EFY Survey: pCB

Industry of India
Wearable
Electronics
Manufacturing
Flexible Electronics ` 100
july 2014

Vol. 3 No. 3 | ISSN 0013-516X | Pages: 152+8 | UK #5; US $10

For You

Agilents Electronic Measurement Group,

including its 9,500 employees and 12,000
products, is becoming Keysight Technologies.

Learn more at www.keysight.com

 EFY Survey: pCB
Industry of India
Wearable
Electronics
Manufacturing
Flexible Electronics ` 100
july 2014

For You

Raspberry pi
The DIY Board Thats
Changing Electronics
Raspberry Pi: A Tinkerers Dream
Innovative Products Powered

oscilloscopes
by Raspberry Pi
Interfacing Dot Matrix LED
with Raspberry Pi

Special
Oscilloscopes:
Top 5 Whats New?
Do-IT YoURSELF
Web-Based Device Controller Buyers Guide:
With Arduino Board
Arduino-Based FM Receiver Budget Friendly
Vol. 3 No. 3
USB LED Light cum Battery Charger
Telephone Tapping Using FM
Oscilloscopes
ISSN 0013-516X Designing Dual-Priority
Pages: 152+8 UK #5; US $10
Encoder Using LabView
Plus, many more make your
own projects inside
contents
30
electronics for you Plus | July 2014 | Vol. 3 No. 3

64
Technology Focus Buyers Guide
Mind-Reading Pets and Hijacking Planes: Budget-Friendly
RPi Innovations Go Into Overdrive Oscilloscopes

12 eStyle Buyers Guide Editor : Ramesh Chopra

Android KitKat Smartphones: A

Treat For All
Hands-On Editorial : Editorial Secretary
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(Technical queries: efylab@efy.in)

22 Wearable Electronics
Wear Your Future
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26 Technology Focus
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The Next Ubiquitous Platform USB LED Light Cum Battery Charger new delhi E-mail: efyenq@efy.in
Telephone Tapping Using FM (Head Office)

42 Telecom Technology Efficient 5V Relay Driver

Difference Counter for In and Out Gates Mumbai : Ph: 022-24950047, 24928520
New Frontiers of UAV Civilian Applications E-mail: efymum@efy.in
diy: Tips & Technique 99-104
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dIy: Software 106-111 E-mail: efyenq@efy.in

50 Internet of Things
Cool Tech for Kool IoT Products
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52 Embedded Design
Analogue Components for IoT 77 Innovation
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Applications Drishti: For Airport Visibility Measurement E-mail: efypune@efy.in

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From 50MHz to 100GHz, Bench-Top for Engineers china :

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Come a Long Way
113 Industry Focus
PCB Industry in India: Marching Ahead
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Tandem Inc., Ph: 81-3-3541-4166

70 Defence Electronics E-mail: tandem@efy.in

Part 4 of 4: Defence Lasers and

Optronic Systems: Gas Laser
126 Interview There exists a phenomenal growth
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6 July 2014 | Electronics For You plus www.efymag.com

 First Look!
3G Wi-Fi Router Astrums NFC Enabled Portable Speaker
from Lapcare With Bluetooth for those who love to enjoy music on the go
With built-in power bank for
small offices, smartphone
users and travellers
L apcare has launched wireless
3G router Smart 3G Wi-Fi, a
multi-functional router with power
bank for small offices, smartphone
users and travellers. It provides
150Mbps connectivity on the move.
The router can support up to
32 Wi-Fi-enabled devices simul-
taneously, once set up as a Wi-Fi
hotspot. Its built-in power bank has
a 4400mAh battery to easily charge
smartphones, iPhones and tablets.
It weighs 124 gms and supports a
built-in USB card reader, allowing
users in the network to directly ac-
cess data from the card reader.
The router complies with
802.11b/g/n standards and has a
connection range of 30m indoors
and 50m outdoors. For on-the-
go users, the router has wireless
network-attached cloud storage.
Price: ` 1899
8 July 2014 | Electronics For You
The Latest Home And Office Products
A strum Holdings has introduced
near field communication (NFC)
enabled portable Bluetooth speaker
Symphony BT-027N for those who love
to enjoy music on-the-go. It also has a
built-in noise-filtering microphone for
conferencing. The speakers recharge-
able battery allows up to 10 hours of
play time.
Some other features of the speaker
are: 6W RMS output, Bluetooth ver-
sion 3.0, one-touch NFC support, 2
+ 2 drivers with passive 360-degree
sound, rechargeable lithium-ion bat-
tery (3.7V/1300mAh), aux and TF, and
anti-skid surface. It is available with a
carry-in one-year warranty. Price: ` 3200
Lenovo Introduces All-In-One PC
With eco-friendly technology through its Cisco EnergyWise certified
Desktop Power Manager
P C maker Lenovo has unveiled the
new ThinkCentre E73z All-In-One
(AIO) with eco-friendly technology
S/ 4670 S 65W/ Intel Core i5-4440s/
4430S 65W/ Intel Core i3-4340/ 4330 /
41303/ Intel Pentium G3430/ G3420/
through its Cisco EnergyWise certified G32203. The graphics are supported by
Desktop Power Manager. The E73z is Integrated 2013 Intel HD.
designed to optimise space. To make The PC has 1600x900 (16:9), 50.8cm
it more reliable, it has ThinkVantage (20-inch) wide LED display and In-
software, PC auto lock utility, hard- tegrated HD audio/ 2x2W speakers.
ware password manager, rescue and It can support up to 16GB DDR3
recovery, and USB port disable option memory and up to 2TB storage.
in BIOS. There are several options available for
The desktop is available with keyboard and mouse.
various operating systems
Price: Starting ` 40,000 plus taxes
such as Windows 8/ 8
Pro/ 8 Single Language/
7 Home Basic 32/ 7 Home
Premium 32/ 7 Home
Premium 64/ 7 Profes-
sional 32/ 7 Professional
64/ 7 Ultimate 32/ 7 Ul-
timate 64. Likewise, there
are various processor op-
tions: Intel Core i7-4770S
65W/ Intel Core i5-4670
www.efymag.com
 First Look!
GizMo
ByTes
Kindle Cloud Reader Now
Available In India
Amazon's Kindle Cloud Reader, a
free Kindle reading app, that ena-
bles customers to read Kindle books
instantly, with only their web browser,
is now available to customers in India.
Kindle Cloud Reader enables you to
read your books online or offline, with
no download or installation required.
As with all Kindle apps, Kindle Cloud
Reader automatically synchronises your
Kindle library, as well as your last page
read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights
for all of your Kindle books, no matter
how you choose to read them.
Nokia Brings Z Launcher To
Android Devices
Nokia has just introduced Z Launcher,
currently in its pre-beta phase, which
aims to make it easier for Android
users to navigate around their devices.
According to a blog post by Nokia, As
soon as you install and start using Z
Launcher, it starts learning what you
use throughout the day and automati-
cally surfaces whatever youre most
likely to need at the right moment.
There is a Scribble feature in the Z
launcher, which allows users to draw
the first letter of whatever they are
looking for on their phones apps or
contacts. The launcher will show the
results accordingly. In addition, users
can add extra letters to further refine
the results.
Apple iOS 8 Will Let You Find
Your Parked Car
Apples new iOS 8 operating system
will reportedly let you find your car
using your smartphone. The new
OS, which was introduced at Apples
Worldwide Developer Conference
recently, will add the feature to iOS-
based devices like the iPhone and
iPad. It is worth noting that Apples
competitor Google had added the
feature to its Google Now smart as-
sistant a month ago.
10 July 2014 | Electronics For You
The Latest Home And Office Products
Intex Launches Low-Cost
Quad-Core Phone
One of the cheapest quad-core smartphones in market
H ome grown manufacturer, Intex,
has launched its budget offering
in the quad-core segment with new
camera with LED flash and a 2MP
front-facing camera. The dual-SIM
device runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean
Aqua i5 Mini smartphone. The Intex out-of-the-box. It comes with 4GB in-
Aqua i5 Mini smart- built storage expandable up to 32GB
phone features via microSD card.
an 11.4cm (4.5- Connectivity options
inch) FWVGA include 3G, GPRS/
IPS display with EDGE, GPS/ A-GPS,
a 480x854 pixel Wi-Fi with hotspot
functionality, Micro-
resolution.
The phone USB, Bluetooth and FM
is powered by radio with recording.
a 1.3GHz quad- It decks in a 1500mAh
core MediaTek battery to deliver a
MT6582 pro- talk time of up to five
cessor and has hours, and a stand-
by time of up to 180
1GB RAM. It
sports an 8MP hours.
autofocus rear Price: ` 6850
Xolo Launches First Windows Tablet
The tablet PC is powered by an AMD Temash A4-1200 processor
X
olo has become the first Indian The tablet PC device comes
manufacturer to launch a Win- preloaded with Microsoft Office suite
dows-powered tablet in the Indian and has 2-megapixel rear camera
market. Dubbed the Xolo Win, the tab- and 1-megapixel HD front camera.
let is available on Flipkart along with Besides, the Windows 8.1 operat-
an exchange offer where users can get ing system is available in the tablet,
a minimum of ` 3000 off on the device. which also has Wi-Fi, micro-HDMI
The offer allows users to trade in their and micro-USB capabilities. The de-
old smartphone, tablet or laptop for vice does not support 3G connectiv-
the Xolo Win device. ity though.
The tablet has a 25.7cm (10.1-inch)
Price: ` 19,999
display with 1366x768 pixel resolution.
It has dimensions of 266x167.8x12
mm and weighs 750 grams. In
addition, the device is powered
by an AMD Temash A4-1200
processor along with the Radeon
HD 8180 graphics chip. It has
2GB RAM and 32GB internal
memory. It runs on a 3550mAh
Li-Ion battery, which gives it
six hours of battery life.
www.efymag.com
 Buyers Guide

Android KitKat Smartphones: A Treat For All

Buying a phone has a lot to do with its OS, but it is not the only criteria. A powerful processor,
high-definition screen and a powerful camera are equally important. If they were not,
Motorola would have easily become the market leader in the last six months

prasid banerjee

W
hen the Android operating
system was introduced,
it was meant to provide
advanced functionality with cheaper
phones. But no manufacturer, except
Motorola, seems to have paid heed
to this. With the KitKat (Android 4.4)
update, now Google promises a lot,
including the fact that KitKat would
work well in any phone with 512MB
or more RAM. It means you should be
able to buy a cheaper phone with the Samsung Galaxy S5 cost at a hefty sum addition, it has a powerful 2.3GHz
latest OS (cue Moto E). of ` 45,000 or more (with the exception Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 proces-
So, when it comes to buying a Kit- of Nexus 5). But to see their value for sor and the pure un-layered version
Kat phone, it really is a matter of value money, you have to take their features of the KitKat OS. This was the phone
for money. In other words, the best into consideration. that Google had launched with KitKat
KitKat phone for you should depend Almost all the phones in this range and till date it remains one of the best
on the money you are willing to spend. have heavily layered versions of the KitKat devices to buy. It is also avail-
The KitKat OS may work well even in OS. HTC gives you its Sense user in- able at a very affordable price (for this
cheaper phones, but a faster proces- terface (UI), which in our opinion is the range of smartphones) of ` 33,000.
sor and other features could make the best OEM-provided UI in the market. The down side with Nexus 5
phone much better. Samsung offers Touchwiz, and then though is that, with Googles Android
there are others. Silver project, this phone is rumoured
High-end smartphones But if its the pure Android experi- to have gone out of production. Be-
Flagships like the HTC One (M8), Sony ence you want, you should be look- sides, Nexus 5 lacks a high-end cam-
Xperia Z2, LG Google Nexus 5 and the ing at only Nexus 5, which sports a era. While KitKat makes it attractive,
market leader (in terms of units sold) full-HD 12.6cm (4.95-inch) screen. In its 8-megapixel camera would not be

Android KitKat Smartphones to choose from

HTC One (M8) Samsung Galaxy S5 Sony Xperia Z2 Moto G Moto E

Price: ` 49,900 Price: ` 51,500 Price: ` 49,990 Price: ` 13,999 Price: ` 6999

hh Camera: 4-Ultrapixel
hh OS: Sense UI on Android 4.4.2
hh Display: Full HD
hh Processor: 2.3GHz Qual-
comm Snapdragon 801
hh Camera: 16-megapixel
hh OS: Touchwiz on Android 4.4.2
hh Display: Super AMOLED, 16
million colours
hh Processor: Exynos 6
octa-core
hh Camera: 20.7-megapixel with
4k video
hh OS: Android 4.4.2
hh Display: Full HD Triluminous display
hh Processor: 2.5GHz Qualcomm
Snapdragon 801
hh Camera: 5-megapixel
hh OS: Pure Android 4.4.2
hh Display: 720-pixel HD display
hh Processor: 1.2GHz Qual-
comm Snapdragon 400
hh Camera: 5-megapixel
hh OS: Pure Android 4.4.2
hh Display: qHD display
hh Processor: 1.2GHz Qual-
comm Snapdragon 200

12 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com

 Buyers Guide
good enough for most buyers. Moreo-
ver, it doesnt compare well to the likes
of Xperia Z2, Galaxy S5 and One (M8).
This leaves us with the layered ver-
sions of high-end Android smartphones.
Let us start with the one that is selling
the most, the Samsung Galaxy S5. It has a
16-megapixel camera, which shoots amaz-
ing pictures, albeit a little oversaturated on
the colours. The Galaxy S5 also has one of
the best screens in the market. Its Super
AMOLED display is a treat for any user,
and its screen is slightly bigger than of
Nexus 5 at 13cm (5.1-inch), which makes it
not so tough to use with one hand either.
The problem with the S5 though is
in its UI and design. The S5 looks and
feels too plastic, even with its faux-
leather dotted back cover. Samsung has
wasted too much space on the screen
and the UI just doesnt give you a high-
end feel. Why is it a big deal? Because
youll be spending ` 51,000 to buy it.
Xperia Z2 and HTC One (M8) on the
other hand have hit the jackpot when it
comes to the design and pricing. Both
these devices are priced at ` 49,900, which
is a very strategic pricing in this range, and
they both have pretty good camera. The
Xperia Z2 has a 20.7-megapixel EXMOR
RS camera, while the M8 uses HTCs Ul-
trapixel technology. Our choice is the M8,
which has HTCs new dual-lens technol-
ogy along with the 4-Ultrapixel camera.
Xperia Z2 seems to make the pictures a bit
dull, compared to the M8 and S5.
All the three are flagships from the
respective companies and lack nothing
in terms of processor power. While M8
and Z2 have the 2.5GHz Snapdragon
801 processor, Galaxy S5 sports Sam-
sungs Exynos 6 octa-core processor. But
for us, HTC gains a big plus because of
the Sense 6.0 UI that comes with M8.
HTCs custom UI, while being as far
away from pure Android as possible, is
arguably the best of all the UIs. Sonys
UI, though pretty simplistic, doesnt re-
ally add much to the device.
Mid-range smartphones
If you are looking to spend under
` 25,000, you have options like Moto G,
Micromax Canvas Knight, Karbonn Ti-
14 July 2014 | Electronics For You
tanium Octane, Octane Plus, Titanium
Hexa and some others.
Selection in this range is quite
tricky actually, because while the
prices in the low-end and high-end
smartphones remain quite close, the
mid-range is pretty vast. For exam-
ple, while Moto G is priced at around
` 14,000, the Canvas Knight and some
others are priced nearer to or above
` 20,000. So, while the choices are more,
the price difference is also bigger.
The best value for money in this
segment is definitely given by Moto
G, which has a 1.2GHz Qualcomm
Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor
along with 1GB of RAM and the KitKat
OS. Canvas Knight and others sport
octa-core processors. So, if you want to
spend less than ` 15,000, Moto G could
be the best choice for you.
Above ` 14,000, the competition
is really between Canvas Knight and
Karbonns devices, for now. But Canvas
Knight doesnt seem to do well in terms
of battery life. With the exception of Ti-
tanium Hexa, the others are all octa-core
units, while the Hexa has a hexa-core
processor. Karbonn Titanium Octane
though is the cheapest octa-core device
available in the market, at ` 14,490.
Low-end smartphones
In the under ` 10,000 range, you can find
good devices priced at around ` 8000 or
less. But there seems to be only Moto E
smartphone in this range that sports the
KitKat OS. The device is priced at ` 6999
and gives you a 5-megapixel rear cam-
era, a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB
RAM and a pure Android experience.
Moto E right now is the best smart-
phone to buy in this range. We dont see
a better device coming up in this range
anytime soon. Even though KitKat is
perfect for such devices, with the addi-
tional layering that OEMs do, it is going
to be hard to match the performance that
the Moto E delivers. Motorola has made
a masterstroke with this device and it is
no surprise that it went out of stock less
than 24 hours after it was launched.
The author is a correspondent at efy
www.efymag.com
 technology nEWS
Most happening, fact-filled current affairs from around the world
Worlds smallest nanomotor
that runs the longest
Engineers at the University of Texas at
Austin, USA have developed worlds
smallest nanomotor which they claim
to be the fastest-ever developed. The
Nanomotor, as they call it, is 1/500th
the size of a grain of salt! It is the fast-
est with ultra-high speed and is able to
run the longest.
The Nanomotor is seen as a signifi-
cant step towards manufacturing min-
iature machines. It can be used in first-
of-its-kind devices, which can be fitted
in applications that require unprec-
edented precision, such as controlled
biochemical drug delivery to live cells
and cell-to-cell communication.
One of the unique features of it is
its large driving power. It is able to
deliver 15 continuous hours of rotat-
ing speed at 18,000 rpm, equivalent to
the speed of a motor in a jet airplane
engine. The other nanomotors avail-
able today are able to run at speeds up
to just 500 rpm and can last only for a
few minutes.
The Nanomotor is capable of reach-
ing and staying in places which were
beyond imagination earlier. Courtesy
its size of one micrometer, it can easily
fit inside a human cell. One amazing
aspect of the nanomotor is its field
of nanoelectromechanical systems
(NEMS). With this, the machine is able
to push forward the frontiers of cheap-
er and more energy-efficient systems.
Coming soon: holographic
projections from cell phones
Holographic projections from your
very own smartphone could be a real-
ity soon, suggests a new report by the
Wall Street Journal. California-based
start-up Ostendo Technologies has
reportedly built the worlds first-ever
hologram projector chip that could
emit videos and 3D images from
smartphones and other screens.
16 July 2014 | Electronics For You
Worldd smallest and fastest Nanomotor (Courtesy: www.crazyengineers.com)
A chipset when fitted into a smart-
phone will help project video on a
surface with 122cm (48-inch) diagonal
view. Several of these chipsets together
will be able to beam larger, more com-
plex images. The first iteration of the
chip will only project 2D videos but the
next version, expected to follow soon
after, will feature holographic capabil-
ity, Hussein S. El-Ghoroury, founder
of Ostendo was quoted as saying.
The chip essentially consists of an
image processor with a wafer made up
of miniaturised light-emitting diodes
(LEDs). The system so formed can con-
trol the colour, brightness and angle
of over a million individual beams of
light, says the report.
These batteries can charge
your phone in ten minutes
Researchers at the University of Cali-
fornia, Riverside Bourns College of
Engineering simply replaced standard
graphite-based anodes in Li-Ion batteries
with silicon, and the results were simply
outstanding. Li-Ion batteries so obtained
can charge a device like your power-
hungry smartphone in just ten minutes!
Researchers Mihri and Cengiz
Ozkan observed that, silicon with its
10x bigger charge capacity compared
to regular graphite-based anodes
allowed 63 per cent increase in the
total cell capacity and makes the bat-
tery about 40 per cent lighter at the
same time. Based on their observa-
tions, they built prototype batteries
(using silicon as anode) that could
be charged 16x faster compared to
standard Li-Ion batteries.
Earlier, an Israeli startup called
StoreDot came out with a proto-
type charger that can replenish your
smartphone battery in half a minute.
StoreDot recently demonstrated their
prototype charger at Microsofts Think
Next Conference successfully charg-
ing a Samsung Galaxy S4s battery
(2600mAh) in under half a minute. The
catch is the charger works only with
the Galaxy S4 for now.
Laser tech that can sense
objects from ten metres
A new laser technology has been
developed which can sense objects
from as far as ten metres (approx. 30
feet). The technology, developed by
researchers from the University of
California, Berkeley can sense objects
from 10 times farther than any other
www.efymag.com
technology nEWS
laser system available today. It can add a lot to smartphones,
3D video games and self-driving cars.
According to the researchers, the technology can let a
self-driving car spot a roadblock from half a block away or
allow you to answer your phone from across a room. It is a 3D
imaging technology based on LIDAR (Light RADAR) system,
which sends a feedback using a light-emitting laser. It is actu-
ally quite good, since the system isnt bulky or huge at all.
A class of lasers known as MEMS tunable VCSELs have
been used to create the technology. The laser could be what
Google needs in order to perfect its self-driving cars and
could also add a lot to the existing smartphone technologies
that we have.

This 3D printer creates fruits in custom taste,

texture, size
Now we have a 3D fruit printer that can print the real edible
fruits. Cambridge, UK-based design studio cum innovation
lab, Dovetailed, has made this revolutionary 3D printer. The
makers of the printer have worked on crafting physical and
digital experienc-
es, which change
the behaviour.
The innova-
tors have used
the technique of
molecular-gas-
tronomy, called
spherification,
3D fruits (Courtesy: www.crazyengineers.com) to make the 3D
printing machine
combine individual liquid droplets with different flavours
into a desired shape of the fruit, only in a few seconds.
The team behind the 3D printer opines that this 3D
printer could be a great help for the chefs and foodies. No
prerequisites are required in using this 3D printer. So any-
one can use it, even with no knowledge of the molecular-
gastronomy technique or cooking. The printer prints fresh
and organic 3D fruits.
The printer lets you have the liberty of creating your
own custom-designed fruits. It means that you can make
your own fruits that havent existed before, in shapes, sizes,
tastes and textures!

This augmented reality helmet is truly a guardian

A new Android-powered helmet for motorcyclists was
unveiled by a company called Fusar Technologies at the
Augmented World Expo 2014. The helmet, known as Guard-
ian, is fitted with an Android board and two wide-angle
cameras. In addition, it also holds part of the Epson Moverio
Android-powered head-mounted display.
It is a fully integrated and connected device that motor-
cyclists can wear, that allows them to have a full cognitive
awareness of whats going on around them, says Ryan
Shearman, founder and CEO of Fusar Technologies. The

18 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com

 technology nEWS

Guardian GA-1 motorcycle helmet (Courtesy: www.augmentedrealitytrends.com)

helmet provides the rider with a detailed heads-up display

through the Epson Moverio. It consists of a rear-view cam-
era, which also shows what is behind them on the display.
Lastly, their speed and navigation information is also shown
on the display.
The helmet has video recording capabilities as well.
The device records everything passively, but the footage
is locked into hard memory if an accident is detected. So
basically, the helmet has its own Black Box feature built into
it. The developers are currently working on the program,
which may eventually even inform a rider about a danger-
ous situation before it materialises.

This self-learning humanoid could pose

threat to the BPO industry
Millions of college graduates looking for jobs in the BPO in-
dustry, as well as the hundreds and thousands of engineer-
ing graduates looking forward to being employed by the IT
industry, are in for a shock. Amelia, a humanoid program
designed by New York-based IPSoft, could well be a viable
alternative to humans in jobs like office accounting and
finance to tech support voice calls.
IPsofts software platform, designed by Chetan Dube, a
former New York
University math-
ematics professor,
could give the In-
dian US$ 70-bil-
lion and the entire
global US$ 400-bil-
lion export-ori-
ented IT services
The world of self-learning Bots has finally arrived cum BPO industry
with IPsofts Amelia (Courtesy: www. zdnet.com) a serious run for
the money. How,
you ask? Amelia with a software algorithm that efficiently
mimics the human brain can carry out natural language con-
versations in a fraction of the time that humans take today,
much to their dismay.
However, Amelias importance grows when subjected
to more complex questions as the humanoid can answer the
same in mere minutes, thanks to its self-learning algorithm.

www.efymag.com Electronics For You | July 2014 19

 technology nEWS
According to IPsoft, Amelia has the
ability to function at one-fourth the
billing rates for human engineers and
could challenge even the most innova-
tive of human resources departments
while handling tasks.
Here comes a 3D-printed robot
At the inaugural Code Conference, or-
ganised at Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif,
a cute, 60cm tall figure, called Jimmy,
walked on to the stage, introduced it-
self and waved its arms. Jimmy is a 3D-
printed robot from the house of Intel.
Although Jimmy is just a research
robot so far, the company has plans
to sell the fully-customisable, 3D-
printable robot kit in the market by
the year end. The consumer version
of Jimmy will be priced starting
around US$ 1600 (about ` 95,000)
and will be sold via 21stcenturyrobot.
com. The kit will have all the parts
that cannot be 3D printed, including
the motors, batteries, processor and
wires. The hardware design will be
freely available so anyone with a 3D
printer can print it.
The consumer model of Jimmy
robot runs on Intel Edison platform,
which is a low-cost computer on a
chip, much like Arduino but with
much wider functionality. Jimmy can
perform a range of tasks including
singing, dancing, tweeting, translating
and, most importantly, delivering cold
beers. It is an open source robot and
allows the developers to create their
own apps and users to download them
so that they can
run whatever they
want on their ma-
chines. Intel will
also make a mar-
ketplace for such
apps and designs.
Heres a video (please scan the QR
code) showing how Jimmy works!
New 2D transistors pave way
for faster electronics
Researchers have now come up with
worlds first two-dimensional field-
effect transistor (FET) which will enable
the development of faster electronics.
20 July 2014 | Electronics For You
These 2D FETs do
not have the issue
o f p e r fo r m a nc e
drop-off under high
voltages and can
provide high elec-
tron mobility, even
if they are scaled
to a monolayer in
thickness.
Fabrication of Artists view of one of the Googles 180 satellites (Courtesy: www.rt.com)
the 2D heterostruc-
tures was done by the layers of a tran-
sition metal dichalcogenide, hexagonal
boron nitride and graphene arranged
up by relatively weak electric forces
or van der Waals that attract neutral
molecules to one another in gases.
The bonding of the interfaces via
van der Waals and the usage of a
multi-step transfer process prepares a
platform for making complex devices
based on crystalline layers. It removes
the constraints of lattice parameters
that tend to restrict the performance
and growth of conventional hetero-
junction materials. The study was pub-
lished in journal ACS Nano.
A new wonder material to
replace graphene
Graphene is undoubtedly no less than
a wonder material that could trans-
form our lives in the days to come.
However, cadmium arsenide is even
better. Heres how...
Graphene has a major drawback
that, it is functional only in two dimen-
sions. This means building complex
pieces of hardware out of the material
is not such an easy task. Taking note,
researchers from Oxford, Stanford and
the Lawrence Berkeley National Labo-
ratory decided to continue looking and
found cadmium arsenide, an unlikely
saviour that could very well prove to
be a viable alternative to graphene.
For starters, it can transmit electric-
ity at tremendous speeds, much like
graphene. However, unlike the latter,
cadmium arsenide can also work in all
three dimensions. This means build-
ing transistors and sensors out of this
material in all probability will be much
Check efytimes.com for more news, daily
easier. Additionally, cadmium arsenide
could be a good candidate for every-
day use, claim the researchers.
Graphene is increasingly being
used in a plethora of applications in
electrical industry. It could be used to
develop better batteries as also in cre-
ating super-strong yet flexible screens.
However, major drawbacks do deter
its use on a large scale.
Googles 180 satellites to
bring Internet access across
the world
Looks like Googles fascination with
bringing the Internet access to inhos-
pitable areas around the world knows
no bounds. A recent report by the Wall
Street Journal has revealed that Google
is looking to build a total of 180 small,
high-capacity satellites and set them
out into low orbit so as to aid in pro-
viding the Internet connections.
These satellites could reportedly
entail a cost of a $1-$3 billion. But once
in orbit these are more likely to pay for
themselves. Further, if all goes well,
Google could double its satellite count,
so that more and more areas could be
covered. This would be an extension to
Googles Project Loon through which
it aims to substantially increase its ad
revenue by bringing more and more
people online.
Google earlier acquired Titan
Aerospace, a company that makes
solar-powered drones, which was in
acquisition talks with Facebook just
a few months ago. Google is eying to
use the technology provided by Titan
to assist its Project Loon, which aims
to connect people to the Internet in far
flung areas.
www.efymag.com
 WEARABLE ELECTRONICS

Wear Your Future

During a Formula 1 race, a driver experiences wrenching forces of more than 4.5G. His
heart rate may exceed 180 beats per minute and his blood pressure could rise by half.
With soaring temperatures inside the cramped cockpit he will also dehydrate, typically
losing 2-3 litres of water during the race. Yet the driver must concentrate well enough to
achieve lap times that might vary by just a tenth of a second. This is tough, on both mind
and body. Hence it is not just the performance of the car itself which an array of sensors
keeps an eye on, wirelessly transmitting data about the engine, suspension and so on to
the pit crews. The drivers own vital signs are constantly monitored, too. Economist

DEEPAK HALAN

What are wearable

computers all about
Way back in 1961 two mathemati-
cians, Edward O. Thorp and Claude
Shannon, developed miniature com-
puterised timing devices to help them
cheat at the game of roulette. Later,
The Eudaemonic Pie - a book written by
IBM Linux Watch (IBM Linux Watch, 2000) & A US Army Land Warrior soldier (Source: http://
American author Thomas A. Bass in IBM watch pad 1.5 (IBM WatchPad 1.5, 2001) www.army-technology.com/projects/land_warrior/)
1985 tells the story about a few Uni- (Source: http://www.itworld.co.kr/)
versity of California, physics graduate
students. They develop very-small-size
computers which are clandestinely
worn on modified platform soled
shoes, to predict casino roulette games.
In the early 1980s, Steve Mann, one
of the forerunners of wearable technol-
ogy, produced a backpack-mounted
computer to control photographic
equipment. Later in 1994 he developed Anaesthesiologist keeps his attention on the
Wearable electronic sensors on a finger
patient while viewing vital signs via Google
a headset that was able to send images Glass (Source: http://www.medical.philips.com/ (Source: http://jasminepark182.com/)
to the Internet. A few years later IBM main/about/future-of-healthcare/)
carried out some trials on wearable
computing on the ThinkPad, and by wearable device and user, it is always systems under its Land Warrior pro-
2001 it presented the first model of a on so that there is no botheration of gramme. A computer manages a day-
wristwatch computer known then as switching off. Wearable-computer-based light video electro-optic sight, a ther-
the WatchPad. Thereafter several inter- devices seamlessly merge with our daily mal sight mounted on the soldiers M-4
esting developments took place in the lives in the sense that we dont need to carbine, a multichannel wireless com-
field of wearable computing. stop doing something to operate the munications system, a helmet-mounted
Wearable computers, or body-borne device. Rather the wearable devices act display system and lightweight body
computers, are small electronic devices more as an extension of our mind and armour. From the helmet-mounted
which are worn by the user under, with body and sometimes also in a way like display, a soldier can view his environ-
or on top of clothing. This type of wear- an artificial body part. ment through the sensors mounted on
able technology is especially useful for his rifle. Using GUI, he can switch to a
applications that demand advanced War with wearable zoom-able map, where he can plot his
computational support, that is, more technology own position, determine the locations
than hardware-coded logic. Since there is Since the mid-1990s, the US military of his squad members and locate sus-
continuous communication between the has been refining prototype soldier pected and confirmed enemy positions.

22 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com

 WEARABLE ELECTRONICS
These positions are funnelled into the
squad leaders maps from intelligence
sources like the Predator unmanned
aerial vehicle. The computer also ties
into the soldiers communications sys-
tem, from which he can read and send
real-time text messages via a voice
interface to other squad members and
view still images from his rifle camera.
As a result, Land Warrior-equipped
soldiers are able to cover more ground
with fewer men, see farther, shoot with
greater accuracy and communicate
more covertly.
DARPA has also developed light-
weight, low-cost electronic yarns that
can be woven into a network of sen-
sors, actuators, logic algorithms and
power sources, and can be twisted and
crumpled as any other clothing. These
smart uniforms are an example of how
the newest technologies are improving
the efficiency, safety and power of the
oldest weapons platform of allthe
foot soldier. It can also relay GPS
information, and the design includes
Interceptor body armour, designed to
stop small fragmentation munitions.
Transforming healthcare
Wearable technology will enable
surgeons to monitor a patients vital
parameters and react to variations at
the same timewithout ever having
to lose sight of the procedure or the
patient. Hence, doctors will have all
the key information and facts, hands-
free, in split seconds, when they need
it most, say in the operation theatre.
Google Glass is a wearable technol-
ogy device that has a tiny prism on the
right side to display information by
means of a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connec-
tion to the MyGlass app on Android
and even iOS devices. Researchers
from Philips, in collaboration with Ac-
centure Technology, have been experi-
menting to discover the possible uses
of Google Glass in healthcare since it
allows doctors to virtually be in two
places simultaneously, thus making
patient care so much more efficient.
Imagine a surgeon or nurse attending
to a patient and carrying out a proce-
dure that needs both hands. Suddenly
24 July 2014 | Electronics For You
Rewalk exoskeleton: Wearable robotic legs
(Source: http://www.glorysurgery.com/)
an alarm is sounded in the next room,
but the doctor does not have to imme-
diately abandon the current procedure.
He communicates with the patient
monitoring data system that has sent
the alert and then takes a call if whats
happening in the adjoining room can
wait or needs immediate action.
The other area where wearable
computing is transforming healthcare
is sensors-based tools. These are gener-
ally made up of gold conductive lines
and ultra-thin sheets of silicon, and
can transmit electric signals to the skin.
Sensor-based tools enable doctors to
feel the pulse rate, pressure and other
vital signs more accurately, resulting in
a more precise surgery. This novel tool
is based on three basic ideas:
1. Using a special process, thinner
flexible silicon can be developed which
is more elastic
2. Semiconductor devices and
arrays of the micro materials can be
printed instead of being forged
3. Good flexibility can be provided
by stretchable interconnects that con-
nect arrays about 200 micrometres
apart.
This results in flexible electronics with Superman. This enables him
and is behind monitoring devices that
include LED and photo sensors as well
as components. These sensors are so
powerful that they can identify if there
is a disease or not, and the intensity,
The MindMesh, an EEG-based thinking cap
(Source: http://www.interaction-design.org/)
from samples of blood, urine, etc itself,
without the requirement of any lab
equipment. These sensors can be put
on catheters to sense heart conditions
in real-time basis, sewn into gloves so
that surgeons can use their fingers as
sensing instruments during surgery
and even be placed on body parts,
such as arms, like a bandage. This new
technology could yield surgical robots
that can network with their environs
via touch.
Hence we are moving towards in-
corporation of multifunctional silicon
semiconductor device technologies in
the shape of soft, 3D, form-fitting skins,
apt for wearing not only on the finger-
tips but also other body parts as well.
For example, a device could encase the
complete 3D surface of the heart to fa-
cilitate different sensing and stimulat-
ing functions, thus allowing advanced
surgical and diagnostic possibilities.
The powerful powered
exoskeleton
In the movie Batman: The Dark Knight
Returns - Part 2, Batman puts on a
powered exoskeleton for his combat
to lift the Batmobile easily with one
hand and fight on equal terms with
Superman. A powered exoskeleton is
a mobile machine and also goes by the
name of powered armour, exoframe,
www.efymag.com

or exosuit. It basically consists of an
outer framework which is put on like
a dress, and a powered system of mo-
tors or hydraulics contribute some or
complete energy for limb movement.
Since it very much resembles the exter-
nal skeleton that supports and protects
bodies of insects and other animals, it
has earned the name exoskeleton.
The main purpose of a powered
exoskeleton is to impart more strength
and fortitude to the wearer. These
machines are mostly used in Defence
to aid soldiers lug heavy items and
sometimes more than that. The US
Army is in process of creating an Iron
Man-like suit that imparts superhuman
strength to the user. This exoskeleton is
called the Tactical Assault Light Opera-
tor Suit (TALOS) and will have strata
of smart materials built-in with sensors
as well as a wearable computer very
much like Google Glass. It can keep an
eye on soldiers critical parameters and
multiply the available strength using
hydraulics.
Powered exoskeletons also en-
able firemen and other rescue workers
endure hazardous conditions. In the
healthcare sector their application
ranges from carrying out very accurate
surgeries to enabling nurses to shift
bulky patients. And then there are sev-
eral other very important uses for peo-
ple with disabilities and special needs.
ReWalk is a commercial exoskeleton
and a bionic walking assistance device
that uses powered leg attachments to
enable paraplegics to stand straight,
walk and climb steps.
The system is power-driven by a
backpack battery and controlled by a
simple wrist-mounted remote which
detects and enhances the users move-
ment. There are several challenges that
need to be overcome before powered
exoskeletons can become popular. One
of the most potent issues is creation
of a high yet compact power supply
that is large enough to enable an exo-
skeleton to function for long periods
without any external power source.
Right now multiple industries have
pooled in their expertise and are work-
ing in close collaboration with R&D
www.efymag.com
WEARABLE ELECTRONICS
organisations, government labs as well
as academia to overcome the hurdles.
Wear do we go from here
Today, we use corneal transplants to
mend defective eyes. In the future, we
may simply be able to insert artificial
eyes with zoom capabilities, infrared
sensors and night vision. We already
have The MindMesh, an EEG (electro
encephalo gram)-based thinking cap
that allows the user to hook different
gadgets to their brain.
For example, a blind person can
plug in a camera and use it as an eye.
In time to come, wearable will evolve
into embeddable, which could be
sensors placed under the skin or swal-
lowed. Today, the Proteus smart pill
is capable of communicating a text
to a doctor or some well-wisher from
within the body to convey that the
medicine has been consumed. Some
years from now, we are likely to have
reached a stage wherein ingestible de-
vices will be transmitting images from
inside the human gastrointestinal tract
to help doctors diagnose the cause and
bring down the need for surgery and
other invasive procedures.
The market potential for wearable
computing stems from its diversity
from watches and fitness trackers
to sensor-filled clothes and Google
Glass. In December 2013, Google
Glass informed us via its Google+
social network page that users of its
Internet-linked eyewear will now be
able to click photos merely by wink-
ing. Now there are speculations that
soon you and I will be able to pay
the taxi driver simply by winking at
the cab meter, and what not. As per
Credit Suisse, a leading financial ser-
vices company, the market for wear-
able technology will rise tenfold to as
high as 50 billion US dollars by 2016
or 2018. The next big revolution in
information technology will not reside
in your pocket or on your office table;
you will be wearing it!
The author is currently associate professor at
School of Management Sciences, Apeejay Stya
University
Electronics For You | July 2014 25
 Technology Focus

