing Tool
JAI SACHITH PAUL
is a statistical-computing
environment that consists
of a language along with a
run-time environment with graphics, a debugger, access to certain
system functions and the ability to
run programs stored in script files.
Implementation of R is heavily
influenced by two programming
languages: S and Scheme. R has
inherited strong object-oriented
features from S language. The
underlying implementation and semantics of the software is inspired
from Scheme.
R provides a wide range of
statistical techniques such as linear
and non-linear modelling, classical
statistical tests, time-series analysis, classification clustering and
more. Communication engineers
make use of R for various signalprocessing techniques such as filter
design and processing of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals.
The software was initially
created by Ross Ihaka and Robert
Gentleman at University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1993, and
is currently being developed by R
Development Core Team. The latest
stable release of R version 3.2.3 is
bundled in DVD accompanying this
months EFY Plus.
Why I should go for R

With a lot of software packages
available for data analysis and statistical computing, one might question the relevance of yet another
package for carrying out the same.
Benefits of R being a language.
R is not an easy-to-learn language
by itself. But definitely it has a
IV
Fig. 1: Reproducing ECG signals from raw data (Courtesy: http://biostatmatt.com)
lot of advantages over other dataanalysis tools, if you could master

it. R, being a highly-interactive
language, allows the programmer to
experiment and explore new areas
and new functionalities. This would
not be even possible if the dataanalysis tool was not a language.
The script can be re-run any time,
on any machine.
Cutting-edge analytics. A powerful analytics software should be
capable of accepting data in various
formats, manipulating and convert-
And so they called it R

There are two reasons behind the naming
of this software. First, it comes from the
names of its two creators, Ross Ihaka and
Robert Gentleman.
Second, the name R acknowledges its
inspiration from software S.
ing it to traditional and modern statistical models. R does all of these.

Various manipulations like transforms, merge, aggregations and so
on are carried out on accepted data
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Fig. 2: Sample R code (Courtesy: www.joyofdata.de)
and statistical models like regression

and tree model are prepared. These
techniques allow academicians and
researchers around the world to
develop latest methods in statistics,
machine learning and predictive
modelling. There are thousands
of packages in every domain that
extend the capabilities of R to adapt
to various applications and their
number increases day by day.
Faster yet reliable results. With
the ability to mix and match models
to yield better results, a normal R
programmer can yield faster, yet
accurate, results. The code can be
automated and thus be reproduced,
nourishing greater research.
Challenges faced while

coding in R
Engineers who are new to R face
certain challenges when they are
introduced to R for the first time.
Mastering the language. R is
not an easy-to-learn language. The
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documentation style could have

been more user-friendly so that
the language would have more
user base.
Memory and speed issues. R
software is designed to be more
generic in nature and programmers
code it to suite their applications.
Till date there are over 2000 applications developed extending the
functionalities of R. Obviously, R
is not the best for certain applications. There are memory and speed
issues when extending the code for
certain applications.
Syntax of the program. For a
professional programmer, syntax
of the script might look somewhat
untidy when compared to other
languages like Python.
How a communication
engineer can make use of R
As discussed earlier, R is designed
to be a generic tool and not an
electronic design automation tool.
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With the help of functions

ported from other open
source packages, R handles
signal-processing tasks pretty
decently. These could be filter
design or ECG signal analysis;
researchers across the globe
make efficient use of this tool
for their applications.
As a signal-processing
tool. Bulk of Rs basic
signal-processing capability comes from the signal
package that was ported over
from the open source project
Octave, points out Joseph
Rickert in his blog titled R
and Signal Processing. The
so-ported signal package can
be used to perform signalprocessing functionalities including filtering, filter generation, resampling, interpolation and visualisation of filter
models. These models are
quite similar to the ones in
MATLAB and hence anyone
who has mastered the latter
can easily switch over to this
open source alternative.
When it comes to statistical analysis, time-series
capabilities of R are superior
to proprietary software like
Fig. 3: Spectrogram and FFT of original and filtered signal (Courtesy: www.joyofdata.de)
MATLAB or an open source
rival like SAS. There are
A language with unlimited
For biomedical signal processwrappers for MIT package for Fast
possibilities
ing. Biomedical engineers have
Fourier Transforms called FFTW,
made effective use of the tool to
dynamic linear modelling filter
With more than 7000 additional packadapt to various biomedical signalfunction based on singular value
ages extending the functionalities to
processing tasks. Matt Shotwell has
decompositions for Kalman filtering
2000 applications, R has emerged as
developed a reproducible R script
for Maximum Likelihood and Bayesa statistical-computing environment
for analysis of ECG signals using a
ian dynamic linear models.
with unlimited possibilities. Users can
windowed (Blackman) sinc low-pass utilise the code developed by othR gives the freedom to users to
filter. For eliminating high-frequency
explore Wavelets. They can make
ers in the open source community to
noise above 30Hz, a low-pass filter
use of filters, transforms and multi
adapt to their application. Hopefully,
is applied to the signals at the first
resolution analysis from the wavewe can expect more communications
stage. In order to eliminate the slow
lets package. For de-convolution
and signal-processing applications
wave that corresponds to respiraon noisy signals, users can utilise
to be actively developed on R in the
tions, the filter at a cut-off frequency
WaveD transform. waveslim and
near future.
of 1Hz is applied. You can find the
wavethresh are other advanced
reproduced ECG signals from raw
wavelet signal-processing packages
The author is assistant professor, department of
ECE at SETCEM, Thrissur
data in the image alongside.
bundled in R.
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Let Us Learn
how to Program 8085
JAI SACHITH PAUL
tudy of microprocessors is an
integral part of the engineering programme, when we are
taking up a course on electronics
or any related discipline. And 8085
is probably the first microprocessor that we get in touch with as a
part of the curriculum. Students are
usually just given some basic handson training using standard boards
with a keypad.
Whenever we are dealing with
hardware, there is always a chance
for it to fail. Moreover, there are
some practical concerns while learning microprocessors using boards.
If you would like to simultaneously
determine the status of all the registers at a time, or analyse the working in varying speed of simulations,
a trainer kit may have limitations.
For electronics enthusiasts
willing to learn programming of
microprocessors, but limited by the
availability of trainer kits, there are
a handful of simulators available
online as open source. In this article, let us have a look at one such
8085 simulator.
The 8085 programming model

8085 processor has a set of seven
8-bit registers including the accumulator and six others, namely, B,
C, D, E, H and L. Depending upon
applications, the registers other than
the accumulator can be used either
as independent byte-registers or as
16-bit register pairs.
A 16-bit special-purpose register
called program counter is available
in the microprocessor. It stores the
address of the next instruction to be
fetched. A 16-bit stack pointer stores
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Screenshot of 8085 simulator
Software at a glance
Name
Licence
Pre-requisites
: 8085 Simulator version 2.0

: GNU GPLv2
: Needs Java 6 update 16; available from javadl.sun.com/webapps/
download/AutoDL?BundleId=33889
the address of the last byte entered

into the stack.
Program Status Word comprising
the accumulator and status registers
is modified as per given instructions. An accumulator stores the
result of an arithmetic and logical
operation, and the result affects the
content of various status registers.
What the simulator consists of

The simulator is designed to be very
user-friendly and simulations are
to be at par with actual hardware
simulations. Let us have a quick

look at the interesting features offered by the tool.
Assembler editor. This allows
the user to input numerical data in
binary, decimal and hexadecimal
formats. The programmer can insert
comments, label instructions and
check errors using the editor. There
are provisions for auto-correct,
auto-intend and syntax highlighting.
Moreover, users are allowed to run
programs written in other simulators
in this editor.
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Disassembler editor. In most
cases, the user is allowed to
reverse-trace the original program
successfully from the original code
using this editor. The editor supports loading of hexadecimal file
format that is specific to Intel.
Assembler workspace. The
workspace contains Address field,
Label, Mnemonics, Hex-code,
Mnemonic size, M-cycles and Tstates. While it supports the statictiming diagram for all instructions, dynamic-timing diagram for
step-by-step simulations are also
supported. It also provides error
checking facility.
Memory and I/O editors.
The memory editor allows users
to choose memory range and to
modify data in a particular memory
location. Users can either view the
entire memory content or the one
in the loaded memory location.
They can store data directly into a
specified memory location.
The I/O editor required for
peripheral interfacing enables users
to edit the content directly.
Interrupt editor. An interrupt is
a mechanism by which an instruction suspends normal execution
of the program and gets itself
serviced. A non-maskable interrupt cannot be ignored by standard
interrupt-masking techniques in
the system, while a maskable interrupt can be disabled by writing
some instruction. The simulator
supports a non-maskable interrupt
in 8085 (TRAP), maskable vectored
interrupts (RST 7.5, RST 6.5 and
RST 5.5) and an externally-serviced
dvd
Printing contents
The software allows the user to print contents of the assembler and the workspace. The
equivalent binary value corresponding to the values of each register in the register bank can
be printed. Values present in accumulator, registers B, C, D, E, H and L and memory (M)
can all be retrieved.
Users can also access contents in Flag Register, Stack Pointer (SP), Memory
Pointer (HL), Program Status Word (PSW), Program Counter (PC), Clock Cycle Counter,
Instruction Counter and special blocks for monitoring Flag Register and usage of SIM and
RIM instructions.
interrupt (INTR).
The interrupt editor allows
triggering of these interrupts by
pressing appropriate columns in the
interrupt table.
Debugger. The debugger allows
users to have a step-by-step debugging of programs by traversing a
program both forwards and backwards. They can put break points
and continue the program from
breakpoints.
Simulator. The simulator allows
three levels of simulations. Users
can have a step-by-step execution
where they can halt between lines
and simulate the code step by step.
In the normal speed of execution,
full execution takes place reflecting
the intermittent states periodically.
The ultimate execution reflects final
state directly.
Supporting features
Crash recovery. Even if there is a
sudden shutdown or crash of the application, the user can easily recover
the program in this simulator.
Helper. Even if the user has very
limited knowledge about user code,
Code Wizard tool helps in programming 8085. The software is preloaded with a lot of sample programs
THE COMPLETE MAGAZINE ON OPEN SOURCE
to aid new users. The user manual

further aids these.
Tools. The simulator has Insert
DELAY Subroutine tool that allows
users to generate a user-defined
delay with the help of registers at a
particular operating frequency.
Memory values can be set at
corresponding vector interrupt addresses with the help of Interrupt
Service Subroutine tool.
Number Conversion Tool facilitates inter-conversion between
hexadecimal, decimal and binary
number formats.
Enhanced laboratory
experience
The software is designed mainly for
users who do not have sufficient
hardware to learn microprocessor programming. It uses the same
simulation engine at the back end
and the user gets the same lab experience while coding in the simulator.
Moreover, there are a lot of inbuilt
sample programs to aid self-learning. If you are new to microprocessor programming and really interested in coding, give it a try.
The author is assistant professor, department of
ECE at SETCEM, Thrissur
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VIII
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WWW.EFYMAG.COM
EVENT
India Electronics Week 2016:
The New-Age
elecTroNics show
One thing that set India Electronics Week (IEW) 2016 apart was the fact that a large fraction
of its visitors were not regulars. For many, this was the first event that got them out of their
offices. And going by their initial feedback, most were happy with their decision.
FACT SHEET
Show dates: January 11-13, 2016
ix co-located shows, 16 conferences, 180-plus exhibitors, 10,000plus visitors a few figures to give you an idea about IEW 2016.
The more interesting figures are 200-plus speakers, 3000-plus
conference delegates, 30-plus per cent of visitors who travelled from
outside Karnataka and, last but not the least, 35 per cent-plus who
visited an electronics expo for the first time!
With such great response, it was natural for Electronics For You
team to not shift from Bengaluru as the city of choice for next years
show, too. IEW 2017 is now all set to be held March 2-4, 2017 at
BIEC, Bengaluru.
Through this brief report we attempt to share key highlights of
what transpired at this years IEW, with the hope that it will motivate
you to experience the show first hand next year, rather than read
about it here. Read on...
78
Location: Bangalore International

Exhibition Centre (BIEC),
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Event space (gross): 10,000+ sqm
Number of exhibitors: 184
Brands represented: 500+
Unique visitors: 10,874
Number of conferences
and workshops: 18
Number of speakers: 207
Number of major buyers invited at
Buyer-Seller Meet: 16
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imAges sAy iT
BeTTer ThAN words
R.V. Deshpand
industries, go e, honble minister, largevernment of Ka
an
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gurating IEW
2016
Panel discussion at IET conference
Audience at the inaugural ceremony

Inaugural session at CEO Summit
Inaugural session
at LED Lighting
Summit
ion
IPC India Hand Soldering competit
Visitors at IEW 2016
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Panel discussion on Standardisation for the IoT Ecosystem
Panel discussion on How to Handle Security for the IoT
for
tart System d
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How to Build p by Deepak Gupta79
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Foundry
a Car works , co-founders, Fresher
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Aneesha Pill
EVENT
Business events at iew 2016

CEO Summit
LED Lighting Summit
Put together with the help of ELCINA, the summit discourse was
based on the theme Invest in India The Multi-Billion-Dollar
ESDM Opportunity. It was graced by the presence of R.V. Deshpande, honble minister of large- and medium-scale industries,
government of Karnataka as chief guest, along with K. Ratnaprabha, additional chief secretary to government of Karnataka,
Commerce and Industry Department, and Arun Sachdeva, senior
director, DeitY, government of India, as guests of honour.
Senior-level speakers across the electronics industry such
as Vikram Desai, president - ELCINA and MD, Desai Electronics, Vinod Sharma, MD, Deki Electronics Ltd, N. Ramachandran, MD, MEL Systems and Services, Sreeram Srinivasan,
CEO, Syrma Technology, Prabhu P.M., MD, Bosch Automotive Electronics, Pankaj Gulati, VP - ELCINA and COO, CDIL,
K.P. Sharma, India head - GSC, Schneider Electric and others
discussed ways to boost investment in electronics manufacturing in India.
The summit also covered the need for investment and opportunities in the electronics industry for design and innovation.
Richard Puthota, director, Cookson India, Vinay Shenoy, MD, Infineon Technologies, Anilkumar Muniswamy, MD, SLN Technologies, S.A. Srinivasa Moorthy, CEO, Andhra Pradesh Electronics, Dr
Kumar Sivarajan, CTO, Tejas Networks, and Rajeev Ramachandra,
CTO, Mistral Solution, presented their views on the same.
Role of infrastructure and low-cost finance to create the appropriate investment climate for the electronics industry in India
was another interesting topic that was covered. T. Vasu, advisor
- Tandon Group, and Subhash Goyal, MD, Digital Group and expresident, ELCINA, discussed the importance of infrastructure
and low-cost finance, while S. Thiruvadi, MD, CanBank Venture,
and Anadi Charan Sahu, GM, SIDBI, shared valuable information on the availability of the same.
With strong emphasis on energy-efficient lighting technology, the summit was co-organised by ELCOMA, the apex body
of lighting manufacturers in India, and EFY. The conference
brought together around 160 participants representing the
entire cross-section and stake-holders in LED lighting, top LED
lighting and component manufacturers, government end-users
(leading municipalities), bulk buyers, regulatory and standardisation authorities, consultants, lighting architects, testing and
certification bodies and so on.
Experts from the LED industry and government bodies discussed various business and technology trends. Shyam Sujan,
secretary general, ELCOMA, Arun Sachdeva, senior director, DeitY, Shekhar Bajaj, CMD, Bajaj Electricals, and Ramesh Chopra,
executive chairman , EFY Group, discussed the future of the
LED industry.
Other interesting sessions included:
LVDC: The Future of Electricity by Vimal Mahendru,
president, Legrand, India
LED, The Good and Not-So-Good Stories by Sudeshna
Mukhopadhyay, senior director, Centre for competence,
lighting applications and head of Philips Lighting Academy,
Philips Lighting, South Asia
LED: A journey from Lumen to Digital Lumen by S.
Chakrabarty, VP, Luminaires BU, Bajaj Electrical Ltd
LED Street Lights with Controls by Uma Lanka, DGM, design
and business development, Crompton & Greaves
Indian Standards on Lighting and Its Mandatory
Implementation by Debdas Goswami, scientist-F and headBureau of Indian Standards (BIS)
LED Market Trends and New Component Technology for the
Future by Ita Lin, CEO, MLS India
Government Procurement Programme for LED Streetlighting
and DELP Programme for LED Lamps by Rajneesh Rana,
DGM, Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL)
LED Indian Standards and Its Compliance by Puneet Randeo,
business development head, UL India
LED Photobiological Issues by K. Vijay Kumar Gupta, MD,
Kwality Photonics Pvt Ltd
IET Conference
The IET hosted the first-of-its-kind conference in India that
focused on ways to help start-ups and business enterprises to
monetise the Internet of Things (IoT). Titled Simplifying the
Puzzle: Generating Money in Internet of Things, the event
showcased success stories from industry experts who have
exploited the monetary potential of the IoT. Futuristic trends,
potential challenges and guidelines to implement IoT programmes were discussed in detail during the conference.
The conference also had two panel discussions on The
IoT as a Thrust to Revenue Generation and The IoT for Cost
Optimisation to Margin Improvement featuring panellists from
companies like Aeris, Bosch, Credit Suisse, Cisco, Intel, Nokia,
Qualcomm, Samsung and Vodafone.
80
Get Funded
For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction,
conflict, argument and debate. This high-spirited slogan marked
the outcome of Get Funded 2016 event. This get-together of innovators and investors marked the perfect platform for start-ups
to find their calling and investors their prize. The over-crowded
boardroom provided enough proof, and the event was tagged as
one of the most interesting and creative ones in its segment.
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EXHIBITORS VIEWS
The event jointly organised by FHS Idealabs and EFY had
an interesting line-up of companies, tech-gurus and electronics
enthusiasts with path-breaking ideas in their minds.
Vendor Development Workshop