Raspberry Pi: A Tinkerers Dream

Come True
The Raspberry Pi has spurred so much interest in last one year that we decided to uncover
what makes it such a great catalyst for innovation

gaming console of 2001.

sd card reader
Write your OS to SD Card One little hack that users of the Pi
1336744
camera expansion
have been doing is to overclock the
tft touch screen
Using the CSI Connector
Using the DSI connector device from its normal 700MHz clock
hdmi-dvi-d adaptor
1428271 micro usb power speed to speeds of 800MHz or, in some
5V from mains
hdmi cable
1841275
cases, even 1000MHz.
This lets you run applications faster,
hdmi/dvi sd card
TV or Monitor Class 2, 4, 6, 10* > 2 GB by making use of the higher compute
linux os power now available on tap from the
Debian Squeeze
Arch Linux Fedora board. There have been users who
ARM
have clocked the Pi at such high speeds
10/100 ethernet
Connect the Raspberry
gpio
Its up to you
that they needed to use an additional
Pi to the Internet
stereo audio jtag heat-sink and cooling to keep the CPU
3.5 mm jack Test/Debug
3712242 (a Broadcom system-on-chip used in
usb peripherals
Mouse / keyboard / 1826382 mobile phones) from burning up.

powered usb hub

Expand your ports 8704341 tv Connect electronics lying
Composite video to
older TVs
around to your Pi
These endless possibilities with a Raspberry Pi, is how every Tinkerers dream comes true! This little ` 3500 computer can do a lot
of the things your desktop PC can do
for just a fraction of the price. Some of
Kids caption it carried. This later its hottest features include being able to

T
Dilin Anand and Sneha Ambastha
he Raspberry Pi board, lov-
ingly called the Pi, is not
just a developer board but
also a small easy-to-work
with computer at a rock-
bottom price. You can use it to connect
peripheral devices, or even to control
entire systems. It gives you the power
to convert an idea into reality in a snap.
The thought behind the creation
of the Pi was to replace expensive
computers from schools science labs.
What happened, however, was that it
evolved into a board now used by hob-
byists, startups and researchers, and
even in industrial applications!
P. Chow Reddy, managing direc-
tor, Interleaved Technologies informs
that the Raspberry Pi initially faced
a problem in its entry into industrial
applications because of the Made for
turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
The fact that this board is so simple
that even kids can work on it has led
to it becoming the numero uno choice
for rapidly prototyping ideas that keep
popping up in innovators heads all
over the world.
P. Chow Reddy adds, At the EFY
launch of Raspberry Pi during the first
Electronics Rocks session by Eben Upton
through video conference, a few demos
on applications were mind boggling. The
most interesting demo over there was
controlling of Raspberry Pi with wrist
watch ez430 from Texas Instruments.
Lets you squeeze out
every bit of CPU power
The Pi comes with a CPU that per-
forms similarly to the Pentium II
which was introduced in 1997. Its GPU
performance is comparable to a XBOX
work with peripherals that were previ-
ously the sole property of a traditional
computer.
USB keyboards, mice, HDMI moni-
tors and projectors, music systems,
memory cardseverything fits in. It even
supports an RCA connector to be able to
output video to your older TVs. It means
you can use your Pi with most IT and
consumer electronics devices without
having to seriously re-engineer the board.
Some exciting
enhancements
From interfacing through inter-integrat-
ed circuit and display serial interface
buses to slapping on IR receivers, sen-
sors and camera boards, the Pi is built
to handle a lot of additional hardware
without breaking a sweat. Some of the
things you can do with it are:
Move your Pi. Lift things, open

26 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com


Engineers Choice (Courtesy: Poll conducted by EFY at
different social networking sites)
doors and windows, mess around with
robotics and sense temperature using
the Gertboard (a board that plugs into
the Raspberry Pi and enables you to
interface your Pi with other devices).
If you want something more serious,
check out the DoodleBorga three-
horse-power robot made available from
PiBorg. They have a lot of other add-
on boards available for the Pi, mostly
targeting robotic applications. Their
collection includes motion and direction
sensors, motor controllers and an LED
board that they call LEDBorg. Apart
from these cool accessories, PiBorg gets
brownie points from us, as their name is
an offshoot of the amazing Borg civilisa-
www.efymag.com
tion from Star Trek!
See the Pi. The possibilities
available for a Raspberry Pi
that can observe visual images
are amazing. While previous
tinkerers and hackers used
webcams to give the power of
sight to their Pi, the Raspberry
Pi Foundation decided to em-
power its boards users with
their in-house camera board.
Thus the Rpi Camera module was
born. With a 5-megapixel sensor on a
board, the module is a much-awaited
accessory that connects to the Pi via
a ribbon cable. While there are many
other webcams available that can be
connected to the Raspberry Pi via USB,
the module launched by the founda-
tion has the benefit of delivering excel-
lent video and imaging quality.
Another interesting module is
the Pi NoIR version, which comes in
a black PCB and has the IR filter re-
moved from the camera system. What
this means is that your Pi can now see
near-IR wavelengths, enabling it to
Technology Focus
mimic features of a security camera at a
much lower cost.
Hear the Pi. Raspberry Pi has certain
limitations when it comes to audio. It
has an audio peripheral connection
which is limited in a number of ways,
resulting in the problem that there is no
way to capture audio using a Pi alone.
Audio output is limited to two
partsanalogue via on-board 3.5mm
stereo output jack and digital only via
on-board HDMI output. While HDMI
provides the potential for high-quality
audio rendering, it cannot be used to
capture voice. The analogue option
gives an output quality that is only de-
cent at best, which cannot be compared
with digital quality output.
This creates a necessity for Audio
Pi, which has many audio features. It
extends the audio output analysis of a
Raspberry Pi beyond the HDMI output
through its on-board HD codex and
processor. It has on-board 24-bit voice
processor that users can use with their
PC to record the audio events, or to build
some kind of a karaoke system with the
Electronics For You | July 2014 27
 Technology Focus
built-in powerful audio codex engine.
That is why many people now im-
mediately think of using their Wolfson/
Raspberry Pi setup as a more flexible,
lower-cost wireless media streaming
system.
Pi on Air. Low-power RF module
is an addition to its existing wireless
protocols. A member from DesignSpark.
coman online community sponsored
by RS Componentssays, The RF
module is a USB device to provide bi-
directional link to any device support-
ing serial communications, like another
Raspberry Pi. Frequency, bandwidth,
power output and data rates can be
configured to allow multiple devices
to communicate with each other and to
other RF devices without any interfer-
ence.
The RF technology employed in
Pi board enables significantly greater
range (up to 300m depending on the
terrain) and lower power consumption
than other wireless protocols such as
Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. The host device can
send and receive up to 180 bytes of data
per packet to other hosts within range,
making it particularly useful for sense
and control applications.
What is the Raspberry Pi
Foundation up to?
The foundation recently announced
Compute module designed for engi-
neers so they can harness the complete
power of the Raspberry Pi for embed-
ded applications. It is quite small and
comes in a 3.5cm6.5cm size. The mod-
ule is compact enough to be mounted
on a SO-DIMM socket, which is found
in most motherboards these days. Once
this module is plugged into a moth-
erboard it would act as a stand-alone
system and could be used as an add-on
card for any particular application that
customers might be developing.
A member from DesignSpark.com
an online community sponsored by RS
Componentssays, Most of the times
in final applications a designer may not
need a complete Pi (complete Raspberry
Pi board with all its connectors and in-
terfaces), he may only need a slice of it.
Compute module may be that slice, with
28 July 2014 | Electronics For You
Major contributors to this report
Abhishek R. Rao P. Chow Reddy
technical marketing managing director,
manager, element14 Interleaved Technologies
a very small form factor of SO-DIMM.
The good thing about the Com-
pute module is that it retains the pro-
cessing power of BCM2885 SOC with
512MB RAM and on-board Flash stor-
age but outsources all its peripherals
to companion I/O board. This makes it
very easy for many Raspberry Pi users
to switch to Compute module for their
final applications.
The Compute module lets design-
ers explore full flexibility of BCM2885
SOC because of the availability of more
GPIOs and interfaces. And the com-
panion I/O board provides access to
processor interface in much better man-
ner, giving liberty to designers to make
custom systems with ease. Besides, the
compute module will encourage many
designers to come up with a variety of
companion I/O boards having different
interfaces, peripherals and applica-
tions.
Pallab Maji, senior research fellow,
NIT Rourkela says, While we were
working on a robot project based on Pi,
we found that certain gesture-controlled
applications were required for which
we had to connect an Arduino board to
Raspberry Pi for a better performance.
I think the Compute module is going
to bring many different in-built capa-
bilities for the designing aspect, like the
increased number of interfacing options
along with a better processing speed.
Is Raspberry Pi the only
one capable of fueling
innovation?
There is great competition between the
different development boards available
today, and this forces us to question
ourselves: Which development board
should be used and why?
Abhishek Rao, says, One
competitor, the RIoT board,
mainly focuses on markets
like mobile and tablet where-
as BeagleBone is looked up
to for more of industrial ap-
plications due to its ability
to provide more number of
Pallab Maji I/O (input or output) func-
senior research fellow,
NIT Rourkela tionalities required for such
applications. If we look at
the Raspberry Pi, its compatibility with
Arduino enables more than 300 add-on
shields which can be used to give this
board an edge over all the other boards
in terms of cost, and in terms of applica-
tions that can be realised.
A report by Mouser Electronics
suggests that the Galileo, a product of
Intels effort with Arduino, does not al-
low us deeper control of the processor.
This report also suggests that ARM is
the most popular processor with multi-
ple tools and licensed by many, which is
not the case with Intels products.
But Michael Leonard in one of his
reports at Makezine suggests that despite
built-in graphic support, BeagleBone
Black is not powerful enough to support
1080p. However, if we look at the facts
and features of Raspberry Pi, it has an in-
tegrated graphical Video core processor,
composite video output and a full-size
HDMI connector. Its capability of HDMI
audio output and addition of Arduino
compatible shields and components
leaves no options for Michael Leonard
but to support Raspberry Pi over others
in a report by him.
Pallab says, I have an old monitor,
and when I connect that monitor to Bea-
gleBone, certain things need to be taken
care of. Whenever I connect the Beagle
board to a VGA converter for a display
on the monitor, I do not meet with
much success. Since Beagle board does
not provide the necessary +5V power to
the device connected to the HDMI port,
I have to provide an external power
to the converter. Second, special cable
needs to be considered as Beagle board
has a micro HDMI port whereas my
monitor has an HDMI port.
Sneha Ambastha is a technical journalist at EFY and
Dilin Anand is a senior assistant editor at EFY
www.efymag.com
 Technology Focus

Mind-Reading Pets and Hijacking

Planes: RPi Innovations Go Into
Overdrive
In the two years since its release, the Raspberry Pi has literally gone placesfrom reaching
near-space in a balloon to crossing the Atlantic. Let us take a look at the latest slew of crazy
innovations powered by this little board

Dilin Anand

A
board designed to be
used by students, the
Raspberry Pi (RPi) end-
ed up being the love af-
fair for an entire hacker
communitynerds and geeks with a
penchant for tinkering with technol-
ogy. While the previous article in this
section looked at what the Pi itself has
evolved into, this article looks to see
if there is any similar maturity in the
applications that it powers.
Almost every project powered by
the RPi has one thing in common. It
very rarely uses high-tech components, A drone that can hijack drones
yet the applications that come out of
the lab are mind-boggling! Here are Your home can hear. Since your Your drone can hijack drones. What
some examples: dog can already talk to you, getting could be worse than a drone that has
Your dog can talk. Imagine if your your home to understand English the capability to hijack other drones?
dog could talk to you, like we saw in should be easier than before. The Well, one that could do it autono-
the movie UP. Well, now dogs actually numerous voice-recognition home- mously, without a human to control it.
can. Aptly named, No More Woof automation systems currently in the And that is exactly what the SkyJack
is a headset built by the research lab market lack the soul with which Ap- does. Running on a Parrot AR.Drone
Nordic Society for Invention and ples Siri responds. That is where the quadcopter with the RPi on board, it
Discovery. Perhaps one of the best RPi comes in with Siris mind, in the can easily hack other Parrot drones
examples of using existing technology form of SiriProxy. This is a combina- nearby, hijacking their wireless con-
in newer fields, this headset reads the tion of Siris soul in the body of an nections and even taking over their
dogs mind using electroencephalo- RPigetting us that much closer to flight pattern. If your Mumbai pizzeria
gram (EEG) sensors. This product taps Hal 9000. Once your dog learns to drone did not deliver their pizza in 30
the minor fluctuations in brain waves speak, this could be the easiest way to minutes, look to the sky and you might
as your dog thinks of you, love, food, take care of things around the house. possibly see it flying behind a SkyJack.
squirrels and you again. The device Want to take out garbage? Ask your
comes with an EEG reader, a process- dog and he will pick up the bag, pass Raspberry Pi
ing unit and brain-computer interface, the voice-recognition security lock, ask gets professional
all built into the headset, with its aim your RPi to disable the gardens sprin- Apart from all these wonderful hob-
to further strengthen the connection kler system and get rid of that garbage byist creations, did you know that
between man and mans best friend. in the neighbours lawn. the RPi also has its share of cool in-

30 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com

 Technology Focus
dustrial applications? Have a look at
some of them:
Test labs for electronics engineers.
A web-enabled RPi and a programma-
ble test and measurement device called
the Red Pitaya have come together to
create this awesome utility. The Red
Pitaya is a portable, programmable,
multifunctional test and measurement
device. It serves as an oscilloscope, a
function generator and a frequency
and spectrum analyser, all in one go!
The Red Pitaya is connected to a net-
work as a web server, and users can
connect to it by simply entering its IP
address in the web browser. Interfac-
ing with the RPi allows access to the
Red Pitaya console. This application
was started at KickStarter and is now
shared in a step-by-step approach on
DesignSpark.com community by one
of their community members.
Command and control microbrew-
ery. The microbrewery business just
got a whole lot easier and productive
with the RPi-powered brew environ-
ment control. It does away with the
fancy and expensive equipment that
you traditionally need, and instead
allows you to brew your first batch
of beer with a couple of sensors and a
web-enabled RPi. This little set-up al-
lows the brewer to connect to his brew-
ing room from anywhere in the world
through the Internet and monitor the
temperature and humidity, both of
which are very essential to ensure that
the beer is drinkable.
Pi joins the Army. There seem
to be an increasing number of RPis
featuring in military applications.
Reddy explains, The developer has
taken proper care in the PCB design
and could not observe any emissions
from the traces too. This suggests that
the devices and components used on
this board are of industrial grade, can
sustain extreme conditions and thus
can be used for defense applications.
The catch here is that boards other
than the Raspberry Pi do not pass this
test, and so engineers can start using
the Raspberry Pi in their applications
confidently.
One person from LiveATC has
32 July 2014 | Electronics For You
built an RPi-powered military
mode-S logger that automati-
cally decodes mode-S mes-
sages through an RTL-SDR
dongle using a RPi. Since
there are hundreds of mes-
sages every second, the RPi
takes the brunt of the com-
puting power needed to sift
through those messages and
log only the new ones to the
database. A lot more serious
industrial applications can BrewPi brewing beer
be expected soon with the
launch of the modular RPi Compute
Module, which specifically targets in-
dustrial applications.
RPi projects breaking
R&D ground
The RPis biggest achievement is
connected to its roots. Being a board
primarily designed for kids to learn
with, it inherently becomes the number
one choice for interdisciplinary engi-
neers who have very little idea about
electronics. What does this mean? It
means, scientists and researchers opt
for the RPi whenever they need to
tinker with electronics.
Going Pi high. The AirPi is an
automatic air-quality and weather-
monitoring device capable of monitor-
ing information about temperature,
humidity, air pressure, light levels,
UV levels, carbon monoxide, nitrogen
dioxide and smoke level through the
Internet. Chasing high-altitude bal-
loons is a sport for those sending RPi
GPS-enabled gear to the outer limits of Marseille Universit in France, Sebas-
the Earths atmosphere. Dave Akerman
outfitted his balloons payload with
a custom RPi computer that sported
a GPS radio, a webcam and various
sensors and trackers. His latest set of is a graphical, open-source experi-
flights was done at St Albans School
in Ireland on the 7th of June 2014. It
flew high with trackers ALBANFLOAT
with live image downloads from the
sky, and ALBANDATA with a number
of environmental trackers.
Life of Pi. A floating research
station that is based on top of an au-
tonomous vehicle for long-term data-
logging operations, this RPi-powered
innovation is definitely a catch. Named
the FishPi, it communicates through
satellite and is able to make naviga-
tional and environmental measure-
ments and observations. Sitting within
an unmanned marine surface vessel
is the RPi built to cross the Atlantic
Ocean while taking scientific measure-
ments. Additionally, a drone project
uses the RPi as its sole navigational
computer to ensure that the mission is
successful.
Seeking crabs. David Soriano, an
associate professor of chemistry at the
University of Pittsburgh-Bradford, has
been using an RPi-controlled webcam
to monitor fiddler crabs. As part of
the research project, these are being
offered thermal polypeptides, rich
in the amino-acid tyrosine. Tyrosine
starts the pathway to melanin pigment
production in the crab, and David is
watching for colour changes that result
from it.
Pi for social sciences. In the Aix-
tiaan Matht, from the Laboratoire de
Psychologie Cognitive, has been run-
ning his graphical experiment builder,
OpenSesame, on RPi. OpenSesame
ment builder for the social sciences,
which allows you to build complex
experiments with minimum effort. The
plug-in framework and Python script-
ing allow you to incorporate external
devices, such as eye trackers, response
boxes and parallel port devices, into
your experiment.
The author is a senior assistant editor at EFY
www.efymag.com
 MANUFACTURE
Part 1 of 2
Flexible Electronics: The Next
Ubiquitous Platform
Just as the IC replaced discrete circuit board electronics, flexible electronics will almost
inevitably, by virtue of the ever-demanding end-user, supersede solid-state ICs. So let us
find out a bit more about flexible electronics, the materials required for their fabrication, the
fabrication processes and the applications
K. MOHAN KUMAR
F
lexible electronics is lightweight,
rugged, bendable, roll-able, port-
able and potentially foldable.
Ever-evolving advances in thin-film
materials and devices have fuelled
many of the developments in the field
of flexible electronics. These advances
have been complemented with the de-
velopment of new integration process-
es, enabling wafer-scale processes to
be combined with flexible substrates.
Diodes and transistors are two
of the most common active thin-film
devices used in digital and analogue
circuits. While they have been suc-
cessfully used in flexible platforms,
their performance and applicability is
limited by requirement of exotic device
architectures and novel materials. In
order to achieve the goal of full-system
integration in next-generation flexible
systems, a paradigm shift in design
and fabrication is necessary.
There are many potential applica-
tions of flexible electronics in health-
care, automotive, humanmachine
interfaces, mobile communications and
computing platforms, and embedded
systems in both living and hostile en-
vironments. Besides, there are market-
specific applications, such as human-
machine interactivity, energy storage
and generation, mobile communications
and networking, touching the applica-
tion of flexible electronics on ubiquitous
computing platforms throughout.
Flexibility in electronic materials
is very attractive for medical and bio-
34 July 2014 | Electronics For You
engineering. Living organisms are in-
trinsically flexible and malleable. Thus,
flexibility is a necessity for successful
integration of electronics in biological
systems. Further, in order to carry out
daily tasks, flexibility is less likely to
hinder over stiffness.
Materials
The fundamental properties of thin-
film materials, as well as the quality of
various device interfaces, give rise to
inherent limitations in device perfor-
mance. Each element of the flex circuit
must be able to consistently meet the
demands placed upon it for the life of
the product. In addition, the material
must work reliably in concert with the
Single-sided flex
Back-bared flex
Double-sided flex
Multilayer flex
Rigid flex
Sculptured flex
Polymer film Copper
Adhesive Laminate
Fig. 1: Examples of basic and selected flexible
circuit construction
COVERLAY
BASE MATERIAL
Fig. 2: Single-sided flex circuit
other elements of the circuit to assure
ease of manufacture and reliability.
The materials and technologies
behind flexible substrates are an
important consideration for flexible
electronics. Perhaps two of the main
flexible substrate candidates are plastic
and stainless steel. Although stainless
steel is incompatible with standard
deposition temperatures, it results in
a substantially heavier system due
to its higher mass densitya critical
consideration for portable flexible
technologies. Also, stainless steel is
not particularly deformable, and is
thus unsuitable, in particular, for wear-
able electronics. Plastic substrates are
lighter and deformable alternatives.
Substrates need to be solvent-
resistant, so that standard optical
photolithography process can be used.
Additional substrate requirements
include low cost (allowing large area,
mass production) and moisture resist-
ance. Table I compares some of the
more critical properties of some key
plastic substrates.
One of the main challenges facing
plastic as a next-generation substrate
is the substantially reduced processing
temperature window. The maximum
fabrication temperature is related to
the glass-transition temperature above
which inelastic deformation takes place
and the substrate no longer retains its
POLYIMIDE
ADHESIVE
COPPER
ADHESIVE
POLYIMIDE
www.efymag.com
 MANUFACTURE
original dimension, which is essential
for photolithography. As an example,
polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) sat-
isfies all requirements and tolerates
temperatures as high as 160oC.
More recently, a number of elec-
tronic devices and circuits have been
demonstrated, utilising paper as a
substrate and/or as a gate dielectric.
Such approaches lead to electronic
devices with the potential for en masse
integration at low cost, which are also
disposable and fully recyclable.
ness selection is typically a function
of the application.
Metal foil
A metal foil is most commonly used
as the conductive element of a flex-
Contact
Coverlay ible laminate. A metal foil is the ma-
terial from which the circuit paths
Adhesive Coverlay are normally etched. Coppers ex-
cellent balance of cost and physical
and electrical performance attributes
Fig. 3: Sculptured flex circuit make it an excellent choice.

Base material COVERLAY POLYIMIDE

ADHESIVE
PLATED COPPER
COPPER PAD
A polymer film provides the founda- BASE MATERIAL
ADHESIVE
POLYIMIDE
tion as a base material for flexible elec- ADHESIVE
COPPER PAD
PLATED COPPER
tronics. Under normal circumstances, COVERLAY
ADHESIVE
POLYIMIDE
the flex circuit base material provides
most primary physical and electrical Fig. 4: Double-sided flex circuits
properties of the flexible circuit. In the
case of adhesive-less circuit construc- Coverlay
Adhesive
tions, the base material provides all of Copper
Adhesive
the characteristic properties. Polyimide
Base
While a wide range of thickness is Adhesive
Copper
possible, most flexible films are pro- Adhesive
Coverlay
vided in a narrow range of relatively Adhesive
Copper
thin dimensions from 12m to 125m Adhesive
Polyimide
(1/2 mil to 5 mils). But thinner and Base
Adhesive

thicker materials are possible. Thinner Copper

Adhesive
materials are, of course, more flexible. Coverlay

For most materials, stiffness increase Fig. 5: Multilayer flex circuits

is proportional to the cube of thick-
ness. This means that, if the thickness
}
Solder mask
Copper
is doubled, the material becomes eight Pre-preg Rigid
FR-4
times stiffer and will only deflect 1/8 Pre-preg

}
Polyimide Coverlay
as much under the same load. Adhesive
Copper
There are a number of materials Adhesive
Polyimide Base
Flex
Adhesive
used as base films, including polyester Copper
Adhesive
(PET), polyimide (PI), polyethylene

naphthalene (PEN) and polyetherim-
ide (PEI). These, along with various
fluropolymers (FEPs) and copolymers
polyimide films, are most prevalent
owing to their advantageous electri-
cal, mechanical, chemical and thermal
properties.
Bonding adhesive
Adhesives are used as the bonding
medium for creating a laminate. When
it comes to temperature resistance,
the adhesive is also typically a perfor-
mance-limiting element of a laminate,
especially when polyimide is the base
Polyimide Coverlay
Pre-preg
FR-4
Pre-preg
Copper
Solder mask
Fig. 6: Standard stack-up of a 4-layer rigid-flex circuit
material. Because of the earlier diffi-
culties associated with polyimide ad-
hesives, many polyimide flex circuits
presently employ adhesive systems of
different polymer families. However,
some newer thermoplastic polyimide
adhesives are making important in-
roads.
As with the base films, adhesives
come in different thicknesses. Thick-
}
Rigid
There are actually many different
types of copper foil. In certain non-
standard cases, the circuit manufacturer
may be called upon to create a specialty
laminate by using a specified alternative
metal foil, such as a special copper alloy
or other metal foil in the construction.
Types of flexible circuits
There are a few basic constructions of

36 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com

 MANUFACTURE
Start with PET film
Step 1: Print Conductor
Step 2: Print dielectric
Step 3: Print additional multilayers
Fig. 7: Construction of polymer thick-film flex circuit
flexible circuits, but there is significant
variation between the different types in
terms of their construction. Following
is a review of the most common types
of flexible circuit constructions. Flex-
ible circuits have a rich history and are
extremely diverse in their nature. This
diversity opens them to use in a wide
range of applications, with new applica-
tions being developed on a regular basis.
It is hard to predict where the tech-
nology will go next. However, roll-to-
roll processing is likely to play an im-
portant part. Flexible electronics opens
the door to foldaway smartphone
displays, solar cells on a roll of plastic
and advanced medical devicesif we
can figure out how to make them.
Single-sided flex circuits
A single-layer flex circuit is the most
basic and consists of a flexible poly-
imide film laminated to a thin sheet
of copper. The copper layer is then
chemically etched to produce a circuit
pattern specific to your design require-
ments. A polyimide cover lay is then
added for insulation and environmen-
tal protection of the circuit.
A single-sided flex is used for:
1. Dynamic flexing applications
2. Unusual folding and forming
applications
3. Installation/service applica-
tions/repair
4. When there are limitations on
space/thickness
38 July 2014 | Electronics For You
Some important features of single-
sided flex are:
1. Very thin construction, under
0.1mm-0.2mm (0.004-0.008 inch)
2. One conductor layer
3. Reverse-bared or back-bared pads
4. Supported and unsupported
finger areas
Back-bared flex circuits
Double access flex, also known as
back-bared flex, are flexible circuits
having a single conductor layer but
they allow access to selected features of
the conductor pattern from both sides.
While this type of circuit has certain
benefits, the specialised processing
requirements for accessing the features
limit its use.
A dual-access flex circuit is simply
a single-sided flex circuit that is manu-
factured such that its conductive mate-
rial can be accessed from both sides of
the circuit. Flexible Circuit is a front
runner in this technology, which uti-
lises specialised lasers and processing
to skive open the polyimide layer of
the base material to allow dual access
to the single copper layer. While this
type of circuit has certain benefits, the
specialised processing requirements
for accessing the features limit its use.
These flex circuits find application
in such fields as:
1. Medical
2. Environmental
3. Test and Measurement
4. Automotive and other general
electronic devices
Sculptured flex circuits
Sculptured flex circuits are a novel sub-
set of normal flexible circuit structures.
Their manufacturing process involves
a special flex circuit multi-step etching
method to produce a flexible circuit
having finished copper conductors
whose thickness differs at various
places along their length. The conduc-
tors are generally thin in flexible areas
and thick at interconnection points.
Sculptured circuit technology
enables the thickness of the copper
conductors to vary at any point on
the circuit. In addition, selective ap-
plication of the supporting dielectric
enables integral exposed fingers to be
produced. All holes are etched, provid-
ing the flexibility to create precisely-
located apertures of any shape or size
at any position on the circuit.
Sculptured circuits are in use across
a wide spectrum of applications from
motor sports to missiles. Sculptured
circuits, when combined with flexible
or rigid circuits, provide an extremely
cost-effective solution to complex in-
terconnect problems by reducing cost,
simplifying assembly and increasing
reliability.
Sculptured flex circuits offer many
benefits, including robust contact
areas, nil or low tooling cost, reliabil-
ity and cost-effectiveness. Their ap-
plications include power circuits and
custom-built circuits.
Double-sided flex circuits
Double-sided flex circuits are flex
circuits having two conductor layers.
These can be fabricated with or with-
out plated-through holes, though the
plated-through-hole variation is much
more common. When constructed
without plated-through holes, the con-
nection features are accessed from one
side only, and the circuit is called Type
V (5), according to military specifica-
tions. It is not a common practice but
it is an option.
Because of the plated-through hole,
terminations for electronic components
are provided for on both sides of the
circuit, thus allowing components to
be placed on either side. Depending
on design requirements, double-sided
flex circuits can be fabricated with
protective cover layers on one, both or
neither side of the completed circuit.
Generally, these are produced with the
protective layer on both sides.
One major advantage of this type
of substrate is that, it allows crossover
connections to be made very easily.
Many single-sided circuits are built on
a double-sided substrate, just because
they have one or two crossover con-
nections. An example of this use is the
circuit connecting a mouse pad to the
motherboard of a laptop. All connec-
www.efymag.com
 MANUFACTURE
tions on that circuit are located (a) Pre-pattern creation (a) Mask etching aerospace, medical, and test and
on only one side of the substrate, Resist
measurement.
Resist
except a very small crossover Substrate

connection which uses the second Substrate

Resist Rigid-flex circuits
Substrate
side of the substrate. Rigid-flex circuits are a hybrid
(b) Polymer spin-coating (b) Line creation
Some situations where dou- construction with rigid and flex-
ble-sided flex is used are: Resist
Polymer ible substrates which are laminated
Polymer lines
1. When circuit density and together into a single structure.
Substrate
layout cannot be routed on a sin- Rigid-flex circuits should not
gle layer (c) Plasma etching (c) Metal deposition be confused with rigidised flex
and dissolve resist
2. Ground and power plane constructions that are simply flex
applications Au Au circuits to which a stiffener is at-
3. For shielding applications Substrate tached to support the weight of
4. For dense surface-mount (d) Lift-off
the electronic components locally.
(d) Lift-off
assembly A rigidised or stiffened flex circuit
Salient features of the double- can have one or more conductor
Substrate
sided flex are: layers. Thus, while the two terms
1. Component assembly avail- (e) TFT fabrication may sound similar, they represent
able on both sides Gate (e) TFT fabrication
products that are quite different.
2. Two conductive layers Dielectric
Gate
The layers of a rigid flex are
Semiconductor
3. Fingers are an integral part also normally electrically intercon-
of the conductor patterns Source Drain nected by means of plated-through
Substrate
holes. Over the years, rigid-flex
Multilayer flex circuits (I) (II)
circuits have enjoyed tremendous
Flex circuits having three or more Fig. 8: Fabrication of short-channel transistors using spin-
coating-induced edge effect (I, side view) and the specific
popularity among military product
layers of conductors are known as process used for TFT fabrication (II, top view) designers. However, the technol-
multilayer flex circuits. Common- ogy has found increased use in
ly, the layers are interconnected (a) Imprint the polymer resist commercial products. While often
Stamp
by means of plated-through holes, considered a specialty product for
Imprinting resist
though this is not a requirement Buffer resist low-volume applications because
Conductor
by definition; it is possible to Substrate
of the challenges, rigid-flex boards
provide openings to access lower (b) Dry and wet etching are normally multilayer structures,
circuit level features. but two-metal-layer constructions
The layers of a multilayer are also sometimes used.
flex circuit may or may not be (c) Dry etching Benefits of rigid-flex circuits
continuously laminated together Source Drain
Bank
include:
throughout the construction, with 1. Use of third dimension
the obvious exception of the areas (d) Semiconductor printing creates an optimal solution for
occupied by plated-through holes. Semiconductor applications with extreme space
The practice of discontinuous lami- limitations
nation is common in cases where (e) Insulator coating and gate printing 2. Replace bulky wire harnesses
maximum flexibility is required. Gate with a compact, yet robust design
Dielectrics
This is accomplished by leaving 3. Flexible assemblies reduce
unbounded the areas where flexing (f) Via definition by dry etching connectors as well as labour, yield,
or bending is to occur. transmission and reliability issues
Multilayer flex circuits are Via 4. These hybrid circuits can have
used when circuit density and up to sixteen layers
layout cannot be routed on a sin- Fig. 9: TFT fabrication process by self-aligned, one-step,
gle layer, and for: multilayered patterning Polymer thick-film
1. Ground and power plane flex circuits
applications 6. Controlled impedance with Polymer thick-film (PTF) flex circuits
2. Shielding applications shielding are true printed circuits wherein the
3. Dense surface-mount assembly Multilayer flex circuits are used in conductors are printed onto a polymer
4. Increased circuit density high-density SMT electronic applica- base film. They are typically single-
5. EMI/RFI shielding tions, and such sectors as automotive, conductor-layer structures. However,