by Ministry of Defence
Commander P.K. Bhattacharya from Ministry of Defence,
government of India, discussed the opportunities available for
Indian electronics manufacturing companies to be offset partners or vendors under defence offset policy.
Buyer-Seller Meet
The meet provided a unique platform for exhibitors to meet 16
large buyers of electronics products, services components and
manufacturing equipment, LED lighting and components, and
IoT hardware, among others. This year more than 100 meetings
took place between buyers and sellers across three days.
BUYERS VIEWS
I have been participating as a VIP buyer since 2012.
During my visits I met many potential vendors.Shanaka
Perera, purchasing manager, Variosystems (Sri Lanka)
Well organised! Online appointments were very useful to
plan meetings. I met close to 20 sellers in two days
time.Nandha Gopala Krishnan R., assistant manager
- global sourcing management Asia, Stanley Black and
Decker Inc.
Excellent initiative! Enables buyers to focus better on
potential vendors.Ganesh Babu Sreenivasan,

global planning and supply manager, Lenovo India Pvt
Ltd
Buyer-Seller meet was very well organised. I am
fond of EFY for making continuous efforts to improve
its event.Prashant Singh Garhwaliya, sourcing,
Panasonic Automotive (India)
Meetings were organised in a controlled environment,
which was good for discussions.Vijay Anand,
sourcing leader - electronics, GE Healthcare
Overall organisation was very good. However,
there is need to categorise the vendor industry and enable
members to meet particular industry buyers.A.R.
Yuvaraj, AGM (Bengaluru), Bharat Electronics Ltd
Good arrangement and hospitality! Wellorganised show! I feel non-exhibitors should also be
invited to participate.S. Ramachandran, DGM operations, Syrma Technology
Well-organised; look forward for more such meets

with respect to the wind sector.Palani Rajan C.,
purchase department, Gamesa Renewable Pvt Ltd
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Through this show we introduced a couple of new products

in the Indian market and got some genuine customers
from Bosch, BEL, Vario Systems (Sri Lanka), etc.
Padmanabha Shakthivelu, national sales manager - India
operations, Electrolube
What I like more about EFYs event is their transparent way
of attending customers, supporting them in media write-ups
and editorial coverage. This allows us to showcase products online
as well as in print.Paresh Vasani, MD, PCB Power
(Circuit Systems India Ltd)
We received good response from scientists, decision makers,
academicians and venture capitalists, all under one roof!
Arjun Goel, director - technical, Saraswati Dynamics Pvt Ltd
We received some good enquiries. We plan to come here next
year also.Rajiv Toshniwal, MD, Toshniwal Sensing
Devices Pvt Ltd
A much better show from last time. Attendence was really
good!Chris Palin, EMEIA manager, Humiseal
Fantastic! Looking forward to participate next year.
Madhur Dogra, senior client engagement manager - India Region,
Microchip
The conferences and exhibitions allowed us to interact with new
designers from India.Niranjan G., GM (ASEAN and
India), business development and technical marketing, ROHM
Semiconductor
A valuable platform that helped us meet with the overall
electronics industry ecosystem. We got many new
customersMukul Pareek, marketing program manager,
Being a national company, it was exciting to see good-quality
crowd from across India.Sumit Sharma, marketing manager,
Goodwill Instruments Co. Ltd
We participated for the first time and found it value for
money. We plan to be here next year.Jiten Mahajan, MD,
Innovative Premier Lighting Pvt Ltd
This exhibition has been quite successful for us. We got some
good leads, especially from the south Indian market.
Sudhanshu Gupta, sales director - India operations,
Lumens Technologies
This is our fourth participation at EFY Expo. Overall
the show was good but needs more publicity. I have already given
confirmation for participation in next years show.Anand
Bhansali, MD, Anand Industrial Components
We were extremely satisfied as far as visitors were
concerned. We are looking forward to next year.C.A. Shyam S.
Jindal, MD, Olive Exports Pvt Ltd
This is the first time we participated in this event. We are very
happy to be a part of it and expect a lot of business through
this event.L. Peter, manager, Ready LED Lighting Pvt Ltd
Participating in this expo has given us fantastic response.
We saw limited but high-quality visitors from various industries like
automation, education, EMS and more. We are really keen
to participate more in such events.Azeem Merchant, CEO,
Messung erfi
This is a great platform! We got good opportunity to talk to a
lot of companies. The conferences were also good.Sai Venkat
Kumar B., country marcomm, Tektronix (India)
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EVENT
Tech events at iew 2016

IoTShow.in
Winning the coveted Peoples Choice Event of the Year
award at the 5th annual Internet of Things Awards conducted by Postscapes, IoTShow.in was recognised as the event
that has had the greatest impact worldwide on the IoT in
2015-16. The show saw more than 200 speakers discussing
ways to develop viable IoT solutions, guiding and driving
efforts to make sure that the IoT becomes a key part of
modern business.
Honble Janardhana Swamy, former MP, and Venugopal KR, IEEE fellow, provided the perfect start for eRocks
and IoTShow.in by enthralling the audience with a glimpse
into the future. The various sessions that followed focused
on smarthomes/smartcities, smarthumans, smart industry
and office and smart automation. There was at least one
session in each track that discussed taking a prototype to a
complete product.
Experts from across the globe came together for four
panel discussions that saw them debating it out on stage,
giving the audience a very realistic view of the behind the
scene of a finished product.
Eminent personalities from hard-core standardisation committees participated in Standardisation for the
IoT Ecosystem: An enabler? Or a roadblock?, which was
moderated by Narang N. Kishor, convenor of the panel on
smart infrastructure by BIS.
Tearing apart the notion of security in the IoT space
was the panel discussion on Security of Things, moderated by Rishi Gaurav Bhatnagar, a maker, Intel software
innovator and Arduino maker fellow.
Navigating the Hardware Start-Up Journey brought
much excitement among the masses in an age where startups are the order of the day. The discussion was conducted
by Satish Mugulavalli, CEO, RevvX.
Take a look at some key sessions by star speakers.
Martin Woolley from Bluetooth SIG delivered talks on
Putting the Smart in SmartHome with Bluetooth and
Bluetooth Beacon Applications and Real-Word Developer Issues.
Dr Vijay Mishra from IISc spoke about nanotech sensors for human body health monitoring.
Threat Perception and Attack Scenarios in Automotive
was handled by Dr. S.K. Sinha from IISc, while Prof.
Bharadwaj Amrutur gave a talk on How We Developed
a Wearable for Monitoring Newborns.
How to Build a Device That Keeps the Doctor Away
was the tip Srinivasa Moorthy, CEO, Andhra Pradesh
Electronics & IT Agency, gave to young designers.
Dr Srinivas Mandavilli, country manager, Imagination
82
Technologies, spoke extensively on Building Secure, Flexible IoT Platforms.
LED Tech Conference

Under the banner of LEDasia.in, IEW had an exclusive tech
conference for the LED sector, where design challenges were
tackled heads-on. Some topics of discussion were:
Conformal Coatings: Why We Need These and How To
Maximise Their Effectiveness by Phil Kinner, global business and technical director, Electrolube.
Global Regulatory Compliance for LED Products by Kalyan
Varma, VP - business stream products, TUV Rheinland
Next-Generation LEDs for Outdoor/Industrial Lighting
by Senthilkumar Madasamy, field applications manager India, CREE India Pvt Ltd.
Makers in India
Put together by Makers Asylum, the sessions revolved around
converting an innovative idea into a product, one that sells
in the market. With talks and demos revolving around this
theme, this track was, as the title says, for all makers in India.
Well, it does not stop there.
T&M Showcase
Test and measurement (T&M) plays a critical role in the
electronics industry. Equipped with an amazing line-up of
presentations and equipment, presenters from various companies explained components and upgrades being applied in the
industry. Overall, sessions enriched the audience and the Q/A
sessions turned out to be quite interactive and informative.
IoTBLR Community Meet-up

Being held for the third consecutive year along with EFY
conferences, the Bengaluru based IoT meet-up group explored
how one could go from an IoT solution idea to product and
then to market. There was also a session by Karnataka Information Technology Venture Capital Fund (KITVEN Fund) on
how IoT/electronics hardware entrepreneurs in Karnataka can
access the latest ` 1 billion KARSEMVEN fund.
IPC Workshop and Hand Soldering

Competition
IPC India held a workshop on PCBs - Problems Coming
Back? Prof. Vidhu Mitter, an expert, discussed the reasons
why problems come back, specifications and standards,
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Experts Views
processes and more. He also discussed the recently-revised

standard, IPC-6012D - Qualification and Performance Specification for Rigid Printed Boards.
The ninth IPC Hand Soldering Competition (HSC) was an
integral part of IEW 2016. Excellence in workmanship skills
was assessed as per IPC-A-610F class 3 requirements. India
champion title and trophy was won by W. Ragini of Amara
Raja Electronics Ltd. The title paved the way for her to go
further in the competition with the doors to IPC World Championship now open. Ramesh Chopra, executive chairman, EFY
group, awarded the India Champion trophy to the winner.
SMTA Conference
Surface Mount Technology Association (SMTA) India chapter
hosted a technical conference where evolving technologies in
the electronics assembly industry were discussed. The track
included sessions like:
Recent Technology Advances for Better X-Ray Images by
Keith Bryant, chairman, SMART Group
Use of Complex Alloys to Achieve High-Reliability LeadFree Solder Joints by M.P. Rajaram, regional sales manager AE, India, Henkel Adhesive Technologies
Importance of Worst-Case Analysis for Electronic Systems
to Enhance Product Survival Probability and Robustness
by Pankaj Bansod, technical lead - reliability, Honeywell
Technology Solutions Lab, India
Electrostatic Discharge Protection for SMT Production by
Ankan Mitra, VP, SMTA India chapter
Defence Electronics Technical

Conference
Under the banner of Raksha India, a technical conference on
defence electronics was conducted, which was supported by
Buyer-Seller Meet and B2B Exposition. The technical conference had some interesting discussions, some of which are
mentioned below:
Cyber Security and Implications for Acquisition, Design and Evaluation by Dr Subrata Rakshit, scientist-G,
CAIR, DRDO
Design and Development of Cutting-Edge Technologies in
Aerospace by S.P. Bhattacharya, executive director (Engg,
R&D), HAL
Reliability and Quality Assurance for Satellite Systems by
Prakasha Rao P.J.V.K.S, project director for GSAT 9, GSAT
17 and GSAT 18
Get
Ready
For
2017!
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I compliment EFY, ELCINA and other organisers to have put

together such a great show and I wish them great success
for the event.K. Ratnaprabha, additional chief secretary to
government of Karnataka, Commerce and Industries Department
We got very good feedback from people and also potential
investors!Prasad H. L. Bhat, chairman and CTO,
Astrome Technologies Pvt Ltd
It was great to see electronic tech enthusiasts all around, along
with many information-sharing sessions in different
domains.Kaustubh Karnataki, chief engineer, FluxGen
Engineering Technologies Pvt Ltd
It was an absolute pleasure to be part of this event and I
hope to be able to speak here again.Martin Woolley, technical
program manager, Bluetooth SIG (Special Interests Group)
Kudos for bringing together different shows/expos
to IEW 2016. Well-organised Buyer-Seller meet! It was
well conducted by executives who were always available
to help.Lt. Colonel Ashutosh Verma, Directorate of
Indigenisation, Ministry of Defence
EVENTS AT A GLANCE
1. CEO Summit (January 11)
2. IPC Workshop (January 11)
3. T&M Showcase (January 11)
4. Defence Electronics Tech Conference (January 11)
5. Vendor Development Workshop (January 11)
6. LED Lighting Summit (January 12)
7. LED Tech Conference (January 12)
8. Get Funded (January 12)
9. IoT: Smart Human (January 12)
10. IoT: Smart Industry & Office (January 12)
11. IoT: Smart Auto (January 13)
12. IoT: Smart Home & Office (January 13)
13. IoTBLR Meetup (January 13)
14. IETs IoT Conference (January 13)
15. Makers in India (January 13)
16. SMTA Workshop (January 13)
17. Buyer Seller Meet (January 11-13)
18. Workshops (January 12-13)
The Workshops
To add to the knowledge-enhancing experience, the workshops
delivered niche skills, with presenters guiding from experience.
There were sessions on building your first open source smart
agriculture project, two on dealing with commercial off-theshelf components, two on working with the IoT and others
focusing on hard-core designing.
With plenty of feedback and positive encouragement, we hope to have a
bIggEr EvEnt nExt yEar, clearing away the glitches and putting up
Look forWard to sEEIng you at IEW 2017,
which will be held at the same venue on March 2-4, 2017.
a better show.
83
Industry NEWS
MAKE IN INDIA
India witnesses US$ 1 billion

private equity investment
in renewable energy
International investors have invested
over US$ 1 billion in Indias renewable
energy sector. By 2022, India aims to
have a generating capacity of 100GW
from solar power, 60GW from wind
energy and 15GW from other renewable energy sources. This means that
over the next seven years, a capacity
of around 140GW needs to be added
across the country.
As we step into 2016, the road
towards building the renewable

energy sector in India looks bright.
The government has been quite
vocal about the benefits of using
renewable energy and the energy it
saves for the country. The central
government has been encouraging
state governments to convince people to use solar energy and we are
now witnessing the results of this
sustained campaign.
SunEdison to invest US$ 2 billion in solar energy sector

SunEdison Inc., a US based renewable
company, is aiming to make an investment of US$ 2 billion in a facility that
will make polysilicon in India. Polysilicon is used as a feedstock material in
many solar energy applications.
According to SunEdisons CEO
and president, Ahmad R. Chatila,
the company is looking for an Indian
partner to make the proposed investment. He has stated, I am talking to
people, but these things take longer
than I would like. It took me two

years to negotiate the deal with
Samsung in Korea.
The company is also on the
look-out for a few locations to set up
the unit. This news has come in the
wake of the solar and wind energy
major facing financial headwinds.
They have been forced to sell off
their assets globally along with walking away from a proposed takeover
of wind energy major Continuum.
Solar tariff dips to ` 4.34 per unit

Solar tariffs have dipped further as
Fortum India won bids for one of the
six projects of 70MW each. The project
will be set up in Rajasthan. Fortum did
a bidding of ` 4.34 per kWh for supplying power to NTPC.
Apart from Fortum, Rays Power
Infra and Solar Direct acquired two
projects each. NTPC did a reverse bidding for 420MW solar power projects,
which will be set up in Bhadla Solar
Park II, Rajasthan.
84
The six bids have come at a tariff

that is much cheaper than the earlier
lowest price or ` 4.63 per kWh, which
was proposed by SunEdison and SB
Energy. These were for two projects
of 500MW and 350MW capacities
respectively in Andhra Pradesh. The
low bidding had definitely raised
concerns regarding its prudency. However, it had elevated hopes for solar
energy becoming a good alternative to
thermal power minus subsidies.
On the Move
Appointments at Wipro
Wipro Ltd has announced the
appointment of T.K. Kurien as
executive vice chairman and Abidali
Z. Neemuchwala as chief executive
officer and member of the board of
the company. Both appointments
are effective from February 1, 2016.
Asim Warsi will head Samsungs

online division
Asim Warsi, VP for mobiles and
information technology, will be
heading Samsungs online division.
He will be responsible for the
marketing and sales of all products,
including consumer electronics.
ASUS appoints Vinay Shetty

as regional director for India,
South Asia
Vinay Shetty has been promoted to
the post of regional director for India
and South Asia for ASUSs computer
components and peripheral
business. He will be replacing Levis
Su, who has moved into the role of
director for motherboards, ASUS
Computers, China.
IAMAI appoints Kunal Shah

as chairman
Mobile Internet body IAMAI has
appointed FreeCharge co-founder
and CEO Kunal Shah as chairman.
Established in 2004, IAMAI
comprises mobile content and
services, online publishing, mobile
and online advertising, e-commerce
and digital payments players,
among others.
Binny Bansal to take over

as Flipkart CEO
Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal,
who has been CEO since inception,
will now take on the newly-created
role of executive chairman, while
his less-prominent co-founder Binny
Bansal, who has been COO, will be
CEO. The Bansals are unrelated,
were at IIT Delhi around the same
time and briefly worked together
at Amazon before founding the
e-commerce firm.
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
Calendar of Forthcoming Electronics