www.efymag.com Electronics For You | July 2014 39

 MANUFACTURE
two or more metal layers can be print-
ed sequentially, with insulating layers
printed between printed conductor
layers.
While lower in conductivity, PTF
circuits have successfully served in a
wide range of low-power applications
at slightly higher voltages. Keyboards
are a common application, but there is
a wide range of potential uses for this
cost-effective approach to flex circuit
manufacture.
PTF technology consists of a simple
set of basic building block materials,
such as substrate, conductive inks, die-
lectrics, conductive adhesives and non-
conductive adhesives/encapsulants.
Underfills, required for flip chips, are
commonly classified as packaging
materials, but they are polymer-based
systems that are a close kind of PTF.
Key capabilities of polymer thick-
film flex circuits are:
1. Single-layer or double-layer
screen through-hole circuitry
2. Low-cost, high-volume, roll-to-
roll fabrication technology
3. Low-cost, screen-printed ink
surface dielectrics
4. Economical choice for cost-sensi-
tive applications
Integration process
Fabrication methods have an impor-
tant effect on the characteristics, cost
and stability. For example, instead
of using a high-mobility material to
achieve high device transconduct-
ance, it is possible to adjust the ar-
chitecture. Employing short channel
lengths is one way to achieve this. In
conventional planar TFTs, the chan-
nel length is ultimately limited by the
diffraction limit in the photolithog-
raphy process. Vertical transistors,
where the channel length is set by the
thickness of the semiconductor, have
been demonstrated to achieve sub-
micrometer channel lengths, paving
the way for high-transconductance
devices using conventional materials
such as a-Si.
Alternative approaches have also
been developed to fabricate organic
submicrometer TFTs uniformly over
40 July 2014 | Electronics For You
large areas. One such
approach is based Comparison of Plastic Substrates for
on a novel edge ef- Thin-Film Deposition
fect that is induced Max Dep. Material Properties
by spin-coating a Temp. C
polymer onto a pre- 250 Polymide (Kapton) Orange colour; high thermal expan-
patterned structure, sion coefficient; good chemical
resistance; expensive; high moisture
as shown in Fig. 8. absorption
Polymer TFTs, with
240 Polyetheretherktone Amber; good chemical resistance;
channel widths as (PEEK) expensive; low moisture absorption
narrow as 400nm, can
190 Polyethersulphone Clear; good dimensional stabil-
be fabricated by this (PES) ity; expensive; moderate moisture
method. absorption
One key advan- 180 Polyetherimide (PEI) Strong; brittle; hazy colour; expensive
tage of this method
160 Polyethylene Clear; moderate CTE; good chemi-
is that, it facilitates Napthalate (PEN) cal resistance; inexpensive; moder-
the use of low-res- ate moisture absorption
olution patterning 120 Polyethylene Clear; moderate CTE; good chemi-
techniques, such as terephthalate (PET) cal resistance; inexpensive; moder-
shadow masking, to ate moisture absorption
create highly repro- Note: CTE denotes the coefficient of thermal expansion. TMax denotes
ducible submicrom- a maximum deposition temperature
eter features, thereby
obviating more conventional, time- patterning and mask alignment, as
consuming lithographic processes. shown in Fig. 9. Both p- and n-type
This, combined with inkjet printing, organic TFTs have been demonstrated
provides an exciting opportunity to using this method.
apply on-demand material deposition In the case of n-type TFTs, Li et al
and desktop-programmable wiring of reported that 20 transistors were fab-
ad hoc patterns. The latter has already ricated without process optimisation,
been demonstrated for CNT and with a yield of 100% and a variation in
graphene-based inks.Though rather mobility and on/off current ratio of a
exotic, such innovative fabrication factor of 3 and 5, respectively. All the
techniques will facilitate the technolo- used techniques (imprinting, wet/dry
gies widespread usage for fabrication etching and inkjet printing) are already
of TFT with high transconductance. available in roll-to-roll processes. The
Any manufacturable device has fol- demonstrated high-resolution features,
lowing essential characteristics: mask-alignment-free process and
1. Superior and prespecified perfor- compatibility to roll-to-roll fabrication
mance, with reproducibility, uniform- show that these and similar techniques
ity and reliability are commercially attractive, inexpen-
2. High yield to acceptable toler- sive and ready to use. It is expected
ance that these methods can be extended to
3. Simulations exist for both reverse the level of integrated complementary
engineering during development and metaloxidesemiconductor (CMOS)
right-first-time design circuit fabrication.
Some novel processes have been Part 2 of the article, in next is-
developed to fabricate solution-pro- sue, will cover some very interesting
cessable TFTs with one-step self- aspects of the application of flexible
aligned dimensions in all functional electronics in various sectors.
layers. The TFT-channel, semiconduct- To be concluded next month
ing materials and effective gate dimen-
The author is a final year student of KMIT af-
sion were controlled by a one-step im- flicted to JNTUH. This article is based on a paper
print process and subsequent pattern he prepared for a technical seminar on flexible
transfer, without the need for multiple electronics
www.efymag.com
 Telecom Technology
New Frontiers of
UAV Civilian Applications
Applications for unmanned aerial vehicles continue to grow by leaps and bounds, especially
when they involve difficult tasks or dangerous situations
B.S. SASTRY AND B. RAMANA
A
s part of the push to increase
uses of civilian drones, nearly
50 companies are developing
some 150 different systems, ranging
from miniature models to those with
wingspans comparable to airliners.
Some of the manufacturers are offer-
ing do-it-yourself unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs) like kit planes.
Present applications
Civilian uses ranging from disaster res-
cue missions, wildlife monitoring and
firefighting are some of the many ap-
plications. The idea of drones quickly
transporting life-saving parcels such as
blood samples and medicines even in
the areas where roads and infrastruc-
ture are poor should be especially at-
tractive to Indian conditions.
Forest surveys conducted by a
camera-equipped drone provide re-
searchers with extensive landscape
information in the form of 3D interac-
tive maps. Ultimately, such maps will
be publicly accessible via open-source
computer vision software. For nuclear
decommissioning or radio contamina-
tion cleanup, UAVs with radiation
detection and mapping software are
being used.
Configuration of different
types of UAVs
The first picture on column two shows
vertical take-off and landing UAV that
combines the ability to hover with
high-speed horizontal flight. Test-
ing will result in fully autonomous
operations. Originally designed for
commercial mapping operations, the
slim vehicle uses a shrouded ducted
42 July 2014 | Electronics For You
fan for propulsion, vertical lift/landing
and control. High aspect ratio (narrow)
wings allow for 10 hours endurance
like sail-plane flight efficiency.
Flying Elephant UAV
The Flying Elephant will take off
from any place carrying up to a ton
of cargo, fly silently and deposit the
cargo wherever required. It will then
independently take-off and fly to the
next satisfied unit. The Jumbo UAVs
can be used for military and civilian
applications.
Miniature wireless sensors of the
(Courtesy: Boeing)
above UAV are under evaluation in the
laboratory.
Propulsion systems
The propulsion systems for UAVs de-
pend on their payload, endurance and
mission. Also, UAVs require reliable
propulsion systems in order to achieve
extended flight times with minimal
quantities of fuel. Some of the propul-
sion systems are briefly described below.
Diesel and petrol engines. Both
diesel and petrol engines are avail-
able of different cubic centimetres for
compact systems. These are equipped
with electronic controller, the
sensors for the crankshaft po-
sition and inlet and cylinder
head temperature, an ignition
module, injector, fuel pressure
accumulator and a fuel pump.
Electronic fuel injection sys-
tem, delivers an optimum fuel
mix at all stages of flight, even
for miniature aircraft.
Wankel engines. Because
of the small size, weight, very
low vibration and high pow-
er-to-weight ratio, Wankel
engines are increasingly be-
ing used in UAV aircraft. The
engine is approximately one
third of the size and weight of
a piston engine of equivalent
www.efymag.com
 Telecom Technology
power output, which offers significant
advantages for UAV aircraft. Addition-
ally, the engine rotors cannot seize,
since rotor casings expand more than
the rotors; the engine is not susceptible
to shock-cooling during descent of the
UAV.
Electric and fuel cells. Solar-electric
UAVs hold potential for unlimited
flight and many of the small UAVs
are equipped with these propulsion
systems. Electric UAVs kept aloft
indefinitely by laser power beaming
technology represent another proposed
propulsion solution for endurance.
The electric fuel cell propulsion
system for UAV applications has low
noise and signature, while taking ad-
vantage of hydrogen, a high-energy
fuel. Fuel cells create an electrical cur-
rent when they convert hydrogen and
oxygen into water and heat. The fuel
cell has about four times the efficiency
of a comparable internal combustion
engine and the system provides seven
times the energy in the equivalent
weight of batteries.
Future applications
The UAV market, whether for com-
mercial, industrial or military custom-
ers, is growing rapidly and is expected
to expand for several years to come.
These are examples of the develop-
ment of matternet where computer-
powered drones carry objects much
like Internet carries data.
In future, drones will power cell
phones and television services. Func-
tioning as pseudo-satellites, UAVs
could be deployed to a specific location
and stay there for days. The benefits of
these satellites are they are less expen-
44 July 2014 | Electronics For You
sive and less susceptible
to losing power compared
to conventional satellites.
Hydrogen-fuelled drones
that can stay aloft for up
to four or more days at a
time, are currently being
tested as a platform for
telecommunications pay-
loads. It is expected that
telecom-equipped drones
could revolutionise the
wireless market.
Control and guidance
of UAVs
The control and guidance of these
small unmanned aircraft are certainly
impressive. Wireless miniature sensors
are being used extensively. A variety
of electronic subsystems have been
specially developed for UAVs such as
the radios that communicate video and
data signals back to a base camp.
An operator on the ground, with
only a laptop computer and tactical
radio, could command what was de-
scribed as a swarm of UAVs without
using a ground-control station.
Artificial intelligence is advancing
to the point where the aircraft are easily
capable of taking off, landing and flying
themselves. Then they simply have to
be instructed as to their mission.
Common-airborne sense and avoid
technology is being incorporated into
UAVs that are used for intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance mis-
sions.
Conclusion
Taking advantage of improvements
in materials, structures, batteries and
electric motors, as well as micropro-
cessor advances, many companies are
coming up with innovative configura-
tions of UAVs.
The knowledge and skill levels of
system integration of multidisciplinary
technologies are available indigenous-
ly. It is time for the Indian industry to
take advantage of these skills.
B.S. Sastry is retired project director LCA, ex-con-
sultant to IT firms for automotive and aerospace
division and B. Ramana is an aerospace engineer
www.efymag.com
 information Technology
Software Defined Networking
Movement of distributed data centres to clouds has been the major driver towards the
software-defined networks. The cloud service providers want their networks to be flexible
and extensible
Ahzam Ali
S
oftware defined networking
(SDN) is an innovative ap-
proach to network design and
implementing functionality in the
network. It is based on the ability to
dynamically modify the behaviour
of network components. SDN uses
software components that can be cus-
tomised and configured in a deploy-
ment, independent of the hardware, to
enable networked systems to expand
data flow control.
SDN is targeted towards creat-
ing an abstraction to the low-level
network and presenting a unified-
service-facing view of the network.
It makes networks more flexible,
dynamic and cost-efficient, yet simpli-
fies operational complexity. SDN is
next-generation networking that pro-
vides benefits like network and ser-
vice customisability, configurability,
improved operations, with increased
performance. There are several differ-
ent approaches to SDN and its practi-
cal implementation.
Whats driving SDN
A fast change in the way the Internet
is used, and the way large industry
players want to use the network and
data, has led to the larger and power-
ful data centres. The network capacity
of traditional networking equipment
has grown many folds, and there
is a strong push towards keeping
everything in the cloud and process-
ing as much as possible within the
cloud. This is driving the demand for
modern-day high-performance data
centres.
Here are some of the changes
in the usage of networks and how
46 July 2014 | Electronics For You
Edge router
Switches Switches L2 Switches
Switches
Fig. 1: Physical topology
Tenant
Network FW LB
A massive parallel pro-
Fig. 2: Service chaining
they demand the creation of high-
performing, scalable and adaptable
data centres:
Changing traffic patterns. Todays
applications access different databases
and servers, creating a flood of ma-
chine-to-machine traffic before the data
is returned back to end user. Users are
moving towards accessing content
from different kinds of devices and the
expectation is that the network would
adapt to the device specifications and
capabilities.
Rise of cloud services. The large
enterprises have adopted the cloud
services, both private and public,
resulting in an exponential growth of
the service. Businesses are looking for
the agility to access applications, in-
frastructure and other IT resources on
demand, and as and what they need.
The services rendered by cloud de-
mand enhanced security, compliance
and auditing require-
ments. Business reor-
ganisation, consolidation
and mergers require IT
for the business changes
overnight. Providing
self-service provisioning,
whether in a private or
public cloud, requires
elastic scaling of comput-
ing, storage and network
resources.
Big data means
more bandwidth. Han-
dling todays big data
or mega datasets requires
Internet
cessing on thousands
of servers, all of which
need direct connections
to each other. The rise
of mega datasets is fuel-
ling constant demand for additional
network capacity in the data centres.
Operators of hyper-scale data-centre
networks face the daunting task of
scaling the network to unimaginable
size, maintaining any-to-any connec-
tivity and still keeping the cost of the
implementation low.
Movement of distributed data
centres to clouds has been the major
driver towards the software-defined
networks. The cloud service providers
want their networks to be flexible and
extensible. The application of SDN lies
in a data-centre environment, where
the network services are fluid and are
able to move from one hardware to
another in the network. There is a need
to create an instance of service dynami-
cally and then destroy the instance
when not in use.
SDN also solves the use case for
multi-tenancy environment. That
www.efymag.com
 information Technology
is, if I am a data centre ser-
vice provider, and I provide
distributed data centre solu-
Openflow
tion to multiple customers, I
should be able to connect the
Virtual machines
different data centres securely
for my customers. And I
should be able to do this dy-
namically in case of changes
required in the service or
configuration. In each of these
use cases multiple tenants in
a data centre share the same
physical resources (physical
Hypervisors
servers, physical storage and
physical network). Each ten- Fig. 3: Network forwarding components
ant is assigned its own logical
resources (virtual machines, virtual
storage and virtual networks). These
logical resources are isolated from
each other.
SDN primarily helps us in the fol-
lowing two ways:
1. Cloud networking. Helps gener-
ate private clouds for enterprises or
service providers, builds and provides
network infrastructure as a service
(IaaS) and helps build virtual private
clouds (VPCs) for cloud service pro-
viders (also known as MSP).
2. Network function virtualisation
(NFV) in service-provider networks.
This provides value-added services
(VAS) for service-provider edge
networks, such as business-edge net-
works, broadband-subscriber-manage-
ment edge networks and mobile-edge
networks.
SDN also helps in moving a num-
ber of network services to general-
purpose hardware, eliminating the
need for dedicated hardware for these
applications. Examples of such applica-
tions are intrusion detection or preven-
tions systems (IDS/IPS), deep packet
inspection (DPI), caching and wide
area network (WAN) optimisation in
virtual machines instead of on physical
hardware appliances.
Implementation
In its present state the structure of
SDN is not very well defined. It looks
like every vender understands the
problem they are trying to solve, but
48 July 2014 | Electronics For You
OpenStack
orchestrator
SDN controller
Network forwarding components
Hypervisors
every vendor has a different approach
towards it. Some organisations are
trying to build standards around the
SDN.
One of the important aspects of
SDN is to keep different components
in the network physically separate
and yet make them work together in
cohesion. For example, if we take a
high-performance integrated-service
gateway, it is likely to have a firewall,
IDP/IDS, routing and switching sys-
tem, all built into one box. When we
take all these services to an SDN, we
have different software components
doing the firewall, IDP routing and
switching. Also, in SDN only the
forwarding of the actual connectiv-
ity has to be provided by a dedicated
physical hardware. All these differ-
ent components are controlled by a
master component called the SDN
controller.
This brings in a challenge to
making sure that all these different
components work together and are
controllable by a controller in the
network. This requires a protocol to
be developed for the communication
among the different components in an
SDN network.
To understand the very-high-level
architecture of the SDN network please
see Fig. 3.
Open Network Foundation (ONF)
(https://www.opennetworking.org) is
a non-profit industry consortium that
is leading the advancement of SDN
and standardising critical el-
ements of the SDN architec-
ture, such as the OpenFlow
protocol which structures
communication between
the control and data planes
of supported network de-
vices. OpenFlow is the first
standard interface designed
specifically for SDN, provid-
ing high-performance, gran-
ular traffic control across
multiple vendors network
devices.
Network
management
One of the most important aspects of
SDN is seamless network manage-
ment. The SDN aims at delivering an
application as a whole, rather than
each network service. The high-level
network applications are formed
with well-orchestrated configura-
tion of different network services.
This demands an implementation of
a very powerful and open network
management system (NMS). An NMS
which translates a high-level business
policy into a configuration of each of
the different service layers, includ-
ing routing, switching, security and
virtual machine provisioning, is the
core of an SDN network. Along with
providing easy configurability it
should also provide a clear visibility
in the network and highlight prob-
lems, if any.
Standards
ONF is the main organisation driv-
ing the standardisation effort of the
SDN. It mainly deals with defining
the protocols and standardising the
way services should be provided in
a network. The main idea is to keep
the network components and services
interoperable, so that healthy competi-
tion is maintained, and customers can
choose the best components from dif-
ferent vendors.
Strengths of SDN
There is a complete transition of
the network architecture in SDN. In
www.efymag.com

SDN the control and data planes are
decoupled, network intelligence and
state are logically centralised and the
underlying network infrastructure is
abstracted from the applications. As a
result, a network administrator gains
unprecedented programmability, auto-
mation and network control, enabling
him to build highly scalable, flexible
networks that readily adapt to chang-
ing business needs.
OpenFlow-based SDN is cur-
rently being rolled out in a variety
of networking devices and software,
delivering substantial benefits to both
enterprises and carriers, including:
1. Centralised management of
networking equipment from multiple
vendors
2. Improved automation so that
network administrators deal just with
the business policies and abstracting
the underlying complication of provi-
sioning individual components
3. Possibility of rapidly deploying
newer services, without being blocked
by any network device or a vendor to
www.efymag.com
information Technology
release an update
4. Opening avenues for all parities
to generate revenue by enabling pro-
grammability of the network through
open API, creating vendor independ-
ence
5. Centralised and automated man-
agement to increase the reliability of
the network and, because the network
is flexible, enhancing the reliability by
automatically reprogramming in the
event of failure
6. Granular network control with
the ability to apply comprehensive and
wide-ranging policies at the session,
user, device and application levels
7. Enhance end users experience
as the network adapts, the network is
centralised and changes in the network
appear seamless to the end-user
Conclusion
The strength of SDN lies in building a
scalable and adaptable network which
can be changed to adapt to the need of
the environment. SDN banks on build-
ing the network with basic individual
components, all separated out but
controlled in unison using powerful
software.
The SDN technology is still shaping
up and different vendors are imple-
menting the solution to differentiate
themselves from the others, along with
a strong standardisation effort being
made by various organisations. It is
difficult for each of these vendors to
ignore the standardisation, but they are
free to build in hooks such that their
solutions work better with their own
components than with a competitors
components.
The main effect of the SDN will be
seen by the service provider and the
larger enterprises. The end users will
experience the virtue of SDN in the
form of enhanced services from the
cloud, seamless usage of the network
and security of their data.
The author has a masters degree in Communica-
tion and 14 years of work experience in telecom-
munications software. He is working at Juniper
Networks, on their next generation network man-
agement solution
Electronics For You | July 2014 49
 the Internetof
things IoT
News, views and development on the Internet of Things

Cool Tech for Kool IoT Products

The Internet of Things (IoT) is top-most on most electronics
companies agenda today. Texas Instruments (TI) is no different.
Their wide connectivity portfolio is powering several interesting IoT
products and platforms across the globe, such as the Internet of
KoolThings platform created by DeviceLab Inc. and KoolTechs
Inc. Praveen Ganapathy, director, business development, Texas
Instruments (India), speaks to Janani Gopalakrishnan Vikram about
whats trending in this space
Janani Gopalakrishnan Vikram of microcontrollers, processors and
analogue solutions for their complete Praveen Ganapathy
director, business development,
Which is the most exciting TI-powered application. Texas Instruments (India)
IoT product according to you? What does What do you think is the topmost secu-
it do and what value does TI add to it? rity concern when it comes to IoT prod- not fit all low-power radio technolo-
One of the most exciting products ucts, and how do you address it in your gies. So, depending on the product,
that TI is powering is the Bluetooth low chips, firmware and platform? engineers can adopt a suitable low-
energy based Internet of KoolThings One of the biggest security concerns power radio technology based on their
platform. This platform involves an for the IoT ecosystem is the breach capabilities. At TI, we are delivering
expandable multi-sensor, multi-function of personal data. As the IoT involves solutions that are compatible with
system that packs features found in several devices, security is vital at all ZigBee, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Sub-1GHz,
many different consumer product layers. To avoid these circumstances, EtherCAT, Prime Alliance, G3-PLC
categories into a user-friendly iWan- several players in the IoT are opting for Alliance and others. As mentioned,
ditAll KoolThings platform. iWan- hardware with security technology. based on the end application at hand,
ditAll KoolThings includes KoolWand As part of our embedded and con- IoT players can incorporate the best
(a wearable key fob-like device) and nectivity technology portfolio we have suited connectivity solution for their
KoolBridge (a small portable wireless security solutions to prevent, detect and design, whether it is Bluetooth, Wi-Fi
hub/media player), and is expandable respond to unintended or malicious or EtherCAT, etc.
with optional KoolSensors and KoolAc- behaviour. They address the hardware, Anything new and exciting that TI is
cessories. software and connectivity spaces in the working on for its IoT customers?
TIs SimpleLink CC254x Bluetooth IoT through symmetric cryptography, One of our most exciting product
low energy wireless MCUs and TIs authentication and anti-cloning, IP pro- lines, already available in the mar-
power, battery management solutions tection and tamper protection. ket, is TIs SimpleLink solution. This
presently power the KoolWand. Ad- As a tech provider, can you tell us which range includes smart RF transceivers,
ditionally, the KoolBridge employs an wireless technologies are most product wireless networking solutions, wire-
optional RF range extender chip from TI makers seeking to imbibe in their prod- less MCUs and range extenders. Each
(CC2591) to improve the covered range. ucts? What could be the reason? product is supported with its own
In this manner, TIs versatile con- We are seeing the popularity of all design ecosystem starting with evalu-
nectivity portfolio is helping customers low-power radio technologies being ation and development tools to refer-
connect more to the IoT. In addition imbibed into IoT products. These are ence designs, training and extensive
to the embedded wireless connectiv- a critical aspect of the IoT because all online support tools. This enables you
ity technologies, customers can benefit the devices must continuously or pe- to create your wireless solution with
from the industrys leading portfolio riodically be connected. One size does TI helping you from start to finish.
Read more about the Internet of Things at internetofthings.electronicsforu.com

50 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com

 embedded design

Analogue Components
for IoT Applications
Numerous analogue components and chips are introduced to the market every year,
but what is influencing their evolution? Read on to find out the latest technologies in this
field, the influence of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm on analogue world and some
interesting applications powered by analogue components

Anagha P.

T
hirty years ago, almost all the
technology surrounding us was
analogue. However, in the past
decade we have witnessed a massive
shift from analogue to digital electron-
ics. The digital platform offers amaz-
ing opportunities for innovation, and
is thus promptly taking over several
aspects of modern life.
Will the digital world be able to
completely take over analogue tech-
nologies and devices? Dont think so.
What we found is that analogue is still
well-established, and innovative tech-
nologies and products are continuing
to emerge in this sector. What is driv-
ing this old technology?
Influence of IoT
The IoT is perhaps one of the most dis-
cussed technology topics these days. It
provides a huge opportunity for us to
leverage the Internet infrastructure to
put technology to better use. Its big-
gest enabler is the ability to connect the
real world with the digital world, thus
enabling people and machines to know
the status of hundreds of thousands of
objects simultaneously.
Analogue components are the key
to deliver this connection between the
real and digital worlds.
While back-end of the IoT is com-
munication and connectivity forming
the digital side, the front-end generally
consists of sensors (temperature, pres-
sure, motion, tilt, acceleration, shock,
proximity, gas, sound, pH, infrared,
etc), actuators, power management
modules (linear regulator, converter,
STC3115 battery monitoring IC by STMicroelectronics
battery charger), signal acquisition
modules, amplifiers, signal processors,
microcontrollers and integrated chips;
this is where analogue comes into play.
New component design
elements
Form factor and power are major con-
siderations for smart products, and
the industry is getting geared up for
making analogue devices suitable for
IoT segment. However, there are some
cases where the size and/or power
are not of high relevance, like for the
smart-grid applications. Some of the
trends driving the analogue industry
are discussed in detail below.
Wearable medical devices and
low-power components. Many devices,
particularly portable and wearable
electronics, cannot afford battery-hun-
gry processors and componentseven
those previously considered as low-
power.
This has led to the development of
low and ultra-low power devices that
can operate for days and months on
a single battery, or without the need
for recharging. For example, OPA2652
operational amplifiers (op-amps) by
Texas Instruments (TI) work at an input
current as low as 300nA. On a coin cell
it operates for several months together.
Consider a patient-monitoring sys-
tem. If the instrument is easily drained
of all power and has to be charged
every few hours, proper monitoring
cannot be attained. Moreover, the
whole charging process is troubling for
the user too.
Benefits of digital in analogue
world. The major trick to reduce power
is to use low voltage. We want a tech-
nology that can be used in analogue
devices, operates in low voltages, and
also integrates to high voltages. This
is where digital was merged with
analogue.

52 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com

 embedded design
flexibility for designers.
Fill-level sensors and connected garbage! Somsubhro Pal Choudhury of
A Finnish start-up named Enevo Oy came up with an IoT-enabled waste-container Analog Devices believes that, the wide
monitoring service called Enevo ONe Collect. It uses low-power autonomous fill level range of different types and sizes of
and event sensors that use ultrasonic sensing and techniques to identify the status of the
data, bandwidth availability, reliability
container it is monitoring. It also features temperature sensing, and comes in an IP67-
class enclosure to endure extreme conditions. These sensors are wirelessly connected to and cost considerations will not make
a local network to send data. a one size fits all model. Customisa-
The fill levels of waste bins and recycling containers are continuously monitored in real tions and optimisations for each mar-
time using dedicated wireless sensors. The readings are sent to a server, which identifies ket vertical and sub-vertical would
the container location and analyses when and how the container is to be emptied. This be the key with the industry severely
information is sent to the waste management firms logistic system. The ONe Collect fragmented, at least in this decade,
method has saved 40% cost on waste collection and reduced environmental footprints.
he adds.
Dedicated processors. There has
For example, filtering is typically application may require low-speed and been a lot of talk about dedicated
done in analogue domain using active high-speed sensing. Depending on the microcontrollers. Many original equip-
filters. But the problem is that, these fil- condition the application may switch ment manufacturers and fabrication
ters are not tuneable individually and back and forth between low-speed plants are working on process tech-
they consume high power. By transfer- sensing and high-speed sensing. nologies that could create processors
ring the signal to the digital domain The typical approach would be optimised for and committed specifi-
and performing the filtering there, the using two separate ADCs, one for low cally to the analogue implementation
filters become individually tuneable speed and the other for high speed, in IoT applications.
and can be switched off when not in and keep one powered off when the In-built battery monitoring. As
use, which reduces power. other is being used. wearable devices are run by small bat-
Harvesting ambient light. The However, when you use a device teries, it is necessary to optimise the use
integrated boost regulator ADP5090 with wider range you can save space of these power sources. An accurate bat-
by Analog Devices Inc. is one example and money, the designing is easier, tery monitoring allows the user to know
where firms have come up with de- failure rate is reduced with fewer de- the exact state of charge of battery and
vices that can store energy from indoor vices, and the power required is almost adds intelligence to its usage.
ambient light and use the devices to the same. Highly scalable devices also For example, STC3115 battery
power the sensors. become useful in low-power applica- monitoring IC by STMicroelectron-
The ambient light is something that tions. In IoT the power has to be locally ics could give timely alert to the user
is freely and abundantly available in derived through photocell or thermo- for turning off the power-consuming
India throughout the year. Exploiting electric voltage generator. blocks when battery is lower than the
this natural resource as a viable power The supply voltages generated by user-programmed threshold levels.
source has become a growing trend in these are subjected to large variations.
wireless sensor network applications One need not worry about regulation Innovative technologies
worldwide. It eliminates the need of in it, if they have an op-amp that can driving cutting-edge
power sources like batteries. In addi- work over such large range; it avoids
analogue components
tion, it opens up huge possibilities of any intermediate stage of regulation. Shrinking the size and increasing
enabling IoT and connecting even re- Expandable platforms. It is very performance has always been the
mote/rural areas to the grid without the important to be able to incorporate challenge in semiconductor industry.
need for connected power or batteries. new hardware and software solutions The semiconductor industry has been
Size and weight. No surprise that, to a system in order to produce a better witnessing the lowering of cost and
just like lower power, size and weight end product. As a result, it is very criti- size in the last couple of decades.
of the gadget can also be an important cal to have a flexible and expandable Process nodes have been going from
consideration in the portable and design platform that is compatible to 45nm down to 28nm to 20nm, and will
wearable electronic space. There is a and can incorporate both new hard- further go down to 16nm and 10nm in
huge demand in market for smaller ware and software solutions, when- the next decade.
and lighter instruments. Size reduction ever necessary. Microchips PIC16(L) But the manufacturers challenge
is being achieved by merging circuit F170X and PIC16(L)F171X family of was to achieve spatial, monetary or
topology (whether the same block can 8-bit microcontrollers offers intelligent power efficiencies. Hence, as the limit
be reused in multiple places) and dif- analogue and core-independent pe- of Moores law reached 28 nm, they
ferent process technologies. ripherals (configurable logic cell, com- had to migrate from planar CMOS to a
Integrating different sensors for plementary output generator and zero new process technology. That is when
higher scalability. Sometimes the same crossing detector), providing increased devices using FinFET technology were

54 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com

 embedded design

Brand Component Takeaway according to manufacturer

Freescale Kinetis E series MCUs Electromagnetic noise immunity for systems that traditionally use 8- and 16-bit MCUs while providing high ef-
ficiency and optimal code density.
Freescale Kinetis miniature (mini) MCUs Worlds smallest ARM powered MCU; ideal for small and smart applications.
Freescale Kinetis KW2x wireless MCUs Best-in-class 802.15.4/ZigBee wireless solutions. Integrates ARM Cortex-M4 processor, and a 802.15.4 standard-
compliant RF transceiver, and provides a reliable, secure, low-power 2.4GHz platform.
Freescale QorIQ T2080 processor Dual-threaded, 64-bit Power Architecture-based device engineered for optimal network performance and energy efficiency.
Freescale Freescale Kinetis M series Designed for single-chip 1, 2 and 3-phase electricity meters and other precision measurement applications. Multiple 24-bit
MCU Sigma Delta ADCs, programmable gain amplifiers, voltage reference with low drift over temperature, phase-shift compen-
sator. Security features including a memory protection unit, external tamper detection pins, iRTC with tamper detect and a
random number generator provide protection of supplier/user data within the MCU and from the MCU to the power grid.
Freescale Kinetis L series MCUs 32-bit devices help enable ultra-low-power designs for handheld appliances, portable medical products and con-
sumer electronics applications.
Microchip Digitally enhanced power Range of intelligent DC/DC power-conversion solutions grows to include controllers supporting flyback, boost
analogue controller and SEPIC topologies. Introduced a step-up PWM controller and low-side MOSFET driver architecture, with a mid-
voltage LDO and fully-functional MCU - all integrated into a small, high-density power package.
Microchip Motor driver Cost-effective, worlds first 1.5A, three-phase brushless DC, sinusoidal motor driver in a 4x4mm package with the
AEC-Q100 quality certification.
Microchip 8-bit PIC MCU Rich set of intelligent analogue and core-independent peripherals (offload timing-critical and core-intensive tasks
from the CPU), along with cost-effective pricing and eXtreme low power (XLP) technology.
Microchip Projected-capacitive Industrys lowest-power, integrates capacitive scanning for touch-screens and touch-pads including 11 single-finger
touch controllers gestures to swipe, scroll or double tap.
Microchip Energy-measurement analogue Integrate six and eight 24-bit, delta-sigma ADCs, respectively, with 94.5dB SINAD, -106.5dB THD and 112dB SFDR
front ends (AFE) for high-accuracy signal acquisition and higher-performing end products. Two extra ADCs enable the monitoring
of more sensors with one chip, lowering cost and size.
Microchip Sensor hub Low-power, flexible sensor hub that makes implementing sensor fusion easy and provides an extremely large
selection of supported sensors, for Windows 8-based PCs, 2-in-1 convertibles, tablets and gaming applications.
Microchip 50-ohm matched WLAN front Small package and footprint, for high data rate mobile device applications.
end Module
Microchip PIC32MZ 32-bit MCUs Integrate 2MB Flash, 512kb RAM, 28Msps ADC, crypto engine, hi-speed USB, 10/100 Ethernet, CAN and many
serial channels. High performance, high memory and peripheral integration.
Microchip Power monitoring IC Highly integrated, single-phase power-monitoring IC designed for real-time measurement of AC power.
Microchip PIC24FJ128GC010 MCU Analogue SoC that integrates a full analogue signal chain, including Microchips first ever on-chip precision 16-bit
family ADC and 10Msps 12-bit ADC, plus a DAC and dual op-amps, along with eXtreme low power (XLP) technology for
extended battery life in portable medical and industrial applications.
Lattice ECP5 FPGA Combines 40% lower-cost, 30% lower power and 2x functional density in the smallest package to meet the unique
needs of fast-growing high-volume small-cell, micro server, broadband access and video applications.
Lattice MachXO3 FPGAs Worlds smallest, lowest-cost-per I/O programmable platform aimed at expanding system capabilities and bridging
emerging connectivity interfaces using both parallel and serial I/O.
Lattice iCE40 FPGA family Flexible, single-chip sensor solutions for making a new generation of context-aware, ultra-low-power mobile devices
possible. Enables always-on sensor solutions.
Lattice Automotive grade ECP3 FPGAs Smallest automotive-qualified FPGA with SERDES. Improve fuel efficiency, safety and access to entertainment.
Atmel ATPL230A PLC modem Seamless and cost-efficient solution for smart metering platforms, providing best-in-class modem features.
Atmel Smar tConnect Wi-Fi con- Integrates Atmels ultra-low-power MCUs and wireless connectivity solutions into an easy, turnkey IoT solution.
nectivity
Atmel SAM D Cortex M0+ based Entry-level, low-power MCUs packed with high-end features including Atmels patented Event System, SERCOM module,
MCU portfolio peripheral touch controller, along with a full-speed USB interface. Additional connectivity and communication options.
Atmel LIN System Basis Chip (SBC) Lower power consumption, improved LDO works down to 2.3v, MLC blocking capacitors for lower overall system
cost - industrys first device that complies with the new OEM hardware recommendations.
Atmel Cortex-A5 processor-based Smaller packaging, extended temperature support, and an alternative peripheral mix while maintaining high performance
MPUs and low-power operation along with an expanded ecosystem to include new software and hardware solutions.
Atmel Smart RF receiver IC family Lower power consumption, high sensitivity and excellent out-of-band blocking performance.