Fairs/Exhibitions/Seminars/Events
Name, Date and Venue
Topics
Contact address for details
7th Edition Source India

February 2-3, 2016
Hotel Green Park, Chennai
International buyer-seller meet and

conference
Electronic Industries Association of India

(ELCINA)
Website: www.sourceindia-electronics.com
IESA Vision Summit 2016

February 3-4, 2016
Leela Palace, Bengaluru
Showcasing Indian ESDM update 2015:

Report by IESA and E&Y, IoTBLR Connected
Devices Makeathon and Makeathon awards,
and a workshop on intellectual property
powered by DeitY
IESA Vision Summit

Website: www.iesaonline.org
ELECRAMA 2016
February 13-17, 2016
BIEC, Bengaluru
Serves the business needs of utilities,

government, EPC consultants, contractors,
electrical equipment manufacturers and
generation companies
ELECRAMA 2016
Email: anil.nagrani@ieema.org
China Information Technology

Expo
April 8-10, 2016
Shenzhen Convention and
Exhibition Centre, China
Largest and most comprehensive exhibition of

electronics and ICT industry in China
China Information Technology Expo

Website: www.citexpo.org
Global Sources Electronics

April 11-14, 2016
AsiaWorld-Expo, Hong Kong
Worlds largest electronics sourcing show

Website: www.globalsources.com
National Electronics Weeks

2016
April 12-14, 2016
Birmingham, UK
UKs largest gathering of electronics and

manufacturing professionals
National Electronics Weeks 2016

Website: www.new-expo.co.uk
Global Sources Mobile

Electronics
April 18-21, 2016
AsiaWorld-Expo, Hong Kong
Worlds biggest mobile electronics

sourcing show

Website: www.globalsources.com
Connect EXPO
April 19-20, 2016
Melbourne, Australia
Australias fastest growing business

technology event with over 7000 visitors meet
200 exhibitors
Connect EXPO
Website: www.connectexpo.com.au
Consumer Electronics China

April 20-22, 2016
Shenzhen Convention and
Exhibition Center, China
Platform that unites international exhibitors

with Chinese retailers keen to bring new
products to their customers
CE China
Website: www.b2b.ifa-berlin.com/en/
Exhibitors/ApplicationCEChina2016
Industrial Automation 2016

April 25-29, 2016
Hannover, Germany
Manufacturers present solutions for

manufacturing and process automation,
robotics, image processing, efficient drive
technology and more
Industrial Automation 2016

Website: www.hannovermesse.de/en/
exhibition/trade-fair-line-up/industrialautomation/
Internet of Things Applications Addresses the opportunity for the Internet of

Europe
Things (IoT)
April 27-28, 2016
Berlin, Germany
IDTechEx
Website: www.idtechex.com
Del Mar Electronics &

Design Show
May 4-5, 2016
San Diego, California, USA
Covers electronic components, fabrication,

design and other aspects of electronics
manufacturing
Del Mar Trade Shows Inc.

Website: www.mfgshow.com
CES Asia 2016

May 11-13, 2016
Shanghai New International
Exhibition Centre, Shanghai,
China
Premier event for the Asian consumer

technology market for global brands and
budding start-ups, alike
CES Asia
Website: www.CESAsia.com
CommunicAsia2016
May 31-June 3, 2016
Marina Bay Sands, Singapore
International communications and information

technology exhibition and conference
CommunicAsia2016
Website: www.communicasia.com
CWST-Expo2015
June 9-11, 2016
Bombay Exhibition Centre,
Mumbai
Presentation platform for coil winding,

insulation, stamping, transformer
manufacturers, coil winding machines and
allied industry
Brandscope Exhibitions
Phone: +91- 9699807207, 9899107207
Website: www.cwstexpo.com
8th Future of Wireless

International Conference
June 21-22, 2016
London, UK
A leading conference for discovering the latest Cambridge Wireless

in cutting-edge wireless technology
Website: www.cambridgewireless.co.uk/
futureofwireless
NIWeek
August 1-4, 2016
Austin Texas, USA
Annual global conference for graphical system National Instruments

design organised by National Instruments
Website: www.ni.com/niweek
IFA Berlin
September 2-7, 2016
Berlin, Germany
Leading trade show for consumer electronics

and home appliances
IFA Berlin
Website: www.b2b.ifa-berlin.com/en/IFA/
AboutIFA
Look up under Events section in www.electronicsforu.com for a comprehensive list

Since this information is subject to change, all those interested are advised
to ascertain the details from the organisers before making any commitment.
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UP gives VAT exemption

for LED bulbs
Uttar Pradesh government has instructed the concerned departments
to roll out VAT exemption on LED
bulbs across the state in a bid to minimise power consumption.
The state government is also
distributing LED bulbs free of cost,
through special camps, to people
across the state. Uttar Pradesh has
been promoting the use of LED bulbs
and solar energy in order to reduce
pressure on conventional power
sources. The state faces acute power
supply shortage every summer, and
purchases power from power-surplus
states, taxing the limited financial
resources of the state.
LED street-lighting made

mandatory in Delhi
Delhi power minister Satyendra Jain
has announced that LED street-lighting
has been made mandatory in the city,
and this is being implemented. He said
that tax reduction is not the solution
for bringing down prices of LED bulbs.
Customers will move towards
higher LED adoption through incentives, and manufacturers should try
and bring in economies of scale in
production. The government is already creating a market for it and will
implement stringent quality standards
to boost adoption. The main purpose
is to ensure a reduction in energy
wastage, he added.
Emphasising the issue of sustainability and energy consumption, Jain
said that, around 60GW of electricity
is being used in the capital for lighting alone, and pushed for efforts to
reduce it by half.
Government approves
electronics cluster in Raipur
The government has approved the fifth
greenfield electronics manufacturing
cluster (EMC), to be set up in Raipur
at an investment of ` 890 million, for
making mobile phones, solar LEDs
and consumer electronics products.
The government plans to set up 200
85
Snippets
Government asks airports to set up
solar energy units
The civil aviation ministry has asked
Airports Authority of India to make at least
four airports energy-neutral by February
2017. As of now, Kochi airport is the only
airport in the country that has installed
solar panels to generate 12MW of power
to meet its energy needs.
Usha Shriram forays into mobile

The consumer durable brand, Usha, with
a pan-India presence has announced its
plan to venture into the fast-growing mobile
handsets market with an exclusive range
of GSM, CDMA feature and smartphones.
Micromax revenues cross ` 100 billion

Indias domestic handset maker,
Micromax, crossed ` 100 billion in annual
revenues during 2014-15. The companys
sales grew by a whopping 47 per cent in
2014-15 to ` 104.5 billion.
IISc bags US military contract

Bengaluru based Indian Institute of
Science (IISc) has bagged a US military
contract for research and development on
solar powered micro-grids. The contract,
worth US$ 52,900, has been awarded by
US Pacific Air Force to develop a solar
powered micro-grid with battery and a
super-capacitor energy storage system.
Telit acquires wireless

communications assets
Telit, a global enabler of the Internet of
EMCs across the country under National Policy on Electronics 2012. The
governments Department of Electronics and IT (DeitY) has already given
in-principle approvals to 17 greenfield
EMCs. It has approved four EMCs that
include two in Madhya Pradesh, one
each in Rajasthan and Jharkhand.
Under the EMC scheme, the Centre provides an aid capped at 50 per
cent of the project cost subject to a
ceiling of ` 500 milion for every 100
acres of land. For larger areas, prorata ceiling applies.
India to capture ten per cent

of medical tech market
There are about 40 innovative medical devices and diagnostics launched
86
Make in india
Things, has agreed to acquire Bluetooth,
Bluetooth Low Energy and Near Field
Communication assets in hardware and
software from Stollmann Entwicklungs und
VertriebsGmbh in Hamburg, Germany.
Stollmann is a global player in the
Bluetooth and NFC business, designing,
developing and manufacturing cuttingedge, low-power Bluetooth modules and
highly-sophisticated software solutions for
short-range wireless communications.
Surya Roshni, Snapdeal to sell

LED bulbs
Domestic lighting company Surya Roshni
has entered into a strategic alliance with
e-commerce company Snapdeal in a bid
to increase its market share of LED bulbs
business. This tie-up initiates a disruptive
trend in energy conservation by making
LED bulbs affordable and within the reach
of millions of people in tier II and III cities.
DevCon India 2016 announces

winners of GR-Kaede
Winners for the Renesas GR-Kaede
design contest, which was done in
partnership with EFY, were announced
at the event conducted in Bengaluru.
The three final designs are for Upasana
diagnsotic toolkit for Asha workers,
smart agriculture system and sign
language recognition using sensor
gloves. The event focused on embedded
technologies being showcased by various
firms as well as a two-day conference
that focused on embedded technologies
for system engineers.
by Department of Biotechnology that

are sold across the country. Minister of science and technology, Harsh
Vardhan, has said that some of these
innovative and affordable products
had received US FDA clearances, and
about 51 patents had been filed.
The minister added that India will
capture ten per cent of the estimated
US$ 600 million global market share of
medical technology by 2025.
Some products developed by the
department, in association with scientific institutions, industry and public
health organisations, include low-cost
catheters, scanning devices and bandages, diagnostic devices, orthopaedic
tools among others.
As an outcome, more than 100
innovators have been trained. Several

national and international patents
have been filed. About 30 prototypes
have been developed and nine startup companies have been established
by the fellows and interns of this
programme and 13 technologies have
been licensed.
Tech Mahindra bets on

digital technologies
Tech Mahindra, the fifth-largest Indialisted IT services firm, will be investing and focussing on its 22 platforms,
and placing big bets on automation,
the Internet of Things and artificial
intelligence. It will invest in start-ups,
seek external funding for some internal units and partner with technology
providers to expand its business.
According to CEO C.P. Gurnani,
Tech Mahindra will go from an IT
and engineering services company
to become a digital technologies
company.
Jagdish Mitra, head of strategy
and marketing, has also said that the
company is also building technologies in-house, such as platforms that
it intends to scale.
Last month, Tech Mahindra held
its Mission Innovation Festival in
Hyderabad, where it showcased
platforms like Prism, a predictive
analytics platform, Tactix, an artificial
intelligence and machine-learning
platform, and Uno, a robotics process
automation platform.
Chinas LeEco to set up

R&D centre in India
LeEco is planning to set up its R&D
centre in India with a team of 1000
people. The company, formerly known
as LeTV, had entered the Indian
market with its launch of smartcycle
and is now planning to get Le superphones. This is in conjunction with
smartdevices including 3D helmet,
LeMe Bluetooth headphones and
other LeEco ecosystem products that
include super TVs, electric cars and
music services.
Check efytimes.com for
more news, daily
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make in india
Market Survey:
Keeping An Eye On
IndIas surveIllance Industry
I
Sudeshna Das is
senior executive
editor at EFY
n addition to usual factors like general

economic growth, increased awareness,
legal requirements and affordability that
drive growth in the security and surveillance
industry, the increasing number of terrorist
attacks and criminal activities make surveillance systems almost imperative for residential, commercial and public infrastructure and
also for public transport in India.
There is a spurt in infrastructure development in the country. Security is a part of the
basic infrastructure for any modern economy.
Naturally, we see significant growth potential
for security solutions in India. says Ganesh
Jivani, managing director, Matrix Comsec.
Advantages of surveillance systems over
physical security such as the ability to allow
remote monitoring and continuous monitoring
have resulted in their wide deployment across
the country. According to a report published
by 6Wresearch India, a business research
organisation, video surveillance market in
India is expected to reach US$ 952.94 million
by 2016, with a CAGR of 32.49 per cent. It is
expected to top US$ 2.4 billion by 2021.
Currently, though analogue based surveillance systems account for the majority of the share of nearly 68 per cent in
the overall market, IP based surveillance
systems are expected to grow with a relatively higher CAGR of 41.78 per cent in the
coming years.
As per a spokesperson from 6Wresearch,
electronics division, Declining prices, terrorist strikes, government initiatives, rising
public infrastructure, increasing government
security spending and growing awareness
have fuelled the adoption of IP surveillance
systems in India. Further, the surging need
for video analytics and remote monitoring have also led to rising penetration of IP
surveillance systems in the country.
Market drivers
The commercial sector is estimated to
have been the largest end-user sector that
includes hotels, restaurants and offices. It
is followed by banking and finance, retail,
manufacturing and industrial and government sectors. The fast-growing end-user
Video analytics intelligently

detect suspicous
movements using CCTV
surveillance
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87
make in india
New amended PMA policy: 100 per cent preference to
Made in India products for procurement of CCTV cameras
(video) and sensor based alarm systems by all government
departmentsA brief: Preferential market access
1. The government of India has laid down a policy for preference to domesticallymanufactured electronic products in government procurement for its own use and not
with a view to commercial resale or with a view to use in the production of goods for
commercial sale.
2. The policy is applicable to all ministries/departments (except Ministry of Defence) and
their agencies.
3. Each ministry/department would specify sector-specific electronic products.
4. Each ministry/department would specify the percentage of procurement to be made
from domestically-manufactured electronic products, which shall not be less than 30
per cent of the total procurement value of that electronic product(s).
5. Each ministry/department would also specify the domestic value-addition requirement
that the electronic product should satisfy for the product to qualify as a domesticallymanufactured electronic product.
6. Policy for preference to domestically-manufactured telecom products in procurement due
to security considerations and in government procurement, notifying telecom products for
government procurement in furtherance of the policy dated October 5, 2012.
7. The Department of Telecommunications came up with a list of 23 domestic products
covered under the policy with their minimum PMA to domestically-manufactured
electronic products and their minimum domestic value addition.
8. Serial number 22 states security and surveillance communication systems (video and
sensor based)
9. SPGI wrote to governments Department of Telecommunications and Department of
Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) seeking clarification as to whether CCTV
camera (video) and alarm systems are part of serial number 22.
10. Government of India, Ministry of Communications and IT, Depar tment of
Telecommunications (Investment Promotion Cell) clarified as per Office Memorandum
No.- 18-14/2012- IP(Pt.) dated July 22, 2015, CCTV video cameras and sensor based
alarming systems can form part of security and surveillance communication and should
get covered under telecom equipment description listed at serial number 22 in the
Gazette Notification dated October 5, 2012.
11. PMA on serial number 22 mentions 100 per cent with value addition of 35 per cent in
the first year, increasing by five per cent in subsequent years.
As per this amendment, domestically-manufactured CCTV cameras and alarm systems have
to be provided 100 per cent preference in all government purchases.
sectors include city surveillance,

traffic monitoring, railways and
education, opines Sanjeev Sehgal,
chairman, Security Promotion Group
of India (SPGI), and managing director, Sparsh, while discussing the
growth drivers of this sector.
Integrated security solutions
incorporating both security products
and surveillance services have been
gaining importance over standalone
solutions. Customers look for more
business value in surveillance solutions by utilising these in varied applications beyond increasing security
and loss prevention. For example,
integration of business intelligence
software to a video surveillance system can be utilised to capture mar88
keting and point-of-sale data. This, in

turn, can help organisations realise
far more value from video surveillance systems. Also, integrated, cloud
based and mobile-operated security
solutions will be the major trends in
the surveillance business.
While discussing the applications
beyond security reasons, Jivani comments, When it comes to enterprises, usage of cameras or security and
surveillance products is not only for
the purpose of security but also for
productivity. When video surveillance is in place at offices, shops
or any other place, productivity of
the workers/employees tends to
increase automatically. Surveillance
helps in making places organised,
Demand generating areas
Commercial and residential

Banking and financial
Retail
Industrial
Government and transportation
be it offices, shops or streets.

The return on investment of
companies increase due to surveillance as productivity goes up. For
example, instead of manufacturing
100 units of a product per day, a
worker starts to make 105 units;
productivity goes up because of the
cost that a company had incurred
on surveillance.
Tectonic shift in the market

With technological advancements
and changing customer needs, analogue video surveillance has been
shifting to network video surveillance. The ever-reducing gap in the
acquisition cost of IP and analogue
segments has also been as a great
trigger point for the industry. Traditionally controlled by analogue based
surveillance systems, Indian market
is now shifting towards digitised, that
is, IP based surveillance systems.
These systems are finding their space
across industry verticals, namely,
government and transportation,
banking and financial, retail, commercial, industrial and residential.
The technological roadmap will
be driven by all-pervasive, online
and proactive solutions. Over the
next few years, the market for IP
surveillance is expected to increase
due to increasing IP infrastructure,
declining prices and demand for
remote access.
From the earlier analogue CCTV
technology, there has been a steady
technology shift to IP based (digital),
open source and fully-integrated
systems, with the option of remote
surveillance, background screening,
video analytics, digital video and
sensor based detection. The shift
of market focus to IP cameras from
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analogue cameras is addressed by

hybrid video recorders. The need for
multi-location monitoring is increasing due to which video management
software is in high demand.
According to Jivani, awareness regarding higher security and
other benefits provided by video
surveillance solutions is increasing
rapidly. He also says, Transition
from analogue cameras to IP video
surveillance is happening on a large
scale. Today IP cameras offer higher
resolution in terms of megapixels.
IP cameras with 2MP and 3MP are
becoming the general norm in the industry and 5MP IP cameras are also
used for special applications.
Further, these cameras also
simultaneously support multiple
streams with better security and
networking capabilities. In addition, new IP cameras also support
intelligent video analytics functions.
For analogue cameras, resolution in
terms of TV lines has improved from
600 TV lines to 700 TV lines and
even higher.
He also indicates that there has
been a significant development in
the IVA technology like face recognition, people counting, missing
objects and so on, which is further
enhancing security.
Sehgal points out that, Apart
from technology, there has been a
shift on the product side too, from
box to fixed-dome cameras and pantilt-zoom dome cameras. In continuous pursuance of clarity, standard
(medium) resolution has replaced
high-resolution cameras, and from
standard-dynamic-range to wide
dynamic-range cameras.
In the recording space, digital
video recorders are being replaced by
network video recorders and external
storage. HD CCTV video surveillance
equipment is the fastest-growing segment in the analogue space and the
next big promising segment.
Jivani focuses on innovation in
this segment. He indicates, On the
video surveillance side, the industry
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needs better compression technology. A certain amount of bandwidth

is required to transfer HD videos,
and this could be achieved only
when we have better compression
techniques. The area of innovation
could be video analytics, wherein,
without putting a lot of time-consuming efforts, a user can directly
jump to the part of the video he or
she actually wants to see. There is
no strong video analytic software
yet that could make this possible.
Market constraints
Business opportunity in security
and surveillance is huge, but till
now it has not been an attractive
investment segment because of high
market fragmentation, unstructured
trade and commoditisation of the
industry says Sehgal.
He emphasises, Companies and
traders are selling inferior-quality
products in the market, which is
affecting the growth of the market
and misguiding customers. The
government needs to set standards
for security devices that can be sold
and provide guidelines for import of
electronic security products in India.
Jivani supports this point as he
says, Most countries have their own
standards for security products and
people who install and maintain
these products. It is the governments job to create standards in
order to ensure a certain level of
quality in products and services. Unfortunately, our country has ignored
this aspect completely so far, leaving
everything to manufacturers, importers, traders and customers. This has
led to India becoming a dumping
ground for cheap and inferior imports. Now, it is encouraging to see
government talking about important
initiatives such as products and
skills standardisation and certification along with skill development.
Jivani emphasises, Most
countries insist on strict homologation programmes before they allow
importing products. Despite India
When it comes to
enterprises, usage of
cameras or security and
surveillance products is
not only for the purpose
of security but also for
productivity. When video
surveillance is in place at offices, shops
or any other place, productivity of the
workers/employees tends to increase
automatically.
Ganesh Jivani, managing director,
Matrix Comsec
being a very large market, we have

failed to establish strong standards
and homologation processes.
While discussing about implementation-related challenges, Jivani says,
When we talk about implementation in video surveillance, there are a
lot of bottlenecks like technological
infrastructure. IP video cameras work
on WAN, LAN or others. Most of the
time the bandwidth required by these
cameras is not available.
Another challenge of the video
surveillance market is the lack of
modes of multiple site monitoring,
limitations of storage and also the
cost involved in the same. Multi-site
management faces the challenge
of the lack of proper connectivity
modes, irrationally-high wiring costs
and the cost of implementing a video
management software for multiple
locations, he adds.
He also indicates the lack of indigenous R&D and adds, Indian industry
is dependent on external R&D and
technologies. Industry and government
should work together to correct this by
promoting indigenous R&D.
Jivani also mentions that while
India is one of the largest markets
in the world, there are not many
manufacturers in India. India has
become a virtual dumping ground for
imported products. Once again, this
situation is not sustainable and needs
immediate correction.
Both Jivani and Sehgal further
elaborate the market challenges as:
Fragmented market scenario.
Indian CCTV market is still majorly
89
make in india
Companies and traders
are selling inferior quality
products in the market,
which is affecting the
growth of the market and
misguiding customers.
Government needs to set
standards for security devices that can be
sold and provide guidelines for import of
electronic security products in India.
Sanjeev Sehgal, chairman, Security
Promotion Group of India (SPGI), and
managing director, Sparsh
unorganised with many traders

flooding the market with inferior
imported products.
Lack of awareness. Customers
need to be educated so that they can
buy the right product and technology for their security needs and get
the best return on their investment.
Today, security products are sold as
boxes without caring for the overall
benefits that customers expect.
Many customers mistakenly equate
products with solutions. Higher customer awareness and better responsibility on part of manufacturers
and their system integrators would
improve customer satisfaction.
Lack of uniform quality
standards. Currently, there are no
quality parameters defined to sell
CCTV products. In the absence of
any regulatory body governing the
standards, a lot of misspelling is
happening in the market.
Inflow of counterfeit products.
A strong initiative from the governments side is required to curb spurious practices and provide quality
and durable products in the market.
Moving towards Make in India

India consumes so many security
and surveillance products that there
is a growing need to manufacture
these products in India. Moreover,
the new amended PMA policy on
100 per cent preference to Made in
India products for procurement of
CCTV cameras (video) and sensor
based alarm systems by all government departments and projects like
90
STRENGTHS
Remote and continuous monitoring
systems
Advent of compact security devices
Integration of new technologies like
light detection and ranging (LiDAR)
technology and high-quality oblique
images
Versatility and customisation of
products at affordable rates
Increasing IP infrastructure
WEAKNESSES
Less number of sessions/workshops by
industries on the installation of the security
and surveillance equipment
Industrys reliability on small and quality
PCBs and availability of multi-layered and
other quality PCBs along with some discrete
components is a problem
Lack of awareness about the installation of
security equipment
Dearth of suppliers of quality components
required for security and surveillance products
SWOT
OPPORTUNITIES
Increase in the number of terrorist
attacks and criminal activities
Increasing number of hi-tech public
infrastructure
Growing awareness
Integrating mobile and cloud
services with surveillance devices
THREATS
Low import duty
Inflow of low-cost security and surveillance
products is high
Inflow of low quality products
Inferior quality products sold with incorrect
information
SWOT analysis of the surveillance industry
city surveillance, public transport

surveillance and police station
surveillance are expected to boost
domestic manufacturing further.
Though in the present scenario
there is clear gap between Make in
India campaign and the security and
surveillance industry.
The fundamental reason for
this can be attributed to the lack
of an ecosystem. India has a lot
of demand and customers, but to
manufacture such products a basic
ecosystem is required, which is
lacking at present. The government
is trying to address this issue of the
lack of an ecosystem through Make
in India campaign, but its effectiveness can only be ascertained after
a period of time. If the security and
surveillance, and telecom and IT industries start making in India, only
then the manufacturing ecosystem
in the country could take off.
I believe that heavy industries
like defence cannot contribute
hugely to this initiative as a lot
of parts will be imported or outsourced. Since it will be the assembly of products, value addition will
be negligible and knowledge sharing
cannot be taken to another level.

If Make in India has to be made
successful, a lot of focus should
be given to telecom, IT, consumer
electronics and video surveillance
industries. Small industries are the
key to develop the manufacturing
ecosystem in India, says Jivani.
According to Sehgal, It is very
encouraging to see the government
committed to domestic manufacturing. Make in India and such other
initiatives will create two-dimensional growth opportunities for the
security industry in India.
While discussing the effectiveness
of these initiatives, he suggests:
1. The government needs to have
well-defined policies for the industry pertaining to imports, quality
control, tax structure and preference to Indian manufacturers.
2. The government needs to be absolutely transparent in large-size
government tenders.
3. Since the major chunk of the
business comes from the government sector, both state and
central government departments
need to allocate and spend funds
to keep the industries going.
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NEW Products
MAKE IN INDIA
Components
UHD chip
Based on DLP CinemaR technology, the DLP 4K ultra-high-definition
(UHD) chipset combines fast
switching speed of the digital micromirror device with advanced
image processing. It is offered in a
single-chip projector architecture that
enables high-resolution and highbrightness solutions.
The DLP 4K UHD solution uses the
fast speed of the chip with advanced
image processing to deliver more than
eight million pixels to the screen with
just four million mirrors.
Texas Instruments Inc.
www.ti.com
AC-DC front-end modules

Vicor has announced an addition to
its new family of high-density PFM
AC-DC front-end modules in the rugged VIA package that offers superior
cooling performance and versatility
in converter mounting. Featuring a
universal AC input range (85V AC 264V AC), power factor correction
and a fully-isolated 24V DC or 48V
DC output, and delivering 400W of
isolated, regulated, DC output power
at efficiencies up to 93 per cent, these
new modules provide unprecedented
power density of 8W/cm3 (127W/in3)
and best-in-class performance in a
diminutive, 9mm thin VIA package.
Vicor Corp.
www.vicorpower.com
Chip capacitors
SMEC Electronics provides a range of
SMD parts including multi-layer chip
capacitors for use in consumer electronics, telecommunications, data processing, PCs and other applications.
92
All capacitors
meet or exceed
EIA 535 BAAC and
IECQ standards.
The chip capacitors can be used for
different temperature characteristics
having capacitance range of 0.5pF to
100F, voltage range from 4kV DC 5kV DC and operating temperature
range from -55C to +125C.
SMEC Electronics India Pvt Ltd
www.smec-inc.com
Constant-current driver IC
Key features of this product are:
Non-isolated buck topology
Active power factor correction, PF>0.9,
THD<10 per cent
Direct supply
technology (no
Vcc supply circuits)
Good line regulation and load
regulation
Cycle-by-cycle current limiting
Output short/open-circuit protection
Over-temperature protection
Silan Microelectronics
www.silan.com.cn
dhananjay.marawar@adsr.co.in
t&m
Pulse ox and heart rate
monitor module
MAX30102 is an integrated pulse oximetry and heart-rate monitor module.
It includes internal LEDs, photodetectors, optical elements and low-noise
electronics with ambient light rejection. It provides a complete system
solution to ease the design-in process
for mobile and wearable devices.
MAX30102 operates on a single
1.8V power supply and a separate

5.0V power supply for internal LEDs.
Communication is through a standard
I2C-compatible interface.
Maxim Integrated Products Inc.
www.maximintegrated.com
Digital multimeter-cuminsulation tester

FLIR IM75 is both an
advanced multifunction
digital multimeter and
handheld insulation
tester for installation,
troubleshooting and
maintenance professionals. It includes
several specialty
insulation modes including polarisation
index, dielectric absorption and Earth
bond resistance. Insulation tests can
be performed instantly, continuously
and over a timed duration for in-depth
assessment.
FLIR Systems India Pvt Ltd
www.flir.com
Spectrum analyser
R&S Spectrum Rider is the new handheld spectrum
analyser that has
a modern and
intuitive look
and feel. Having
state-of-art design
and implementing
latest design methodology, Spectrum Rider has better RF
performance coupled with comprehensive features and benefits to address the
needs of various market segments.
Rohde & Schwarz
www.rohde-schwarz.com
Waveguide mixer
Anritsu has announced the release of
its new high-performance waveguide
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New Products
mixer MA2806A (50GHz to 75GHz) to

expand millimeter-wave measurement
solutions supported by the companys
signal analyser MS2830A.
Connecting MA2806A to MS2830A
supports spectrum measurements in
50GHz to 75GHz band (V-band) currently used by various millimeter-wave
sensors, WiGig Gigabit Wireless LAN
(802.11ad), and broadcast video camera streaming equipment. MA2806A is
targeted at development and manufacturing of devices and antennae for
these types of equipment.
Anritsu India Pvt Ltd
www.anritsu.com
Airflow anemometer
MECO airflow anemometer (model
961P) is used to measure wind speed
and temperature. It acts as
an indicator that spins in the
wind and gives a direct measure of the speed of the wind.
It is mainly used in the HVAC
industry for measuring airflow
of air-conditioners.
Measuring range for the
air flow is 1~25m/s and
for temperature 0~50C.
The meter is equipped with
special functions such as m/
sec, ft/min, knots, km ph, MPH, CFM,
max./min./hold, and auto power off.
MECO Instruments Pvt Ltd
www.mecoinst.com
Transformer turn-ratio meter

Some features of the product are:
Fully-automatic measurement of
transformer turn ratio
Excitation current, HV and LV voltage, polarity and per cent deviation

measurement
36 vector group selection facility
3-phase connection enables simpler
and faster testing
0.1 per cent accurate measurement
by 24-bit technology
20 x 4 blue LCD to view all parameters on a single screen
Over-current protection
Inbuilt memory to store test data
Portable (tabletop and panel mount)
Veer Electronics
www.veerelectronics.com
LeDs
COB downlights
iLux Electricals has come up with COB
downlights that are made from components of Vossloh-Schwabe, Germany.
The downlights have CRI
>85, L90/B10,
3Step Macadam.
These are available in 11W, 15W, 18W and 22W.
iLux Electricals Pvt Ltd
info@iluxelectricals.com
LED lights
Philips Piano LED lights are
aesthetically inspired by the
instrument and its elegant
black-and-white colour
combination makes spaces
appear highly sophisticated.
The skillfully-designed pieces of the collection allow users to slide independent modules giving
them the freedom to personalise lights.
They can adjust the light bars and create patterns based on their choice.
Philips Lighting
www.lighting.philips.co.in
Internet of thIngs
Wireless user-authentication
technology platform
STMicroelectronics and ClevX, an intel-
94
lectual property innovator and technology developer for portable storage and
mobile device manufacturers, have
announced the worlds first DataLocksecured encrypted portable storage
media with Bluetooth Smart wireless
user authentication.
Users can interact with secure portable storage (full-disk, XTS-AES 256-bit
encryption) from their smartphones or
wearable devices where all data on the
drive is encrypted and can be locked/
unlocked using single- or multi-factor
authentication.
STMicroelectronics
www.st.com
Module
Microchip has announced RN2483 LoRa
module, which is the worlds first to
pass LoRa Alliances LoRaWAN certification program. The module was independently tested by Espotels accredited
test laboratory to meet the functional
requirements of the latest LoRaWAN 1.0
protocol specification, for operation in
868MHz licence-free band.
Microchip Technology Inc.
www.microchip.com
mIsCeLLaneous
Analogue timers
Shavison has launched 48mm x 48mm
panel-mounted timers in analogue
timer series. These are available in two
operating modes,
namely, on delay/interval and
cyclic on first or
off first, whereas
on delay/interval
timers are available in four different supply voltage
and time ranges, that is, on delay/interval (60 minutes, 230V AC), on delay/
interval (60 minutes and 230V AC/110V
AC/24V AC/24V DC), on delay/interval
(30 hours, 230V AC), on delay/interval
(30 hours, universal supply voltage).
Shavison Electronics Pvt Ltd
www.shavison.com
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
Do-it-yourself
N
KA IDHI
TH
UR
IA
Making arduino ShieldS