www.efymag.com Electronics For You | July 2014 55

 embedded design
demonstrated by Taiwan Semiconduc-
tor Manufacturing Company.
Multiple fin-height FinFETs. The
most advanced semiconductor technol-
ogy used today can produce around
10 million transistor elements in a chip
of size one square centimetre. A new
multiple fin-height FinFET process
technology has been developed at
National Nano Device Laboratories
(NDL), National Applied Research
Laboratories (NARLabs). It allows up
to 20 million transistors in the same
place, which is twice the number pos-
sible today!
Unlike the traditional field-effect
transistors (FETs), where gate controls
source-drain current only on one side,
the fin field-effect transistor (FinFET)
has three-dimensional fork-shaped gate
similar to a fishs fin (hence the name).
It can control the source-drain current
in the transistor from three sidesleft,
right and top. In multiple fin-height
FinFET, like the name suggests, the fins
will have different heights allowing dif-
ferent amount of currents correspond-
ing to associated channel height. This
concept lets further reduction in chip
area by 20%. Compared to a normal
FinFET, the multiple-height FinFET has
20% higher storage capacity and 20%
less manufacturing cost.
FD-SOI. STMicroelectronics, along
with its partners, introduced a technol-
ogy known as Fully Depleted Silicon
On Insulator (FD-SOI). It is a planar
process technology where an ultra-
thin layer of insulator (buried oxide or
BOX) is positioned on top of the base
silicon and then a very thin silicon film
implements the transistor channel.
IC etched on graphene. Several
manufacturing units have been work-
ing on moving from silicon to other
alternatives, to get better performance
56 July 2014 | Electronics For You
Major contributors to this story
Bhaskar Rajiv Mantri
Dhandapani analog applications
country sales manager, manager, Texas
Freescale Semiconductor Instruments (India)
India Pvt Ltd
in terms of power, size and cost. These
alternates could be based on graphene,
nanotubes or various tunnel field-effect
transistors (TFETs).
There is on-going research on these
and other devices based on electron
spin as opposed to electron charge.
Researchers at University of California,
Santa Barbara, have come up with the
concept and demonstration of an in-
tegrated circuit design scheme where
the transistors and interconnects are
monolithically patterned seamlessly
(without obvious joints or seams) on a
two-dimensional atomically flat sheet
of graphene.
The model of etching offers possi-
bilities for extremely energy-efficient,
transparent and flexible next-genera-
tion green electronics.
Photonic IC that can manipulate
atoms. A group of scientists from
California State University, Pasadena,
claim to have developed an optical
circuit that uses light to manipulate in-
dividual atoms in small, self-contained
units. According to them, the photonic
integrated circuit is an integrated opti-
cal circuit with a photonic crystal that
can both localise and interface atoms
with guided photons in the device.
The optical properties of photonic
crystals are determined by factors like
their physical geometry and size of the
Sanjeev Sharma Somsubhra Pal Vishal Goyal
director (IP - sales & Choudhury senior technical
marketing), Terminus managing director, marketing manager,
Circuits Analog Devices India STMicroelectronics
waveguide. This feature allowed the
scientists to make a photonic crystal of
silicon nitride that acts as waveguide
for laser light tuned to certain atomic
transitions in caesium. The caesium
atom absorbs and scatters these wave-
lengths, generating forces that could
trap and manipulate the atom.
The photonic crystal is integrated
into a small, self-contained system
that has a readily available supply
of caesium atoms. These units are
relatively cheap to make and easy to
operate. This interesting technology
could serve as high-quality building
block for quantum computation and
communication. It also opens door for
several experimental opportunities.
Analogue standing tall
Over the last few years, we have wit-
nessed the shifting of electronics world
from analogue to more sophisticated
and efficient digital substitutes. But all
analogue components cannot be com-
pletely substituted by digital devices;
they would coexist and complement
each other. With the extensive devel-
opments in the IoT segment, we see it
driving many new technologies and
products in analogue components and
chips.
The author is a technical correspondent at EFY
www.efymag.com
 test & Measurement
From 50MHz to 100GHz, Bench-Top to Wristwatch
Oscilloscopes Have Come a Long Way
In this story, we explore the latest features and kinds of oscilloscopes that play an integral
role in effectively testing designs today. We also learn how new technologies in oscilloscopes
are enabling test and embedded engineers to design better
ABHISHEK A. MUTHA
A
s an engineer, if you want to
improve your design overall,
effective testing is an integral
part. However, it means possessing
tools you can rely on and that can
provide consistent results as per re-
quirements.
Today, oscilloscopes come in nu-
merous shapes and sizesfrom as
small as a wristwatch to pocket-sized
and bench-top ones. They even have
diverse bandwidthsfrom the entry-
level 50MHz to the massive 100GHz!
Let us explore the new technologies,
innovations and breakthroughs in the
oscilloscopes domain that help our
engineers design better.
From analogue to digital
From simple signal capture to complex
time-domain signal analysis, oscil-
loscopes come with salient and con-
trasting functionalities. Oscilloscope
manufacturers have augmented the
automated capabilities and portability
factor so that designers can accomplish
swiftly and get more authentic meas-
urements for increased productivity.
The invention of cathode ray tubes
(CRTs) in the late 19th century was an
important milestone for the birth of ana-
logue oscilloscopes, and has changed
the way of waveform representation,
believes Srinivasa Appalla, manager-
product support & application, Rohde
& Schwarz. However, he says, The
technological advancements in electron-
ic designs have put new requirements
on signal analysis which are not met by
analogue scopes. Digital oscilloscopes,
introduced in the 80s, are dominating
the market now because of the ability of
58 July 2014 | Electronics For You
Exciting innovations in the last one year
Osciums iMSO-204 and iMSO-204L are mixed-signal
oscilloscopes designed specifically for the iPhone, iPad and
iPod.
Highlights: 2 analogue + 4 digital channels, 50MSPS sample
rate, 5MHz bandwidth, 200ns/div-10s/div
Price: $399.97
Gabotronics Xminilab Portable is a small mixed-signal oscilloscope
with an arbitrary waveform generator and protocol sniffer.
Highlights: 2 analogue inputs, maximum sampling rate of
2MSPS, 200kHz analogue bandwidth, 8-bit resolution, 1M
15pF input impedance, 256 buffer size per channel and input
voltage range of -14V to +20V
Price: $118
LabNations SmartScope is a 100MS/s open source
oscilloscope for iPad, Android and PC. A must-have for every
Arduino and Raspberry Pi developer.
Highlights: 2x100MS/s 45MHz oscilloscope, 50MS/s arbitrary
waveform generator, digital logic analyser at 100MS/s, digital
waveform generator at 100MS/s, 200 waveforms/second data
updates
Price: $179
Gabotronics Oscilloscope Watch
Highlights: 2 analogue inputs, 4MSPS maximum sampling
rate, 200kHz analogue bandwidth, 8-bit resolution
Price: $150
digital signal processing, and respective an important role of providing real-
analysis and documentation. time signals and waveform display.
Sumit Sharma, marketing man-
ager-India, Good Will Instrument Mixed-signal and
Co. Ltd. too believes, that with the mixed-domain
rapid advancement of technology, As oscilloscopes have evolved from
the oscilloscope market has also been analogue to digital and from mixed-
shifting from conventional analogue signal oscilloscopes to mixed-domain
oscilloscopes towards digital storage oscilloscopes, they have become even
oscilloscopes (DSOs). He says, In more valuable tools for analysing
contrast to analogue oscilloscopes, the system performance or troubleshoot-
major function of a DSO is to not only ing problems, says Pamela Aparo,
convert signals from analogue to digi- marketing manager-electronic test &
tal but also store testing data, allow re- measurement, Analog Devices Inc.
mote control and transmission of data Embedded system designers require
through various interfaces. But, he advanced testing capabilities to resolve
also believes, Despite the strengths of their design issues, so mixed-signal
DSOs, analogue oscilloscopes still play oscilloscopes (MSOs) emerged in the
www.efymag.com
 test & Measurement
Our fast-moving world needs
Are engineers ready to make the jump from knobs to a
to analyse data fast, and also on the
smartphone/tablet interface where they use their fingers move, informs Vivek Mantri, country
to zoom in on a part of a waveform? manager-industrial segment, Scientech
Manipulating the image on an oscilloscope by using touch-screen technology is a relatively Technologies. He says, Trending tech-
easy jump for most engineers to make. A more difficult transition would be to use this kind of nology in telecom and RF segments
interface as the main screen to configure all the available functions in an oscilloscope with
additional functions integrated.Pamela Aparo, marketing manager-electronic test &
needs data analysis to be extremely
measurement, Analog Devices Inc. accurate in time to display waveforms,
The new generation of engineers is smartphone savvy and enjoys working with the scope and in frequency to display signal
like an electronic gadget. Hence the user interface of the scopes is moving towards touch-screen spectra, where MDOs are a perfect
operations.Srinivasa Appalla, manager-product support & application, Rohde & Schwarz choice. However, he adds, For most
The proliferation of consumer electronics with capacitive touch-screens and intuitive operation of the general-purpose requirements,
is creating a new set of user expectations that, as a test and measurement vendor, we are analogue oscilloscopes are sufficient.
continuing to track and evaluate.David Farrell, general manager-mainstream oscilloscopes,
Tektronix Handheld, PC-based,
Yes. If a common man can zoom his images and watch closely on smartphones then phone and even a
engineers would surely appreciate and use it with warm welcome.Vivek Mantri, country wristwatch scope
manager-industrial segment, Scientech Technologies Pvt Ltd
Oscilloscopes have evolved from
beginning of 2000, informs Sharma. scopes, Tektronix. He adds, Analogue, the typical bench-top instruments to
He says, There has been a growing digital and now RF signals are coming as small as a wristwatch, providing
need for detecting digital signals which together to the embedded domain and flexibility and an array of choices.
are usually presented by two discrete creating significant changes on how Mantri defines todays generation
voltage levels. A logic analyser, work is done in designs houses and re- as tech-savy, that is more comfort-
which is the best fit for such digital- search centres, specifically with respect able with touch screens and USB data
signal measurements, has the benefit of to analysing those signals in as short a transfers. He says, They want their
multiple-channel input measurements, time as possible. oscilloscopes to be handheld, with an
usually limited to two or four channels On a similar note, Aparo says, easy interface, and prefer data trans-
in oscilloscopes. He adds, Nowadays, Mixed-domain oscilloscopes offer fers through SD cards. Different user
some system designers not only need similar benefits as mixed-signal oscillo- segments will find analogue, MSO or
an MSO but also an instrument which scopes when an engineer needs to ana- PC-based instruments useful, depend-
can afford to do frequency- and time- lyse signals in both the time domain ing on their usage. Although, he
domain analysis simultaneously. So, a and frequency domainand these are maintains, no single technology can be
mixed-domain oscilloscope (MDO) is useful in looking for problems that are suitable for all kinds of applications.
the latest trend. caused by phase instability or phase Todays handheld oscilloscopes
The continuously-evolving integra- offsets. range from 20MHz to 500MHz in
tion level of embedded designs drives Not everyone is into MDOs though. bandwidth, with sampling rates from
further feature integration into oscillo- On the contrary, Sanchit Bhatia, digital 500Msa/s to 5GSa/s, and mostly come
scopes. Appala says, Additional digi- applications specialist, Agilent Tech- with LCD displays. Typically, with two
tal channels, as part of mixed-signal nologies India believes, MDOs are an channels, these are ideally suited for
options, protocol-specific trigger and attempt to add spectrum analyser capa- use by hobbyists, students, technicians
decode options are a few examples. bility to oscilloscopes. He says, MSOs and anyone else looking for an easy-
The key requirement is a synchronised have not evolved to MDOs as yet due to to-use, affordable, single-channel PC
operation of such features for true lower specifications. In fact, in MDOs, oscilloscope.
system-level debugging. the oscilloscope and spectrum analyser PC-based oscilloscopes, comple-
In the analogue to digital era, a sig- capabilities have gone backwards. Any mented with software, provide band-
nificant number of digital designs came general oscilloscope and any entry-level width signal analysis anywhere be-
onto the analogue board, thus MSOs spectrum analyser have better specifica- tween few tens of MHz to as high as
came to light about ten years ago. The tions than todays MDOs. Support- 20GHz. These USB, modular devices
trend has evolved since, and mixed- ing his view, he adds, A stand-alone typically have one, two, four or even
domain oscilloscopes came into exist- spectrum analyser and a stand-alone eight channels with USB 2.0 or USB
ence with Tektronix leading the charge. oscilloscope are a better solution than 3.0 interface, depending on the model.
Today, mixed domain has moved to an MDO, as they offer full instrument Some of them are even loaded with
another level with the inclusion of capabilities and can be synchronised memory capacity. The software pro-
wireless RF signals, says David Farrell, using external trigger, if the application vided with these instruments is used
general manager-mainstream oscillo- so demands. to transfer instrument set ups, meas-

60 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com


urement data and images, and mostly
favours the Windows operating sys-
tem. But some oscilloscope makers are
providing support for Linux, Mac OS
X and even for Raspberry Pi.
Interestingly, apart from these,
engineers can now perform analysis
on their iPhones and on small devices
such as a wristwatch scope (see the box
titled Exciting innovations in the last
one year.)
There are various other pocket-
friendly oscilloscope devices available
in the market for engineers. At the
end of the day, it all depends on the
engineers preference, purpose and un-
derstanding of the devices limitations.
People will either love it or remain
nonchalant with these innovations.
Knobs vs smart touch
Today, smart touch interfaces can be
used to define areas where you want
the oscilloscope to trigger. These inter-
faces are fully configurable. Traditional
analogue scopes were designed for op-
eration using dedicated knobs and but-
tons. However, the latest digital scopes
incorporate touch-screen displays,
enabling new operating concepts and
enhancing ease of use, informs Appal-
la. He says, As the model acceptance
heavily depends on the users taste
and experience, it is advantageous if
instruments support multiple ways
of operationdedicated knobs, USB
keyboard/mouse and touch-screen
interface. An intuitive operating inter-
face helps users to navigate faster and
reduces time in setting up, executing
and documenting measurements.
Oscilloscope makers keep adding
features to their instruments based on
user demand for more signal analysis.
Good touch-screen implementations
support drag-and-drop functional-
ity for organising the display with
multiple waveform diagrams and for
selection of predefined operations.
Other innovative user-interface con-
cepts include colour-coding of buttons
and knobs for guiding the user, adds
Appalla. In future, more touch-screen
functionality, which is popular in con-
sumer devices, will follow.
www.efymag.com
test & Measurement
Notable changes in oscilloscopes
in last one year
USB 3.0 in PC-based oscilloscopes
Integration of multiple instruments in one oscilloscope
Smart touch-screen interface
Support for operating systems like Linux and Mac
Sharing her personal experience,
Aparo notes, Although knobs and
buttons are somewhat comforting
when I start working with a new os-
cilloscope, I have to say that moving
away from traditional knobs has made
it easier to automate certain tests, and
it has made it possible to save common
configurations. The learning curve for
using a new oscilloscope with multi-
ple menu levels is higher than when
purely analogue oscilloscopes were the
only optionbut this is also because
the new oscilloscopes can do so much
more. She adds, Obviously, having
USB interfaces on oscilloscopes makes
it easier to store test results and import
them into other programs for writing
reports or presentations.
Although oscilloscope screens are
evolving to capacitive touch interfaces
with multi-touch capabilities that pro-
vide zoom capability and analysis
capability with great ease, Bhatia be-
lieves that common traditional knobs
like channel scaling, offset and trig-
ger modes, to name a few, are being
retained as the engineers are used to
operating scopes with these knobs.
As the touch has been success-
fully implemented in mobile systems,
more electronic devices will feature
this technology. Sharma says, In this
fashion, a traditional hand-held oscil-
loscope is being upgraded to the full
touch-screen hand-held scope as a
next-generation transition. This may
minimise the gap between high-end
and low-end scopes and bring the
whole new experience of using oscil-
loscopes to engineers.
From 50MHz to 100GHz
An apparent factor when choosing
an oscilloscope is bandwidth. And,
incidentally, the biggest impact on the
price of a scope is its bandwidth and
the number of analogue samples per
second that it can read. For
error-free results, most engi-
neers know that the samples
per second figure should be
at least three to five times
higher than the bandwidth.
Engineers, typically, prefer
entry-level and mid-level oscilloscopes.
But almost a year back, Teledyne
LeCroy had demonstrated a 100GHz
real-time oscilloscope targeting applica-
tions such as CEI-25/28, CEI-56, optical
coherent modulation communication
systems, defense and radar applica-
tions, emerging 10-32Gb/s serial data
technologies, 100GBASE-R Ethernet,
SAS12, PCI Express Gen4, Thunder-
bolt and next-generation USB. Agilent
Technologies had also introduced
real-time oscilloscopes with 63GHz true
analogue bandwidth in 2012. So, whats
the significance of such extremely-high-
bandwidth oscilloscopes?
High-speed serial standards, such
as PCIe Gen4, MIPI MPHY and Fibre
Channel, work at speeds beyond
10Gbps, and require high bandwidth
to capture the signal content, informs
Bhatia. He says, With the adoption
of high-speed serial standards, band-
width demands on oscilloscope keep
increasing. On a similar note, Aparo
says, Higher-bandwidth oscilloscopes
are important in measuring the perfor-
mance of higher-speed data links like
USB 3.0 and JESD204B interfaces. They
are also needed in the development of
new high-speed digital interfaces and
fibre optics.
Major significance for this kind of
breakthrough is due to trends right
from Telecom, RF, space technolo-
gies, to high-end medical electronics
gadgets used in telemedicine, informs
Mantri. However, he says, General-
purpose, lower-frequency oscilloscopes
will continue to lead the market for
their ease of use, lower cost and ver-
satility. They are easy to service and
find wide applications in production,
service, testing and troubleshooting.
Trends and tools that help
Continuous integration at design
level raises new challenges for test and
Electronics For You | July 2014 61
 test & Measurement
debugging. Embedded design is the
buzz word today, informs Appalla. He
says, Former truly-isolated functional
blocks and circuit components now
get closely integrated on circuit board
or even multi-chip level. For system
debugging, a time-correlated analysis
of analogue signals, such as switched
mode power supplies or D/A convert-
ers, as well as digital signals of various
communication and programming
interfaces is required. Additional com-
plexity is given by protocol-based in-
terfaces or integrated RF components.
The user requirements, as men-
tioned above, are drivers for standard
oscilloscopes. Debugging of protocol-
based interfaces, such as I2C, SPI or
CAN, is supported with trigger and
decoded options. Often a bandwidth
of 1GHz is required, not only because
of faster digital signals but also driven
by fast edges of clock signals or power
supply switching. A suitable sample
rate of 5Gsample/s and a minimum
acquisition memory of 10Msample
enable a signal acquisition with high
resolution over a long observation
period, adds Appalla.
In general, the trends in oscillo-
scopes are focused on helping engi-
neers answer their questions faster. In
addition to integrating logic analyser
and spectrum analyser functions in
the MSO and MDO classes of instru-
ments, another trend is the integration
of signal sources in the oscilloscope,
informs Aparo. She says, This func-
tion can range from a simple sine-wave
or square-wave generator to something
as complex as a multichannel arbitrary
waveform generator that allows us-
ers to create modulated signals. This
trend of integrating more features and
functions into the oscilloscope helps
engineers get answers more quickly,
because it provides all the needed tools
in a single platform. An example of
this kind of integration can be wit-
nessed in Tektronixs MDO that boasts
of six instruments built in one, namely,
oscilloscope, spectrum analyser, logic
analyser, arbitrary/function generator,
protocol analyser and a digital volt-
meter.
62 July 2014 | Electronics For You
Major contributors to this article
David Farrell Pamela Aparo
general manager- marketing manager-
mainstream electronic test &
oscilloscopes, measurement, Analog
Tektronix Devices Inc.
Oscilloscopes also increasingly
offer better bandwidth, more analy-
sis capabilities and better hardware
specifications, informs Bhatia. He says,
Analysis capabilities offered today
include variety of protocol analysis
tools, compliance applications and
more mathematical functions. Tools
such as AC calibration of probes, de-
embedding and equalisation offer
better reproduction of the signals on
the scopes.
New and still not so common with
oscilloscopes is the operation in the
frequency domain. But users request
this functionality, informs Appalla.
He says, They want, for example, to
debug EMI problems caused by power
supplies, fast edges or touch-screen
emission.
Technologies for tomorrow
One of the new technologies devel-
oped for high-bandwidth scopes is
indium phosphide (InP) semiconduc-
tors, informs Bhatia. He says, New
technologies are developed by Agilent
labs (a research organisation within
Agilent), which focuses on higher
integration, low-noise front ends and
high-speed designs. He adds, InP
semiconductors have very low noise
and high transistor-breakdown volt-
age at high frequencies. Thus, they
can handle higher voltages at high
bandwidths. This helps design engi-
neers make high-bandwidth measure-
ments very accurately and with great
confidence.
Targeting embedded design engi-
neers, Tektronix delivered advanced
802.11 WLAN test solutions to its
mixed-domain and performance oscillo-
scopes. Engineers can use tools for inte-
Sanchit Bhatia Srinivasa Appalla Sumit Sharma Vivek Mantri
digital applications manager-product marketing manager- country manager-
specialist, Agilent support & application, India, Good Will industrial segment,
Technologies India Rohde & Schwarz Instrument Co. Ltd Scientech
Pvt Ltd Technologies Pvt Ltd
grating 802.11 a/b/g/j/n/p/ac WLAN
connectivity into their product designs.
The new WLAN solutions address the
growing demand toward integrating
Wi-Fi in everything from home appli-
ances to industrial equipment.
Many of the new technologies
being developed are also software
improvements that make it easier
for engineers to test or simulate their
systems more quickly. Aparo says,
This is often found in larger markets
like wireless communications or au-
tomotive radar, where there is a large
pool of engineers who are working on
these applications around the world
and their needs converge on common
requirements or published stand-
ards. Talking about how it would
help a design engineer, she adds,
Improving software for oscilloscopes
can reduce the time it takes a design
engineer to understand what is not
working, or verify the performance
of a new platform. By pre-loading
common tests or waveforms into the
software, engineers know there is
consistency in the information they
are gathering, and this makes it easier
to collaborate with other team mem-
bers.
High-end test and measurement
requires high-end semiconductors to
make them work efficiently. Mantri
says, So, support on making the
semiconductors application-specific
from respective vendors can create a
big wave in this market. Compact USB
digital oscilloscope will be a dream
come into reality for service engineers
on field at an affordable cost.
The author is a senior technical correspondent
at EFY
www.efymag.com
 buyers guide
Budget-Friendly Oscilloscopes
Digital oscilloscopes, being expensive, have always been out of reach for many. But this
doesnt make them less desirable. Fortunately, test and measurement companies have
sensed this situation and started developing low-priced oscilloscopes with reasonable
quality and features. So we now have several wonderful low-budget options. Let us take
a look at some of them
Ankit Gupta
A
good oscilloscope is an indis-
pensable tool for you if you
are seriously into electronics.
The oscilloscope helps you check the
functioning of electronic circuits bet-
ter. With advancements in technology,
electronics designing, testing and even
repairing has become much more
challenging than before. Engineers
thus require advanced tools to solve
measurement challenges quickly and
accurately, and a digital storage oscil-
loscope helps them do just that. But,
due to its high price, this equipment
has always been out of reach for most
individuals.
The strong desire of the engineers
to possess a good oscilloscope has led
companies such as Tektronix, Agilent
64 July 2014 | Electronics For You
and Teledyne LeCroy to introduce
low-priced oscilloscopes that promise
reasonable acquisition quality and
performance. Generally, these look like
a standard oscilloscope with integrated
display for viewing the acquired signal
as shown in Fig. 1.
Another low-cost solution comes
from companies such as Digilent,
Virtins Technology, Link Instruments,
Parallax Inc. and Velleman Inc., which
uses processing power of a computer
Fig. 1: An oscilloscope with integrated display
and its monitor to display the acquired
signal. These solutions are becoming
more popular as they are compact yet
show the signal on a larger display of
a computer for better analysis. Some
of these are even multifunctional, with
additional functions of waveform
generator, logic analyser, DC supply
and multimeter. Fig. 2 shows such a
system.
Next are the small pocket-size os-
cilloscopes that can be highly useful
for field engineers. Most of these are
low-priced. Though their accuracy is
not as good as the previous options
but these are good enough for basic
analysis. Fig. 3 shows a pocket-size
oscilloscope.
There are also various open source
do it yourself (DIY) oscilloscope de-
signs available on the Internet. You can
build these systems yourself and use
for basic test and measurement. Such
systems are very useful for students
as they learn a lot while building their
own oscilloscope and then use it with
better confidence. Fig. 4 shows such a
system.
There are so many options avail-
Fig. 2: An oscilloscope that shows signal on a
computers screen
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 buyers guide
a specified low value to a speci-
Table I
fied high value. Typically, these
Some Low-Budget Oscilloscope Options values are 10% and 90% of the step
Specifications Tektronix Agilent Gwinstek Rigol Teledyne LeCroy height. As a thumb rule, similar to
TBS1052B-EDU DSO1052B GDS-1052-U DS1074Z 940-WAVEACE1001 bandwidth, the rise time of the oscil-
Bandwidth 50MHz 50MHz 50MHz 70MHz 40MHz loscope should be less that 1/5 of
Sample rate 1.0GS/s 2.0GS/s 250MS/s 1GS/s 1GS/s (interleaved) the fastest rise time of the signal to
half channel maximum accurately measure it.
interleaved, Sample rate. Sample rate refers
1 GS/s all to how frequently a digital oscillo-
channels
scope takes a sample of the signal.
External trigger Yes Yes Yes Yes
The faster an oscilloscope samples,
Number of channels 2 2 2 4 2 lesser the details lost while recon-
Automated wave- Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes structing the signal. In order to
form measurement accurately reconstruct a signal and
Waveform math Yes, FFT Yes, FFT Yes, FFT Yes, FFT avoid aliasing, the Nyquist theo-
I/O interfaces USB, GBIP USB USB USB USB rem states that the signal must be
(optional) sampled at least twice as fast as its
Display size 17.8cm 14.7cm 14.7cm (5.7 17.8cm 17.8cm (7 inches) highest frequency component. This
(7 inches) (5.7 inches) (7 inches) theorem assumes an infinite record
inches) length and a continuous signal, but
Overall dimensions 326mm x 324.6mm x 310mm x 313.1mm 163mm x 313mm x no oscilloscope can offer infinite
158mm x 157.8mm x 142mm x 160.8 mm 115.8mm
record length. Therefore sampling
124mm 129.2mm 140mm 122.4mm
(approx.) at only twice the rate of the highest
frequency component will not be
sufficient.
The sampling rate
that you might require
to accurately read your
signal will majorly de-
pend on the method
used for reconstructing the
signal, also called interpola-
tion. For accurate recon-
struction using sin(x)/x
interpolation, sample rate
Fig. 3: A pocket-size oscilloscope should be at least 2.5
times the highest fre-
able for each type of oscilloscope. Fig. 4: A DIY-type oscilloscope quency component of
But before looking at these options to your signal. Using lin-
evaluate which one suits your require- which a sinusoidal input is attenuated ear interpolation, the sample rate
ment, you need to understand their to 70.7% of its true amplitude. Beyond should be at least 10 times the highest
specifications. You can have correct this frequency the oscilloscope cannot frequency signal component.
measurements only when your oscil- support reasonable accuracy. To de- Record length. The oscilloscope
loscopes specifications support the cide how much bandwidth you need, cannot store infinite number of sam-
range of the signals you are trying to find out what would be the range of ples as assumed by Nyquist equation.
measure. Some of the important speci- frequencies you would need to meas- Record length determines the time
fications are: ure. Once you know the frequency that can be captured by each channel
Bandwidth. It determines the range, just use the five times rule, that of the oscilloscope.
maximum frequency signal that the is, multiply the maximum frequency Time captured = Record length/
oscilloscope can accurately measure. by five and you have the bandwidth Sample rate
The accuracy decreases with increase that you need to accurately measure Normally, an entry-level oscillo-
in signals frequency. The bandwidth those signals. scope comes with 2k to 2.5k points,
mentioned in the datasheet (say, Rise time. Rise time is the time which is more than enough. In gen-
100MHz) is actually the frequency at taken by a signal to change from eral, greater record length is better.

66 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com

 buyers guide
advanced features of expensive os-
Table II
cilloscopes, such as math functions
Some PC-Based Oscilloscopes and USB storage, also with these
Manufacturer Model Bandwidth Sample rate Multifunction oscilloscopes.
Dynoninstruments ELAB-080 60MHz 80MS/s Yes Being mostly compact in size,
Bitscope BS50 70MHz 40MS/s Yes these can be used as bench-top
oscilloscopes and also moved eas-
Virtins Technology VT DSO-2820R 80MHz Yes
ily, if required. Their display size
Link Instruments MSO-19 60MHz Repetitive mode: 1GS/s Yes ranges from 12.7cm to 17.8cm (5 to 7
Single shot: 200MS/s inches), which is enough for proper
Jyetech DSO 094 (Dual channel) 10MHz 50MS/s No viewing. But some vendors boast
of utilising the same space more ef-
Parallax PropScope USB 25MS/s Yes
Oscilloscope
ficiently with advanced features like
auto-hide menu panel and sectional
Picotech PicoScope 2104 10MHz Repetitive mode: 1GS/s; Yes
Single shot: 50MS/s
zooming.

Dynoninstruments S2X100 50MHz 100MS/s Yes PC-based oscilloscopes

Easysync DS1M12 250kHz Repetitive mode: 20MS/s Yes A PC-based oscilloscope is normally
Synchrotech USB-SCOPE50 75MHz 1GS/s No a small piece of hardware that is at-
tached to a computer to acquire the
waveform, but waveform cap- signal and show it on the computers
Table III ture rate refers to how quickly display. In most cases the power sup-
Some Pocket-Size Oscilloscopes an oscilloscope captures a ply too is derived from the computers
Manufacturer Model Bandwidth Sample rate waveform. The oscilloscopes USB port, which makes them very
Jyetech DSO 094 10MHz 50MS/s
with better waveform capture handy and easy to carry along. A
(Dual channel) rate capture fast transients lot of multifunction options are also
better. available, such as additional signal
Velleman APS230 2 x 30MHz 240MS/s
P robe s pe c ific at ions . generator, logic analyser, multimeter,
Velleman HPS10 2MHz 10MHz Probes specifications are as 5V DC supply, digital I/Os and spec-
Velleman HPS50 12MHz 40MHz important as that of oscillo- trum analyser.
scope. The probes bandwidth The multifunction oscilloscopes
Velleman PPS10 2MHz 10MS/s
should match the bandwidth are perfect for students and hob-
uni-trend UT81B 8MHz 40MS/s of the oscilloscope. Here also byists, who do not require higher
Seeedstudio DSO Nano v2 0-200kHz 1MS/s the five time thumb rule accuracy but need all the tools at one
works perfectly. place. Availability of the signals on a
Seeedstudio DSO Nano v3 0-200kHz 1MS/s
The probe will be in direct bigger display is also a treat for the
contact with the circuit and eyes. The window software for these
To capture and debug serial bus you should not overload it. Otherwise, the oscilloscopes provide analysis and
will need record length as high as measurements will not be correct. Re- storage tools. Table II shows some
1M points. sistive loading greater than 10M-ohms of the PC-based systems available
External trigger. External trig- and capacitive loading less than 10pF in the market.
gers allow you to stabilise repetitive is acceptable for a probe.
waveforms and make them appear Pocket-size oscilloscopes
static on the display by continuously Integrated display type Pocket-size oscilloscopes are easy to
displaying the same section of the oscilloscope carry along and normally work on
input signal. Generally, oscilloscopes Table I show some low-budget battery. The frequency range that
are available with edge and pulse- integrated-display oscilloscopes you get in these oscilloscopes is lim-
width trigger. But advanced trigger- available from different manufactur- ited. Some expensive ones do sup-
ing options like A and B sequence, ers, including their brief specifica- port signals in megahertz range but
video, communication (CAN, SPI, tions. The bandwidth you can get in the low-budget ones are normally
etc) and logic triggering can help you this budget will mostly be less than for kilohertz range only. So these
debug faster. 100MHz, which is more than enough cannot be used for debugging high-
Waveform capture rate. Sample for basic analysis and testing, if you frequency signals; they only support
rate indicates how fast the oscilloscope go by five times thumb rule dis- basic testing and are very handy in
samples the input signal within one cussed earlier. And you get a lot of field work.

68 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com


Some of these also come with wire-
less connectivity, such as Bluetooth.
Using them you can view the signals
remotely within a defined distance.
There are a few that you can connect to
you Android device and view the sig-
nals wirelessly. Table III shows some
of the pocket-size oscilloscopes from
different vendors.
DIY-type oscilloscopes
Lot of designs are available on the
Internet to build oscilloscopes your-
self and use them for basic testing.
In most cases, complete designs
including schematic, layout and
source code are available. Their per-
formance, however, will depend on
the quality and proper assembly of
the components.
DIY-type oscilloscopes are mainly
microcontroller based. The most
popular microcontrollers for oscillo-
scopes belong to AVR and PIC series.
Their frequency range also is not
very high. Some of them display the
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buyers guide
Table IV
Some DIY-Type Oscilloscopes
Model Bandwidth Sample rate Website link
AVR DSO 10MHz 50MS/s http://www.ulrichradig.de/home/index.php/avr/avr-dso
DSOAMk3 5MHz 20MS/s http://alternatezone.com/electronics/dsoamk3.htm
eOscope 20MHz 40MS/s http://www.eosystems.ro/index.php/projects/eoscope
06201P 1MHz 5MS/s http://www.jyetech.com/Products/LcdScope/eDSO062.html
PIC12F675 http://www.semifluid.com/2006/01/31/pic12f675-oscilloscope/
Oscilloscope
PPMScope 500kHz 1MHz http://jonw0224.tripod.com/ppmscope.html
SX28 http://www.sxlist.com/techref/ubicom/sxoscope/index.htm
signals on a computer monitor while oscilloscopes offer reasonable quality,
others have integrated LCD displays. including the DIY ones. However, one
Those using computer monitor for from a reputed manufacturer is more
display are more comfortable than likely to give accurate measurements
those with integrated displays. Table and performance.
IV shows some of the DIY-type oscil- It is only the beginning; we are
loscopes. likely to see a lot of better and cheaper
From all the above types and options in future.
options, choose the one that suites
your taste and requirements. All the The author is a technical editor at EFY
Electronics For You | July 2014 69
 defence electronics

Part 4 of 4
Defence Lasers and Optronic Systems:
Gas Laser Electronics
Carbon dioxide and helium-neon lasers are the two commonly used gas lasers used in
tactical military applications. High-power lasers, such as carbon dioxide gas dynamic lasers,
hydrogen fluoride/deuterium fluoride lasers and chemical oxy-iodine lasers, which can
generate mega-watts of CW power for directed-energy weapon applications, are also broadly
classified as gas lasers. These lasers are pumped by gas dynamics or by chemical reactions.
Focus in this concluding part of the article is on gas laser electronics with emphasis on the
role of electronics in gas lasers having potential for tactical military applications

Dr Anil K. Maini and Nakul Maini

Power

C
arbon dioxide laser-based
range finders and laser radar
and helium-neon laser-cavity-
based ring-laser gyroscope inertial
navigation sensors are among the com-
mon military applications exploiting
use of gas lasers. In addition, such gas
lasers as gas dynamic carbon dioxide
lasers, chemical oxy-iodine lasers, all
gas-phase iodine lasers, hydrogen
fluoride and deuterium fluoride lasers,
though not electrically or optically
pumped, these are largely exploited
to build high-power directed-energy
weapons. We shall, however, confine
our discussion in this article to electri-
cally-excited gas lasers having military
applications.
In both carbon dioxide and helium-
neon lasers, the power supply used
to initiate and subsequently sustain
electrical discharge through the gas
mixture contained in a sealed envelope
constitutes the primary and essential
component of electronics. The active
medium is usually excited either by
passing an electric discharge current
along the length of the tube known as
longitudinal excitation in both types
of gas lasers (Fig. 1), or by an electric
discharge perpendicular to the length
of the laser tube known as transverse
excitation which is common in carbon
dioxide lasers only (Fig. 2). Frequency-
stabilisation electronics used in the
case of actively-stabilised Doppler
+ Supply
HR Brewster
mirror window Gas mixture
Fig. 1: Longitudinally-excited gas laser
Power
HR Brewster
Supply
mirror window + Electrode
Gas flow
Fig. 2: Transversely-excited gas laser
broadened gas lasers, such as helium-
neon and carbon dioxide, is another
area that relates to gas laser electronics.
Negative resistance
characteristics
Gas-discharge characteristics, when
excited electrically, are the key to de-
sign of power supplies for gas lasers.
Typical gas-discharge characteristics,
as applicable to carbon dioxide and
helium-neon lasers, exhibit negative
resistance in their current-voltage re-
lationship. The current is zero initially,
which may rise to a few nano amperes
after the applied voltage exceeds a
certain threshold causing some ionisa-
tion of the gas mixture. This current
increases slowly till it reaches the
Brewster Output
window coupler
Laser
Output
Brewster Output
window coupler
Laser
Output
Electrode
breakdown point. At the breakdown
point, large number of molecules in the
gas mixture are ionised and conduc-
tivity increases significantly. Increase
in discharge current causes further
reduction in discharge resistance with
the result that the voltage required
to sustain the discharge actually de-
creases with increase in current. This
gives rise to what is called negative
resistance region in the gas-discharge
current-voltage characteristics.
Helium-neon
power supplies
The generalised form of a gas-laser
power supply essentially comprises
a high-voltage generation circuit that
provides the starting voltage, either