Using Fritzing
MADHURAM MISHRA
e are all familiar with

Arduino shields available
in the market. These allow
us to increase the functions and capabilities of Arduino boards. Without
these it is difficult to connect the
circuit to an Arduino board.
Generally, we use jumper wires
for connecting an Arduino board to
a circuit assembled on a breadboard.
Management of cable connections
and troubleshooting becomes very
difficult while using jumper wires.
Most people find it difficult to design an Arduino shield using conventional or professional printed circuit
board (PCB) designing software since
these require typical measurements
of Arduino for matching connector
locations. Fig. 1 shows the interfacing of a circuit assembled on a breadboard to an Arduino Board.
We can easily make Arduino
shields using Fritzing software. It
is easy to use as compared to other
software because here we do not
have to provide any dimension details or alignment for proper placement of the connectors that are used
to connect the shield with Arduino.
Fritzing is an open source software initiative that supports designers and artists who are ready to
move from physical prototyping to
the actual product. It was developed
at University of Applied Sciences of
Potsdam, Germany. The software
allows designers, artists, researchers or hobbyists to document their
Arduino based prototypes and create
PCB layouts for manufacturing. The
associated website helps users share
and discuss drafts and experiences as
well as reduce manufacturing costs.
Fritzing can be seen as an electronic design automation (EDA) tool
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simply making the schematic, which

can be further adjusted in Arduino
shield form. There are many routing
options available in the software. In
this article, we explain the making
of an Arduino shield using Fritzing
version 0.91 for Arduino UNO R3 for
a single-sided PCB.
Steps for making an Arduino shield using Fritzing are:
1. Download Fritzing. The
downloaded file can be used
directly; you need not install it.
2. Go to Breadboard as
shown in Fig. 2. Draw a proper
connection diagram of the
desired circuit using the component library in the software.
Cross-check the connections in
the software.
Fig. 1: Assembled circuit on a breadboard interfaced with
3. Go to Schematic and
Arduino board
check if the connections are
done in Breadboard. We can
directly design a circuit in ScheFig. 2: Fritzing Breadboard section
matic. For those who are new to
for non-engineers. It has a codeview option, where one can modify
code and upload it directly to an
Arduino device.
There is a huge library in Fritzing to help us make shields for
different Arduino and Raspberry Pi
boards. We can get the artwork by
Fig. 3: Schematic diagram made using Fritzing

95
Do-it-yourself
Fig. 4: PCB section of the software
Fig. 5: Arduino shield single-side PCB
Fig. 6: Choose Export for PCB option after

proper routing
Fig. 7: Berg strip soldering on track side of the

PCB
designing of schematics, the option

of Breadboard is recommended. The
schematic made using Fritzing is
shown in Fig. 3.
4. Go to PCB section of Fritzing
as shown in Fig. 4. Select the type
of PCB you need to make. Various
options are available like Auto Routing and Layers Selection.
5. Select the settings for Copper
Layer as per requirement. Route connections manually as per the circuit
and the requirement. Fig. 5 shows
Arduino shield PCB

after routing. The
settings are different for double- and
single-side PCBs.
6. After preparing the PCB and
proper routing of the circuit, click
Export for PCB as shown in Fig. 6
and save the files in PDF format in
the destination folder.
7. Check the design rules by clicking Routing under PCB section.
8. If copper fill is required, it can
be applied to the PCB using the relevant option under Routing options.
9. Place the berg strips/headers
used for connecting the shield to Arduino UNO board on the same side for
soldering on a single-side PCB. Careful
soldering is required for this purpose.
Since the berg strip header and routing
tracks are on the same side, remove
the plastic sheath from the berg strip
before soldering. Place the sheath
back after soldering. A long header of
25mm is recommended. Placement of
the same is shown in Fig. 7.
10. Specify the type of file in
which you are exporting the circuit
diagram PCB artwork. If you export
in PDF format, specify the folder
where you want to save the exported
file. A number of files will be saved
in the target folder in PDF format
for bottom-layer copper, top-layer
copper, mask top, mask bottom, silk
top, silk bottom and so on, and their
respective mirror image files will be
saved in another PDF file. We can
easily select the desired file for a
particular requirement.
11. Transfer the artwork on the
PCB, which is cut to the required
size. Proceed for etching and soldering of components.
Component images are distributed
under CC-BY-SA, which will also be
the licence for any generated breadboard views.
EFY Note
96
The relevant files of

this project are
included in this months
EFY DVD and are
also available for free
download at source.
efymag.com
Madhuram Mishra is a student

of ME digital communication at
NITTTR, Bhopal
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
Do-it-yourself
N
KA IDHI
TH
UR
IA
LossLess Image
CompressIon Using MATLAB
LALIT G. PATIL
ATLAB is a powerful tool

for analysing images and
signals for developing applications. One of the applications
of image compression with MATLAB
using a graphical user interface is
described in this article.
Cameras are nowadays being
provided
with more
and more
megapixels to
improve the
quality of captured images.
With improvement in image
quality, size of
the image file
also increases.
Fig. 1: Flowchart showing
the compression process
Due to
speed limitation of the Internet, it takes
more time to
upload goodquality images
that are of
bigger sizes. A
Fig. 2: Original image
sample 1
user needs to
compress the image without degrading its quality. Mobile manufacturers

need algorithms in their cameras
that enable storing the images in
reduced sizes without degrading
their quality.
There are two types of compression algorithms, namely, loss-less
and lossy-image compression. This
article proposes a technique to compress the captured image to reduce
its size while maintaining its quality.
A number of images were considered to check the veracity of the
proposed algorithm.
In this article, discrete cosine
transform algorithm is used, which
compresses the image with a good
compression ratio.
The flowchart of the process is
shown in Fig. 1.
The image
is read through
MATLAB to capture its pixels. After obtaining the
compressed image, peak-signalnoise ratio (PSNR)
Fig 4: Original image
sample 2
and mean-square
Lossless Image Compression using MATLAB
Lossless Image Compression using MATLAB
Select Image
Image To Be Compressed
Compress Image
Compressed Image
Select Image
Image To Be Compressed
Compress Image
Compressed Image
Original Image Size in kb
Compressed Image Size in kb
Original Image Size in kb
Compressed Image Size in kb
337.506
119.868
371.587
96.9473
Fig. 3: MATLAB implementation of image

sample 1
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Fig. 5: MATLAB implementation of image

sample 2
EFY Note
The complete MATLAB code of this
project, input images and figures are
included in this months EFY DVD
and are also available for free download at source.efymag.com
error (MSE) are calculated using the

following relationships:
MSE =
M,N(Image1(m,n) Image2(m,n))2
mxn
where m and n are the number of

rows and columns. Image1 and
Image2 are the original and compressed images, respectively.
After compression, there should
not be much change in the quality
of the image. MSE indicates an error between the original image and
compressed image. It should be as
small as possible.
PSNR = 10 log10
( )
R2
MSE
where R is the maximum fluctuation in the input image data type

(maximum possible pixel value of
image). PSNR is related to MSE and
it gives the amount of noise in a
compressed image. PSNR should be
as high as possible.
All equations are implemented in
MATLAB in the form of functions.
Some images and their associated MATLAB graphical interfaces
are shown in Figs 2 to 5.
Lalit G. Patil is a lecturer
in Department of Electrical
Engineering, M.S. University
of Baroda, Gujarat. His areas
of research include signal
processing, image processing
and control systems
97
Do-it-yourself
P
DEE
SAN KASH
PRA
RGB Colour GENERATOR

PAMARTHI KANAKARAJA
resented here is a red, green

and blue (RGB) colour
generator using AT89C2051
microcontroller (MCU). This is a
simple and low-cost circuit for a

multiple colour generator that can
be built easily with a few additional
components. The main objective of
the project is to generate multiple
colours from RGB primary colours as
used in television displays, computer
monitors and other colour displays
for commercial applications like LED
projectors. The concept of primary
colour mixing is shown in Fig. 1.
Additive mixing of red and
green lights produces shades of
yellow, orange or brown. Mixing
green and blue produces shades of
cyan, whereas mixing red and blue
produces shades of purple including
magenta. Mixing nominally equal
Fig. 1: Concept of primary colour mixing
TP1
IC1
7805
C1
10u,16V
LED1
BATT.1
9V
R1
330E
TP0
proportions of the three primaries

results in shades of grey or white;
colour space that is generated is
called an RGB colour space.
Circuit and working

The circuit diagram for the multiple
colour generator is shown in Fig.
2. The circuit requires a 9V battery,
7805 voltage regulator (IC1), Atmel
AT89C2051 MCU (IC2) and a few
other components. The 20-pin MCU
performs the operation of multiple
colour generation from RGB primary
colours on pressing switches S1
through S4. In this project, we have
used the concept of pulse width
modulation (PWM) to change the
colours of the RGB LED.
Initially, the circuit is powered by
a +9V supply, which is connected
to IC1 to maintain a constant +5V
at its output. This constant output
is fed to the MCU circuit. Port3 of
R2
8.2K
Test Points
Test point
R3
100E
1
2
RGB1
P3.1 (TXD)
P1.6
18
P3.2 (INT0)
P1.5
17
P3.3 (INT1)
P1.4
16
P1.3
15
S4
P1.2
14
S3
P3.7
P1.1
13
S2
XTAL2
P1.0
12
S1
11
4
5
P3.0 (RXD)
P3.4
IC2
AT89C2051
P3.5
XTAL1
GND
XTAL1
11.0592MHz
GND
Fig. 2: Circuit of the RGB colour generator
98
20
19
C2
33p
Vcc
P1.7
C3
33p
RST
C4
0.1u
R4 R5 R6 R7
R4 R7 = 1K
TP0
0V GND
TP1
+5V
PARTS LIST
S1 = YELLOW
S2 = MAGENTA
S3 = CYAN
S4 = MULTIPLE
10
Details
Semiconductors:
IC1
- 7805, 5V voltage regulator
IC2
- AT89C2051 MCU with a
proper base
LED1
- 5mm LED
- 5mm RGB LED
RGB1
Resistors (all 1/4-watt, 5% carbon):
R1
- 330-ohm
R2
- 8.2-kilo-ohm
R3
- 100-ohm
R4-R7
- 1-kilo-ohm
Capacitors:
C1
- 10F, 16V electrolytic
C2, C3
- 33pF ceramic
C4
- 0.1F ceramic
Miscellaneous:
S1-S4
- Tactile switch
XTAL1
- 11.0592MHz crystal
oscillator
CON1
- 2-pin connector terminal
- 9V battery
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
Fig. 3: Actual-size PCB pattern of the RGB colour generator
is followed by green and

blue colours switching
on and off in a similar
manner and for the same
time periods.
Now, when we press
switch S1, we get yellow
colour (red+green), and
if we press switch S2, we
get magenta (red+blue).
If we press switch S3, we
get cyan (blue+green),
and if we press switch
S4, we get multiple
colours with the help of
PWM technique.
Software
The software is written
in embedded C language
and compiled using
Keilvision 4 version
compiler. It contains simple switch statements to
produce different colours
from primary colours.
We have used Topwin
6 software to burn the
hex code into the MCU
using a Universal Topwin
programmer board.
Fig. 4: Component layout of the PCB
IC2 is used to drive common-anode

RGB LED, with P3.0 connected to
red pin, P3.1 to green pin and P3.2
to blue pin of the RGB LED. Port1
is connected to the four tactile
switches S1 through S4 for producing multiple colours.
When the circuit is switched
on, red colour of the RGB LED
glows for a preprogrammed time
interval of three seconds. It then
switches off for three seconds. This
EFY Note
The source code of this

project is
included in this
months EFY DVD and
is also available for free
download at source.
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
efymag.com
Construction
and testing
An actual-size, single-side PCB of
the circuit is shown in Fig. 3 and
its component layout in Fig. 4. Assemble the circuit on the PCB as it
minimises time and assembly errors.
Carefully assemble the components
and double-check for any error(s).
Use a proper IC base for the MCU.
CON1 is a 2-pin connector used
to connect a 9V battery.
For troubleshooting, verify
the voltages listed in the test
points table.
Pamarthi Kanakaraja is associate
professor (R&D cell) at Usha
Rama College of Engineering
and Technology, Telaprolu,
Andhra Pradesh. He has been
working in the field of embedded
designing and programming
concepts for the last six years
99
Do-it-yourself
S.C.
EDI
DWIV
infrared Motion-SenSing
Relay Switch
T.K. HAREENDRAN
his circuit is designed for use

with all kinds of mediumpower automobile/domestic
12V DC loads. It is a simple solidstate relay (SSR) switch, controlled
by a standard passive infrared (PIR)
motion sensor module. A PIR sensor
is an electronic device that can measure IR light radiating from objects
in its field-of-view.
Apparent motion is detected
when an IR source with one tem-
perature (such as a human being)

passes in front of an IR source with
another temperature (such as a
wall). The PIR sensor module, centred on a PIR sensor, has elements
made of crystalline material that
generates an electric charge when
exposed to IR radiation.
Changes in the amount of IR
striking the element change the
voltages generated, which are
measured by an onboard circuitry.
Fig. 1: PIR motion sensor module and its dome shaped cover (inset)
CON1
FOR
5V
R3
10K
D1
1N4007
G
D
D
Vcc
OUT
GND
CON2
FOR PIR
SENSOR
T1
BS170
R4
1K
G
R1
1K
C1
100u
25V
R2
10K
LED1
Fig. 2: PIR motion Sensing SSR Switch

CON3
FOR
12V IN
CON4
FOR
12V OUT
GND
100
T2
IRF9540
The module contains a special filter

called Fresnel lens, which focuses IR
signals onto the sensor element. As
ambient IR signals change rapidly,
onboard circuitry triggers the output
to indicate motion. Fig. 1 shows
the PIR motion sensor module. It is
usually hidden behind a translucent
dome shaped cover as shown in the
inset in Fig. 1.
Circuit and working
Circuit diagram of the PIR motionsensing SSR switch is shown in Fig.

2. It is built around a PIR motionsensor module (connected across
CON2), MOSFETs BS170 (T1) and
IRF9540 (T2), rectifier diode 1N4007
(D1) and a few other components.
The PIR sensor module has a
3-pin connection for Vcc, output
and ground, and provides a single
output that goes high when motion
is detected. It also has a 2-pin jumper selection for single or continuous
trigger output mode. The two positions are labelled H and L (Fig. 1).
When the jumper is at H position, output goes high whenever the
sensor is triggered and retriggered.
In position L,
PARTS LIST
output goes high
and low like
Semiconductors:
a monostable
D1
- 1N4007 rectifier diode
T1
- BS170 n-channel MOSFET
timer every time
- IRF9540 p-channel MOSFET
T2
the sensor is trigLED1
- 5mm LED
gered. RetriggerResistors (all 1/4-watt, 5% carbon):
R1, R4
- 1-kilo-ohm
ing pulse does
R2, R3
- 10-kilo-ohm
not affect the
Capacitor:
output duration.
C1
The circuit
Miscellaneous:
CON1, CON3,
presented here
CON4
is in repeatable
CON2
- 3-pin connector
trigger mode
- PIR motion sensor
and turns T2
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
Fig. 3: Actual-size PCB pattern of the PIR motionsensing SSR switch
When motion is detected,

PIR sensor output goes high
to about 3.3V. The high-level,
standard TTL output from the
sensor-module switches on
MOSFET T2 through T1, and
T2 is closed by this action. As
a result, the connected DC load
is powered through T2 for a
finite duration, determined by
the time-delay setting of the
PIR sensor module. Usually, the
PIR sensor module includes an
onboard time control preset pot
(Fig. 1), which is adjustable
from seconds to minutes. LED1
is the power-on indicator.
Construction and testing

Fig. 4: Component layout of PCB
on when sensor output goes high.

Output of the PIR sensor module is
connected to the base of T1 (BS170)
via resistor R1.
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
An actual-size, single-side PCB

for the PIR motion-sensing
SSR switch is shown in Fig. 3
and its component layout in Fig. 4.
Enclose the PCB in a small box so
that you can connect 12V IN and
12V OUT easily at the rear side of
the box. Install the PIR sensor at a

suitable place and connect it to the
PCB using a three-wire cable.
EFY notes.
1. During initial power-up, the
circuit automatically switches to
active mode for a while and then
shifts back to sleep mode.
2. p-channel power MOSFET IRF
9540 (in TO-220 package) is
preferred universally for all commercial/industrial applications
at power dissipation levels up to
approximately 50 watts.
3. According to the data sheet, the
PIR sensor requires an initial stabilisation time of 10 to 60 seconds in
order to function properly. During
this time, any motion in its fieldof-view (approx. 6 metres) should
be avoided.
T.K. Hareendran is an
electronics hobbyist,
freelance technical writer
and circuit designer
101
Do-it-yourself
.
S.C DI
IVE
W
D
PIN Diode Based

Fire SenSor
D. MOHAN KUMAR
ere is an ultra-sensitive fire

sensor that activates an
alarm when it detects fire.
Thermistor based fire alarms have
a drawback; the alarm turns on
only if the fire heats the thermistor in close vicinity. In this circuit,
a sensitive PIN diode is used as
a fire sensor for a longer-range
fire detection.
It detects visible light and
infrared (IR) in the range of 430nm
- 1100nm. So visible light and IR
from the fire can easily activate
the sensor to trigger the alarm. It
also detects sparks in the mains
wiring and, if these persist, it gives
a warning alarm.
It is an ideal protective device
for showrooms, lockers, record
rooms and so on. Authors prototype is shown in Fig. 1.
PIN diode BPW34 (Fig. 2) is
used in the circuit as light and IR
sensor. BPW34 is a 2-pin photodiode with anode (A) and cathode
(K). The anode end can easily be
identified from the top-view flat
surface of the photodiode. A small
solder point to which a thin wire
is connected is the anode and the
other one is the cathode terminal.
BPW34 is a tiny PIN photodiode or mini solar cell with radiant
sensitive surface that generates
350mV DC open-circuit voltage
when exposed to 900nm light. It
is sensitive to natural sunlight and
also to light from fire. So it is ideal
for use as a light sensor.
BPW34 photodiode can be used
in zero-bias as well as reverse-bias
states. Its resistance decreases
when light falls on it.
102
Fig. 1: Authors prototype
Circuit and working

Circuit diagram of the PIN diode
based fire sensor is shown in Fig.
3. It is built around 9V battery,
PIN diode BPW34 (D1), op-amp
CA3140 (IC1), counter CD4060
(IC2), transistors BC547 (T1 and
T2), a piezo buzzer (PZ1) and a few
other components.
In the circuit, PIN photodiode
BPW34 is connected to the inverting and non-inverting inputs of
op-amp IC1 in reverse-biased mode
to feed photo current into the input
of op-amp. CA3140 is a 4.5MHz BiMOs op-amp with MOSFET inputs
and bipolar output.
Gate-protected MOSFET (PMOS)
transistors in the input circuit
provide very high input impedance,
typically around 1.5T ohms. The
IC requires very low input current,
as low as 10pA, to change output
status to high or low.
In the circuit, IC1 is used as a
transimpedance amplifier to act as
a current-to-voltage converter. IC1
amplifies and converts the photo
current generated in the PIN diode
to the corresponding voltage in its
output. The non-inverting input is
PARTS LIST
Semiconductors:
IC1
- CA3140 op-amp
- CD4060 counter
IC2
T1, T2
- BC547 npn transistor
LED1-LED3
- 5mm LED
D1
- BPW34 PIN photodiode
R1, R5, R6
- 1-mega-ohm
R2, R3
- 1-kilo-ohm
R4, R7, R8
- 100-ohm
Capacitor:
C1
- 0.22F ceramic disk
Miscellaneous:
- 9V battery
BATT.1
PZ1
- Piezo buzzer
Fig. 2: BPW34 PIN photodiode
connected to the ground and anode

of photodiode, while the inverting
input gets photo current from the
PIN diode.
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
R3
1K
R5
1M
7
2
8
IC1
CA3140
16
V DD
12
RESET
LED1
R1
1M
D1
BPW34
3
Q4
R2
1K
T1
BC547
11
01
00
C1 0.22u
10
R6
1M
D1 = BPW34 PIN PHOTODIODE
IC2
CD4060
Q5
Q6
Q7
Q8
14
Q9
13
Q10
15
Q12
Q13
Q14
R8
100E
PZ1
PIEZO
BUZZER
LED3
BATT.1
9V DC
R7
100E
00
Vss
R4
100E
T2
BC547
LED2
GND
Fig. 3: Circuit diagram of the PIN diode based fire sensor
Fig. 4: PCB layout of the PIN diode fire alarm
Large-value feedback resistor R1

sets the gain of the transimpedance
amplifier since it is in inverting configuration. Connection of non-inverting input to ground provides low
impedance load for the photodiode,
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
which keeps the photodiode voltage low.

The photodiode
operates in the photovoltaic mode with no
external bias. Feedback
of the op-amp keeps the
photodiode current equal
to the feedback current
through R1. So the input
offset voltage due to the
photodiode is very low in
this self-biased photovoltaic mode. This permits
a large gain without any
large-output offset voltage. This configuration is
selected to get large gain
in low-light conditions.
Normally, in ambient
light condition, photocurrent from the PIN diode is
very low; it keeps output
of IC1 low. When the PIN
diode detects visible light
or IR from fire, its photo
current increases and
transimpedance amplifier IC1 converts this current to
corresponding output voltage. High
output from IC1 activates transistor
T1 and LED1 glows. This indicates
that the circuit has detected fire.
When T1 conducts, it takes reset pin
12 of IC2 to ground
potential and CD4060
starts oscillating.
IC2 is a binary
counter with ten
outputs that turn high
one by one when it
oscillates due to C1
and R6. Oscillation
of IC2 is indicated
by the blinking of
LED2. When output
Q6 (pin 4) of IC2
turns high after 15
seconds, T2 conducts
and activates piezo buzzer PZ1, and
LED3 also glows. The
alarm repeats again
after 15 seconds if
fire persists.
You can also turn on an AC
alarm that produces a loud sound by
replacing PZ1 with a relay circuitry
(not shown here). The AC alarm is
activated through contacts of the
relay used for this purpose.

An actual-size, single-side PCB for
the PIN diode based fire sensor is
shown in Fig. 4 and its component
layout in Fig. 5. Enclose the PCB in
a small box in such a way that you
can connect PIN diode BPW34 easily at the rear side of the box. Install
the PIN diode in a suitable place
and cover it such that normal light/
sunlight does not fall on it.
Testing the circuit is simple. Normally, when there is no fire flame
near the PIN diode, the piezo buzzer
does not sound. When a fire flame
is sensed by the PIN diode, piezo
buzzer sounds an alarm. Its detection range is around two metres. It
can also detect sparks in the mains
wiring due to short-circuit.
D. Mohan Kumar was

associate professor
at Government
College for Women,
Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala
103
Do-it-yourself
Fridge temperature
and humidity Indicator
PARTS LIST
Circuit and working
Semiconductors:
IC1, IC2
- ATmega328P MCU with
Arduino Uno bootloader
IC3
- 7805 voltage regulator
TX1
- 433MHz RF transmitter
module
RX1
- 433MHz RF receiver module
ZD1
- 5V zener diode
ZD2
- 3.3V zener diode
R1, R2, R5
- 10-kilo-ohm
- 330-ohm
R3
R4
- 100-ohm
- 10-kilo-ohm preset
VR1
Capacitors:
C1, C2, C9, C10 - 22pF ceramic disk
C3, C4
- 100nF ceramic disk
C5, C6, C11
C7
C8
Miscellaneous:
BATT.1, BATT.2 - 9V battery
ANT1, ANT2 - Spiral antenna
XTAL1, XTAL2 - 16MHz crystal oscillator
LCD1
- 162 character module
display
S1, S2
- Tactile switch
SENSOR1
- AM2302 digital temperature
and humidity sensor
CON1
- 4-pin connector for sensor
Circuit diagram of the transmitter

unit is shown in Fig. 2. It is built
around ATmega328P microcontroller (MCU) (IC1) with Arduino
Uno bootloader, AM2302 digital
temperature and humidity sensor
connected as SENSOR1 to CON1,
433MHz transmitter (TX1), 5V zener
ZD1, 3.3V zener ZD2 and a few
other components.
Low power consumption of the
transmitter is the essence for long
operating hours of the gadget. For
that, the conventional regulator
is replaced by 5V and 3.3V zener
diodes, with 330-ohm resistor R3
and 100-ohm resistor R4 in series to
reduce current consumption.
Circuit diagram of the receiver
unit is shown in Fig. 3. It is built
around another ATmega328P MCU
(IC2) with Arduino Uno bootloader,
voltage regulator
7805 (IC3), 16x2
TP1 R4
TP2
R3
LCD character
330E
100E
BATT1
module display
9V
(LCD1), 433MHz
CON1 FOR
ZD1
C3
C4 ZD2
AM2302
receiver (RX1)
5V
100u
100u 3.3V
SENSOR1
25V
25V
and a few other
components. The
20
receiver checks
7
Vcc
AVcc
21
1
ANT1
the code word
AVREF
PC6/RESET
28
2
R2 10K
PD0/RXD
PC5/SCL
sent by the trans27
3
S1
PD1/TXD
PC4/SDA
TX1
mitter unit and
26
4
PD2
PC3
25
IC1
5
C5 100n
displays temperaRF
TX
PC2
PD3
ATMEGA328P
24
PC1
XTAL1 6 PD4
ture and humidity
23
16MHz 9 PB6/XTAL1
PC0
4 3 2 1
on the LCD.
19
10
PB5/SCK
PB7/XTAL2
18
If the trans11
PD5
PB4/MISO
C1
C2
17
12
mitter
stalls or
PD6
PB3/MOSI
22p
22p
16
13
PB2
PD7
its
power
supply
15
14
PB1
PB0
gets
interrupted,
22
8
GND
AGND
there is no way
for the receiver
to know whether
the incoming
Fig. 2: Circuit diagram of the transmitter unit
ANT
Vcc
DATA
GND
R1
10K
GND
e can measure temperature and humidity inside

the fridge using a normal
temperature-humidity indicator but
relative humidity (RH) could be
inaccurate in that case. The moment
the fridge door is opened, RH will
shoot up due to ingress or egress of
moisture in the surroundings.
The small sniffer device, described in this article, picks up temperature and humidity from inside
the fridge and transmits on an RF
link to a nearby receiver unit. The
receiver unit checks the received
code, identifies the right sniffer
device and displays live temperature
and humidity. Authors prototype is
shown in Fig. 1.
SOMNATH BERA
DATA
VCC
AJIT
BISW
DAS
Fig. 1: Authors prototype
104
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
EFY Note
D2
14
13
12
11
10
9
D3
C11
100n
D1
D4
D0
9
7
D5
S2
10
EN R/W
XTAL2
16MHz
D6
11
12
RS
A/VEE
13
14
15
16
C10
22p
C9
22p
Fig. 3: Circuit diagram of the receiver unit
Fig. 4: Actual-size PCB pattern of the transmitter unit
Fig. 5: Component layout of the PCB shown in Fig. 4
signal is valid. To circumvent this

problem, a counter has been provided on the left side of the LCD
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
5 6 7 8
1 2 3 4
R5 10K
7
D7
VDD
VO
Vss
LCD1
16 X 2
RF RX
ANT2
C7
10u
16V
C8
470u
25V
GND
Vcc
BATT2
9V
ANT
GND
IC3
7805
VR1
10K
Vcc
DATA
DATA
GND
RX1
TP3
AVcc
Vcc
PC6/RESET
AVREF
PD0/RXD
PC5/SCL
PD1/TXD
PC4/SDA
PD2
PD3
PD4
PC3
IC2
ATMEGA328P
PB6/XTAL1
PB7/XTAL2
The source code of this

project is
included in this
months EFY DVD and
is also available for free
download at source.
efymag.com
PC2
PC1
PC0
PB5/SCK
PD5
PB4/MISO
PD6
PB3/MOSI
20
21
28
27
26
25
24
23
19
18
17
C6
100n
Software
The software includes Adafruit
library for DHT sensors, virtual
wire library for communicating
with 433MHz RF sensors and
liquid crystal library for the LCD
display. All libraries are included
in the software bundle in this
months DVD.
16
An actual-size, single-side PCB of

the transmitter unit is shown in
Fig. 4 and its component layout in
Fig. 5. An actual-size, single-side
PCB of the receiver unit is shown
in Fig. 6 and its
component layout
in Fig. 7.
Connect the
battery of the
transmitter and
then place the
transmitter at a
suitable location
inside the fridge.
Close the fridge
Fig. 6: Actual-size PCB pattern of the receiver unit
door and power
on the receiver
unit. Temperature
and RH will be
shown on the
LCD. Move the
receiver unit to
the farthest corner
of the house and,
in most likelihood,
you will still be
able to see the
temperature and
Fig. 7: Component layout of the PCB shown in Fig. 6
RH ticking.
display. If the counter does not
move, or stops, it means that
Somnath Bera is an avid user
of open source software.
the incoming signal has stalled.
Professionally, he is a thermal
Reset the system by pressing
power expert and works as
additional general manager
switch S2 momentarily to come
at NTPC Ltd
back to normal operation.
PD7
PB0
GND
PB2
PB1
AGND
15
22
105
Do-it-yourself
A
TIM
PRA ARI
M
KU
High-Impedance
Audio Buffer With Jfet
PETRE TZV PETROV
HP1,HP2=HEADPHONE
he buffer circuit described

here can be used to enS1
R9
C6
R8
CON2
ON/OFF
C4
R5
hance the AC input impedC3
10M
10K
10u
FOR
220u
33n
5.6K
25V
ance of audio amplifiers that are
25V
9V
GND
BATT.1
D
LED1
used with pickups in musical
CON1
POWER
instruments.
AUDIO IN
G
Some signal sources for preT1
JACK1 R1
C2
R6
HP1
PN4393
10K
0.1u
amplifiers, passive pickups for
560E
S
electric guitars or sensors based
C5
on capacitors require very highSJ1
47u
CON3
25V
DC BIAS
impedance of over 5-mega-ohm.
R7
This can be achieved easily with
HP2
560E
VR1
R2
junction field effect transistor
R3
R4
C1
10K
10M
3.9K
50p
3.9K
(JFET) but may require special
CON4
design of the printed circuit
board (PCB), appropriate construction techniques of the box, Fig. 1: Circuit diagram of the high-impedance audio buffer with JFET
proper cables and connectors.
pend mainly on R2 and will be around
This circuit provides a solution
PARTS LIST
for a high-impedance, low-cost, low- 10-mega-ohm.
Semiconductors:
Value of R2 can be increased
quiescent current, buffer-follower
T1
- PN4393, n-channel JFET
LED1
- 5mm LED
but it may be difficult to maintain
based on PN4393 JFET.
the high input resistance during the
R1, R9
- 10-kilo-ohm
Circuit and working
practical usage of the circuit. ResisR2, R8
- 10-mega-ohm
- 3.9-kilo-ohm
R3, R4
tor R1 and capacitor C1 are used for
The circuit of the high-impedance
R5
- 5.6-kilo-ohm
protection and filtering functions for
audio buffer with JFET is shown in
R6, R7
- 560-ohm
VR1
- 10-kilo-ohm potmeter
the input of the buffer, respectively.
Fig. 1. It has almost unity gain and
Capacitors:
C1 can be omitted but not R1. Values
relatively-low-output impedance.
- 50pF ceramic
C1
of R1 and C1 can be changed as per
The buffer can be used with any apC2
- 0.1F ceramic
C3
- 33nF ceramic
requirement. Capacitor C2 is used to
propriate JFET including J201, J202,
C4
remove DC input components.
J113, PN4391, PN4392, PN4393,
C5
Resistors R8 and R9 between gate
2N5457, 2N5458, 2N3819, BF245B,
C6
G and drain D of transistor T1 are not Miscellaneous:
MPF102 or similar. Although there
S1
- On/off switch
always needed. So resistor R8 is not
are some differences between
BATT.1
- 9V, 6F22 or PP3 battery
necessarily equal to R2. Also, R8 will
these JFETs, all of these can do the
CON1
- Audio jack connector
CON2-CON4 - 2-pin connector
reduce the input impedance. Use of
job depending on the input sigSJ1
- Shorting jumper
high-value resistors R2 and R8 may
nal range. However, care must be
HP1, HP2
- Headphone
increase input noise, so care must be
taken because some JFETs are not
taken while selecting their values.
pin-to-pin compatible.
Resistors R3 and R4 provide DC
Resistor R9 and capacitor C6 are
Audio input is applied to connecbias for the JFET. Resistor R4 is
for filtering noise from the power
tor CON1. Input impedance depends
connected to transistor T1 through
source. These can be omitted if the
mainly on the values of resistors R2
shorting jumper SJ1. Range of R3
and R8 and is around 5-mega-ohm. If power source is clean. But filtering
is from 1-kilo-ohm to 10-kilo-ohm.
capacitors C3 and C4 should not
resistors R8 and R9 and capacitor C6
Lower values will provide lower outbe omitted.
are omitted, input resistance will deput impedance but will increase the
106
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
Fig. 2: Actual-size PCB layout for the high-impedance audio buffer

with JFET
power consumption. Bias depends

on the input signal, parameters of
the JFET and power supply.
JFETs have wide tolerances,
which is the main issue during their
application. Fortunately, this is not
a problem here. If a single circuit is
required, choose an appropriate value
for R3 depending on the JFET. In that
case, SJ1 and R4 can be omitted. If
some other JFET devices are required,
connect R4 to source S of the JFET
through SJ1 without changing the
value of R3 to adjust the circuit to the
parameters of the JFET.
This buffer has two outputs
available at connectors CON3 and
CON4. The outputs can drive loads of
10-kilo-ohm or more, simultaneously.
Higher impedance loads are preferred.
The loads can be reduced to 2-kiloohm without overloading the circuit,
but amplitude of the signal will drop.
Usually, that is not a problem. The
circuit can drive two high-impedance
2-kilo-ohm headphones (HP1 and
HP2) connected to CON3 or CON4 (a
total load of 4-kilo-ohm).
Signal level on output CON3 is
not adjustable but signal level on
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
CON4 is, using potmeter VR1.