70 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com


in the form of a high-voltage trigger the breakdown voltage of the gas mix-
pulse or a DC voltage level, to initiate ture in question. The current-limiting
the gas discharge, and a power supply feature is provided by a resistance
with current-limiting feature to deliver called ballast resistance, which limits
the steady-state current to sustain the the discharge current to desired value.
discharge. Amplitude of high-voltage There are three commonly-used
trigger pulse needs to be greater than circuit topologies for designing heli-
um-neon laser power
supplies. In one of the
topologies, an AC-DC
or DC-DC (in case
of portable systems)
power supply produc-
ing an output voltage
slightly higher than
Fig. 3: Generalised block diagram of helium-neon laser power supply the voltage required
Fig. 4: High-voltage multiplier chain for odd multiplication factor
Fig. 5: High-voltage multiplier chain with even multiplication factor
Fig. 6: Voltage multiplier chain with unequal capacitors
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defence electronics
to sustain the discharge plasma is cas-
caded to a voltage multiplier chain of
diodes and capacitors to produce the
starting voltage. The voltage at the out-
put of multiplier chain drops to almost
the voltage level present at the output
of DC power supply due to inherently
poor regulation of the multiplier chain.
In the second commonly used cir-
cuit topology, the DC power supply
is connected directly to the plasma
tube through the ballast resistance. A
high-voltage trigger pulse of 10-15kV
is applied to the tube to initiate the
discharge. Once gas mixture is ionised,
the DC power supply takes over to
sustain the discharge.
In the third topology, constant
power output fly-back converter
is used. The DC to DC converter is
designed to produce an open circuit
output voltage of 10-15kV and a power
output delivery rating equal to prod-
uct of a little more than the required
magnitude of DC voltage and desired
discharge current. As a consequence,
the converter output voltage rapidly
drops to the desired value after the
discharge is initiated.
Diode-capacitor
multiplier chain
There are two common voltage mul-
tiplier configurations, one for the odd
multiplication factors (Fig. 4) and the
other for even multiplication factors
(Fig. 5). The output voltage in case of
multiplier configuration shown in Fig.
4 is given by:
nVm
VO=
2
1+[n(n 1)/12CRL]
In the case of multiplier chain with
even multiplication factor, the output
voltage is given by:
nVm
VO=
2
1+[n(n /2+1)/6CRL]
In both cases, C1=C2=C3=C4=C5=C6=
C7=C8=C, n is the multiplication fac-
tor, f is frequency of operation equal
to power-line frequency for AC-DC
power supply and the switching fre-
quency in case of a switched mode
power supply. VP is the peak ampli-
Electronics For You | July 2014 71
 defence electronics
tude of the voltage applied to the input This is possible for large value of ca-
of multiplier chain. Also, in both cases, pacitance C.
multiplied output voltage is equal to Another voltage multiplier circuit
nVP, provided the bracketed term in that offers a superior performance is
the denominator is zero or negligible. the one that uses unequal capacitors.
Fig. 7: Push-pull converter with cascaded multiplier chain
Fig. 8: Fly-back converter with high-voltage trigger circuit
Fig. 6 shows the circuit
configuration.
Helium-neon
power supply
circuits
The most commonly
used helium-neon laser
power supply circuit is a
push-pull type high-fre-
quency switched mode
DC-to-AC power supply
Fig. 9: Constant power output fly-back converter cascaded to a diode-
72 July 2014 | Electronics For You
capacitor type voltage multiplier chain,
as shown in Fig. 7. The push-pull cir-
cuit generates a high-frequency square
waveform across transformer second-
ary, which is then multiplied to gener-
ate the starting high voltage for the
discharge tube. The push-pull circuit
here is configured around a switching
control IC type LM3524.
It may be mentioned here that, a
large number of control ICs intended
for switching power supply design are
commercially available. Some of the
other popular type numbers include
TL497, TL594 and TDA8130. Their
data sheets contain typical application
circuits for switching supply design.
When discharge occurs, the volt-
age falls to a lower value to supply the
sustaining discharge current through
the ballast resistance. The rest of the
voltage is dropped across the multiplier
chain components. In some cases, the
sustaining voltage may be tapped from
an earlier point in the chain for better
overall performance. In that case, the
output of the multiplier chain feeds the
discharge tube through a relatively high
resistance of the order of tens of mega-
ohms and the sustaining voltage feeds
the tube through the ballast resistance.
The other common circuit topol-
ogy is the one where the power supply
generates the voltage required to sus-
tain the discharge and a high-voltage
trigger circuit generates the starting
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Fig. 10: Commercial helium-neon laser power supplies
Fig. 11: Helium-neon laser with inbuilt power
supply
Fig. 12: Helium-neon power supply for ring laser
gyro cavity
voltage to initiate the discharge. Fig.
8 shows a typical circuit. The power
supply is configured around an exter-
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nally driven fly-back type DC-to-DC
converter. The ballast resistance is split
into two resistances.
Initially, when there is no discharge,
the voltage appearing after RSENSE is
equal to open circuit voltage. A frac-
tion of this voltage is compared with
VREF and the comparator drives the
high-voltage trigger circuit configured
around SCR, R-C components and trig-
ger transformer. As soon as discharge
is struck, voltage appearing after RSENSE
drops and the drive pulses are with-
drawn from SCR gate. The power
supply provides the discharge cur-
rent through series connection of re-
sistors constituting ballast resistance.
In the third circuit topology, the
converter circuit is designed to de-
liver an output power equal to the
product of the required sustaining
voltage at the power supply output
and the discharge current. Since it is
a constant-output-power converter,
the output voltage would increase
without limit in the ideal case in the
event of zero current drawn from the
power supply. When the output volt-
age exceeds the required initiating
voltage, the plasma current drawn
from the power supply forces the
output voltage to fall to the sustain-
ing voltage governed by the output
power capability of the converter.
Compact helium-neon laser
power supplies are commercially
available both as AC-operated
bench-top versions as well as DC-
operated supplies for OEM market
(Fig. 10). Helium-neon lasers with an
integrated power supply are also avail-
able (Fig. 11).
defence electronics
Power supplies for ring
laser gyroscope sensors
A ring laser gyroscope comprises a
helium-neon ring laser cavity with
two counter-propagating laser beams.
A ring laser gyroscope, which is the
heart of the inertial navigation sys-
tems of modern aircraft, missiles etc,
makes use of a ring helium-neon laser
in a closed cavity. Without going into
details of its operational principle, it
would suffice to mention here that
stability of discharge current in each
arm of the ring laser cavity is very
crucial for proper functioning of the
device. Also, it is important to have a
stable value of difference between the
currents in the two arms.
A power supply configuration
that achieves this is shown in Fig. 12.
As shown in the figure, there are two
current-sense loops controlled by the
same reference voltage. Another possible
approach could be to use a precision ref-
erence for one arm and then use the ac-
tual controlled current flowing through
that arm as the reference for controlling
current in the other arm. The preferred
circuit topology for the power supply
is an externally-driven PWM-controlled
fly-back converter generating a regulated
output voltage equal to the sustaining
voltage at the required plasma current.
Carbon dioxide laser
power supplies
Carbon dioxide (CO2) lasers are oper-
ated in both CW and pulsed-output
modes. CW lasers are either DC-
excited or RF-excited. Pulsed-output
lasers are mainly transversely-excited
atmospheric-pressure (TEA) lasers.
Power supply circuits for DC-excited
lasers are similar to the ones described
in earlier paragraphs in the case of
helium-neon lasers. Different power
supply circuits discussed in the case of
helium-neon lasers are equally valid
for carbon dioxide lasers.
Present-day TEA CO2 lasers use
Marx bank capacitor systems. In this
system, the arrangement of individual
capacitors is such that they are in par-
allel during the charging process and
in series during the discharge opera-
Electronics For You | July 2014 73
 defence electronics
Fig. 13: Marx bank power supply arrangement
Fig. 14: Power supply for RF-excited carbon dioxide laser
Fig. 15: Carbon dioxide laser power supplies
tion. This means, if each capacitor in
the bank were charged to a voltage V,
then the total voltage available across
the tube for discharge operation would
be nV, n being the number of capaci-
tors.
Fig. 13 shows the Marx bank power
supply arrangement where the switch-
es are open during the charging. They
are triggered simultaneously to the
closed position to initiate discharge.
Though the Marx bank shown here
uses four stages, Marx bank systems
with higher number of stages are also
used. Marx banks are particularly suit-
able for producing fast-rising pulses.
Power supply of an RF-excited
CO2 laser comprises an RF source
and an impedance-matching network
(Fig. 14). The RF source may further
be split up into an RF oscillator and a
cascade arrangement of RF amplifiers,
depending upon the output power
74 July 2014 | Electronics For You
delivering capability. Frequency of
operation is in the range of 50MHz
to 150MHz. RF power is fed to the
laser cavity through impedance-
matching network. The laser cavitys
mechanical structure combined with
RF discharge can be considered as an
electrical load comprising complex
impedance. Power transfer efficiency
from the RF source to the discharge is
a key operational feature of the laser
that is made more complicated by the
fact that the discharge impedance is
power dependent.
CO2 laser power supplies too are
commercially available both as bench-
top laboratory systems as well as com-
pact versions for OEM market (Fig. 15).
Frequency stabilisation
of lasers
Carbon dioxide and helium-neon
lasers have Doppler broadened gain
versus frequency curves, which is
60MHz in the case of carbon dioxide
laser and 1400MHz for helium-neon
laser emitting at 632.8nm. With active
stabilisation techniques, such as dither
stabilisation, optogalvanic stabilisation
and stark cell stabilisation, these lasers
can be frequency stabilised up to an
accuracy of 1MHz.
Fig. 16 shows block diagram of
dither stabilisation scheme. The grat-
ing allows selection of various lines
within the laser tuning curve. The
output of the low-frequency oscillator,
when applied to the PZT, moves the
grating along the axis and hence var-
ies the output. The other input to the
frequency synchronous detector is the
error signal, which corresponds to the
deviation in the laser output frequency
from the line centre.
In fact, the magnitude and phase of
the error signal determine the location
of operational point with respect to the
centre of the Doppler broadened gain
curve. While the amplitude decides
how far or close to the line centre the
operational point is, the phase decides
which side of the line centre it is lo-
cated. Though Dither stabilisation is
simple to implement, the disadvantage
of this technique is the presence of fre-
quency modulation in the output as a
result of laser dithering.
Optogalvanic stabilisation tech-
nique is particularly suitable for
carbon dioxide lasers. It makes use
of variation in discharge impedance
due to alteration in internal radiation
field intensity. Fig. 17 shows a typical
optogalvanic frequency stabilisation
set up.
An AC signal is applied to the
cavity length transducer resulting
in frequency modulation of the laser
and therefore modulation of the plas-
ma-tube impedance. The impedance
variation, which is proportional to
the slope of the output power versus
frequency curve of the laser, is meas-
ured by exciting the plasma-tube by a
high-speed current-regulated power
supply and measuring the resulting
variation in voltage-drop across the
plasma-tube. This voltage is applied
www.efymag.com

Fig. 16: Dither frequency stabilisation
Fig. 17: Optogalvanic stabilisation schematic
Fig. 18: Stark cell stabilisation block diagram
to the synchronous detector. The
other input to the synchronous de-
tector is the reference signal used to
modulate the laser cavity length with
the help of PZT. The error signal pro-
duced at the output of synchronous
detector is used to stabilise the laser
frequency.
Stark cell stabilisation technique
allows dither-free frequency stabi-
lisation. It also allows stabilising
frequency anywhere on the Doppler
broadened gain versus frequency
curve of the lasers. Fig. 18 shows the
block diagram of stark cell stabilisa-
tion.
A part of the output laser beam is
made to pass through the stark cell.
An appropriate value of DC voltage
is applied to one of the stark plates
to make the stark-shifted molecular
transition of the gas contained in the
cell precisely coincide with the carbon
dioxide laser output line of inter-
est. A slowly varying linear voltage
www.efymag.com
ramp may be applied instead. Also
superimposed on this is a relatively
high-frequency sinusoidal or square
waveform. The frequency is 5kHz,
typically. The beam at the output of
the stark cell is thus modulated in
both amplitude and frequency by the
applied high-frequency signal around
the line of interest.
The laser beam is phase-sensitively
detected with high-frequency signal
applied to the stark cell as reference.
The output of phase-sensitive detector
is the frequency-discriminant error
signal. The error signal is amplified
and then fed back to the PZT through
a suitable interface. One of the end
elements of the cavity is mounted on
the PZT. The error signal adjusts the
length of the cavity in the feedback
mode to lock the laser frequency to the
centre of the Doppler profile of the line
of interest.
With this article, the four-part se-
ries focussing on the role of electron-
defence electronics
ics in military lasers and optoelectron-
ics is completed. While introduction
to role of electronics, solid state laser
electronics and semiconductor diode
laser electronics were discussed in
the earlier parts, important building
blocks of electronics used in com-
mon gas lasers are discussed in this
concluding part. Different circuit
topologies in use for design of power
supplies for carbon dioxide and he-
lium neon lasers have been discussed
at length, highlighting important
design-related issues with reference
to gas lasers for military applications.
Different techniques of frequency
stabilisation of gas lasers, which is of
paramount importance in applications
such as laser radar, have also been
covered.
Concluded
Dr Anil Kumar Maini is a senior scientist, currently
director of Laser Science and Technology Centre,
DRDO, Ministry of Defence, while Nakul Maini is
technical editor with Wiley India Pvt Ltd
Electronics For You | July 2014 75
 EFY Plus DVD
This Months DVD Contents
This months DVD brings you circuit modelling along with PCB EDA tools for students and
small businesses. Also included are a neural network simulator and a machine learning tool
for enthusiasts. Have fun!
pankaj V.
FidoCADJ
The latest version of FidoCADJ includ-
ed in the DVD is an-easy-to use graphi-
cal editor with a library of electrical
symbols and footprints (traditional and
SMD). It is not a simulation tool but an
agile EDA tool with graphical flexibil-
ity for hobbyists. FidoCadJ is available
for multiple platforms like MacOSX,
Linux and Windows. This makes it a
perfect choice for exchanging sketches
in forums and newsgroup discussions
with just a few clicks. Supported OS:
Windows, Linux, MacOS. Size: Windows
- 840kB, MacOSX - 10MB, Linux - 574kB
JMCAD
If you are looking for a suitable pro-
gram for modeling and simulation
of complex dynamic systems, here
is a small and effective Java-based
program for you. With JMCAD you
can create virtual prototypes on your
desktop and make sure your design
works properly before committing to
prototype. It combines the simplicity
and clarity of a block-diagram interface
with a high-performance mathematical
engine, providing fast and accurate
solutions for linear, non-linear, con-
tinuous time, discrete time, multi-rate
and hybrid systems. Supported OS:
Windows, MacOSX, Linux (with Java).
Size: 2.3kB
GPUTILS
GPUTILS is a collection of open source
replacements for the Microchip PIC
microcontroller utilities comprising an
assembler, dis-assembler, linker and
object file viewer. GPUTILS can be
used to develop code for over 250 PIC
processor types involving standard
configure make, and make install steps.
Supported OS: Windows. Size: 928kB
76 July 2014 | Electronics For You
SpiderPCB
Spider PCB brings the hierarchical
layout to the PCB industry, providing
not only a hierarchical schematic but
also a layout tool for the PCB designers.
It is an easy-to-use PCB EDA tool for
students and small businesses. Using
Spider PCB, you can easily follow the
classic top-down design, bottom-up im-
plementation. You can draw the sche-
matics on the way down, starting with
block-diagram form in the top-most
hierarchical level and adding more and
more detail while going towards the
component level. Supported OS: Win-
dows. Size: 1.5MB
SimCAS
SimCAS is a free, open source, very
simple and flexible analogue simulator.
This simple tool can run on Windows
and Linux. It is not as powerful as
Spice or Qucs but provides a handy
GUI-based analogue simulation envi-
ronment. It uses symbolic equations
to define various components and
solves the net system by using a Com-
puter Algebra System (CAS) algorithm
without using a matrix. Supported OS:
Windows, Linux. Size: Windows - 2.4MB,
Linux - 525kB
Weka
Weka is a machine learning tool which
helps in analysing large data and ex-
tract the most relevant information.
This DVD brings you the latest version
of Weka, which is written in Java and
can be run on any platform. It provides
you with a collection of machine learn-
ing algorithms for solving real-world
data mining problems. Supported OS:
Windows, MacOSX, Linux (with Java).
Size: 32-bit Windows - 51.1MB, 64-bit
Windows - 52.5MB), MacOSX - 81.6MB,
Linux - 23.1MB
LTspice IV
LTspiceIV is a high performance Spice
simulator, schematic capture and
waveform viewer with enhancements
and models for easing the simulation
of switching regulators. New enhance-
ments to Spice have made simulating
switching regulators extremely fast
compared to normal Spice simulators,
allowing the user to view waveforms
for most switching regulators in just a
few minutes. Supported OS: Mac OS,
Windows. Size: Windows (14.5MB), Mac
OSx (48.9MB)
AIM-Spice
Developed at the University of Cali-
fornia, with its first release in 1972,
Automatic Integrated Circuit Model-
ling Spice, or AIM-Spice, uses the Spice
format for describing analogue circuits.
Unlike Spice, which uses control re-
cords, AIM-Spice uses point-and-click
type controls. This DVD includes
AIM-Spice for Windows, while you
can also get the Linux version by send-
ing an email to trond@aimspice.com.
Supported OS: Windows, Linux. Size:
Windows - 3.66MB
Qucs
Qucs is a circuit simulator with well
advanced Graphical User Interface
(GUI) which allows setting up of
schematics and presenting simulation
results in various types of diagrams.
It supports various circuit simulation
types along with the availability of
mathematical equations and use of a
subcircuit hierarchy (with parameter-
ised subcircuits). Supported OS: Win-
dows, MacOSx. Size: Windows (53.783
MB), MacOSx(67.7MB), Ubuntu (411.5
MB)
The author is a technical journalist at EFY
www.efymag.com

FidoCADJ: Vector Drawing Software
FidoCADJ is a simple, intuitive application that helps users create vector drawings
for schematics as well as printed circuit boards. You can select from a wide range
of preset components and print or export your designs to various file formats
Pankaj V.
F
idoCADJ is a Java-based multi-
platform editor for more than just
electronics. It offers a very clean
and intuitive environment to help us-
ers design their electronics with ease.
FidoCADJ is not a simulator, but it of-
fers an agile and effective environment
for hobbyists. While there is no netlist
concept, it comes with a library that in-
cludes electrical symbols and footprints
(traditional and SMD) to assist you in
your drawings.
FidoCADJ generates electronic
circuit outputs with a very compact tex-
tual description in various file formats.
This makes it very easy to include these
drawings in text messages and exchange
your sketches in forums and newsgroup
discussions.
Some regard FidoCADJ as a Ja-
va-based modification of FidoCAD
software, which can only be run on
Windows. However, it is actually a com-
pletely re-written program that offers
full compatibility with FidoCAD files,
and allows for showing and modifying a
file using FidoCAD format. It is not just
an adaptation or extension for FidoCAD.
If you are familiar with FidoCAD,
getting used to FidoCadJ will not be
a problem. In fact, many commands
and procedures are quite similar to the
original application including some ex-
tensions as well.
Compact and efficient
A major advantage of working with
FidoCADJ is its simple text format.
With no header description required, a
simple coordinate system for drawing
and various drawing elements, it offers
a compact and efficient storage format
for the drawings. From the latest version
included in this DVD, it uses only the
www.efymag.com
FIdoCADJ
UTF-8 encoding on all formats.
Unlike other CAD tools and its pre-
decessor FidoCAD, FidoCadJ includes
an interpreter that can recognise and cor-
rectly interpret any file with or without
standard header. Moreover, it can also
correctly interpret commands containing
text, as long as the number of incorrect
lines does not exceed a value set inter-
nally in the program (approx. 100). This
ensures a fast and efficient functionality,
wasting no time, for example, in trying
to open a very large binary file.
A simple coordinates system in
FidoCADJ identifies a very large area
only by whole and positive coordinates.
The fixed unit length of in x and y axes
at 127m allows to obtain a good resolu-
tion (about 200 dots per inch) for even
the smallest SMD packages, without
being too fine for everyday use.
Intuitive environment
FidoCADJ offers graphical flexibility
and several intuitive drawing features.
In the toolbar situated on the top of the
window, you will find the most used
and common features for creating and
EFY Plus DVD
Advisory note
There are no separate modes of operation
for PCB and schematic in FidoCADJ. These
appear only at the moment of printing the
drawing. Hence it is advised to set the
program to resize a schematic according to
the size of the page, otherwise the print may
have the size of a postage stamp.
editing a drawing. Some of the features
and functionalities in FidoCADJ, which
account for ease of use of this intuitive
tool, are discussed below.
The vacuum-tube radios and switch-
es of old times inspire the elements of
ease of use in this tool. When you press
a button, it remains in that position until
another function from the toolbar is se-
lected. So you dont need to press again
and again for the same element in your
circuit. Also, you can easily edit or mod-
ify the parameters like coordinates or
rotation of any drawing element just by
double-clicking on it in selection mode.
Intuitive ruler. Drawing a PCB re-
quires measuring distances in the work-
ing area. This tool offers an intuitive
ruler feature that allows you to easily
check any track width, the clearance
Electronics For You Plus | July 2014 1I
 EFY Plus DVD
between two tracks or the total size of a
card. You can just right click and drag to
open a ruler in green for your help.
Keyboard shortcuts. From selecting
multiple graphic elements to drawing
a PCB pad, there are various drawing
commands available in FidoCADJ.
These allow you to rapidly select vari-
ous features that let you design faster
(as shown in the table), without having
to manipulate your mouse.
Flexible graphics. It also offers three
different zoom settings for graphical flex-
ibility with the buttons like Fit, Show Grid
and Snap to Grid. You can automatically
select the most suitable zoom settings
in order to show the whole drawing on
the screen by pressing Fit button. Show
Grid makes it easy to toggle between
visible and invisible grids. Finally, the
elements added will stick to the nearest
step of the grid utilising the Snap to Grid
button. (Note: To carefully align various
elements, Alt key should be kept pressed
while using the other cursor keys.)
Partial customisation of command
bar. FidoCADJ also allows you to
partially customise the command bar.
In particular, you can either choose to
see the icon on each button or both the
icon and its text description. These two
selectable formats for the icons can be
changed from the menu File Options.
Any change in the settings will be ap-
plied at the restart of the application.
Easy search and navigation. The li-
braries include all the standard symbols
used in electrical schematics and a wide
selection of footprints for drawing PCBs.
A quick search text field allows for the
quick searching inside the included
libraries and the results appear in the
form of a tree, allowing you to eas-
ily navigate through by typing up and
down arrow keys.
Macros. The FidoCADJ applica-
tion offers you a quick access to all the
electrical components, lets you preview
them in a dedicated pane, and insert
them into the working environment
with the help of just a few clicks. The
tool includes these electrical compo-
nents in the form of various macros or
symbols in the libraries. A tree list at the
right side of the window enables easy
II July 2014 | Electronics For You Plus
Installing FidoCADJ
Installation file can be found in EFY Plus DVD that came with this magazine. FidoCADJ is a Java-
based tool, so Java is a pre-requisite to run this tool on any platform.
The application is distributed as an executable .jar file, which is a Java archive. For many
operating systems, you can just double click on the file to run the application, provided that a
recent version of Java is installed on the system. The minimum Java version needed to run
FidoCadJ is the version1.5, which has been around for a few years now.
But, in some cases it might be useful to run the application from a command line (for
example, the terminal in the Unix systems, or the MS-DOS Prompt in Windows). To do so, you
can use the following command lines:
1. java -jar fidocadj . Jar
2. java -jar fidocadj . jar ~/ FidoCadJ / test . Fcd (To open a specific file with the application,
include it in the command line)
Supported OS: Windows, Linux, MacOS (with Java)
HDD space required: Max 10MB
selection of any preset ele-
ment in the drawing. Keyboard Shortcuts
Export with effects. Fi- Keyboard Command Description
shortcuts
doCADJ allows you to ex-
port your drawings through A or Spacebar Select For selection of different elements
several file formats, so you R Rotate To rotate selected elements
can create simple sche- S Mirror To mirror the selected elements
matics for use. The gen- L Line For inserting a line
T Text For inserting a test-string
erated electronic circuits
B Bezier For drawing a Bezier curve
can be printed or exported
P Polyline For drawing a polyline
to PNG, JPG, SVG, EPS,
K Curve For drawing an open or closed
PGF, PDF, or to a script
natural cubic spline curve
file format. Also, you can E Ellipse For drawing an ellipse
apply anti-aliasing and G Rectangle For drawing a rectangle
black-and-white effects to C Junction To insert an electrical junction
the drawings. To export the I PCB Track To draw a PCB track
current drawing, select File Z PCB Pad To draw a PCB pad
Export. With Black&White Esc Terminate To terminate new insertions
option, you can print any
visible layer in solid black. tronics. Its intuitiveness and handy set
For the bitmap file formats, it may be of features make it an easy-to-use and
useful to enable the option Anti aliasing. learning tool for hobbyists. Moreover,
While exporting to any vectorial format, being free, Java-based and multi-plat-
it will be beneficial to specify the scaling form, it can be of great use.
factor. Anti aliasing reduces the annoying But it need not be considered
effect of the quantisation that is visible uniquely for electronics design as cus-
especially on diagonal lines. tomisation of its libraries can prepare
Customised libraries. As mentioned it for any type of 2D drawing and for
above, FidoCADJ includes a collection many other situations, provided those
of libraries of symbols and footprints specific libraries can be made available.
(traditional and SMD) for assistance in FidoCadJ is the official drawing tool
your drawings. It allows you to custom- of ElectroYou, an Italian social network
ise and manage these by defining new for electronics. It is a free GPL Licensed
symbols and libraries with the luxury software tool that can be downloaded
of modifying the existing ones. In some for free at http://fidocadj.sourceforge.
specific cases you can also replace the net/. You can participate in the forums
existing libraries with the external ones. and blogs related to this tool at http://
sourceforge.net/p/fidocadj/discus-
An effective 2D design tool sion/997486
Summarising, we can regard FidoCAD
as an effective tool for designing elec- The author is a technical journalist at EFY
www.efymag.com

Simulate Your Circuits
Using Qucs
In this article we explore the features and functions of Quite Universal Circuit
Simulator (Qucs) and go through a step-by-step analysis. Qucs is available
for Windows, Mac and Ubuntu (open source) in the DVD accompanying this
months issue of EFY Plus
ABHISHEK A. MUTHA
A
n open source electronics
circuit simulator software
released under GPL, Quite
Universal Circuit Simulator (Qucs)
provides the user with capabilities
to set up a circuit with a graphical
user interface. It can simulate circuit
behaviour, and supports pure digital
simulations using VHDL and/or Ver-
ilog languages.
Qucs is much simpler to use and
handle than other circuit simulators
like gEDA or PSpice. It also supports
a growing list of analogue and digital
components as well as Spice sub-circuits,
which makes it easier to work with.
What is Qucs all about
Qucs is an integrated circuit simulator
that enables you to set up a circuit with
its intuitive graphical user interface
(GUI) and simulate the small-signal,
large-signal and noise behaviour of the
circuit. Post simulation, you can view
the simulation results on a presenta-
tion page or window.
Qucsator and GUI
The GUI is based on Qt by Digia. The
software aims to support most kinds
of circuit simulation like DC, AC, S-
parameter, harmonic balance analysis
and noise analysis to name a few. The
Top three functions of Qucs
1. Schematic capture
2. Analogue and digital simulations
3. Data visualisation
www.efymag.com
EFY Plus DVD
Qucs GUI is well advanced and
allows setting up schematics and
presenting simulation results in
various types of diagrams. Apart
from representation in DC, AC,
S-parameter, noise and transient
analysis, mathematical equations
and use of a sub-circuit hierarchy
(with parameterised sub-circuits)
are also available. Qucs can also
import existing Spice models for
use in your simulations.
Fig. 1: Combined schematic and data visualisation Qucsator, the simulation
back-end, is a command-line
circuit simulator. It takes a net-
work list in a certain format as
input and outputs a Qucs data-
set. It has been programmed
for usage in the Qucs project
but may also be used by other
applications.
Qucs comes with a huge
array of components and mod-
els including HICUM, BSIM2,
BSIM3 and BSIM6 to list a few.
It also provides semiconductor-
based components and models
Fig. 2: Data display with 3D diagram such as PMOSFETs, MOSFETs,
op-amps, diodes and many
more.
While some examples have
been included in this story to
demonstrate some of the abili-
ties of Qucs, many more are
available within the program
in the DVD.
Features and their
functions
Qucs consists of several stand-
Fig. 3: Data display with different kinds of data
representations (diagrams) and data markers alone programs interacting
Electronics For You Plus | July 2014 III
 EFY Plus DVD
with each other through the GUI, such
as:
GUI. It is used to create schematics,
set up simulations, display simulation
results and to write VHDL code.
Back-end analogue simulator. The
analogue simulator is a command line
program which is run by the GUI in
order to simulate the schematic that
you previously setup. It takes a netlist,
checks it for errors, performs the re-
quired simulation actions and finally
produces a dataset.
Simple text editor. This is used to
display netlists and simulation log-
ging information, and also to edit files
included by certain components (like
Spice netlists or Touchstone files).
Filter synthesis application. The
program can be used to design various
types of filters.
Transmission line calculator. This
can be used to design and analyse
different types of transmission lines
(examples: micro-strips, coaxial cables).
Component library. The compo-
nent library manager holds models
for real-life devices, such as transis-
tors, diodes, bridges and op-amps.
The user can extend it with additional
components.
Attenuator synthesis application.
The program can be used to design
various types of passive attenuators.
Command line conversion pro-
gram. The conversion tool is used by
the GUI to import and export datasets,
netlists and schematics from and to
other CAD/EDA software. The sup-
ported file formats as well as usage
information can be found on the home
page of Qucs.
Additionally, the GUI steers other
EDA tools. For digital simulations (via
VHDL) the program FreeHDL (see
http://www.freehdl.seul.org) is used.
And for circuit optimisations ASCO
(see http://asco.sourceforge.net) is
configured and run.
Getting started
Once the software has been success-
fully installed on your system you can
start it by issuing the # qucs command,
or by clicking the appropriate icon on
IV July 2014 | Electronics For You Plus
your start menu or desktop. Qucs is
a multi-lingual program. Therefore,
depending on your systems language
settings, the Qucs GUI appears in dif-
Fig. 4: Qucs has been started
Fig. 5: Application Setting Dialog Box
Fig. 6: New Project Dialog
Fig. 7: New empty project has been created
Fig. 8: Components tab
ferent languages.
On the left hand side you will find
the Projects folder opened, as shown
in Fig. 1. Usually, the projects folder
will be empty if you are using
Qucs for the first time. The
large area on the right hand
side is the schematic area.
Right above it you can find
the menu bar and the tool-
bars. Go to File Application
Settings menu to configure
the language and appearance
of Qucs.
For the language and font
settings to take effect, the ap-
plication (as seen in Fig. 2)
must be closed either via the Ctrl + Q
shortcut or the File Exit menu entry.
Then re-start Qucs.
Setting up schematics
The following sections will enable the
user to set up some simple schemat-
ics. For this, first create a new project
named WorkBook. Either press the
New button above the projects folder
or use the menu entry Project New
Project, and enter the new project
name as shown in Fig. 3.
Confirm the dialogue by
pressing the Create button.
When done, the project is
opened and Qucs switches to
the Content tab.
In the Content tab, as seen
in Fig. 4, you will find all the
data related to the project.
It contains your schematics,
the VHDL files, data display
pages, datasets as well as any
other data (like datasheets).
On the right hand side, an
untitled and empty sche-
matic window is displayed.
Now you can start to edit
the schematic. The available
components can be found in
the Components tab.
The window in Fig. 5 is
displayed on clicking the
Components tab. There are
lumped components (such
as resistors and capacitors),
sources (such as DC and AC
www.efymag.com
 EFY Plus DVD
Left clicking on the
components ports
(small red circles)
starts a wire and
clicking on a sec-
ond port finishes
the wire. In or-
der to change the
orientation of the
wire, right click it.
You can leave the
Fig. 9: Components of the voltage divider appropriately wired Fig. 12: Data display with tabular graph wiring mode by
pressing Esc key.
For any ana-
logue simulation
(including the DC
simulation), there
is a reference po-
tential required (for
the nodal analysis).
The ground symbol
can be found in the
Components tab in
the lumped com-
Fig. 10: Ground symbol as well as DC simulation in place Fig. 13: Simple filter in qucs-qt4 ponents category.
The user can also
choose the ground
symbol icon or
simply press the
Ctrl + G shortcut.
In the circuit in Fig.
7, the ground sym-
bol is placed at the
negative terminal
of the DC voltage
source.
Placing simu-
Fig. 11: Final voltage divider schematic Fig. 14: Simple schematic area lation blocks. The
type of simulation
sources), transmission lines (like mi- position. You can even drag-and-drop that is to be performed must also be
crostrip, coaxial cable, twisted pair), the components. placed on the schematic. You can do
nonlinear components (like ideal op- this by choosing the DC simulation
amp, transistors), digital components DC simulation block, which is found in the Compo-
(like flip-flops), file components (like of a voltage divider nents tab in the simulations category.
Touchstone files, Spice files), simula- DC analysis is a steady-state analysis. Labelling wires. If you want volt-
tions (AC or DC analysis), diagrams It computes the node voltage as well as age between the two resistors (the
(like Cartesian or polar plot) and branch currents of the complete circuit. divided voltage) be output in the
paintings (such as texts, arrows, cir- The circuit in Fig. 6 is for dividing the dataset after simulation, you need to
cles). voltage of a DC voltage source accord- label the wire. This is done by double
Each of the components can be ing to the resistor ratio. clicking the wire and giving it an ap-
placed on the schematic by clicking it Wiring components. Connect the propriate name. Wire labelling can
once. Then move the cursor onto the components appropriately using the also be done using the icon in the
schematic and click again to put it on wiring tool. Enable the wiring mode toolbar, by pressing the Ctrl + L short-
its final position. You can right click either by clicking the wire icon or cut or by choosing the Insert Wire
to rotate the component into its final by pressing the Ctrl + E shortcut. Label menu entry.

www.efymag.com Electronics For You Plus | July 2014 V

 EFY Plus DVD
Additional details
Software: Qucs (Quite Universal Circuit
Simulator)
Supported OS: Windows, Mac, Ubuntu
Size: Windows - 54MB, Mac - 106MB,
Ubuntu - 247.3MB
Last stable release: 0.0.17 on June 23,
2013
The dialogue is closed by pressing
the Enter key or pressing the Ok but-
ton. Now the complete schematic for
the voltage divider is ready and can be
saved. This can by done by choosing
the File Save menu entry, clicking
the Single Disk icon or by pressing the
Ctrl + S shortcut.
The final DC voltage divider is
shown in Fig. 8.
Issuing a simulation. The sche-
matic can now be simulated. This is
started by choosing the Simulation
Simulate menu entry, clicking the
simulation button (the gearwheel) or
by pressing the F2 shortcut. After the
simulation has been done, the related
data display is shown. Also, the Com-
ponents tab changes its category to
diagrams.
Placing diagrams. Choose the
tabular (list of values) diagram and
place it on the data display page. By
double clicking divided.V, the graph
(values in a tabular plot) is added to
the diagram. Besides the node voltage
divided.V the current through the DC
voltage source V1.I is available. Only
items listed in the dataset list can be
put into the graph.
Available dataset items
Depending on the type of simulation
the user performed you find the fol-
lowing types of items in the dataset:
# node.V - DC voltage at node node
# name.I - DC current through
component name
# node.v - AC voltage at node node
# name.i - AC current through
component name
# node.vn - AC noise voltage at node
node
# name.in - AC noise current through
component name
# node.Vt - Transient voltage at node
VI July 2014 | Electronics For You Plus
Operating system support for Qucs
Qucs is currently developed on GNU/Linux systems using the GNU auto tools (and
CMake experimentally). For this reason it is very likely that Qucs runs on all kinds
of Unix systems supporting an appropriate system interface and an installed Qt
environment. It has been verified that Qucs can be installed on GNU/Linux, Solaris 2.9,
MacOS 10.5, NetBSD, FreeBSD and Cygwin (Unix emulation layer for Windows). Qucs
is also available natively on x86 Windows (XP/Vista/7/8) systems and experimentally
on x86_64 versions of these.
Some other simulation tools
1. EasyEDA, online schematic capture, ngspice simulation and PCB design
2. Falstad Circuit Simulator Applet, Paul Falstads online java circuit simulator
3. GeckoCIRCUITS GPL software, online applet version (Java)
4. GNU Circuit Analysis Package (Gnucap)
5. Ngspice, including Online Spice
What users have to say about Qucs
Qucs is a very powerful circuit simulator program and has features I have yet to
understand. It is also very user friendly. It is a great piece of software for anyone wanting to
learn electronics and the price is right. Zero.
This is probably the most useful open source circuit simulator I ever found. It is
accurate and (once you learn a bit) really easy to use.
Very nice product. I am a DSP guy, so I do not use circuit simulators often. I have
some experience with Spice and OrCAD, but I have a very strong preference for Qucs.
Easier to use and richer in features. For example, the basic OpAmp is just what you need
when you want to make some examples in class without drowning in the complexities of
a real OpAmp.
Very nice program which I use mostly to simulate and display S-parameters files and
circuits.
Courtesy: http://sourceforge.net/projects/qucs/
node first successful simulation using Qucs.
# name.It - Transient current through
component name
License
# S[1,1] - S-parameter value Qucs is a free software released under
Please note that all voltages and the General Public License (GPL). It
currents are peak values and all noise comes with complete source code.
voltages are RMS values at 1Hz band- Every user of the program is allowed
width. and called upon (on a voluntary basis
Depending on the type of graph, of course) to modify it for their ap-
you have various options to choose for plications, as long as the changes are
the graph. For a tabular graph, there is made public.
the number precision as well as type The screenshots show the main
of number notation (important for schematic and data display area of the
complex values). Press the Ok button Qucs GUI on the lower right corner, the
to close the dialogue. menus and icons at the upper part and
In the tabular graph, as seen in the project/contents/component/ac-
<image 9>, the value of the node tion/diagram selection on the left-hand
voltage divided.V is 0.5V. That is ex- side.
pected since the resistors are of equal
values and the DC voltage source The author is a senior technical correspondent at
produces 1V. EFY. This article has inputs from Qucs recently
Congratulations! You made your released documentation
www.efymag.com
 EFY Plus DVD

LTSpice IV: Ideal for SMPS

Simulations
LTSpice IV is a free, high-performance Spice tool to virtually model, simulate
and analyse electronic circuits, particularly switching regulators, before actually
building them using electronic components

Anagha P.