Choice of power
supply depends on
the peak-to-peak
amplitude from the
signal source. One
or two 9V batteries
of type 6F22 can be
used. These provide
9V or 18V of power
supply voltage, covering practically all passive pickups for the
musical instruments
and other highimpedance sensors.
Some JFETs allow
higher power supply.
A well-filtered DC
wall adaptor can also
be used.
Construction
and testing
An actual-size, single-side PCB for
the high-impedance audio buffer
with JFET is shown in Fig. 2 and its
component layout in Fig. 3.
This circuit may require appropriate selection of values of resistors R3 and R4 in order to optimise
the peak-to-peak amplitude of the
output signal. It is appropriate for
battery operation, which is important for portable applications.
The circuit can be mounted
in a small box near the pickup or
attached to the strap of the string
instrument. Due to its high input
impedance, input cable should be
shorter than one metre and shielded
or, at least, twisted. The gain is
lower than unity but that is not a
problem because most pickups provide strong signals.
Petre Tzv Petrov was a researcher

and assistant professor in
Technical University of Sofia
(Bulgaria) and expert-lecturer in
OFPPT (Casablanca), Kingdom of
Morocco. Now he is working as
an electronics engineer in the
private sector in Bulgaria
107
Do-it-yourself
.
S.C DI
IVE
DW
Plus-minus 5V suPPly
From 9V Battery
A. SAMIUDDHIN
p-amps require dualpolarity supply for proper

operation. When working
with battery supply, it becomes
TP1
IC1
78L05
TP2
C2
2.2u
16V
1
BATT.1
9V
C1
470u
25V
difficult to get dual power supply

for the op-amps. Presented here is
a simple circuit that provides 5V
from a 9V battery.
C3
10u
16V
3
4
V+ 8
NC
IC2 OSC
ICL7660
CAP+
LV 6
GND
Vout 5
CAP
TP0
C4
10u
16V
+5V
GND
5V
CON1
FOR
OUTPUT
TP3
GND
Circuit and working

The circuit diagram for the 5V
supply from a 9V battery is shown
in Fig. 1. It is built around 9V
battery (BATT.1), voltage regulator IC 78L05 (IC1), CMOS voltage
converter ICL7660 (IC2) and a few
other components.
Voltage regulator IC1 converts
9V battery input into regulated 5V.
This 5V output from IC1 is given
to pin 8 of IC2. IC2 and capacitors
C3 and C4 form the voltage inverter section that converts +5V
to -5V. Converted -5V supply is
available at pin 5 of IC2. Converted 5V supply is thus available at
connector CON1.
Fig. 1: Circuit diagram of 5V supply from 9V battery
Test Points
Test point
Details
TP0
0V (GND)
TP1
9V
TP2
+5V
TP3
-5V
Fig. 2: Actual-size PCB layout of 5V supply

from 9V battery
PARTS LIST
Semiconductors:
IC1
- 78L05 voltage regulator
IC2
- ICL7660 voltage converter
Capacitors:
C1
C2
C3, C4

- 2.2F, 16V electrolytic
Miscellaneous:
CON1
BATT.1

- 9V battery
An actual-size, single-side PCB

for5V supply from 9V battery is
shown in Fig. 2 and its component
layout in Fig. 3.
Assemble the circuit on the
PCB and enclose it in a waterproof box. Battery BATT.1 should
be enclosed in the box. Fix CON1
on the front or rear side of the
cabinet, so that you can use the
5V easily.
Before using the circuit, verify
the test points given in the table
to ensure proper working of
the circuit.
A. Samiuddhin is B.Tech
in electrical and electronics
engineering. He has been
an electronics hobbyist
since ninth standard
108
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
Price
` 49,000
FIRST Look
ESTYLE
Compiled by
nEhA chAudhAry
Zebronics unveils
tower speakers
With acoustics dispersion
using ZEB-spatial disperser
technology
Digital printer from 3idea

Big things come in small packages
XYZprintings new 3D printer, da Vinci Jr., is a simple
and easy-to-use 3D printer that requires no calibration
and also a new auto-loading filament system for an easy,
more convenient, 3D printing experience. It features
a fluid, press-and-release extruder, which makes for
an easy extruder replacement or cleaning experience.
Simply open up the 3D printer, press Release button and
the replacement or cleaning process can be done within
a few seconds.
It has a robust build size of 15cm x 15cm x 15cm (5.9
x 5.9 x 5.9-inch). Due to its new compact design, da Vinci
Jr. consumes only 75 watts of power. Its PLA filaments
are made up of non-toxic, biodegradable plastic that is
recyclable and safe for the environment. This eco-friendly
3D printer makes sure that nothing goes to waste.
Intex introduces new range of

washing machines
The latest tower speakers from Zebronics, Tyson, come with a combination of
front-loaded down-firing transmission
Price
line and spatial disperser technolo` 4500
gies. At 68cm, it breathes life into every
moviewhether you are watching a
gritty indie thriller or a lush period romance, the deep, clear bass adds a kick to
your flicks. It also reproduces music with
robust, enveloping sound, no matter what
you listen to or how loud you play it.
The product comes equipped with Bluetooth
technology and keeps the user entertained with music
and control playback feature wirelessly. Added to this,
it has a built-in FM and is compatible to most gadgets
with USB or SD/MMC card. The speaker comes with a
full-function remote control, which enables the user to
switch songs and radio stations with ease by just pressing the keys on the remote.
Washing machines for all

Intex Technologies has announced the launch of its
powerful and trendy washing machines, WMS76FT and
WMS76ST. The semi-automatic models come with SaltWater Technology. The
powerful technology helps
Price
` 10,750 balancing the spinning
(for WMS76FT)
basket, thereby significantly
reducing the noise produced
by washing machines due
to frequent usage. The
machines come with a saltwater pack injected into the
spinning basket.
Capacity of both
machines is 7.6kg with additional features like Smart
Power Saving, Unique
Impeller Design, Fastest
Woolen Spinning, Smooth Operating Safety Cover, Cover
Safety Switch, Wheel Castor, Water Balance SD Basket,
Collar Scrubber, Rust Free and Shock Free.
110
Power bank from STK Accessories

A rugged battery bank for travellers
The Neptune Power Bank is rugged
and tough, and you can carry it around
wherever you go. It offers maximum
value to users with its protective, polymer
coating, making it the perfect gizmo
for travellers. It is waterproof (IP67),
shock-resistant and dustproof. Extreme
hikers seldom have network reception in
isolated terrains, and this is where this
portable power bank comes in handy
owing to its amazing in-built features like
SOS beacon.
Other features that make this device travel worthy
are an infrared pointer and a torch at the top of the
device. Both can be useful in all SOS situations. The
smart-enabled, rugged portable power bank is powered
by a 5200mAh battery and can charge a phone twice
with a USB output of 5.0V 1.0A.
Price
` 3999
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
Price
`
9999
(on pre-order)
GizMo ByTes
ZenFone Max smartphone from ASUS
See the world with ultimate energy
ZenFone Maxs sleek frame secretes a monster batterya non-removable 5000mAh
cell custom-crafted from lithium-polymer to pack maximum energy into minimum
space. It also turns into a power bank, allowing you to draw on its incredibly longlasting battery to charge other devices. The battery boasts of 914 hours of standby
time and 37.63 hours of talktime.
The smartphone features Android 5.0 (Lollipop) operating system, Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 CPU, Adreno 306/405 GPU, 2GB LPDDR3 RAM, 16GB
eMMC flash (5GB free lifetime ASUS WebStorage) and expandable up to 64GB,
5MP front camera and 13MP rear camera, among other features.
Earbud from Zoook

Worlds smallest Bluetooth earbuds
From incredible acoustic detail and
clarity to breathtaking audio experience,
BULLET earbud is the new standard for
true wireless stereo-like audio. BULLET
capsule houses and charges the earbud
when not in use. Simply place the earbud in the capsule to charge automatically, so it is ready to go when you are.
The robust, minimal capsule is machined from a single block of aluminium
and is designed to fit as easily into your
lifestyle as your pocket.
The earbud is built with dedicated
amps-driving high-precision-balanced armature speakers. The result is an incredibly detailed sound, excellent mid and
high tones with a tight bass response, all
delivered with minimal distortion. This
combined with the most advanced wireless and battery technologies available
and a noise isolating design makes BULLET unique in wireless audio.
Price
` 1999
(on www. gadgets360.com)
Price
` 11,990
Helpchat app now features

Pollution Meter feature
Bengaluru based personal assistant app
Helpchat has launched Pollution Meter
feature, that lets users track the air quality
in their surroundings. The feature indexes
air quality into six colour-coded categories
ranging from Good to Severe. The app also
sends an alert to the user if the air quality
drops below a certain point.
Chat app for parents

and teachers
Bengaluru based Chander Prakash
Garg has developed Educhat, a chat
app designed especially for parents and
teachers. The platform makes a separate
closed chat group of each school, through
which teachers can communicate,
clear doubts and make last-minute
announcements. Currently, the app has
4000 schools, including Delhi Public
School, Don Bosco and St Xaviers, and
2.5 million parents on board.
Government launches app

for filing complaints
Humidifier from USHA

For clean health
USHAs humidifier HU 3403 offers eight adjustable humidity
levels with eight different musical melodies, demineralisation
cartridge to soften hard water,
memory function, wireless remote
function, three detachable nozzles, maximum humidity level of
400m/h-500 m/h and one LED
light for power, humidity mode
and warning indication. It provides
a wattage of 35 watts and comes
with a one year warranty.
The new mobile app launched by Public

Grievances and Pensions Ministry is meant
for Centralised Public Grievances Redress
& Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) portal
of Department of Administrative Reforms
and Public Grievances (DARPG). It will
not only permit filing of grievances, but
also allow people to track the status of the
redress of their grievances.
Tata Sky makes Everywhere

TV free for all
Tata Sky has decided to make its service
Everywhere TV accessible for free to all its
subscribers. In 2013, the DTH operator had
announced this service on Tata Sky mobile
appa feature that lets users stream 80+
live channels. They charged customers with
` 60 per month fee to access the service.
Tata Sky mobile app is available on several
platforms including Android, iOS, Windows
and Mac OS X. With Everywhere TV, users
could not only watch live TV channels, but
also have access to Videos on Demand and
catch up TV videos.
The prices, features and specifications are based on information provided to us, or as available on various websites and portals. EFY cannot vouch for their accuracy.
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
111
Buyers GUIDE
ESTYLE
Buying a 127cm flat-panel tV
P
Belal Khan
is a senior
correspondent
at EFY. He is an
alumnus of Indian
Institute of Mass
Communication
lanning to buy a 127cm (50-inch)

flat-panel TV? Look no further. In
this article we explain some important things a consumer needs to look for
while choosing such a high-end device.
The wide-display TV market is growing at a significant pace with the arrival
of new and better technologies like LED
and frequent launches of advanced and
improved products.
According to Indian Television Market
Outlook 2015, increasing income levels
of Indian consumers, easy availability of
financing options and growing awareness
about innovative technologies have been
the main driving factors for growth in
this segment.
Some are smart TVs that are available
across various operating systems; Samsung operates on Tizen, Sony on Android
and LG on Web-OS.
Online versus offline

Along with conventional electronic re-
tail outlets, online retail chains such as

Amazon, eBay, Homeshop18, Snapdeal and
Flipkart are mediums where consumers can
conveniently place orders through websites
or mobile based applications. These retail
channels have been dominating consumer
demands owing to the busier lifestyles of
people and the benefit of comfort provided
by these online sales portals.
However, according to our research,
even though people usually get comparatively lower prices while buying from online retail chains as compared to physical
stores, some prefer buying from reputable
consumer electronics stores for better customer service experience and satisfaction.
Described below are some tips that
must be kept in mind while buying a
127cm flat-panel TV.
LED, LCD or plasma

Confused between LCD, LED or plasma?
Let us try and explain the differences
between these.
SOME 127cm (50-inch) FLAT-PANEL TVs
Price
Sony BRAVIA
KDL-50W900B
LG 50LA6200
Panasonic VIERA
TH-50A410D
Philips
50PFL5059
Mitashi
MiDE050v01
Samsung
50J5100
Micromax
50B5000FHD
` 120,000
` 110,347
` 56,500
` 52,990
` 50,617
` 43,500
` 42,000
Full-HD smart TV,

1920 x 1080 pixels
Wi-Fi and Internet
One USB port
Three HDMI ports
Smart features like
apps
Web browser
Full-HD display,
1920 x 1080 pixels
No smart TV
No picture engine
Hyper-real engine
speakers
Two built-in
speakers
Full-HD display,
1920 x 1080 pixels
60Hz
Two USB ports
Two HDMI ports
Features Full-HD display,

1920 x 1080 pixels
worth
3D smart TV
looking
Wi-Fi and Internet
at
Three USB Ports
Four HDMI Ports
Smart features like
Web browser
Skype-compatible
Smartremote
Full-HD display,
1920 x 1080 pixels
Hz MCI
3D smart TV
Wi-Fi and Internet
Three USB ports
Three HDMI ports
Smart features like
games
Web browser
Gesture control
Full-HD display,
1920 x 1080 pixels
One USB port
Two HDMI ports
1130mm x 658mm
x 60mm
Full-HD display,
1920 x 1080 pixels
One USB port
Two HDMI ports
1127mm x 666mm
x 62mm
The prices mentioned here are from various e-commerce portals and are subject to change.
112
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LED TVs are, in fact, just LCD

TVs with LED backlights. Their entry has sent almost all LCD screens
out of the picture because these offer high picture quality, lower power
consumption and are extremely thin
as compared to LCDs or plasmas.
Morever, consumers these days are
getting more inclined towards LED
TVs, and this is primarily due to
the aggressive marketing initiatives
pushed by different global as well as
domestic brands.
A plasma screen offers premier
picture quality and is ideal for
movie enthusiasts and gamers who
look for great picture quality. However, it consumes a lot of power and
so manufacturers are now working
on getting this rectified.
Another drawback of plasma
screens is that these are made out
of glass. This normally causes glare
from reflected objects in the viewing
area. There are companies like Panasonic that use anti-glare filter material to take care of this problem.
LCD TVs are economical and
offer inferior picture quality as compared to LED and plasma screens.
If you are not worried about great
picture quality and are looking for
a pocket-friendly TV, you can go
for this.
However, if you are planning
to buy an LCD TV, please keep in
mind that LCDs are more or less
inefficient in terms of power use per
display size. This happens primarily
because the light that is produced
at the back of the screen is blocked
before it reaches the viewer.
3D technology
If you are planning to go for high
3D performance, you will need a 3D
Blu-ray player to watch 3D movies.
Moreover, you will also need 3D
glasses to view anything in 3D. Both
these things are rather expensive.
The future of 3D TV depends
on adoption of this product at a
mass level. New technologies that
are being incorporated in these
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televisions are WindowWalls (wallsize displays) and Visible Light

Communications.
Sound
Most 127cm TVs have poor sound
quality because it is impossible
to fit a high-quality sound system
into a lean and compact device. We
recommend buyers to get a surround-sound system for an overall
enhanced experience. The added
advantage will significantly decrease the gap between picture and
sound quality.
Internet connectivity
Almost all TVs now come with
Internet connectivity, whether it
is for steaming online content or
getting access to online applications. Most come with built-in Wi-Fi
adaptors and Ethernet ports for
wired connections.
Ports
Make sure there are at least three
or four HDMI ports. This is the
most common technique for viewing HD images from external devices. USB ports are useful as you
can view content from USB drives
on your TV.
Smart TVs
An increasing number of TV sets
come with built-in Wi-Fi for connecting Internet based services for
running videos or apps for watching special-interest programmes,
downloading on-demand movies,
playing games or even posting to
social media. Brands like LG and
Samsung use a handy bar of icons
at the bottom of the screen for this
feature, while Sony uses Google
Android TV platform for a better
consumer experience.
Smart TVs also offer customisable homescreens and provide
recommendations to viewers with
regards to what programmes they
should watch based on their personal tastes.
113
do-it-yourself
ESTYLE
Ten Things You Can Do

With Your Old Android Device
EFY BUREAU
esearch says that, average

smartphone users upgrade
their smartphones once in
every two years. Each time they
upgrade a smartphone, the big
question of what to do with the old
device pops up. There are a number
of creative ways they can utilise
their old smartphones to improve
their day-to-day life. If you too have
upgraded yours recently and are
wondering what to with it, read on
to find out ten things you can do
with your old Android smartphone.
Gaming console. It is very easy
to pair an old Android device with
the television via Google Chromecast and an HDMI cable. You can
download a selection of emulators
for your classic gaming consoles.
There are apps from Super Nintendo to Sega Genesis available for
Android. You can pair a Bluetooth
gaming console with your Android
device and you are good to go.
PlayStation remote controller works
really well with Android devices.
Gym device. Your old Android
device can be an ideal gym tool. You
can format it, remove unnecessary
apps and data. This avoids unnecessary distractions in the gym. You can
use your device as an MP3 player
while you sweat it out. You can pair
it with a cheap fitness tracker or
smartwatch for extra functionality.
Desktop computer. Yes, you can
install your old Android device as a
desktop computer. Even the oldest
smartphone is more powerful than
old desktop computers. You can install Debian or any version of Linux
114
operating system on your device and

connect it to a monitor. Then, sync
it with a Bluetooth keyboard and
mouse, and you are good to go.
Car GPS and music player.
There is no doubt that you can use
old Android device as a GPS navigation unit with your car. There are
a number of great navigation apps
available for Android (Google Maps,
CityMapper, Waze and others). This
gives you the option of using the old
Android device as a dedicated GPS
unit in your car. You can plug it in
using an auxilliary cable and double
up the usage as a dedicated stereo/
MP3 player.
Wi-Fi extender. If you have
weak Wi-Fi signals in your house
or office, you can extend the signal
range using your old Android device.
You would need to install apps like
fqrouter2. The app will pick up signals and repeat it. However, the app
requires a rooted Android device.
Digital photo frame. To turn

your smartphone into a digital
photo frame, just install an app like
Dayframe, load a selection of your
favourite photos, sit it in an upright
dock and let it roll. This is a sureshot way to impress the guests and
keep the memories alive at all times.
Baby monitor. You do not need
to spend huge amounts of money
so you can keep an eye on your
precious little one. Apps like Dormi
and the simply-named Baby Monitor
transform an old smartphone into a
baby monitor, while streaming videos and audio to your current device.
Security camera. Take advantage
of your devices camera by turning it
into a Wi-Fi-enabled security camera
to protect your home. Apps exist
that are motion-sensitive and will
email you with photos.
Alarm clock. Who uses an
analogue clock these days? Take
your pick from the thousands of
clock apps in Google Play Store, buy
yourself a cheap smartphone dock
and you have got an infinitely customisable alarm clock to sit beside
your bed.
Video chat terminal. Set up your
old Android device with apps like
Google Hangouts and Skype and use
it as a futuristic terminal for face-toface communications. Think of it as
an extra extension for your office or
living room.
Apart from these, there are
many other ways you can make use
of your old Android device. So get
your device out and start tinkering
with it.
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
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115
product categories index

Products
Page No.
Automation & Robotics
Products
Page No.
Products
Components (Including Active & Passive)
Optics & Optoelectronics
Page No.
Products
Page No.
RK Enterprises ................................................ 129
Allegro Micro ...................................................... 49
Alcon Electronics Private Ltd. .............................. 9
Binay Opto Electronics Pvt Ltd ..................... 16, 17
Eita Technologies ............................................ 128
Cirkit Electro Components P Ltd ...................... 125
Buljin Elemec Pvt Ltd ....................................... 127
Microchip Technology Hong Kong Ltd. .............. 47
Digi-Key Electronics ............................................ 3
ST Microelectronics Marketing Pvt. Ltd ............. 43
Element14 India Pvt Ltd. ..................................... 1
PCBs, Assemblies & Sub Assemblies
Advance Tech Services Pvt Ltd .......................... 21
Techno Power .................................................. 129
LWI Electronics Inc. ........................................... 23
Circuit Systems India Ltd ................................. 101
Anritsu India Pvt Ltd .......................................... 25
Toradex Systems (India) Private Limited ............11
Mouser Electronics (India) Private
Sahasra Electronics Pvt Ltd .............................115
Crown Electronic Systems................................ 127
Toshiba India Pvt. Ltd ......................................... 63
Indicators & Monitors)
Limited .............................................................. 7
Cyronics Instruments Pvt Ltd.............................. 36
Murata Electronics India Pvt Ltd ........................ 33
Plugs, Sockets & Connectors
Batteries & Power Supplies
Perfect Radios ................................................. 127
Anand Enterprises ........................................... 128
Arham Electronics & Electricals
Renesas Electronics India Pvt. Ltd. .................... 31
(Nimra Products) .......................................... 127
S.M Semiconductors ........................................ 129
BB Battery India Co. Pvt Ltd .............................. 61
SMD Electro Components ................................ 125
Brite Systems .................................................. 127
Stead Electronics (India) Pvt Ltd .......................118
Digital Promoters (I) Pvt Ltd ............................. 127

Elektro Power Systems ................................... 129
Display Systems
Exide Industries Ltd ............................................ 45
Micromax Instruments ..................................... 127
Good Will Instrument Co. Ltd .......................... 132

Kandhari Photo Electronics P Ltd .................... 128
Educational Training Kits
Keshav Electronics .......................................... 123
Advance Technologies ..................................... 127
Minmax Technology Co. Ltd .............................. 35
Ifabex Technologies ......................................... 128
Mornsun Guangzhou Science & Technology
ISOFT ...............................................................118
Co. Ltd. ........................................................... 91
Test & Measurement Equipment (Including
Auro Controls ..................................................... 59

Jai Mata Electronics ........................................ 128
Punith Electronics .............................................116
Dinteck ............................................................. 128

FLIR Systems ............................................ 71, 121
Keysight Technologies India Pvt Ltd ................. 2, 5
Meco Meters Pvt Ltd .............................. 51, 53, 55
Minoo Impex .................................................... 121
Reseller and Distributors
NANJING GLARUN ATTEN Technology
Digi-Key Electronics ............................................ 3
Co. Ltd ............................................................. 93
Element14 India Pvt Ltd ....................................... 1
NI Systems (India) Pvt Ltd ................................ 133
LWI Electronics Inc. ........................................... 23
Rishabh Instruments Pvt Ltd .............................. 99
Mouser Electronics (India) Private Limited ........... 7
Rohde & Schwarz .............................................. 29
Safety & Security Products
SIGLENT Technologies Co. Ltd ........................ 109
Schurter Electronics (I) Pvt Ltd .........................119
Tangent Test Technologies ................................ 57
Scientific Mes Technik Pvt Ltd ............................ 13
Tektronix India Pvt Ltd ...................................... 134

Sensors & Transducers
National Controlling & Equipments ................... 128
Industrial & Manufacturing Equipment
NECS Power Conditioners ............................... 125
Furukawa (Thailand) Co. Ltd .............................. 15
PSI Enterprises ................................................ 129
Inde Enterprises ................................................ 39
Services
Rajmane Telectric P Ltd ..................................... 59
Indium Corporation ............................................ 71
KMTS Engineering Pvt Ltd ............................... 128
Sakthi Accumulators Private Ltd ...................... 128
Indus Robotics & Automation Research
Raj Electronics ................................................. 129
Zeal Manufacturing Co. ................................... 120
PIC GmbH ......................................................... 41

Training and Certification Institutes
ERT Tech. Services .......................................... 128
Ifabex Technologies .......................................... 128
Shavison Electronics Pvt. Ltd. ..........................113
Pvt Ltd .......................................................... 120
Srishti Electronics ............................................ 128
Max Technology & Co. ....................................... 37
Solar Products
Sahasra Electronics Pvt Ltd .............................115
Raj Electronics ................................................. 129
GT Magnetics Pvt Ltd ........................................116
Systellar Innovations ........................................118
Jai Mata Electronics ........................................ 128
Cabinets, Enclosures & Accessories
Transformers
Shrey Plastic Moulders .................................... 129
Materials (Including Chemicals &
SPM Electronics And Systems ......................... 129
Consumables)
Switches & Relays
Wires & Cables
Universal Electronic Agencies ..........................116
Progressive Engineers ..................................... 123
Electronics Relays (India) Pvt Ltd .................... 123
Sagar Switch Gear ............................................117
EFY Magazine Attractions During 2016

MONTH
TECHNOLOGY FOCUS
MARKET SURVEYS
BUYERS GUIDE
FOR ELECTRONICS LABS
eSTYLE BUYERS GUIDE
January
Latest Technologies for Enabling

the Internet
Connectors and Terminals
Development Boards
Microwave Ovens Under ` 10,000
February
Drones
Security and Surveillance
Desktop Power Supplies
126cm (50-inch) Flat-Panel Televisions
March
Intuitive Gesture Control
Test and Measurement

Equipment
Noise Meters
Blood-Pressure Monitors
April
Latest Display Technologies
Solar Industry
Digital Multimeters
Wireless Printers for Homes
May
Solid-State Storage
3D Printers
3D Printers Under ` 100,000
Fitness Wristbands
June
Affordable Virtual Reality
The Internet of Things
Wi-Fi and Radio Frequency Modules
Earphones
July
Connected Homes and Appliances
Home Automation
Budget-Friendly Oscilloscopes
Wireless Routers for Homes
August
Self-Driving Cars
LED Lighting
LED Chips and Bulbs
Low-Priced Tablets
September
Solar Cells to Inverters: Whats New
Strategic Electronics
Soldering/Desoldering Stations
3G/4G Dongles
October
Sensors
Consumer Electronics
LCD and OLED Display Modules
Smart Televisions
November
The Internet of Things
Medical Electronics
Desktop PCB Manufacturing Equipment
Blood-Sugar Monitors
December
Materials: 3D Printing to Solar Panels
Materials and Chemicals
Motors and Drives
Low-Priced Laptops
130
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
advertisers index
Client name
Page No.
Advance Tech Services Pvt. Ltd. (www.advancetechonline.in) ..............21
Client name
Page No.
Client name
Page No.
GT Magnetics Pvt. Ltd. (www.gtmagnetic.com) .................................... 116
Progressive Engineers...........................................................................123
PSI Enterprises ......................................................................................129
Advance Technologies ...........................................................................127
IESA Vision Summit 2016 ........................................................................52
Alcon Electronics Private Ltd. (www.alconelectronics.com)......................9
Ifabex Technologies ...............................................................................128
Punith Electronics .................................................................................. 116
Allegro Micro (www.allegromicro.com) ....................................................49
Inde Enterprises (www.indeonline.in) ......................................................39
Raj Electronics .......................................................................................129
Anand Enterprises .................................................................................128
India Electronics Week 2017 ...................................................................19
Rajmane Telectric P Ltd (www.rajmaneteletric.com) ...............................59
Anritsu India Pvt Ltd .................................................................................25
Indium Corporation (www.paigegroup.com) ............................................71
Renesas Electronics India Pvt. Ltd. .........................................................31
Arham Electronics & Electricals (Nimra Products) ................................127
Indus Robotics & Automation Research Pvt. Ltd. ................................120
Rishabh Instruments Pvt Ltd....................................................................99
Auro Controls (www.aurocontrols.com) ...................................................59
ISOFT..................................................................................................... 118
RK Enterprises .......................................................................................129
BB Battery India Co. Pvt Ltd ....................................................................61
Jai Mata Electronics ...............................................................................128
Rohde & Schwarz (www.rohde-schwarz.co.in) .......................................29
Binay Opto Electronics Pvt Ltd (www.binayLED.com) ......................16, 17
Kandhari Photo Electronics P Ltd ..........................................................128
Brite Systems .........................................................................................127
Keshav Electronics ................................................................................123
S.M Semiconductors..............................................................................129
Buljin Elemec Pvt Ltd (www.flexiblepcb.com)........................................127
Keysight Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. (www.keysight.com) ...................2,5
Circuit Systems India Ltd ......................................................................101
Kits N Spares ...........................................................................................27
Cirkit Electro Components P Ltd ...........................................................125
KMTS Engineering Pvt. Ltd. .................................................................128
Crown Electronic Systems .....................................................................127
LEDBazaar.............................................................................................131
Cyronics Instruments Pvt. Ltd. .................................................................36
LWI Electronics Inc. (www.livewireinfo.com) ...........................................23
Design in India .......................................................................................120
Max Technology & Co. (www.maxtechnoloindia.com) ............................37
Digi-Key Electronics (www.digikey.com)....................................................3
Meco Meters Pvt Ltd (www.mecoinst.com) .................................51, 55, 53
Digital Promoters (I) Pvt Ltd...................................................................127
Microchip Technology Hong Kong Ltd. (www.microchip.com) ................47
Dinteck ...................................................................................................128
Micromax Instruments (www.micromaxinstruments.com) ....................127
EFY Group: Subscription .........................................................................69
Minmax Technology Co. Ltd (www.minmax.com.tw)...............................35
EFY Group: TOI .....................................................................................122
Minoo Impex...........................................................................................121
Sagar Switch Gear ................................................................................. 117

Sahasra Electronics Pvt Ltd (www.sahasraelectronics.com) ................ 115
Sakthi Accumulators Private Ltd ............................................................128
Schurter Electronics (I) Pvt Ltd .............................................................. 119
Scientific Mes Technik Pvt Ltd (M) (www.scientificindia.com) .................13
Shavison Electronics Pvt. Ltd. (www.shavison.com)............................. 113
Shrey Plastic Moulders (www.shreyplasticmoulders.com)....................129
SIGLENT Technologies Co. Ltd.............................................................109
SMD Electro Components (www.smdelectro.com) ...............................125
SPM Electronics And Systems (spmelectronics.com/) .........................129
Srishti Electronics (www.acedigital.co.in) ..............................................128
Eita Technologies ...................................................................................128
Mornsun Guangzhou Science & Technology Co. Ltd. ............................91
ST Microelectronics Marketing Pvt. Ltd ...................................................43
electronica 2016.......................................................................................77
Mouser Electronics (India) Private Limited ................................................7
Stead Electronics (India) Pvt. Ltd. (www.steadresistors.com) .............. 118
Electronics Relays (India) Pvt Ltd..........................................................123
Murata Electronics India Pvt Ltd .............................................................33
Systellar Innovations (www.systellar.in)................................................. 118
Elektro Power Systems..........................................................................129
NANJING GLARUN ATTEN Technology Co. Ltd ....................................93
Tangent Test Technologies.......................................................................57
Element14 India Pvt Ltd.............................................................................1
National Controlling & Equipments ........................................................128
Techno Power (www.technopowersystems.com)..................................129
ERT Tech.Services.................................................................................128
NECS Power Conditioners ....................................................................125
Tektronix India Pvt Ltd. (www.tektronix.com).........................................134
Exide Industries Ltd (www.exide4u.com) ................................................45
NI Systems (India) Pvt Ltd (www.ni.com) ..............................................133
Toradex Systems (India) Private Limited (www.toradex.com) ................ 11
FLIR Systems (www.flir.com)...........................................................71, 121
Perfect Radios........................................................................................127
Toshiba India Pvt. Ltd...............................................................................63
Furukawa (Thailand) Co. Ltd. ..................................................................15
PIC GmbH (www.pic-gmbh.com) ............................................................41
Universal Electronic Agencies (www.easternradio.co.in) ...................... 116
Good Will Instrument Co. Ltd (www.goodwill.com.tw) ..........................132
Piyush Electronics & Electricals (P) Ltd.................................................125
Zeal Manufacturing Co. (zeal-services.com) .........................................120
WWW.EFYMAG.COM
131

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In Joystick Based Stepper Motor

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THINGS YOU WANTED TO KNOW!

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