L
TSpice, formerly known as
SwitcherCAD, is the fourth-
generation free Spice simulation,
schematic-capture and waveform-
viewer software solution with en-
hancements and models offered by the
semiconductor manufacturer Linear
Technology Corporation (LTC).
This software features built-in
component models to help obtain ac-
curate results for non-linear designs.
It also comes with various advanced
and full-fledged capabilities that let
you precisely test circuit functionali-
ties. Exceptionally good simulation of
switched mode power supply (SMPS)
controllers and regulators is said
to be one of the key features of this
product.
Its speed of simulation has greatly
improved as compared to the previous
Spice programs, without compromis-
ing on the accuracy of simulation, due
to the introduction of mixed-mode
simulation capability and many other
enhancements. In a few minutes it can
perform detailed cycle-by-cycle SMPS
simulations and analyse them.
It is to be noted that LTSpice is not
SMPS-specific Spice. It has all the fea-
tures of any other typical analogue and
mixed-signal simulation program, with
an added benefit that it is fast enough
to simulate a SMPS interactively. This
improved performance is an advan-
tage for simulating general analogue
circuits and would aid all electronics
engineers.
PLL
Meant for whom?
LTSpice IV can be used to design
simple and complex switching
regulators and run simulations for
these circuits. The ease to learn,
simplicity of usage and extensive
help files make it a good choice for
students. The advanced simulation
and analysis capabilities make it a
great tool for creating professional-
grade circuits by electronics engi-
neers.
Many students, novice engineers
and experienced professionals in Simulation
such fields as radio-frequency elec-
tronics, power electronics, digital Stable and feature-rich
electronics and other disciplines use The software is highly stable, and the
LTSpice IV. Those users who want to number of nodes you can create using
create their own schemes of integrated LTSpice is unlimited. The application
circuits and test them can also use this comes with a library that has a varied
Spice circuit simulator. While it cannot collection of predefined components
generate printed circuit board (PCB) like resistors, capacitors, inductors,
layouts, netlists can still be imported diodes, wires, BUS taps, text boxes,
into layout programs. labels etc that can be added to the cir-

www.efymag.com Electronics For You Plus | July 2014 VII

 EFY Plus DVD
cuit. You can simulate a large number
of analogue components from LTC as
well as other discrete passive devices
contained in the library. Third-party
models, like MOSFET components, can
be imported to the workspace and inte-
grated in your schematic; their configu-
ration can be displayed without using
internal nodes and without affecting
the switching waveforms.
It is possible to configure each
component in the schematic individu-
ally by right-clicking on it. This way
the user can modify the functions and
parameters. For example, the resist-
ance, tolerance level and power rating
of a resistor, parasitic properties and
the amplitude of a voltage source can
be changed.
Further, the general-purpose sche-
matic and symbol-capture and editing
tools can help the user insert all kinds
of geometrical figures and shapes found
in complex output designs. It supports
unlimited schematic size and hierarchy.
You can also generate netlists and cross
probe simulation data.
Advanced options
The enhancements to Spice makes the
simulation of SMPS very fast and easy
compared to typical Spice simulators.
This allows you to view and evaluate
waveforms for most switching regu-
lators in a few minutes compared to
hours required by other similar Spice
simulators.
Once the schematic is created, you
can evaluate the validity of the scheme
with the help of built-in compiler and
simulator. LTSpice provides you with
advanced simulation and analyses op-
tions that can outperform some paid
Spice simulators. It has features like
steady-state detection, step response
computation and Fourier analysis.
You can also plot circuit simulations
VIII July 2014 | Electronics For You Plus
based on transient, AC, noise and DC
analysis.
LTSpice is capable of computing
bill of materials (for certain circuits),
heat dissipation of components and
generate complete efficiency reports
of the SMPS circuits you have drafted.
This lets you determine the points with
higher energy dissipation and thereby
take measures to minimise the energy
wastage in the circuit.
Easy to use
A user with no previous knowledge
about the device, Spice or schematic
capture can get a detailed simulation of
power systems with just a few mouse
clicks. A good collection of pre-drafted
and verified demo circuits can be used
to start building the custom circuit,
and the parameters can be suitably
modified to fit different power sup-
ply requirements. All these features
make LTSpice easy to understand and
operate.
Installation and getting
started
This download includes fully-func-
tional LTSpice IV, help files, over 1100
macro models for 80% of LTs power
products, numerous operational ampli-
fiers, resistors, transistors and MOS-
FETs. The installation file LTSpiceIV.
exe is a self-extracting gzip compressed
file. Double clicking on it installs LT-
Spice IV in the computer as it extracts.
Windows Vista users should right click
on file and select Run as administra-
tor option.
Hundreds of demo circuits are
available for download at Linear
Technology website, all of which were
designed and reviewed by the firms
factory applications group.
The pre-drafted test fixtures (JIG)
are used for testing models during
LTSpice IV Facts
License type Freeware
Developer Mike Engelhardt, Linear
Technology Corporation
Latest version 4.21x
Operating systems hh Windows
and requirements Version: Windows 2000 and
later (Runs on both 32-bit
and 64-bit operating system)
Processor: Pentium 4
hh Linux
Via Wine Windows simulator
hh OS X
Via Crossover, Parallels, or
DARWINE
development and provide a good start-
ing point for draft. You can also create
your own design using the schematic
editor with the help of a large number
of macro models of power devices pro-
vided in the software package.
Support
The software is updated often. You can
check for updates and install them by
built-in menu command Tools > Sync
Release. You have to close all other
windows and establish an Internet con-
nection before the update can be made.
Comments about the software and
bug report can be directly mailed to
LTSpice@linear.com. By registering
with MyLinear account at www.linear.
com, you would be able to receive free
samples, literature, product updates
and so on. Blogposts and video tuto-
rials for different functions that can
be done using this tool are available
in the website (Design Support > De-
sign Simulation Page > LTSpice IV >
LTSpice Blog). For additional support
you could also join the Yahoo group
LTSpice IV and LTSpice wiki www.
ltwiki.org, which are not affiliated to
Linear Technology.
The author is a technical correspondent at EFY
www.efymag.com
 innovation

Drishti: For Airport Visibility Measurement

This highly-precise and cost-effective
transmissometer developed by Council
of Scientific and Industrial Research-
National Aerospace Laboratories
(CSIR-NAL) is a significant contribution
to the field of electronics and airport
instrumentation in India
Drishti at New Delhi Airport
rugged. The availability of complete
knowledge base to the component
level allows cost-effective servicing
and maintenance.
Modern design
Built on an industry-standard FPGA
design platform, Drishti makes good
use of virtual instrumentation concept.
Miniaturised, highly-precise, modular
optics with provision for manual and
automatic alignment has been used in
its design.
The use of electronic modulation
technique for modulating lamp inten-
sity and synchronous demodulation
technique for improving signal-to-
noise ratio make Drishti highly effi-
cient. It is provided with landline and
Wi-Fi communication from runway to
air traffic control (ATC) room. It also
features web-enabled remote accessi-
bility for data and health monitoring of
the system from anywhere in the coun-
try. The system facilitates automated
measurement of RVR (50-2000 metres)
and MOR (10-10,000 metres).

the price of an imported system, yet The system

Anagha P.
gives more precise readings than it. Drishti, developed by CSIR-NAL for

V
isibility on the runway is
extremely important for safe
landing and take-off of an air-
craft. Hence visual-range accessors are
mandatory for all airport runways.
Till now the transmissometers
used in Indian airports were imported.
The requirement of a highly-accurate,
cost-effective, low-maintenance, in-
digenous, state-of-the-art system on
par with more-expensive imported
systems prompted development of the
Drishti transmissometer at CSIR-NAL.
Indigenous, economical
and rugged
Drishti is the only indigenously-
developed transmissometer of its kind
available today. It costs just one-third
The device is rugged, has high Indian Meteorological Department
mean time between failures and is (IMD), meets the specifications for
nearly maintenance-free. In fact, the visibility measurement instruments
Drishti system installed in New Delhi set forth by ICAO and WMO. It has
airport in 2011 has never had a failure a field-programmable gate array
or maintenance issue to date! (FPGA)-embedded hardware and web-
Virtual instrumentation concept enabled data acquisition software built
with a combination of modular hard- in LabView environment.
ware and software design has made It basically comprises of a transmit-
serviceability easier, while weather- ter (a lamp with spectral characteristics
proof enclosures (IP65) for the elec- similar to runway lights) that sends
tronics hardware make the system collimated beam of light and a receiver
What is a transmissometer?
Visual range depends on several environmental factors like fog, snow, rain and storm. It
is commonly measured as meteorological optical range (MOR) or runway visibility range
(RVR). A transmissometer, also referred to as transmittance meter, is an instrument used
to measure the transmission coefficient of the light passing through the atmosphere and
thereby determine the MOR and/or RVR.

www.efymag.com Electronics For You | July 2014 77

 innovation
Installed systems
Features
After evaluating the performance
Transmitter Lamp with spectral characters similar to runway lights of Drishti system in the critical fog
Receiver Photo diode and suitable electronics. Photopically corrected to match season of December 2011 to Febru-
the human-eye response ary 2012, Indian Meteorological
Background 2 to 40,000 candela per square metre (cd/m2) covering the range Department requested CSIR-NAL to
luminance monitor of night, twilight, normal day and bright day install three more systems at Indira
(BLM) Measurement accuracy of 10%
Gandhi International Airport, New
Software Suitable Windows-based software in LabView environment Delhi, which is the most stringent and
Communication to Through Wi-Fi and landline crucial airport of India to cover the
control tower requirement of 2012-13 fog season. In
a record time of three weeks, the team
and Wi-Fi. developed the systems, installed them
From Inception to Fruition6 months
A multi-disciplinary and received the International Class I
June 2011: Concept and design field product, the suc- certification.
September 2011: Developed prototype cess of which is attrib- Currently there are seven Drishti
December 2011: Field installation at IGI Airport, New Delhi
uted to the effective and systems operating in three Indian in-
December 15, 2011: Two Drishti systems started functioning
at IGI Airport Runways 29 and 11 efficient use of phys- ternational AirportsIndira Gandhi
December 26, 2011: Drishti received International Class I ics, material science International Airport of New Delhi
Certification and several engineering (five systems), Lucknow International
streams, such as elec- Airport (one system) and NSCBI
tronics, computer science, communica- Airport of Kolkata (one system). A
The team behind Drishti tion, civil, environmental, structural, partnership agreement is signed with
Dr Shubha V.Chief Scientist electrical and mechanical engineering. Indian Meteorological Department,
Dr T.G. RameshHonorary Consultant who are the sole buyers, users and
G. SivakumarSoftware Engineer Challenges certifying agency for civilian airports,
Arul PaliganMechanical Engineer
R. Krishna MurthyMechanic There were several technical con- on 20th May 2014 and soon all the ci-
V. JithurajAssistant straints the team had to overcome vilian airports of the country will have
during the development of this prod- Drishti systems.
(an optical detector and associated uct. Since Drishti is a field equipment,
electronics photopically-corrected to it should be capable of withstanding Copyrights, patents,
match the human-eye response) that harsh environment conditions like rain, awards and recognition
is set up at a characteristic distance to fog, lightning and climatic variations The Drishti system holds 14 copy-
collect the transmitted beam. (extreme heat of about 55C during rights. There are four patents and a
Drishti is a 30-metre baseline sys- summer and snow in winter). As safety trademark filed for Drishti under Intel-
tem covering low and high visibility of aircraft cannot be compromised, a lectual Property Management Division
ranging from less than 25 metres to real-time operating system that works (IPMD)CSIR. Drishti has also been
about 10,000 metres. It is suitable for round the clock was necessary. Also, certified with International Class I
installation in all categories of air- the system should be rugged with high NOTAM (Notice to Air Man).
portCAT I, CAT II, CAT III A and mean time between failures. The system has been recognised
CAT III B. It also has provision for var- The Drishti team was able to meet by various organisations and has won
ying the baseline anywhere between 15 all these challenges successfully using several prestigious awards like the
metres to 75 metres as per international virtual instrumentation concept. With Aeronautical Society of India Award
standards. a highly customisable application for Indigenisation of Aeronautical
The instrument is set up parallel development software and modular Equipment, best innovation award of
to airport runway. A detector collects electronics hardware, a user-defined 2012 and 2013 by CSIR-NAL and IETE
the transmitted light beam and meas- system was developed. Increased reli- Diamond Jubilee Corporate Award for
ures the attenuation of light intensity ability was achieved by reducing the performance in Electronic Instruments
caused while traversing through the part count to minimum. Eco-friendly, & Instrumentation in 2013. It has also
atmosphere. It works on the principle miniaturised, high-precision optics received NRDC Meritorious Invention
that, higher the attenuation factor, were used. The effects of weather and 2012 award and IESA Technovation
lower will be the visibility of the run- climate were offset by housing the elec- 2013 award for Most Innovative Prod-
way. Data from field site is transmitted tronics, mechanical hardware and the uct.
to ATC room, which is usually located precision optics in environmentally-
4 to 5 kilometres away, through cable controlled enclosures. The author is a technical correspondent at EFY

78 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com


Data Analytics will be the
Next Big Thing for Engineers
There is a growing demand for engineers in the data analytics (DA) field, with some
companies particularly looking for electronics engineers with a penchant for programming
and mathematics. Of course, jobs in DA pay really well too! So let us find out the skills,
salary and what lies ahead for a career in DA
Abhishek A. Mutha
T
oday, most of the jobs available
in data analytics (DA) are for
computer science graduates,
but there are some companies that
particularly look for electronics engi-
neers. An engineering degree with a
knack for programming, statistics and
mathematics is the latest choice for
employers hiring in the DA domain.
Anand Sankaran, senior principal
architect, Verizon Data Services, India
informs that many universities in the
US, Europe and India have started spe-
cialised courses both at graduate and
undergraduate levels to cater to the in-
creasing demand for DA professionals.
The exponential growth in DA is
catalysed by an unprecedented avail-
ability of data, thanks to a steep fall
of storage cost and the ubiquitous
need to extract valuable insights from
a volume of data to solve business
problems. He says, A recent article in
the Harvard Business Review predicts
IT-software
Manufacturing and engineering
BFSI
CRM/BPO/ITeS
Consulting services
Others
Fig. 1: Top five industries for data analytics (Data
courtesy: TimesJobs.com)
www.efymag.com
that DA will be one of the coolest and
the fastest growing career paths in
the coming decade, and we have seen
studies that highlight a shortfall of
qualified candidates to meet the job
requirements in this space.
Why engineers
Basically, engineers have a good blend
of learning in technology, mathemat-
ics and data science. Sudeshna Datta,
EVP and co-founder, Absolutdata says,
Engineers have been critical to the
growth of the analytics market in India
and are very apt to make a career in
DA. To add, now there are institutions
who help engineers learn the basics of
machine learning and big data in the
curriculum.
However, Ashish Soni, chief
analytics officer, Costarch believes
that engineering graduates fit into
the area of DA only if they have an
inclination towards number crunch-
ing. Their quantitative and computer
skills give them the competitive edge
Up to ` 500,000 (entry level)
` 500,000 to ` 1,000,000 (junior level)
` 1,000,000 to ` 1,500,000 (mid level)
Over ` 1,500,000 (senior level)
Fig. 2: Salary breakup of data analysts
(Data courtesy: TimesJobs.com)
Career
that graduates from other streams
do not have. In short, he says, If
an engineering graduate is looking
for a career in data analytics, he/
she should focus on improving his/
her numerical computation skills,
learn some numerical programming
language and explore the area of
statistics.
Engineering graduates with a good
knowledge of programming and busi-
ness can have a well-defined career
path in this sector. Harvard Business
School predicts that there is a serious
dearth of data scientists in the US
alone. With open data movements
gathering steam across the world,
scope for engineering graduates to
Four Major Categories
Hiring Data Analysts
1. IT companies
2. KPOs (knowledge process outsourcing)
3. Captive analytics units
4. Niche analytics firms
Bengaluru
Mumbai
Delhi NCR
Chennai
Hyderabad
Others
Fig. 3: Top five locations for data analytics
(Data courtesy: TimesJobs.com)
Electronics For You | July 2014 79
 Career
If you are someone who is good at discovering and
communicating meaningful patterns in data and are looking for
a career in data analytics, target IT software companies, and be
prepared to relocate to the southVivek Madhukar, COO, TimesJobs.com
Notable Organisations
Hiring in this Domain
1. Tata Communications
2. Ericsson
3. Amazon
4. GE
5. IBM
6. Honeywell
7. Shell
8. NTT Data
make a career in data analytics is
huge, says Kaushank Nalin Khand-
wala, manager, Data Centre and Ana-
lytics Lab, IIM Bangalore.
Current opportunities
for engineers
In the coming decade, social, mobile,
analytics and cloud (SMAC) are the
strategic focus areas for many technol-
ogy companies. The entry-level roles
in analytics are in the areas of data
modelling, data visualisation, business
analysis and reporting.
Apart from their core field, engi-
neers are now hired by IT companies,
KPOs, captive analytics units and
niche analytics organisations across
various entry-level roles, such as
management trainees, analysts and
assistant managers in the risk, mar-
keting and analytics consulting roles.
Over the last 14 months, the spike in
big data roles has also added to the
mix.
There are a lot of opportunities for
fresh engineering graduates who have
the right kind of skill set. The entry-
level roles generally involve a profile
where the graduates are required to
aggregate, compile and screen the
data and also prepare a datasheet for
further analysis. In addition, they may
also be asked to explore the data to
find some insights before applying any
data analysis technique.
80 July 2014 | Electronics For You
nological minds for a long time to
Typical Entry-Level
Job Profiles in Analytics
1. Business analyst
2. Data analyst/data scientist analyst
3. Data manager
4. Data engineer
For engineers, roles will also be
of programmers, specifically for Java,
Python and R.
Freshers with good knowledge of
Hadoop and cloud computing will
have a distinct advantage.
For experienced graduates, roles
range from business intelligence special-
ists, programmers, open source experts
to Hadoop engineers, cloud computing
experts, Java, Python, text mining spe-
cialists and domain specialists.
Pay package
At PayScale.com, the average salary indi-
cated for an entry-level data analyst is `
257,383 per year. The skills that increase
pay for this job the most are SAS, SPSS
and quality improvement/QA.
A mid-career data analyst earns
an average salary of ` 400,236 per
year. The highest paying skills as-
sociated with this job are database,
SAS, Microsoft SQL server and SQL
(refer charts).
Some industry experts preferred
to keep the pay packages confiden-
tial and the others gave us a basic
idea. At Costarch, Soni informs, We
do recruit engineers to work in this
domain with our company but we
do not have any fixed pay package
for our recruits and it depends very
much on their skill sets. But to give
you an idea, the entry-level pack-
age varies between ` 240,000 and `
450,000 and for experienced profes-
sionals, it varies between ` 500,000
to ` 1,000,000.
Demand areas
Vivek Madhukar, COO, TimesJobs.
com explained, DA is a high-demand
profession that is going to continue
to attract the best and brightest tech-
comemany CIOs today started out
as DA specialists. DA is the job of find-
ing business insights in figures and
factsat a junior-to-mid-level career
this comprises extracting information
from raw data. At a mid-to-senior-level
position, this information is processed
into knowledge that is leveraged for
business growth.
He further adds, If you are some-
one who is good at discovering and
communicating meaningful patterns
in data and are looking for a career in
DA, target IT software companies and
be prepared to relocate to the south
as Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad
account for almost half of the jobs
available in this sector.
According to the data provided
by TimesJobs.com, the top indus-
tries hiring DA professionals is the
IT industry with about 42 per cent
share of jobs followed by the manu-
facturing and engineering industry
with a share of 10 per cent. Bank-
ing, financial services and insurance
(BFSI) and ITES-BPO (information
technology-enabled service-business
process outsourcing) have 9 per cent
and 4 per cent of the jobs, respec-
tively (refer pie charts).
Apart from Bangalore and Mumbai
that feature in the list of top locations
for jobs in the DA field with 25 per cent
and 16 per cent, respectively, Delhi
shares 19 per cent of the jobs and,
Chennai and Hyderabad with 10 per
cent of the jobs each. Remaining jobs
are scattered in other locations (refer
pie charts).
Skills expected
Both freshers and experienced gradu-
ates should have a balanced mix of left
brain and right brain skills, informs
Anand. They need to be able to both
count and connect the dots, be curious
enough to question everything they
see and sceptical enough not to ac-
www.efymag.com
 Career

Expert Advice for a Career in Data Analytics

I see two distinct paths for a career in DA. One could choose to focus on a career that
is about extracting information from data or go further and choose a career that is about
distilling business wisdom from data. The latter is harder, riskier but challenging and in the
long run, more rewarding. Do not choose a career just because it has a buzz around it;
choose a career that creates a buzz within you. You could be twice lucky, if the career you
are interested in is also the one the market is interested in. Anand Sankaran, senior
principal architect, Verizon Data Services India
There are a lot of resources available on the Internet. All I can advise is that keep
improving your skills in this area because there is a big shortage for right kind of talent in
this area. Explore the platforms that deliver massive open online courses to develop your
skills and knowledge about the area. Ashish Soni, chief analytics officer, Costarch
Get your skin in the game. Learn as much as you can. Take up courses from free
online resources such as Coursera, EDX, Amazon web services. Play with open data sets.
There is a lot of scope for entrepreneurship with Cloud computing, analytics, big data and
open data movements gathering momentum. Time to think big and make a good impact.
Kaushank Nalin Khandwala, manager, Data Centre and Analytics Lab, IIM Bangalore

cept every answer

they hear, be both Major contributors to this report
an analyst and an
artist.
Key skills in-
clude logical think-
ing, analytical bent
of mind, strong
grip on mathemat- Anand Sankaran
senior principal
Ashish Soni
chief analytics officer,
ics, statistics and architect, Verizon Data
Services India
concepts of prob-
ability. Madhukar
says, Those who
are comfortable playing with numbers
complemented with data visualisation,
good business understanding and
communication skills will do very
well.
Talking about AbsolutData, Datta
says, The major areas that we expect
people to be strong are quantitative
ability, problem-solving skills, good
aptitude and lateral thinking. On the
other hand, Soni notes, The skill sets
required to excel in this area include,
interest in number crunching, good
logic reasoning, knowledge and expe-
rience with some statistical package,
programming knowledge and should
be able to think out of the box.
Future
DA is a 23 billion dollar industry, in-
forms Datta. She says, Over the last
decade, India has witnessed a change
in even top tier strategy consulting
companies using data-based decision
Kaushank Nalin Sudeshna Datta
Khandwala EVP and co-founder,
Costarch manager, Data Centre Absolutdata
and Analytics Lab, IIM
Bangalore
making, surely the trend is changing.
Eventually data-based analytics is go-
ing to be the space to watch out for!
With encouraging career pros-
pects and amongst the most well-paid
careers, DA jobs surely seem to be
the next big thing for engineers to
consider. It is already beginning to
revamp businesses and their abil-
ity to compete by helping them make
smarter decisions. Analytics is the new
career choice for those who want to
stay ahead.
Analytics is not too much into
tools or technologies, it is a method of
thinking that permits the use of knowl-
edge, tools and technologies to extract
valuable insights from data. Analytics
jobs and careers exist in most large
companies in almost every industry
vertical.
The author is a senior technical correspondent
at EFY

82 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com

 dIy: project

Quiz Game Controller sani the

o

Dr D.K. Kaushik and Ashok Sharma tion is asked by the quiz

master, any of the partic-

T
his PIC16F877A microcon- ipating teams can press
troller-based quiz controller, the button and give the
designed for up to six players answer within the al-
or teams, is suitable for school and col- lotted time. A buzzer
lege quiz competitions. It is similar to sounds and a big 12.7cm
a fastest-finger-first system in which (5-inch) 7-segment dis-
the player who presses the button first play shows the number
gets the first chance to answer the quiz. of the team that presses
Here, each team is assigned a their pushbutton switch
unique number and provided with a first. Authors prototype
pushbutton switch. As soon as a ques- Fig. 1: Authors prototype is shown in Fig. 1.

L TP1

TP2
BR1=1A
230V 1 IC3 3 1 IC4 3
AC, 50Hz BR1 7805
7812 LED7
MAINS
2 2 POWER
C1 C2 C3
470u 0.1u R4
0.1u
N X1 35V 680E

X1=230V AC PRIMARY TO 15V, 500mA

TP0
SECONDARY TRANSFORMER

R1
10K LED6 R3
C4 1K
10u , 16V TP3 PZ1
LED5 PIEZO
11 32
R2 1.2K BUZZER
1 VDD VDD LED4
MCLR 40
2 RB7
S7 RESET RA0
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

RB6 39
3 RA1 RB5 38 LED3
RNW1 37
4 RA2 RB4
1 36
5 RA3 RB3
10K RB2 35
6 RA4 RNW2 T1 BC547
RB1 34 LED2
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 7 RA5 100E
RB0 33 LED1
8 RE0 IC1 15
RC0
1

S1
9 RE1 PIC16F877A RC1 16
10 RC2 17
RE2
RC3 18
19 RD0 1 COMMON 9
RC4 23 IN1
S2 20 RD1 24 R5
RC5 2 16
21 IN2 OUT1
RD2 RC6 25
DIS1
22 RD3 RC7 26 3 15 R6 8
S3 IN3 OUT2
27 RD7 30 7
RD4 IC2 a CA
28 RD6 29 4 IN4 14 R7 6
RD5 OUT3 b
Vss Vss OSC1 OSC2 ULN2003 5 c
S4 5 13 2
14 IN5 OUT4 d
31 12 13 1
R8 e
XTAL1 6 OUT5 12 10
S5 IN6 f
20MHz R9 9 g
7 IN7 11 4 dp
OUT6
C5 C6 R10 CM
S6 8 10
33p 33p GND OUT7 3
R11
S1S6 = PLAYER1PLAYER6
R5R11 = 1K
GND
LED1LED6 = PLAYER1PLAYER6
Fig. 2: Circuit diagram of the quiz controller

84 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com


Circuit and working
Test Points As shown in Fig. 2, the quiz game
Test point Details controller circuit is built around the
TP0 0V popular PIC16F877A microcontroller
TP1 12V (IC1), driver ULN2003 (IC2), transistor
TP2 5V BC547 (T1), 7-segment display (DIS1),
TP3 Low when S7 is pressed some LEDs and switches.
PIC16F877A. This microcontroller,
Fig. 3: Code compilation in Proton IDE
dIy: project
which forms the heart of the circuit, has
8-bit processor with 8kB Flash memory,
368-byte data memory and 256-byte EE-
PROM. In addition, it has three timers.
A 7-segment (common-anode) display is
connected to the PIC controller through
buffer ULN2003 on port C (RC0-RC6).
Six pushbutton switches are con-
nected to port D (RD0-RD5) of the
microcontroller. This port is used as
the input port. The logic values of these
switches are scanned by the program
through this port at a very fast rate of
about 6 microseconds. The microcon-
troller keeps scanning the positions of
the switches and, when a switch shows
logic 1, it sends a signal to port B (RB7)
and the buzzer sounds.
Port B of the microcontroller acts as
output port for the LEDs also. Six LEDs
(LED1 through LED6) connected to port
pins RB0 through RB5 of IC1 are used
as visual indications. For example, if
the third team presses the switch first,
LED3 will glow along with sounding of
the buzzer, and at the same time digit
3 will be displayed on DIS1.
Switch S7 is connected to pin 1 of
microcontroller for manual reset. Resis-
tors R1 and R2 and capacitor C4 form
the power-on reset circuitry.
ULN2003. The 7-segment display
DIS1 (SUNR400CA or its equivalent)
is driven by ULN2003 driver IC2. Pins
RC0 through RC6 of microcontroller
are connected to input pins IN1 through
IN7 of IC2. Its output pins OUT1
through OUT7 are connected to the seg-
ments a through g of DIS1.
Power supply. The power supply is
derived from 230V AC mains primary
to 15V, 500mA secondary transformer
X1. Bridge rectifier module BR1 rectifies
secondary output of the transformer,
capacitor C1 filters it and sends to input
of 7812 regulator IC3. The 12V regulated
DC output from IC3 is sent to input of
7805 regulator IC4 to power buzzer and
DIS1. The 5V DC from 7805 powers the
microcontroller.

Software
The program for microcontroller is writ-
ten in Basic and compiled using Proton
Fig. 4: Actual-size PCB layout for the quiz controller IDE v2.0. After compilation of the code

www.efymag.com Electronics For You | July 2014 85

 dIy: project
Fig. 5: Component layout for the PCB
(quiz_mm.bas), if everythings fine,
you will see Compilation Success
for Target Device 16F877A (20MHz)
message at the bottom of the screen, as
shown in Fig. 3. The hex code gener-
ated by Proton IDE is used to burn into
the PIC16F877A using PICSTART Plus
programmer.
Construction and testing
An actual-size, single-side PCB layout
for the circuit is shown in Fig. 4 and
86 July 2014 | Electronics For You
its component layout in Fig. 5. All the
components are easily available in elec-
tronics components shops. After as-
sembling of the components properly
on the PCB, power supply connections
should be checked.
Install the 7-segment display DIS1
suitably so that it is visible to the quiz
master and the audience. It requires at
least eight wires to connect to the PCB.
Connection detail for each segment
(a through g) is provided in Fig. 5
at DISP1. Next, install all six switches
(S1 through S6) at different locations
where the six contesting teams can
reach them. House each switch and its
corresponding LED in a transparent
enclosure, so that when you press the
switch and LED glows, it is visible to
the quiz master.
Switch on the power supply to
start the quiz. On pressing any switch
(S1 through S6), the corresponding
number (1 through 6) should appear
Parts List
Semiconductors:
IC1 - PIC16F877A microcontroller
IC2 - ULN2003 driver
IC3 - 7812, 12V regulator
IC4 - 7805, 5V regulator
T1 - BC547 npn transistor
BR1 - 1A bridge rectifier
DIS1 - 12.7cm (5-inch) 7-segment
display (common anode)
LED1-LED6 - 5mm white LED (high
intensity)
LED7 - 5mm red LED
Resistors (all -watt, 5% carbon):
R1 - 10-kilo-ohm
R2 - 1.2-kilo-ohm
R3, R5-R11 - 1-kilo-ohm
R4 - 680-ohm
RNW1 - 10-kilo-ohm resistor network
RNW2 - 200-ohm resistor network
Capacitors:
C1 - 470F, 35V electrolytic
C2, C3 - 0.1F ceramic
C4 - 10F, 16V electrolytic
C5, C6 - 33pF ceramic
Miscellaneous:
XTAL1 - 20MHz crystal oscillator
X1 - 230V AC primary to 15V,
500mA secondary
transformer
S1-S6 - Pushbutton switch
S7 - Tactile switch
PZ1 - Piezobuzzer
efy Note
The source code of this project is
included in this months EFY DVD
and is also available for free down-
load at source.efymag.com
on DIS1 and the buzzer should ring.
Simultaneously, the corresponding
LED near the switch should glow. The
LED and display switch off after six
seconds while the buzzer stops ringing
after two seconds.
When a question is asked by the
quiz master, any team can respond by
pressing their switch. The switch first
pressed is recognised by the micro-
controller. Any other switches pressed
thereafter do not get registered. So the
team who pressed the button first can
be allowed to give the answer.
For any problem in the display you
can press reset switch S7 momentarily
and check again. For further trouble-
shooting, you can also verify the volt-
ages at various points given in the test
points table.
Dr D.K. Kaushik is principal and Ashok Sharma
is technical assistant at Manohar Memorial (P.G.)
College, Fatehabad (Haryana)
www.efymag.com
 dIy: project

Arduino-Based FM Receiver Abhijeet

Rai

Madhuram Mishra

10K
VR1
his project is of an FM radio based on Philips

3
TEA5767 digital radio-receiver module.

2
VDD
Vss

VO
The radio receiver uses I2C interface with

D7
14
Arduino UNO development board. The TEA5767

D6
13
module offers such features as stereo or mono

D5
outputs, radio station scanning and signal strength

12
D4
indication. The authors prototype on a breadboard

FREQUENCY DOWN

S1
FREQUENCY UP
S2
11
D3
is shown in Fig. 1.

16X2 LCD

10
LCD1

D2
Circuit and working

9
D1
8

10K

10K
The circuit of the Arduino-based FM receiver,

R2

R1
D0
shown in Fig. 2, is built around Arduino UNO board

7
R/W EN
(board1), TEA5767 radio receiver module (FM1),

TP4
LM386 low-power amplifier (IC1), 162 LCD (LCD1)

TP3
and 8-ohm speaker (LS1). A/VEE
RS
4
K

Arduino UNO board. Arduino is an open source

16

15

electronics prototyping platform based on flexible,

easy-to-use hardware and software. It is intended for
artists, designers, hobbyists and anyone interested in
AREF
GND
SCL
SDA

13
12
11
10
9
8

7
6
5
4
3
2
TX 1
RX 0
creating interactive objects or environments. ARDUINO DIGITAL
Arduino UNO is a board based on ATmega328

BOARD1
DRIVER
330E

USB

microcontroller. It has 14 digital input/output pins,

R3

ATMEGA328

six analogue inputs, a USB connection for program-

POWER

ANALOG
INPUT

GND
GND
ming the on-board microcontroller, power jack, an
3.3V
RST

Vin

A0
A1
A2
A3
A4
A5
5V

ICSP header and a reset button. It is operated with

a 16MHz crystal oscillator and contains everything
needed to support the microcontroller. It is easy to
use as the user simply needs to connect it to a com-
BATT.1

puter with a USB cable, or power it with an AC-to-

9V

DC adaptor or battery, to get started. The microcon-

5

troller on the board is programmed using Arduino

DATA
CLOCK
R/W

BUSMODE
Vcc
TP1

programming language and Arduino development

TEA 5767
FM1
GND

environment.
ROUT

LOUT

TP5 9 MPXO
TP0

GND

10 ANT
6

8
VR2

ANT.
10K
LM386 2

6
IC1
4

LS1 = 8OHM, 0.5W SPEAKER

1
7

TP2
8
25V
22u
C1

100u, 25V
10E

25V

C3
R4

10u
C2
LS1

Fig. 1: Authors prototype Fig. 2: Circuit diagram of the Arduino-based FM receiver

88 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com


Pins A4 and A5 of the Arduino
board are connected to DATA and
CLOCK pins of the FM module (FM1),
respectively. Pins 10 through 12 of the
Arduino board are connected to EN,
R/W and RS pins of LCD1 while pins 2
through 5 are connected to data pins of
the LCD. Pins 7 and 8 of the Arduino
board are connected to tactile switches
S1 and S2 to increase and decrease FM
frequency, respectively.
TEA5767 receiver module. The
TEA5767 is a single-chip electronically-
tuned FM stereo radio module for
low-voltage applications with fully-
integrated intermediate frequency
(IF) selectivity and demodulation. The
TEA5767 module is shown in Fig. 3.
Its operating power supply can range
from 2.5V to 5V (maximum).
The radio module is completely
adjustment-free and requires a mini-
mum of small and low-cost external
components. The oscillator in TEA5767
operates with a 32.768kHz or 13MHz
external crystal. The module can be
configured to operate either in I2C
Test Points
Test point Details
TP0 0V
TP1 5V
TP2 9V
TP3 Low when S1 is pressed
TP4 Low when S2 is pressed
TP5 Output of FM1
Fig. 3: TEA5767 digital radio receiver module
DATA BYTE 1 DATA BYTE 2
WRITE MODE
Fig. 4: Write mode data sequence
www.efymag.com
mode or 3-wire bus mode, selectable
via BUSMODE pin. In this project, the
module is operated in I2C mode by
grounding the BUSMODE pin.
The module also provides 4-bit
level information via the bus. There
is autonomous search tuning function
inbuilt in the module along with many
more features.
Pins 3 and 6 of TEA5767 module
(FM1) are connected to ground. Pins 7
and 8 of FM1 provide outputs for right
and left channel, respectively.
LM386 amplifier. The output
signals from the module are very
low and inaudible, so we need to use
an audio-amplifier circuit. Here, for
testing purpose, we use low-voltage
power amplifier LM386 at the left
channel output. Use VR2 to adjust the
volume in the speaker. If you want
stereo output, you should use another
LM386 with the same configuration at
the right channel output of the module.
Software program
The software of this project is written
in Arduino programming language.
The Arduino UNO is programmed us-
ing Arduino IDE software. ATmega328
on Arduino UNO comes with a boot
loader that allows you to upload new
code to it without the use of external
Parts List
Semiconductors:
FM1 - TEA5767 digital radio-
receiver module
LCD1 - 162 LCD
BOARD1 - Arduino UNO board
IC1 - LM386 low-power amplifier
Resistors (all 1/4-watt, 5% carbon):
R1, R2 - 10-kilo-ohm
R3 - 330-ohm
R4 - 10-ohm
VR1, VR2 - 10-kilo-ohm preset
Capacitors:
C1 - 22F, 25V electrolytic
C2 - 10F, 25V electrolytic
C3 - 100F, 25V electrolytic
Miscellaneous:
S1, S2 - Tactile switch
BATT.1 - 9V battery
LS1 - 8-ohm, 0.5W speaker
ANT. - 75cm hookup wire antenna
DATA BYTE 3 DATA BYTE 4 DATA BYTE 5
dIy: project
hardware programmer. It communi-
cates using the STK500 protocol. You
can also bypass the boot loader and
program the microcontroller through
ICSP (in circuit serial programming)
header, but using boot loader pro-
gramming is quick and easy. Select the
correct board from Tools Board
menu in Arduino IDE and burn the
program (sketch) through standard
USB port in the computer.
The source code for the same is
provided with auto-scan function as
well as without auto-scan function.
Programming steps. The program
for this circuit performs the following
functions:
1. Initialising the TEA5767 module
2. Writing the data to TEA5767
module
3. Reading the TEA5767 module
values
4. Displaying information on the
LCD screen
5. Scanning available FM channels
6. Increasing or decreasing the
frequency by a unit defined value of
particular MHz.
The source program is well com-
mented, which can be seen by opening
the file in Arduino software.
Writing data to TEA5767. The use-
ful details about writing the byte and
reading the byte can be obtained from
page numbers 13 through 16 of the
datasheet (Rev.5).
Wire.BeginTransmission(0x60);
This is used to start I2C communi-
cation with the TEA5767 module
The address of TEA5767 is 0x60
during writing
The address of TEA5767 is 0x61
during reading
Wire.write(0x00);
This is used to send data to the I2C
device byte by byte
The significance of various bytes
in TEA5767 is also mentioned on page
numbers 13 through16 of its datasheet.
The data byte sequence for the write
mode is shown in Fig. 4; the remaining
detail can be found in the datasheet.
Bitwise operators used for pro-
gramming the first two bytes of
TEA5767 are explained below:
Electronics For You | July 2014 89
 dIy: project
Fig. 5: Actual-size PCB layout for the Arduino
FM receiver
Bitwise operators
& (bitwise and)
| (bitwise or)
^ (bitwise xor)
~ (bitwise not)
<< (bitshift left)
>> (bitshift right)
Since structures of the first and the
second bytes are different, different
bitwise operators are used.
Read mode. In read mode, we have
to note the following changes:
1. When a station is found in search
mode, as instructed during write op-
eration, the ready flag (RF) in first byte
is set to 1. That is, RF=1
2. The values of signal strength
level in 4th byte
3. Stereo or mono reception in 3rd
byte
For reading the values from
TEA5767, the following method is
used in the code by creating a buffer
as follows:
90 July 2014 | Electronics For You
Fig. 6: Component layout for the PCB
Buffer [i]= Wire.read ();
Wire.read (); is used to read the val-
ues of all the five bytes in Read mode.
Displaying values on LCD screen.
The task of displaying values is per-
formed by reading the values of bytes
of the TEA5767 in read mode.
1. The available frequency is dis-
played on LCD screen by reading first
byte stored in buffer(0); this value is
stored in buffer during read operation
2. If search mode is high, a scan is
displayed on the screen
3. The signal strength is stored in
the 4th byte which can be obtained by
reading the buffer(3)
4. The reception type is displayed
on screen by reading the buffer(3).
Searching/changing the frequency.
Switches S1 and S2 are used to change
the station/channel search or switch to
auto-scan mode. Search-up or search-
down operation depends on the switch
pressed. The 7th bit of 3rd byte in write
efy Note
The source code of this project is
included in this months EFY DVD
and is also available for free down-
load on source.efymag.com
operation is for search-up or search-
down operation. The implementation
of these operations has been included
in the code.
R1 and R2 are pull-up resistors
connected at digital pins 7 and 8 of
Arduino board, respectively.
Construction and testing
An actual-size (Arduino shield type),
single-side PCB for Arduino FM re-
ceiver is shown in Fig. 5 and its com-
ponent layout in Fig. 6. Assemble the
components on the recommended PCB
to avoid assembly errors. Double check
for any overlooked error. TEA5767 is to
be mounted on solder-side of the PCB.
A 75cm (wavelength/4) hookup
wire antenna should be connected at
pin 10 of the TEA5767 module.
Switch on the circuit and use switch
S1 or S2 to change frequency. Pressing
S1 momentarily increases the frequency
and S2 decreases the frequency. Long
pressing of any of the two switches will
enable auto scanning.
LCD1 shows the selected frequen-
cy, signal strength and whether the
sound is mono or stereo.
To test the circuit for proper func-
tioning, first verify the correct voltages
at various points as given in the test
points table.
The author is a final-year student of B.Tech (ECE)
from Truba Institute of Engineering & IT, Bhopal
(MP)
www.efymag.com
 dIy: project

Web-Based Device Controller t Rai

With Arduino Board

Abhijee

Priyanka Kumari 90 degrees. If the pulse is longer than hardware and software. It is intended
1.5ms, the shaft turns closer to180 de- for artists, designers, hobbyists and

A
rduino board can also be used grees as shown in Fig. 3. anyone interested in creating interac-
to control electrical devices Arduino UNO board. Arduino is tive objects or environments.
and appliances over the Inter- an open source electronics prototyping Arduino UNO is a board based
net. Just by clicking a few buttons on a platform based on flexible, easy-to-use on ATmega328 microcontroller. It
webpage, the devices can be operated consists of 14
from a remote location. For this the digital input/
board needs to be Ethernet-enabled output pins,
using Ethernet shield. This project six analogue
illustrates the point by using Wiznet inputs, a USB
W5100 Ethernet shield to control a TP1 connection for
servo motor and an LED. M1 = 5V, SERVO
MOTOR
programming
the on-board
Circuit and working microcontroller,
Fig. 1 shows circuit of the web-based power jack, an
device controller. The circuit is built ICSP header
around Arduino UNO board (board1), TP2
and a reset but-
Arduino Ethernet shield (shield1) and M1 ton. It is op-
servo motor (M1). TP0
erated with a
Servo motor. A servo motor mainly 16MHz crystal
consists of a DC motor, gear system, LED1 oscillator and
position sensor (generally a potentiom- R1 contains every-
eter) and control electronics as shown SHIELD1
680E thing needed
in Fig. 2. The DC motor is connected GND
to support the
to a gear mechanism, which provides Fig. 1: Circuit diagram of the web-based controller microcontroller.
feedback to a position sensor. The po- It is very easy
tentiometer allows the control circuit to to use as the user simply needs to
Potentiometer
monitor the current angle of the servo Control Electronics
connect it to a computer with a USB
motor. If the shaft is at correct angle, Gear system cable or power it with an AC-to-DC
the motor shuts off. If the circuit finds adaptor or battery to get started.
that the angle is incorrect, it will keep DC Motor The microcontroller on the board is
the motor on until the angle is correct. programmed using Arduino pro-
A normal servo is used to control the gramming language and Arduino
angular motion up to 180 degrees. development environment.
Angle of rotation. The angle of Arduino Ethernet shield. The
servo motor rotation is determined by Servo Horn/Arm Arduino Ethernet shield allows an
the duration of a pulse that is applied Fig. 2: Servo motor components Arduino board to connect to the
to the control wire. The servo expects Internet. It is based on the Wiznet
a pulse every 20 milliseconds (0.02 W5100 Ethernet chip, which provides
seconds). The length of the pulse will 0
1ms 1ms
a network (IP) stack capable of both
determine how far the motor rotates. 90 TCP and UDP. It supports up to four
A 1.5-millisecond pulse, for example, simultaneous socket connections. Use
makes the motor turn to the 90-degree 1.5ms 1.5ms
the Ethernet library to write sketches
position (often called the neutral posi- 180 which connect to the Internet using
2ms 2ms
tion). If the pulse is shorter than 1.5ms, the shield.
the motor turns the shaft lesser than Fig. 3: Servo positions The Ethernet shield connects to

www.efymag.com Electronics For You | July 2014 91

 dIy: project
Test Points
Test point Details
TP0 0V
TP1 5V
TP2 PWM signals for servo motor (M1)
Parts List
Semiconductors:
Board1 - Arduino Uno board
Shield1 - Arduino Ethernet shield
LED1 - 5mm LED
Resistor (1/4-watt, 5% carbon):
R1 - 680-ohm SD card.
Miscellaneous:
M1 - 5V servo motor
efy Note
The source code of this project is
included in this months EFY DVD
and is also available for free down-
load at source.efymag.com
an Arduino board using long-lead
stackable headers (refer Fig. 4). This
keeps the pin layout intact and allows
another shield to be stacked on top, if
needed.
The Ethernet shield has a standard
RJ-45 connection, with an integrated
line transformer and Power over Eth-
ernet (PoE) enabled.
There is an onboard microSD card
slot, which can be used to store files for
serving over the network. It is compat-
ible with the Arduino UNO and Ardui-
no Mega (using the Ethernet library).
The onboard microSD card reader is
accessible through the SD Library.
When working with this library, digital
pin 4 of the Arduino cannot be used.
The shield also includes a reset
controller, to ensure that the W5100
Ethernet module is properly reset on
power-up. Previous revisions of the
shield are not compatible with the
Mega board and need to be manually
reset after power-up.
Arduino communicates with both
the W5100 and SD card using the SPI
bus (through the ICSP header). They
are connected to digital pins 10, 11, 12
and 13 on the UNO and pins 50, 51 and
52 on the Mega. On both the boards,
pin 10 (slave select or SS pin) is used
to select the W5100 and pin 4 for the
92 July 2014 | Electronics For You
Fig. 4: Ethernet shield on top of Arduino
On the Mega, the hardware SS pin
(pin 53) is not used to select either
W5100 or SD card, but it must be kept
as an output, otherwise SPI interface
wont work.
Note that, because the W5100 and
SD card share the SPI bus, only one
can be made active at a time. If you
are using both peripherals in your
program, this should be taken care of
by the corresponding libraries. If you
are not using one of the peripherals in
your program, however, you will need
to explicitly deselect it. To do this with
the SD card, set pin 4 as an output and
write a high to it. For the W5100, set
digital pin 10 as a high output.
The reset button on the shield re-
sets both the W5100 and the Arduino
board.
Digital pins 4 and 7 of the shield
(Shield1) are connected to LED1 and
control pin of servo motor (M1), re-
spectively.
Software
The software for this project is written
in Arduino programming language.
The Arduino UNO is programmed us-
ing Arduino IDE software. ATmega328
on Arduino UNO comes with a boot
loader that allows you to upload new
code to it without the use of external
hardware programmer. It communi-
cates using the STK500 protocol. You
can also bypass the boot loader and
program the microcontroller through
ICSP (in-circuit serial programming)
header, but using boot loader pro-
gramming is quick and easy.
Select the correct board from Tools
-> Board menu in Arduino IDE and
Fig. 5: An actual-size Fig. 6: Component
PCB for the controller layout for the PCB
burn the program (sketch) through
standard USB port in the computer.
Construction and testing
An actual-size, single-side PCB for
the web-based device controller using
Arduino is shown in Fig. 5 and its com-
ponent layout in Fig. 6. Assemble the
components on the recommended PCB
to minimize assembly errors. Carefully
assemble the components and double-
check for any overlooked error.
To check working of the project, fol-
low the steps below:
1. Connect the servo as shown in the
circuit diagram (Fig. 1)
2. Power up the Arduino board
through power adaptor
3. Connect Ethernet shield on top of
the Arduino board
4. Connect the Ethernet shield with
LAN cable through your router
5. Ping the IP address 192.168.0.160,
or change the IP address as per your
router setting.
You need to change the IP address
in the source code, recompile and burn
into the microcontroller
Now you can access the servo (M1)
and LED1 using this IP address on your
browser. If the connection is successful,
you can see following user-interface
controls on your browser:
1. Turn on LED, Turn off LED
2. Rotate Left, Rotate Right
You can switch on/off LED1 and
also control the servo motor M1 by
clicking the appropriate button.
To test the circuit for proper func-
tioning, verify correct 5V supply for the
circuit at TP1 with respect to TP0.
The author is a final-year B.Tech (ECE) student of
Ansal Institute of Technology, Gurgaon
www.efymag.com
 dIy: circuit

USB LED Light Cum Battery Charger s.c. dwiv

edi

T.K. Hareendran docked to USB. The light source is a

standard 1W white LED. Fig. 1 shows

N
Parts List
owadays, many devices with the authors prototype.
Semiconductors:
rechargeable batteries use
USB power to recharge them Circuit and working IC1
T1
- MCP73831 Li-ion charger
- IRFZ820A MOSFET
while they are connected. The USB in- Fig. 2 shows the circuit diagram of USB LED1, LED2 - 5mm LED
LED3 - 1W white LED
terface has the ability to power devices, LED flashlight cum charger whose
Resistors (all 1/4-watt, 5% carbon):
which can be used to charge a battery. front end (charger) is wired around the R1, R2 - 1-kilo-ohm
Here is an interesting yet simple advanced Li-ion linear charge-manage- R3 - 2.2-kilo-ohm
R4 - 10-kilo-ohm
circuit of a compact USB LED flash- ment chip MCP73831 (IC1). The 8-pin VR1 - 10-kilo-ohm linear potmeter
light with built-in lithium-ion (Li-ion) IC has features like high-accuracy cur- Capacitors:
battery and a dedicated battery-char- rent and voltage regulation, battery C1, C2 - 10F, 16V electrolytic
Miscellaneous:
ger circuit. It charges the battery in a conditioning, charge termination and
S1 - On/off switch
clever manner whenever the device is charge status indication. IC1 is fol- BATT.1 - 3.7V/3.9Wh Li-ion battery
lowed by a commonly- USB1 - USB B type connector
- 2-pin terminal connector
available 3.7V/3.9Wh
mobile phone Li-ion
battery and the 1W
Test Points
white LED (LED3) with
a simple MOSFET-based Test point Details
driver (T1). TP0 0V
The charging power TP1 5V
supply is derived from TP2 Battery voltage
the USB and the battery
charging is fully con- charging and glowing of LED2 indi-
trolled by MCP73831. cates that the battery is fully charged.
Glowing of LED1 indi- Switch S1 is used to turn flashlight
Fig. 1: Authors prototype cates that the battery is LED3 on or off. Here, a potentiometer
(VR1) is added deliberately to adjust
the intensity of the light output from
TP1 TP2
S1 near 0% to 100% in a smooth manner.
FLASH LED3
R1
1K
S1 = ON/OFF SWITCH
LIGHT 1W LED Note that, in this circuit configuration/
4
application, a current-limiting resistor
VDD VBAT 3 D
C1 LED1 IC1 BATT.1 is not very crucial for the white LED3.
10u CHARGING MCP73831 3.7V
16V
LED2
1
STAT
Vss
PROG 5
C2
VR1 G Construction and testing
10u 10K POT
T1
USB1
CHARGED 2
16V
S
IRFZ820A
An actual-size, single-side PCB for the
R3
USB B TYPE R2
R4
MOSFET circuit is shown in Fig. 3 and its com-
1K 2.2K
10K ponent layout in Fig. 4. After assem-
TP0 bling the circuit on a PCB, enclose it in
a suitable plastic box. Use heat sink for
Fig. 2: Circuit diagram of USB LED flashlight cum battery charger LED3 or buy the IC with an embedded
heat sink and connect
it to the PCB using
external wires. Before
using the circuit, verify
the test point voltages
given in the table.
The author is a freelance
technical writer and circuits
Fig. 3: PCB layout for the circuit Fig. 4: Component layout for the PCB designer

www.efymag.com Electronics For You | July 2014 93

 dIy: circuit

Telephone Tapping Using FM s.c. dwiv

edi

Karunesh Shukla 24SWG enamelled copper wire wound

over 5mm air core. L1 is made of 8

T
his is an interesting circuit
which you can connect to a
telephone line to listen to the
conversations through any FM radio
receiver. Power for the circuit is drawn
from the telephone line itself, so it does
not require a power supply of its own.
The telephone wires act as the antenna
for the audio signal.
Circuit and working
Fig. 1 shows the circuit diagram of tel-
ephone tapping circuit using FM. The
circuit is built around transistors T1
turns, L2 of 6 turns and L3 of 10 turns
with a tapping at fourth turn. Vari-
able capacitor VC1 is used for tuning
the transmitted frequency. Diodes D1
through D4 rectify the telephone line
voltage which drives the circuit.
Working of the circuit is simple.
Connect the circuit in parallel to the
telephone line to listen to the conver-
sation between the calling and the
called parties. Keep switch S1 on and
tune your FM radio until you hear the
conversation.
Parts List
Semiconductors:
D1-D4 - 1N4148 diode
T1, T2 - BC547 npn transistor
Resistors (all 1/4-watt, 5% carbon):
R1 - 220-ohm
R2 - 33-kilo-ohm
R3 - 10-kilo-ohm
R4 - 47-kilo-ohm
R5 - 390-ohm
Capacitors:
C1, C3 - 22pF ceramic disk
C2 - 100nF ceramic disk
C4 - 1nF ceramic disk
C5 - 10pF ceramic disk
C6, C7 - 47pF ceramic disk
C8 - 100F, 25V electrolytic
VC1 - 50pF variable capacitor
Miscellaneous:

and T2 and bridge diodes D1 through Construction and testing CON1

S1
- 2-pin connector
- On/off switch
D4. Coils L1 through L3 are made of An actual-size, single-side PCB for L1 - 8 turns, 5mm dia, 24SWG
air core
L2 - 6 turns, 5mm dia, 24SWG
air core
L3 - 6 turns + 4 turns, 5mm dia,
R1 TP3 24SWG air core
L2
220E R2
R3 VC1 6T D2 D1
R4 C1
10K 47K 22p 50p L3
6T+4T
33K 1N4148 1N4148 Test Points
C2 C7
C6 L1 Test point Details
47p 8T TP1 S1
100n 47p
CON1 Across TP0 9V-12V, provided S1 is switched
C5 TP0
C8
and TP1 on during conversations
T1 10p
C4 BC547 100u Across TP2
1n C3 25V D4 and TP3 6V (approx.)
R5 T2 D3
22p 1N4148
390E BC547 1N4148
TP2 tapping a telephone line using FM is
GND
shown in Fig. 2 and its component
CON1 = TELEPHONE LINE
layout in Fig. 3. After assembling the
Fig. 1: The telephone tapping circuit circuit on PCB, enclose it in a suitable
plastic box.
Fix 2-pin connector CON1
for connecting the telephone
line. Fix switch S1 on front panel
of the box. Before using the
circuit, verify the test point volt-
ages mentioned in the table.
The author is a B.Tech (ECE) from Prasad
Institute of Technology, Jaunpur, UP. He is
currently working as a senior hardware
Fig. 2: An actual-size PCB layout for the circuit Fig. 3: Component layout for the PCB R&D engineer at ESP Safety Pvt Ltd, Delhi

94 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com


Efficient 5V Relay Driver
EFY LAB
T
his design idea outlines
a method to use an ana-
logue switch and discrete
components to reduce the power
dissipated in relay actuation. We intro-
duced a power-saving relay-driver circuit
for a 12V relay in May issue. Presented
here is an MAX4624-based circuit to
drive a 5V relay in a more efficient way.
Relays are often used as electrically-
controlled switches. Unlike transistors,
their switch contacts are electrically
isolated from the control input. On the
other hand, the power dissipation in a
relay coil may be too much for battery-
operated applications. You can lower
this dissipation by adding an analogue
switch that allows the relay to operate at
a lower voltage.
Circuit and working
Fig. 1 shows circuit diagram of the effi-
cient 5V relay driver. The circuit is built
around 1, low-voltage, single-supply
SPDT (single-pole, double-throw) ana-
logue switch MAX4624 (IC1).
Power consumed by the relay coil
equals V2/RCOIL. The circuit lowers this
dissipation (after actuation) by applying
less than the normal operating voltage
R2 D1
S1
27K 1N4007
TP1 1 6
IN
2 V+ IC1 COM 5
MAX4624
3 4
CON1
GND
C2
2.5V
0.15u
S1 = ON / OFF SWITCH
Fig. 1: Circuit diagram of the efficient 5V relay driver
Fig. 2: Actual-size PCB for the circuit
www.efymag.com
of 5V. Note that the voltage re-
quired to turn a relay on (pick-
e d i up voltage) is greater than that
s.c. dwiv
required to keep it on (dropout
voltage). The relay normally
has a 3.5V pick-up voltage and
a 1.5V dropout voltage, yet the circuit
allows it to operate from an interme-
diate supply voltage of 2.5V. Table I
compares the relays power dissipation
with fixed operating voltages across it,
and with the Fig. 1 circuit in place.
When you close switch S1, current
flows in the relay coil and capacitors
C1 and C2 begin to charge. The relay
remains inactive because the supply
voltage is less than its pick-up voltage.
The RC time constants are such that
C1 charges almost completely before
the voltage across C2 reaches the logic
threshold of the analogue switch. When
C2 reaches that threshold, IC1 connects
C1 in series with the 2.5V supply and
relay coil. This action turns on the relay
by boosting the voltage across its coil to
around 5V (twice the supply voltage).
As C1 discharges through the coil,
the coil voltage drops back to 2.5V
minus the drop across D1, but the
relay remains on because that voltage
is above the relays dropout voltage
(1.5V). Component values for this cir-
cuit depend on
C1 TP2 the relay charac-
100u teristics and the
16V N/O
NO
supply voltage.
D2
N/C
The value of R1,
1N4007
which protects
NC
RL1
CON2
FOR LOAD
R1
4.7E
5V 1C/O
RELAY
the analogue
TP0
switch from the
GND initial current
surge through
Fig. 3: Component layout for the PCB
dIy: circuit
Parts List
Semiconductors:
IC1 - MAX4624 analogue switch
D1, D2 - 1N4007 rectifier diode
Resistors (all 1/4-watt, 5% carbon):
R1 - 4.7-ohm
R2 - 27-kilo-ohm
Capacitors:
C1 - 100F,16V electrolytic
C2 - 0.15F ceramic disk
Miscellaneous:
S1 - On/off switch
RL1 - 5V, 1 c/o relay
CON1 - 2-pin terminal connector
CON2 - 3-pin connector
Table I
Relay Power
Voltage Power
5V normal operating voltage Around 450mW
2.5V with circuit shown in Fig. 1 Around 112mW
Table II
Test Points
Test point Details
TP0 0V
TP1 2.5V
TP2 Between 4V and 5V without
connecting relay
C1, should be sufficiently small to allow
C1 to charge rapidly, but large enough
to prevent the surge current from ex-
ceeding the peak current specified for
the analogue switch.
The value of C1 depends on the re-
lay characteristics and on the difference
between input voltage and the relays
pick-up voltage. Relays that need more
turn-on energy require larger C1 values.
The values for R2 and C2 are selected to
allow C1 to charge almost completely
before C2s voltage reaches the logic
threshold of the analogue switch.
Construction and testing
An actual-size, single-side PCB for ef-
ficient 5V relay-driver is shown
in Fig. 2 and its component lay-
out in Fig. 3. After assembling
the circuit on PCB, enclose it in
a suitable plastic box.
Before connecting the load,
verify that the voltages at vari-
ous points are as per Table II.
The circuit is based on Max-
im application notes.
Electronics For You | July 2014 95
 dIy: circuit

Difference Counter for In and Out Gates

Petre Tzv Petrov release S1, its pole returns to its Also, resetting occurs through capaci-
original position at terminal 1. tor C7 whenever power is switched on.

S
ometimes, we need to
vivek pan
know whether someone
is still inside a building
before it is locked. And if so,
how many persons are still inside?
There can be many other similar situ-
ations for which the circuit presented
here can come handy. But it needs
separate in and out gates to work and
can count up to nine persons (inside)
only. Though, it can be extended to
count more.
Circuit and working
Fig. 1 shows circuit of the difference
counter, built around four ICs, for use
between entrance and exit doors. Switch
S1, which is an SPDT switch, together
with gates N1 and N2 of CD4011 (IC4)
generates a pulse for incrementing
counter CD40192 (IC1). CD40192 is a
BCD pre-settable up/down (bidirec-
tional) counter. The counter moves up
or down with the positive clock edges
applied to its corresponding pin 5 (clock
up) or pin 4 (clock down).
When you press S1, its pole comes
in contact with its terminal 3, which is
connected to pin 5 of IC4. When you
chabhaiy Thus, for every action of press-
a The outputs of IC1 are decoded by
ing and releasing switch S1, CD4511 (IC2), which has internal 4-bit
there is an increment in display latch, decoder and output drivers. The
DIS1 till 9. Pressing switch S3 internal latch is always enabled be-
momentarily resets the counter to 0. cause pin 5 (LE) is connected to ground
Switch S2 is also an SPDT switch permanently. The outputs of IC2 drive
that works exactly like switch S1, but common-cathode 7-segment display
it is used for decrementing the count LTS543 (DIS1). Since pin configura-
in DIS1. Switch S2, together with gates tions may be different for the other
N3 and N4 of IC4 generates a pulse for displays, always check their datasheets
decrementing the counter in IC1. Parts List
The counter can be expanded to Semiconductors:
display more digits through the output IC1 - CD40192 up/down decade
pins 12 and 13 of IC1, if needed. High- counter
IC2 - CD4511 BCD to 7-segment
level signal on pin 14 (reset) clears all driver
internal triggers. That is, when switch IC3 - 7805, 5V voltage regulator
IC4 - CD4011 quad NAND gate
S3 is pressed momentarily, IC1 is reset.
D1 - 1N4001 rectifier diode
LED1 - 5mm LED
Test Points Resistors (all 1/4-watt, 5% carbon):
R1-R4 - 10-kilo-ohm
R5-R11 - 330-ohm
Test point Details
R12 - 22-kilo-ohm
TP0 0V R13 - 1-kilo-ohm
TP1 5V Capacitors:
C1-C3, C5, C7 - 0.33F ceramic disc
TP2 Low to high signal when S2 is C4 - 47F, 16V electrolytic
pressed and released C6 - 470F, 25V electrolytic
TP3 Low to high signal when S1 is Miscellaneous:
S1-S2 - SPDT foot switch
pressed and released
S3 - Tactile switch
TP4-TP7 Binary values (0 or 1) equivalent to the CON1 - 2-pin terminal connector
respective displays shown on DIS1 DIS1 - LTS543 7-segment display

S1 S2 = SPDT SWITCH S3 = TACTILE SWITCH C1 C3, C5, C7 = 0.33u TP1 D1 1N4001

3 IC3 1
S3 7805
C4
R4 2 R3 RESET C5
GND C1 C2 C3 47u 2
10K S2 10K R13 C6 0.33u
16V
EXIT 1K 470u CON1
1 C7
TP2 25V 915V
3 TP4
15 16 7 16 LED1
J1 Vcc A Vcc
TP5
Vcc 14

13

12

11

10

8
9

1 J2 11 1 B 13
PRESET a
TP6 R5
N4

N3

10 J3 3 2 C 12 8 3
Q1 b
IC4 TP7 R6 CC CC
9 J4 IC1 2 6 D IC2 11
CD4011 Q2 c
CD40192 CD4511 R7 5 dp a 7
N2
N1

7 GND

5 CLK UP 6 5 LE 10
Q3 d
R8
4 BL 9
1

4 CLK DOWN Q4 7 e 10 g b 6
3 LT 15
R9
14 RESET BORROW 13 f
TP3 ENTRANCE f e d c
8 GND 12 8 GND 14 R10
1 3 CARRY g 9 1 2 4 DIS1
R1 S1 R12 LTS543
R2 R11
10K 2 22K
10K
TP0 R5 R11 = 330E
GND

Fig. 1: Circuit diagram of the difference counter

96 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com


Fig. 2: Actual-size PCB layout for the counter
Fig. 3: Component layout for the PCB
before use.
Resistors R5 through R11 are usu-
ally in the range of 120 to 470 ohms,
depending on the type of DIS1. Here,
www.efymag.com
we have used 330-ohm resistors.
Power supply of the circuit is built
around linear regulator 7805 (IC3). The
input voltage is applied to connector
dIy: circuit
CON1 and can be AC or DC in the
range 9-15V.
Construction and testing
An actual-size, single-side PCB for the
difference counter is shown in Fig. 2
and its component layout in Fig. 3.
Mount the components on the
PCB to save time and avoid assem-
bly errors. Carefully assemble the
components and double check for
any overlooked error. Check/verify
the voltages at various points as per
the table.
You may use any type of SPDT
switches (S1 and S2) to check the
increment and decrement in DIS1 dis-
play. But for practical application, S1
and S2 should be SPDT foot switches,
which could be fitted in level with the
floor at the entrance and exit doors,
respectively.
The author was a researcher and assistant profes-
sor 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
Electronics For You | July 2014 97

Interfacing Dot Matrix LED
with Raspberry Pi
Somnath Bera
Y
ou will find in this article pro-
jects for interfacing an 88 and
a 57 dot-matrix display with
Raspberry Pi.
Since Raspberry Pi does not have
enough GPIOs, we have used its I2C
bus to connect to MCP23017 IO ex-
pander to have 16 additional GPIOs for
connecting to LED dot-matrix display
such as 88 or 57. Pin 3 (SDA) and
pin 5 (SCL) are I2C pins on Raspberry
Pi board. Some libraries in the form
of a GPL Python script, taken from
Adfruit.com, are used in this project to
manage the extended GPIOs.
First, you will see how a single 8x8
LED matrix is interfaced with GPIOs
through MCP23017. Then you can
expand the project to interface more
dot-matrix displays.
System set up
To use I C on Raspberry Pi, you need
2 Fig. 3: Commenting the code
to enable a few things inRaspbian
Wheezy operating system as these are
not enabled by default. This is a fairly
easy process. First you edit the mod-
ules file using the command:
$ sudo nano /etc/modules
and add the following two lines
(also refer Fig. 1):
i2c-bcm2708
i2c-dev
Save the file and exit nano. Next,
open the raspi-blacklist.conf file by
writing the command (also refer Fig. 2):
$ sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/
raspi-blacklist.conf
Comment out the code by putting
# symbol at the beginning of the two
lines as given below (also refer Fig. 3)
and then save and exit.
#blacklist spi-bcm2708
#blacklist i2c-bcm2708
Now install the necessary software
www.efymag.com
diy: tips & technique
habhaiya
vivek panc
to manipulate the I2C bus using follow- Once the software is installed, re-
ing commands (also refer Fig. 4): boot your Raspberry Pi so that these
$ sudo apt-get update effects take place permanently. Also
$ sudo apt-get install python-smbus install Python and python-dev on
i2c-tools Raspberry Pi using following com-
mands (also refer Fig. 5):
$ sudo apt-get install
python python-dev
For interacting with
the GPIO through Py-
thon, you have to install
the GPIO Python librar-
Fig. 1: Adding the lines in /etc/modules ies. The latest library
available is RPi.GPIO-
0.5.5.tar.gz. Download
the same from the link
below:
Fig. 2: Editing the raspi-blacklist.conf file http://raspberry-
gpio-python.googlecode.
com/files/
Unzip or extract the
tar file by using com-
mand (also refer Fig. 6):
tar zxvf RPi.GPIO-
0.5.5.tar.gz
Now change directo-
ry to the RPi.GPIO-0.5.5
and write the following
command (also refer Fig.
Fig. 4: Install the Python-smbus and I2C tools 7):
$ sudo python setup.py
install
The command will
install Raspberry Pi
GPIO library into Py-
Fig. 5: Installing Python packages thon. Now reboot the
Raspberry Pi using com-
mand:
$ sudo reboot
Fig. 6: Extracting the tar file Project 1:
Multiplexing of
8x8 dot-matrix
display
In this project, you will
use two separate files
Fig. 7: Installing the setup.py one to create a template
Electronics For You | July 2014 99
 diy: tips & technique
up the microprocessor and damage
it. Also ensure the reset pin 18 of
MCP23017 is connected with +5V
rail.

Circuit and working

To test the I2C connection on Raspberry
Pi, open the terminal and issue the fol-
lowing command:
Fig. 8: Multiplexing with GPIOs using 8x8 dot-matrix display $ sudo i2cdetect -y 0
or
$ sudo i2cdetect -y 1
If your Raspberry Pi is version 1
then use 0, else 1, and watch the screen
shown in Fig. 10 appear at the terminal
prompt.
Congratulations! Your Raspberry
Pi has successfully detected the hard-
R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6 R7 R8 ware at 0x20 address. The address is
R1 R8 = 470E
13 3 4 10 6 11 15 16 020 because all the three address pins
1
GPB0 GPA7 28 9 (A0, A1, A2) of MCP23017 are set low.
2 27
3
GPB1 GPA6
26
14 If you had set only A0 high (connected
GPB2 GPA5
4 GPB3 GPA4 25
8 to +5V) the address would have be-
5
GPB4 IC1 GPA3 24 12 come 021.
6 GPB5
MCP23017GPA1
GPA2 23 1 This signifies one fundamental
7 22
8
GPB6
21
7 issue with I2C communications: You
GPB7 GPA0
2
PIN2 9 20 can connect any number of devices
RASPBERRY PI

VDD INTA
5
18
RESET INTB 19 on the I2C bus (pin 3 and pin 5) but
PIN6 10
Vss NC 11
all devices should have unique ad-
PIN5 12 A2 17 DIS1
PIN3 13
SCL
16 dresses. So, setting A0, A1 and A2
SDA A1 8X8 CC DOT MATRIX DISPLAY
14
NC A0 15 pins will define different addresses
for different devices. You can also
control the device by issuing ap-
Fig. 9: Circuit of 8x8 dot-matrix display propriate command. You may try
this as explained below to gain more
the changes in letter.py code confidence.
and the same will be drawn on There is another way of testing the
the LED matrix. I2C connection on Raspberry Pi. Con-
Make the connections as nect an LED on A0 pin and issue the
per the circuit shown in Fig. 9. following commands:
MCP23017 (28-pin DIP) is used $ sudo i2cset 0x20 0x00 0x00 # this
here as it has 16 GPIOs8 for will switch on the LED on A0
rows and 8 for columns of 8x8 $ sudo i2cset 0x20 0x00 0x01 # this
Fig. 10: Testing I2C connection LED matrix. Remember to use will switch off the LED on A0
current-limiting resistors, whose The command line program is easy,
values can be between 470 ohms provided you understand the binary
and 1-kilo-ohm, in series with and hex conversion. Adafruit.com has
the LEDs. an excellent library using which we
Fig. 11: Running the Python code Four wires are connected to can manipulate these GPIOs in a far
the Raspberry Pitwo for I2C more lucid way. The files include Ada-
of figures on the 8x8 dot- matrix (us- and two for 5V supply and ground fruit_I2C.py, Adafruit_MCP230xx.py,
ing 1s) and the other to control the connections. letter.py and mcplight9.py
GPIOs for drawing figures on the Before testing, make sure that 5V Now open the terminal and write
LED matrix. So whatever letter or supply is going to the correct pin in the command given below (also refer
character you want to display, make Raspberry Pi board, else it will heat Fig. 11):

100 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com

 diy: tips & technique

efy Note
The source codes of this project are
included in this months EFY DVD
and are also available for free down-
load at source.efymag.com
R1 R5 = 470E R1 R2 R3 R4 R5
$ sudo python mcplight9.py 1
GPB0 GPA7 28 13 3 11 10 6
9
Now you will see different charac- 2
GPB1 GPA6 27
3 26
ters visible on your dot-matrix display 4
GPB2 GPA5
25
14
GPB3 GPA4
as shown in Fig. 8. Each character will 5
GPB4 IC1 GPA3 24 8

be displayed on the LED matrix one 6 GPB5 GPA2 23 5

7 MCP23017GPA1 22
after another. 8
GPB6
21
1
GPB7 GPA0 7
PIN2 9 20
Project 2: Multiplexing of
RASPBERRY PI
VDD INTA
18 19
2
INTB
5x7 dot-matrix display PIN6 10
RESET
Vss NC 11
PIN5 12 17 DIS1
A2
Similarly, by using Adafruit libraries, PIN3 13
SCL
A1 16 5X7 CA DOT MATRIX DISPLAY
SDA
as you did in the first project, you can 14
NC A0 15

do the multiplexing of 5X7 dot-matrix

display. The libraries include Ada-
fruit_I2C.py, Adafruit_MCP230xx.py,
efy.py and mcplight9.py.
First make the connections as
shown in Fig. 12. Then open the nano
editor by writing the command:
$sudo nano efy.py
Now write the efy.py code. This
python script will create the word EFY
Fig. 12: Circuit diagram of 5X7 dot-matrix display
on the 5x7 LED matrix. Save and exit sequentially, one by one, on the 5x7
the nano editor. dot-matrix display.
Now run the code by using the
The author is an avid user of open source soft-
command: ware. Professionally, he is a thermal power expert
$sudo python efy.py working as an additional general manager at NTPC
It will display E, F and Y characters Limited

www.efymag.com Electronics For You | July 2014 101

 diy: tips & technique
Modify Servo Motor
for Continuous Movement
Pooja Juyal
S
ervo motors are widely used
in precise control applications,
but most of them can rotate up
to 180 degrees only. Presented here
is a process for modifying servo mo-
tors so that these can rotate up to 360
degrees in either direction (clockwise
and anticlockwise). This would permit
the motors use for wider applications
without using additional controllers.
The modification of a servo motor
can be done using the following com-
ponents and tools:
1. Two 2.2k , 1%, 0805 resistors
2. Soldering iron
3. Multimeter
4. Wire cutter
5. Precision screwdriver
De-assembling
the servo motor
1. Remove any tags or stickers from
the body of motor and open its front
cover by removing the screws holding
the motor together, as shown in Fig. 1.
2. Slowly open the front cover.
There is circuit board, potentiometer
and motor inside the casing, as shown
Fig. 1: Removing the front cover
Fig. 2: Circuit inside the casing
102 July 2014 | Electronics For You
in Fig. 2.
3. There are two sets of wires; one
coming out of the motor and one com-
ing out of the potentiometer. Cut the
wires coming out of the potentiometer
and do not damage the wires coming
out of the motor, as shown in Fig. 3.
4. Open the top cover of motor to
take out the potentiometer, as shown
in Fig. 4.
5. Pay attention to the gear con-
figuration (better take a photograph
of it) as this will be needed during re-
assembly, as shown in Fig. 5.
6. The knob shown in Fig. 6 helps
limit the servos movement.
7. Slowly pull the gear arrangement
and potentiometer out of the casing.
Try to minimise the movement be-
tween the gear arrangements. Cut the
wires hanging from potentiometer, as
shown in Fig. 7.
Fig. 3: Cutting the wires of potentiometer
Fig. 4: Opening top cover of the motor
habhaiya
vivek panc
Breaking the motion-
hindering points
8. To break the motion-hindering
points, the rim of the rivet needs to be
removed. For doing so choose a drill
bit which is a little bigger than the in-
ner hole of the tiny rivet, as shown in
Fig. 8.
9. While drilling, do not press hard
and try not to get any grease on con-
tact. Stop drilling as soon as doughnut-
shaped rim of the rivet drills out, as
shown in Fig. 9.
Fig. 5: Assembly of top part of the motor
Fig. 6: Knob of the motor
Fig. 7: Removing the gear arrangement of motor
www.efymag.com

Fig. 8: Removing the rim of the rivet
Fig. 9: Drilling the rim
Fig. 10: Removing the end stop
www.efymag.com
diy: tips & technique
Fig. 11: Removing the limiter Fig. 15: Soldering the rivet back
Fig. 12: Removing the limiter
Fig. 13: Removing the knob Fig. 16: De-soldering the wires from driver board
Fig. 14: Placing the shaft and end-stop back
10. Now remove the end-stop and
put it aside, as shown in Fig. 10.
11. The bumps on the potentiom-
eter also help in preventing a continu-
ous rotation, but breaking these will
damage the motor. So follow the tech-
nique mentioned below:
The limiter and foil contact are
pressed close together. Remove the Fig. 17: Soldering the two 2.2k resistor on board
limiter using pliers or cutter, as shown
in Fig. 11. the limiter by snipping it, as shown in
12. Detach the limiter completely Fig. 12.
without affecting the shaft. The foil 13. Now remove the knob (men-
contacts will come off easily. Remove tioned in step 6), as shown in Fig. 13.
Electronics For You | July 2014 103
 diy: tips & technique
14. Put the shaft and its end-stop
back to original position (apply some
petroleum jelly on shaft inner side), as
shown in Fig. 14.

Modification
15. For modification, solder the rivet
back in its position, as shown in Fig.
15. Spin the shaft to ensure it rotates
easily. Fig. 18: Re-assembling the gears

16. De-solder the wires from the

driver board, as shown in Fig. 16.
17. Mount two resistors to make the
driver sense that the potentiometer is
always on its centre position. The re-
sistors should be of 1% tolerance to en-
sure the precision required. The value
of the resistors should be 2.2-kilo-ohm
each, and 0805 package, as shown in Fig. 20: Modified servo motor
Fig. 17.
Fig. 19: Assembling the potentiometer inside case
fit inside the housing and none of them
Re-assembly is getting pinched. Put the screws back
18. Re-assemble all the parts of gear the case, as shown in Fig. 19. Do not and the servo motor is ready, as shown
assembly in their correct order (refer try to rotate the gear assembly at this in Fig. 20.
to the previously-clicked pictures of time.
the gear assembly), as shown in Fig. 18. 20. Put back the PCB inside the The author is working as an assistant manager at
19. Push potentiometer back into case. Ensure that all the wires properly Samtel Avionics Ltd

104 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com

 dIy: software

Designing Dual-Priority Encoder

Using LabView sani the
o

Paluru Sunitha and Naga Sunil Round LED (this is where we see the
Manohar Bole output) and drop it on to Front Panel
and label it as output A2. Similarly, se- Step 6. Select Modern -> Decora-

I
n priority encoder, if two or more lect other three such outputs and label tions -> Recessed Frame and adjust its
inputs are equal to 1 at the same them as A1, A0 and AVALID. These size such that the outputs (A2, A1, A0
time, the input having the highest will be used for the first-highest-prior- and AVALID) are positioned inside the
priority will take precedence. In case of ity encoder output. Following the same frame for neat appearance. Similarly,
dual-priority encoder, the circuit iden- steps as above, label them as B2, B1, B0 arrange the remaining outputs (B2, B1,
tifies both the highest-priority and the and BVALID for the second-highest- B0 and BVALID) in another recessed
second-highest-priority asserted signal priority encoder output. Arrange them frame.
among a set of input signals. Presented in sequential order as shown in Fig. 1. Step 7. Use A[2:0] and AVALID to
here is an eight-input dual-priority identify the high-
encoder designed using LabView est-priority request,
versions 12. In LabView, Front Panel where AVALID is
serves as the user interface and Block asserted only if at
Diagram contains the graphical source least one request in-
code that defines the functionality of put is asserted. Use
the virtual instrument (VI). Following B[2:0] and BVALID
are the steps required to design dual- to identify the sec-
priority encoder using NIs LabView: ond-highest-prior-
Step 1. Open LabView and press ity request, where
Ctrl+N followed by Ctrl+T keys to BVALID is asserted
open the tiling Front Panel and Block only if at least two
Diagram. request inputs are
Step 2. Go to Front Panel and from asserted.
the menu bar select View->Controls Right click on
->Modern->Push Button (this is where the Front Panel,
we give input), drag and drop it on select Modern-
to Front Panel and label it as input I0. Fig. 1: Front Panel >Decoration->Thin
Similarly, select seven such inputs and Line with Arrow
label them as I1, I2, I3, I4, I5, I6 and I7. option and drag
Arrange them in sequential order as and drop on the
shown in Fig. 1. Here, input I7 has the Front Panel and
highest priority. place the arrow to
Step 3. Select View->Controls-> each input line as
Modern->Boolean-> Vertical Toggle shown in Fig. 1.
switch and label it as En, place it Step 8. Go to
above the inputs. This is an active low Block Diagram
enable input. workspace (refer
Step 4. Select Modern-> Decora- Fig. 2) and select
tions-> Flat Frame and adjust its size View-> Functions
such that all the inputs are positioned -> Programming->
on its left side for neat appearance. Structures-> Case
Double left click on the Front Panel Structure and drop
and type dual priority encoder and it on to Block Dia-
drag it inside the frame. gram. (Note. Three
Step 5. Select Modern-> Boolean-> Fig. 2: Block Diagram Case Structures are

106 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com


Fig. 3: Block Diagram after clean up
Fig. 4: All Tunnels closed
used in this project; this will be con-
sidered as main Case Structure.) The
labels in the menu at the top of the
Case Structure will appear as True and
False. First consider the True condition.
Step 9. Select Programming->
Boolean-> NOT gate and drop it on to
Block Diagram. Place the cursor at out-
put of vertical toggle switch (En). You
will see a hot spot. From there pull a
wire and give it as input to NOT gate.
The output of NOT gate is connected
to the selector terminal ? of the Case
Structure.
Step 10. Again, select Program-
ming-> Boolean-> Bool to (0, 1) func-
tion and drop it on to Block Diagram.
Connect the output of I7 to input of
Bool to (0, 1) function.
Step 11. Select Programming->
Comparison-> Equal ? function and
www.efymag.com
dIy: software
drop it on to inside the main Case Structure. If la-
Block Diagram. bels in the menu appear as True and
Give the output False, modify them to 0 and 1, respec-
of Bool to (0, 1) tively. Right click on case selector or
to one of the in- menu, select Add Case After option
puts of Equal ?. and label it as 2. Similarly, do the same
Place cursor on for the other five cases and label them
the second input as 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.
of Equal ? and Step 17. Connect the output of the
right click on it. Select function of I7 to selector terminal
Select Create- ? of the inner upper Case Structure.
>Constant and Step 18. Select case 0 and then se-
put value 1. lect Programming->Boolean-> False
Step 12. Se- Constant and connect the output
lect Program- of False Constant (labeled as F) to
ming-> Com- the Round LED A2, which is placed
parison-> Select outside the Case Structures. An open
function and box called Tunnel will be created on
drop it on to both main and upper Case Structure
Block Diagram. boundaries.
It has three input Step 19. Place the curser on the out-
lines, namely, put wire of F. You will find a hot spot.
true (t), select Click on it and draw two more wires
(s) and false (f). to connect to A1 and A0, respectively.
Connect the out- Thus we have connected F to A2, A1
put of Equal ? and A0 to represent the binary num-
to s input of ber for the case 0. That is, the binary
Select function. number for decimal number zero for
Step 13. Re- [A2 A1 A0] is [0 0 0]. Now, if case 1 is
peat steps 10, 11 selected, the binary representation of
and 12 for re- outputs A2 A1 A0 will be 0 0 1. Here,
maining inputs F should be connected to A2 and A1
(I6, I5I1), ex- for the 0s. For 1 we will consider the
cept for I0. True (T) Constant by selecting Pro-
Step 14. Place cursor on the true (t) gramming->Boolean-> True Constant
input of Select function, right click on option. That is, connect T to A0. For
it and create a constant of value 7 for case 2, the binary output of [A2 A1 A0]
input I7. Similarly, do it for all inputs is [0 1 0] and for case 3 the output is [0
with constant value decreased by 1 for 1 1], and so on.
each input of Select function, which Step 20. Similarly, connect False (F)
are arranged in descending order as and True (T) constants to outputs (A2,
shown in Fig. 2. A1, A0) for remaining cases to repre-
Step 15. Connect the output of sent the corresponding binary number.
Select function corresponding to I1 to We can follow the same technique for
false (f) input of Select function corre- the inner lower Case Structure.
sponding to I2. Similarly, connect the Step 21. Select another Select
remaining outputs of Select function function and place in the main Case
to false (f) input of the Select function, Structure. Connect output of Equal ?
except for I7. Create a constant 0 for correspond to input I7 to the s input
the false (f) input of Select function of of Select function. These are used to
input I1. select the second-highest-priority re-
Step 16. Add two Case Structures quest. Similarly, do it for the remaining
as explained below. Select Program- inputs, except for I0.
ming-> Structures-> Case Structure, Step 22. Connect t inputs of Select
drag and drop it on to Block Diagram functions from the output of previous
Electronics For You | July 2014 107
 dIy: software
Fig. 5: Output with both first and second-highest priority
Fig. 6: Output with only first-highest priority
Select functions as shown in Fig. 2, ex-
cept first Select function of I7.
Step 23. Connect output of Select
function corresponding to I1 to the
f input of the Select function corre-
sponding to I2. Similarly, repeat the
same connection at the Select func-
tions corresponding to I3 through I6
inputs, except for I7. And then create a
constant 0 at f input of Select function
corresponding to input I0.
Step 24. Select another Case Struc-
ture and drop it on to Block Diagram
inside the main Case Structure. If la-
bels appear as True and False, modify
them to 0 and 1, respectively and then
add six more cases and label them as 2,
3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.
Step 25. Connect the output of the
108 July 2014 | Electronics For You
second Select func- efy Note
tion of I7 to selector
The source code of this project is
terminal ? of the
included in this months EFY DVD
inner lower Case
and is also available for free down-
Structure. And then load at source.efymag.com
repeat steps 18 and
19 for outputs B2, connect all the Tunnels on right side
B1 and B0. of Case Structure to False (F) constant.
Step 26. Select Then all the Tunnels will be closed as
Programming-> shown in Fig. 4.
Numeric-> Com- Step 31. Return to Front Panel. Save
pound Arithmetic the VI and press the Run Continuously
and drop it on to button to check for the operation of
Block Diagram. Ex- dual-priority encoder. Give different
tend it so that it inputs and check the outputs for iden-
has eight inputs. tifying the first-highest and second-
Now, connect the highest priority request.
eight outputs from
Boolean (0, 1) func- Checking the output
tions to the eight Fig. 5 shows the result for dual-priori-
inputs of Com- ty encoder operations for first-highest
pound Arithmetic. and second-highest priority requests
Change the mode of when the inputs I7, I5, I3 and I0 are
Compound Arith- asserted. Here, I7 has the highest
metic to Add by priority, after that the next-highest
right clicking on it priority will be given to I5. Hence,
and select Change all the output LEDs A2, A1 and A0
Mode-> Add op- glow, which is equivalent to 111 (also
tion. This will add a a binary representation of 7) in the
+ sign to it to make highest-priority box. In the second-
it an adder function. highest-priority box, B2 and B0 are on
Step 27. Select and B1 is off, which is equivalent to
Programming-> 101 (also a binary representation of 5).
Comparison- The output LEDs both AVALID and
>Greater ? and drop BVALID are asserted, because more
it on to Block Dia- than one input is asserted.
gram inside the main Case Structure. Fig. 6 shows the result when only
Give the output of Compound Arith- one input I2 is asserted. Here, output
metic adder to the first input x of LEDs A2, A1 and A0 show the highest-
Greater ?. Place cursor on the second priority request 2 as 010 (binary repre-
input y and right clicking on it create sentation of 2) and the output LEDs B2,
a constant of value 1. B1 and B0 are turned off. The output
Step 28. Connect the output of LED AVALID only is asserted, because
Greater ? to Round LED BVALID we asserted only single input and there
and draw another wire from output is no second-highest-priority request.
of Compound Arithmetic adder to Here, note that the circuit will be on
input of another comparison function only when the enable input (En) is in
Greater Than 0? Give the output of it off condition, because it is an active
to another Round LED AVALID. low enable input.
Step 29. Press Ctrl+b keys to re-
move broken wires and press Ctrl+u The authors Paluru Sunitha and Naga Sunil Mano-
keys to clean up the diagram on the har Bole were third-year B.Tech (electronics and
communication) students from Maharaj Vijayaram
Block Diagram as shown in Fig. 3. Gajapathi Raj College of Engineering, Vizianagaram
Step 30. Change the case to False when they sent this project, under the guidance of
condition in main Case Structure and Associate Professor M. Satyanarayana, last year
www.efymag.com
 dIy: software

C++ Implementation of Digital FIR

Filters Using Blackman Window
Ahlad Kumar where hd(n) is an infinite-duration
impulse response and w(n) is the

T
his utility program can be a window function. There are various sani the
o

handy tool for anyone working windows available in signal processing

in the field of signal processing
with interest in implementation of the
project through C++ programming.
Although this work can be easily
implemented in Matlab using simple
inbuilt functions, the real challenge of
designing and understanding the con-
cept of filter design will be missed out.
In order to understand the depth of
designing an FIR filter using window
functions, coding in C++ is a must. De-
scribed here is a C++ implementation
of finite impulse response (FIR) filters
using Blackman window method.
FIR filters
The term filter is often used to denote
systems that process the input in a
specified way. In this context, filtering
describes a signal-processing operation
that allows signal enhancement, noise
reduction or increased signal-to-noise
ratio. Systems for the processing of dis-
crete time signals are also called digital
literature. However, in this article we
specifically discuss Blackman window.
In the case of Blackman window, w(n) 2. It prompts you to enter filters
is given as: type
2n 4n
3. It prompts you to enter window
w[n]=0.420.5 cos +0.08 cos length (N) from 1 to 200
N1 N1
=0 where n=0,1,2......, N1 4. It prompts you to enter the cutoff
otherwise
frequency. The software is designed to
------ eqn(2)
accept the values in radians between
Plot of eqn(2) can be seen graphi- 0.2 and 2.6
cally as shown in Fig. 1. 5. The program outputs normalised
filter response. This is a filter response
Software design which is designed to pass through a
Here, we have developed C++ based cutoff frequency of 1 radian
software for designing FIR filters using 6. The program outputs actual
Blackman window to get frequency filter response. This is a filter response
response. The resultant software has which is designed to pass through a
the following salient features: cutoff frequency specified by the user
1. Welcome screen of Blackman
window design Software structure
The software is designed to follow the
1
0.9 structure as shown in Fig. 2, where
0.8 the details of each file are explained as
0.7
given below.
0.6
Amplitude

filters. Depending on the requirement 0.5 1. MAIN.CPP. This file contains

and application, the analysis of a digi- 0.4 the menu-driven program for user
tal filter may be carried out in time do- 0.3 inputs
0.2
main, z-domain or frequency domain. 0.1
2. FUNC.H. It is a header file con-
A common application of digital 0 taining code related to Blackman win-
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
filters is to modify the frequency re- Time (samples) dow coefficients calculation
sponse is some specified way. An ideal Fig. 1: Blackman window 3. BLACK.H. It is a header file
low-pass filter is one of the common containing code for supporting C++
examples of digital filters which passes graphics
the frequencies up to a specified value BLACK.H GRAPH.H 4. GRAPH.H. It is a header file
and blocks other frequencies. One way again to support graphic content in
to approximate the ideal low-pass C++
response is to do truncation of the im- FUNC.H
pulse response by multiplication with Output responses
the window functions. Mathematically, of the filter
it can be expressed as follows Now, the results obtained after run-
MAIN.CPP ning the software is presented for
hd(n)w(n) 0nN1
h(n)= ------ eqn(1) Blackman window for a low-pass FIR
0 otherwise
Fig. 2: Software flow filter for different window length N to

www.efymag.com Electronics For You | July 2014 109

 dIy: software
4. The amplitude
and shape of the
end-ripple remains
the same but it gets
shifted towards the
edge and finally out
of the pass band for
larger values of N
5. As N increas-
es, the ripples in
Blackman Lowpass filter Blackman Lowpass filter the pass band get
actual filter; normalised filter actual filter; normalised filter smoothed out. A key
Fig. 3: Frequency response of low-pass filter with N=49, Fig. 5: Frequency response of low-pass filter with N=149,
difference in the ob-
fc=1.2 fc=1.2 served responses of
the rectangular is the
absence of the Gibbs
phenomenon. This
owes itself to the
smoother shape of
the Blackman win-
dow in the time-
domain, with the
notable absence of
a discontinuity that
would lead to the
Blackman Lowpass filter Blackman highpass filter Gibbs phenomenon.
actual filter; normalised filter actual filter; normalised filter 6. As N increases
Fig. 4: Frequency response of low-pass filter with N=99, Fig. 6: Frequency response of high-pass filter with N=45, the widths of the
fc=1.2 fc=1.2 lobes decrease in the
stop band
observe the effect of N on frequency From Figs 3 to 5, we have following
response. All values of |H(j)| are in observations when N increases from 49 Other frequencies
decibels. A normalised frequency scale to 149 at cutoff frequency (fc)=1.2: In the next section we present the
is used. 1. The widths of the pass band and outputs of high-pass, band-reject and
Low-pass filter. Simulation of low- side lobes decrease band-pass filters.
pass filter using Blackman window is 2. The slope of the transition band Frequency response of high-pass
done through the software. Figs 3 to increases, that is, the band develops a filter with N=45, fc=1.2 is shown in Fig.
5 are the outputs of the low-pass filter sharper cutoff 6. Frequency response of band-reject
for different window length of N=49, 3. As N increases, the number of filter with N=67, with lower cutoff
99 and 149, respectively. ripples increase in the pass band frequency (fl)=1.2 and upper cutoff

110 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com


Blackman bandreject filter
actual filter; normalised filter
Fig. 7: Frequency response of band-reject filter with N=67,
fl=1.2 and fu=2.0
efy Note
The source code of this project is
included in this months EFY DVD
and is also available for free down-
load on source.efymag.com
frequency (fu)=2.0, is shown in Fig. 7.
Frequency response of band-pass filter
with N=91, fl=1.2 and fu=2.0 is shown
in Fig. 8.
The program was tested on Win-
www.efymag.com
dIy: software
ing. Its impact on
consumer electron-
ics is evident by the
advent of high-def-
inition televisions
and digital imag-
ing. Its application
in the field of bio-
medical and signal
processing includes
Blackman bandpass filter
actual filter; normalised filter enhancement of the
Fig. 8: Frequency response of band-pass filter with N=91,
quality of signals
fl=1.2 and fu=2.0 under interest us-
ing various digital
dows XP, 32-bit PC using Turbo C++ filters. These filters can also be used in
version 3. For running Turbo C++ on applications like noise removal. The
64-bit PC with Windows 7 or Windows filter routines can be easily coded to
8, a separate Turbo C ++ IDE is avail- hardware description language like
able for download. You need to copy Verilog or VHDL and can turn out
the source code and relevant header to be a good project for students or
files into bin folder before running the designers working in real-time image
program. and video processing.
Applications The author is an M.Tech from ABV-Indian Institute
of Information Technology and Management,
Digital signal processing finds applica- Gwalior, and B.Tech from Jamia Millia Islamia in
tion in almost every field of engineer- New Delhi
Electronics For You | July 2014 111
 useful websites

Raspberry Pi: Getting Started

Raspberry Pi has always been a favourite for engineers and hobbyists. Here are some of the
websites that will help you understand and start using your Raspberry Pi
niraj sahay

raspberrypi.org
The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. This
computer can be used in electronics projects, and for many of the things that your desktop PC does,
like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. The website is the home for this little wonder and
is updated with all the information that you would need to get started. The forum on the site is very
active and has approximately 95,000 members discussing nearly 75,000 topics.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/

elinux.org
The purpose of this website is to preserve and present information about the development and use
of Linux in embedded systems as well as open source projects and tools for general embedded
development. The website has pages related to different embedded hardware. Each page has lots
of information on the boards that you want to try out. The site can prove to be a good resource for
learning Rasberry Pi.

http://elinux.org/RPi_Hub

adafruit.com
Adafruit was founded in 2005 by MIT engineer Limor Ladyada Fried. Her goal was to create the best
place online for learning electronics and making the best designed products for makers of all ages and
skill levels. The site has 503 tutorials on different topics and is growing daily. Apart from shopping,
blogs and forum the site has a dedicated section for understanding different electronics hardware. The
tutorial on Raspberry Pi in the learning section of the website is divided into different parts and caters
to all your learning requirements on the subject.

https://learn.adafruit.com/category/raspberry-pi

wiringpi.com
The Raspberry Pi has a 26-pin general-purpose input/output (GPIO) connector which carries a set
of signals and buses. There are eight general-purpose digital I/O pins that can be programmed
as either digital outputs or inputs. The website is a good resource for developers designing with
Rsapberry Pi. WiringPi is a GPIO interface library for the Raspberry Pi and includes a command-line
utility gpio which can be used to program and set up the GPIO pins.

http://wiringpi.com/

suntimebox.com
If you are a beginner and do not have any knowledge about this little computer, this is the right
place to start. The site has good tutorial on Rapberry Pi and Android programming. The site teaches
you how to use, program and understand the Raspberry Pi in simple-to-understand language. The
complete tutorial is divided into different courses. These courses use practical examples, visual
images, videos and audio clips to explain many of the concepts used for learning the Raspberry Pi.

http://www.suntimebox.com/raspberry-pi-tutorial-course/
112 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com

PCB Industry in India: Marching Ahead
Poor government policies and increased imports have always been major threats to
PCB manufacturers and suppliers in India, but the industry is growing and expanding to
other verticals, and still harbours huge potential. Let us see how
Anagha P. and Dilin Anand
I
ndia has become a strong and
attractive global destination for
PCB manufacturers over the past
few years. The global PCB manufac-
turing market is expected to increase
from $62.3bn in 2013 to $74.31bn in
2018, growing at a compound annual
growth rate (CAGR)
of 3.6%, accord-
ing to a Research
and Markets re-
port published
this year.
By regional
growth rates, Asia
Pacific (APAC) is
likely to be the leader
of the industry over
the next five years.
Industry growth is an-
ticipated to be driven
by expanding demand
for high-end products
clpcb.c
from consumers in India esy: s
Court
and China.
Whats driving the
Indian market?
According to an Indian Electronics
and Semiconductor Association (IESA)
report, supported by the Department
of Electronics and Information Tech-
nology (DeitY), PCBs feature among
the top four components contributing
to the bill of material (BoM) across
major electronic products consumed,
particularly in products such as power
supplies, set-top boxes, car radios and
many other digital instruments.
Regardless of the issues dis-
cussed, we foresee many opportunities
in the Indian industry. The demand for
PCBs in this market has only increased
over recent years, and there is a CAGR
www.efymag.com
of approximately 35% year over year,
says Viral Bhulani, president, Indian
Printed Circuit Association (IPCA). He
adds, Furthermore, with the Internet
of Things coming into play in the elec-
tronics arena, manufacturing units are
now getting orders for
PCBs that
om
are highly
customised and specially
processed.
For small batches of PCBs, domes-
tic products turn out to be cheaper,
while still providing better quality
than imports. This has enabled domes-
tic manufacturers to grow by taking
over business from foreign competi-
tors.
The local PCB industry not only
serves the domestic market but also
serves the export market; around 24
per cent of the total PCBs manufac-
tured annually is exported. Indian PCB
manufacturers have also enhanced
their capabilities from single- and
2-layered PCBs to 16- or even 24-lay-
ered PCBs. The PCBs export has grown
by nearly 26%.
The stability of prices is usually
industry FOCUS
very good in this sector. In spite of the
dramatic devaluation of rupee in the
previous year, the suppliers of PCBs in
India were generally able to maintain
the prices.
The customers have also
become more value-con-
scious; more than ever they
now demand reliable and
high-grade PCBs. These
two factors coming to-
gether help drive local
PCB manufacturing.
Besides, with the
Internet of Things
cominginto play in
the electronics arena,
manufacturing units
are nowgetting or-
dersfor PCBs that
are highly custom-
ised and specially
processed for spe-
cific purposes, for which
Indian PCB industry has strengths in.
The ability of Indian PCB firms to
closely work with the customers, and
the excellent technical services they
provide, have led many designers to
choose domestically-manufactured
PCBs over imported ones. Availability
of flexible payment schemes, ability to
handle sudden demand for increase
in production, or demand for slowing
down a little, makes Indian PCBs a
better option for domestic electronics
manufacturers.
Krishna Rao, chairman, Sulakshana
Circuits Ltd, is confident that, in the
next 10 years, plants that manufacture
raw materials for PCBs will come up
in India, and that this would enhance
the industry.
The presence of supporting organi-
sations is also somewhat of a boon to
industry growth, though not all deci-
Electronics For You | July 2014 113
 industry FOCUS
SWOT analysis for the Indian PCB industry
Helpful
Internal Strengths
hhFlexibility in terms of handling high-mix,
low-volume batches
hhAbility to face frequent pull and push from
customers
hhReadiness to adopt design changes
hhFlexible payment terms
hhInfrastructure to effectively handle the pro-
duction of low- and mid-range PCBs in low
and medium quantities
hhHigh quality of products, unlike the PCBs
imported from China
hhGood customer services and technical
support
hhAbility to customise products and offer
specialised processes for the customer
External Opportunities
hhIncreasing demand for PCBs in India
hhPopularity for domestically manufactured
PCBs in low-end and mid-range applica-
tions
hhImport not feasible for low- technology
boards in small batches
hhPositive and responsive approach of De-
partment of Electronics and Information
Technology (DeitY)
hhModified Special Incentive Package
Scheme (M-SIPS) by government of India
hhValue consciousness of customers
hhRequests for highly customised, high-
quality boards for specific applications
Harmful
Weaknesses
hhLack of automation and technological
upgrades
hhInability to produce mass volumes
hhInherent absence of infrastructure and
ecosystem for creating PCBs in large
quantities and of high complexities
hhInsufficient go-to-market expertise
hhLack of educated, skilled and trained
manpower
hhLack of strong investments and afford-
able finance
hhHigh cost of production
hhLow export incentives compared to com-
petitors like China
Threats
hhTaxation and excise issues with raw
materials
hhDependency on import of raw materials,
and production and testing equipment
hhHigh cost and insufficient availability of
power
hhEnvironmental measures and lag in imple-
menting them
hhDuty-free PCB imports being dumped in
the market
hhBureaucratic hurdle: lengthy and time-
consuming processes for approvals and
clearances of new projects
the ecosystem or infrastructure for
large-scale and most advanced manu-
facturing techniques. Most important-
ly, the lack of investment incentives to
bear the risk in India hampers growth
of the PCB industry here.
Indian PCB manufacturers can,
generally, handle small and medium
batches effectively. They are flex-
ible enough to accommodate design
changes at lower tool cost and can
work with smaller panel sizes to
produce small to mid-size quantities.
However, high-end and large batches
of PCBs are still imported in most
cases.
Automation and adaption of the
latest technologies is slow in the in-
dustry. One of the reasons is the lack
of good investment. Though PCB
industry has lot of potential, convinc-
ing potential investors has been a
challenge.
The electronics manufacturing in
the country drives demand for PCBs.
As manufacturing has remained low
the demand for PCBs has also re-
mained low.
Another issue is the changes and

sion makers believe that they have been
instrumental enough. DeitY has set
electronic hardware production target
of US$ 400 billion by year 2020 which, if
it materialises, will create huge demand
for PCBs. The department is positive,
responsive and very keen in promoting
electronic manufacturing in India, says
Satish Athavale, managing director,
Shogini Technoarts Pvt Ltd.
Indian Printed Circuit Association
(IPCA) is a non-profit, voluntary, pro-
fessional organisation formed in 1985
with a mission to promote the PCB
industry in India and represent their
interests. The members of this organi-
sation include PCB manufacturers, de-
signers, electronic manufacturing ser-
vices (EMS) companies and suppliers
of PCB machines and raw materials.
Whats holding India PCB
Inc. back?
One of the biggest drawbacks is that
the Indian industries inherently lack
Which industry shows the highest PCB demand?
Most of the PCB demand in India comes from mobile phones, consumer electronics,
automotive, power electronics and industrial automation segments. Energy meters
and telecommunication industry come next. It is expected that in the next five years,
demand for PCBs would considerably increase from LED lighting and solar sec-
tors. Currently two million mobile phones are being imported into India. Indian PCB
manufacturers are gearing up to this demand while some claim to already have the
capability to meet the demand.
Reasons for low manufacturing base in India and lack
of competitiveness
hh Large capital investments required for setting up PCB manufacturing units is inhibiting
manufacturers to set up new units, especially for multilayered PCBs, whose demand is
expected to grow at a significant rate.
hh High investment required in pollution control equipment due to stringent pollution stan-
dards and polluting nature of industry.
hh Inverted duty structure, as inputs for manufacture of PCBs are subject to 5% to 10%
customs duty while PCBs attract nil duty under the ITA-1.
hh Lack of availability of skilled labour.
hh Lack of availability of raw materials like pure-grade silicon and copper laminates re-
quired for fabrication of the printed circuit boards.
hh Lack of availability of raw materials at competitive prices.
hh Lack of access to new technology and state-of-the-art capital equipment.
Rajoo Goel, secretary general, ELCINA Electronic Industries Association of India

114 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com

 industry FOCUS

History of PCB industry in India

hh The making of PCBs in India was started by scientists and
research institutes in the late 1950s.
hh Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) established the first
commercial PCB manufacturing facility in India in 1968,
for in-house requirements. This was followed by Indian
Telephone Industries and some other defence and space
research institutes.
hh The first private sector firm that manufactured professional-
grade PCBs came up in 1970s.
hh The first boom in PCBs manufacture was between 1985 and
1990. It did not last long due to low domestic demand, lack
of infrastructure, high cost of capital, low investments and
lack of skilled manpower.
hh The Indian Printed Circuit Board Association was set up in
1985 when a few leading PCB technocrats met in Mumbai
(then known as Bombay).
hh The entrance of multinational companies (MNCs) and for-
eign firms into the Indian market led to the second boom
that started in 2001. Exports started picking up and quality
reached world-class standards.

advances in technology and Indian manufacturers inabil-

ity to keep pace with them and stay ahead in R&D. This is
again a function of scale and profitability.
The high cost of electricity and frequent load-shedding
make it difficult to run advanced machines.
Almost the entire raw material required for PCB
manufacturing is imported, out of which 90% is from
China. It is believed that Indias entire demand of PCBs
can be met by just one major PCB plant in China. We
cannot get raw materials at competitive prices due to the
lack of volumes.
Since there are no manufacturers in India for copper-
clad laminates, solder mask inks, photopolymer film and
chemicals used in plated-through-hole (PTH) process, the
manufacturing companies have to keep huge inventory of
imported raw material, which blocks their working capital.
Low taxes on imported PCBs has led to flooding of cheap,
low-quality PCBs in the market, which is a threat to Indian
manufacturers.
There are virtually no technical institutes in India
to give training in various aspects of PCB manufacture.
Hence we greatly lack the skilled manpower or specialised
personnel in the field.
Foreign challenge. In India, Japanese companies like
Suzuki prefer to source their PCBs from Japanese firms
while Korean companies like Samsung source theirs from
Korea. This results in very little business going to the In-
dian manufacturers. Anyway, the local players are unable
to compete with Chinese exporters who get 17% export
incentive.
It would be incorrect to say that the market for PCBs
is not growing. The problem is that almost 75% of do-
mestic demand for PCBs is met by imports and, in ad-

www.efymag.com Electronics For You | July 2014 115

 industry FOCUS
dition, a large number of PCBs are
being imported as fully-assembled
boards. These go straight into finished
products assembled in India as part of
the low-value-added manufacturing
model followed by most companies
in India.
Government policies and
their impact
The industry feels that the Indian gov-
ernment does not take a proactive ap-
proach to encourage PCB manufactur-
ing in India. The current government
policies benefit only the large indus-
tries. The bureaucratic hurdles are too
much for the small-scale industry to
handle. The processes to get approvals
and clearances for projects are lengthy,
complicated and consume a lot of time,
energy and money.
The Central and state governments
can play a major role in establishing
PCB industry in India, which is a high-
value-added manufacturing activity
requiring high capital investment. The
industry needs government support
for access to technology, low-cost fi-
nance and infrastructure to establish
PCB manufacturing clusters where the
entire value chain can flourish in a sup-
portive environment.
According to Amit Agrawal, direc-
tor, Advance Technologies, corruption
is a major curse on our system. He
mentions that two Indian firms, that
had started manufacturing PCB lami-
nates, closed down recently due to the
poor policies and torture from the
government.
Moreover, duty-free import for
PCBs has encouraged dumping of
cheap, Chinese PCBs in India, reduc-
ing the demand for Indian PCBs.
But some policies introduced by the
government of India in last two years
hold a ray of hope for the Indian PCB
industry.
Modified Special Incentive Package
Scheme (M-SIPS). M-SIPS is an invest-
ment-based scheme that is aimed to
offset disability and attract investment
in almost all verticals of electronic sys-
tem design and manufacturing (ESDM)
sector. According to Rajneesh Garg,
116 July 2014 | Electronics For You
Major contributors to the story
Amit Agrawal, Krishna Rao, Rajneesh Garg, Rajoo Goel,
director, Advance chairman, managing director, secretary general,
Technologies Sulakshana
Circuits Ltd
Garg Electronics ELCINA Electronic managing director,
Association of India
managing director, Garg Electronics,
This would be of value only to large
industries. However, some say that
there are provisions for smaller indus-
tries, and that it is a wrong perception
that M-SIPS can be of value to only
large industries.
Preferential Market Access (PMA).
The revised PMA policy mandates
local sourcing of electronics for gov-
ernment departments, except the
Ministry of Defence, for a period of
10 years. While the revised policy
mandates sourcing of sensitive tel-
ecom and electronic equipment (and
technology) from domestic equipment
makers, it has exempted the private
sector from the changed rules. How-
ever, it will cover the schemes and
grants made by the Central govern-
ment. This will give impetus to the de-
mand of PCBs in India and eventually
boost the indigenous manufacturing
in the country.
Looking towards the future
India has a good number of PCB
manufacturers in the country. How-
ever, the local capability is restricted
to producing single-, dual- and multi-
layered PCBs of up to 12 layers, and to
16 to 24 layered PCBs in some cases.
The PCBs needed in products with
high demand, like telecom, consumer
and automotive applications, require
complex multi-layered PCBs that are
not available locally, thus necessitat-
ing imports.
Building on the existing capability,
special initiatives need to be offered
to encourage indigenous design and
manufacturing of multi-layered PCBs
of up to 64 layers and beyond. This
Satish Viral Bhulani,
Athavale, president, Indian
Industries
Printed Circuit
Shogini Technoarts Association (IPCA)
Pvt Ltd
Some solutions that
the government can
implement to support
this industry are:
hh Elimination of inverted duty structure
hh Sorting out excise and customs duty
procedural issues
hh High import tariff on PCB imports. Nil
duty on raw material imports.
hh Imposing anti-dumping duty or safe-
guard duty
hh Interest subsidies or low-interest loans
for PCB manufacturers
hh Quicker, easier reimbursement of
CENVAT
will ensure local sourcing of PCBs by
product manufacturers, thus contrib-
uting to higher value addition. This
shall also meet the requirements of the
local EMS players who source PCBs in
bulk. This would go well with DeitY
strategy of PMA, which enlists PCB
and its contribution to bill of materials
in its notifications.
India possesses a good chance of
elevating itself as a global supplier of
PCBs. The country is already export-
ing 20 to 30 per cent of the total pro-
duction of PCBs. However, the vol-
umes and the subsequent price points
in comparison with China is a major
hindrance as is the ability of Indian
PCB makers to handle complex prod-
ucts that require more than 24 layers.
Government support in the form of
lower excise duties and rebates for up-
gradation of capital equipment could
make a positive impact.
Anagha P. is a technical correspondent and Dilin
Anand is a senior assistant editor at EFY
www.efymag.com
 industry nEWS
corporate news new ventures calendar new appointments

Incubation centre for In Focus

electronics start-ups gets
DeiTY nod
The Department of Electronics and
Information Technology (DeitY) has
given a go ahead to the setting up of
an incubation centre to provide physi-
cal as well as technology infrastructure
to electronics start-ups from across the
country. After incentivising and nur-
turing the IT services industry during
its initial years, the Software Technol-
ogy Parks of India (STPI) is looking to
do the same for product companies,
specifically in the electronics sector,
with the now approved Electropre-
neur Park to be set up in the national
capital. The same will boost domestic
manufacturing of electronics and en-
courage entrepreneurship across India.
Under the project, the government
plans to set up an incubation centre
for electronics start-ups in Delhi. This
centre aims to incentivise ten compa-
nies every year over the next five years.
These companies will be short-listed by
a board comprising stakeholders from
the government as well as the industry
and academia. The proposal has been
sought by STPI in association with the
Delhi University and India Electronics
and Semiconductor Association (IESA).
Once up and running, the incu-
bation centre will give electronics
start-ups unrestricted access to experts
within their domain as well as men-
tors, shared consultants and services.
Further, these start-ups will be able to
seek investment from foreign investors
and venture capitalists, among others,
to boost their growth and potential.
Piyush Goyal is new energy minister
Piyush Goyal has been appointed as the Central governments new minister for Power,
Coal and New and Renewable Energy. He is expected to pay special attention to solar
energy. The ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE) currently oversees the Solar
Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is responsible for directing the Jawaharlal
Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM).
Sanjay Kapoor joins Micromax as chairman
Micromax has hired ex-Bharti Airtel CEO Sanjay Kapoor as the new chairman. Prior to
this appointment, Kapoor was the CEO for India and South Asia of Airtel (March 2010
through May 2013), though he was with the company in other positions since July 1998.
Vineet Taneja joins Micromax as CEO
Micromax has hired Vineet Taneja, the ex-Samsung India chief, as the new CEO. Taneja
was the country head for IT and mobile businesses of Samsung India till recently.
Vimal Kapur appointed president of Honeywell Process Solutions
Vimal Kapur has been named president of Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS). HPS is
a Honeywell business that supplies automation control, instrumentation, etc.
Deshpande, ex-president ELCINA, passes away
Ram G. Deshpandes untimely and sudden demise on 31st May has shocked the
industry. Originally from Philips, he rose to become managing director of Vishay
Components. After retiring a few years ago he set up his own company to work in
education sector. He was president of ELCINA for two years (2003-2005).
non-conventional sources of energy, The proposed JVs will be between
plans are now underway to build two state-owned oil sector firms such as
state-owned joint ventures (JVs) to Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOC), Bharat
oversee the construction of renewable Petroleum Corp. Ltd, Hindustan Pe-
energy projects across the country. troleum Corp. Ltd, Oil and Natural
Currently, the oil and renewable en- Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC), Oil India Ltd
ergy ministries are drafting a proposal and Solar Energy Corp. of India and
for the setting up of the two JVs. the Indian Renewable Energy Devel-

JVs to oversee construction of

renewable energy projects
In line with the BJP-led NDA govern-
ments plan to come out with a com-
prehensive National Energy Policy
to balance power generation in the
country through conventional and Renewable energy project

118 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com

 industry nEWS
opment Agency. One of the JVs will
Calendar of Forthcoming Electronics
be intended to oversee large-scale,
Fairs/Exhibitions/Seminars/Events
grid-integrated projects while the other
Name, Date and Venue Topics to be covered Contact address for details
will target off-grid projects. While one
Elasia 2014 An international exhibition on Manish, Triune Exhibitors Pvt Ltd, Bengaluru
July 25-28, 2014 power, electrical and lighting Phone: +91-9310492923, +91-80-43307474/ of the JVs will be led by ONGC, the
Pragati Maidan, New Delhi +91-80-22352770, E-mail: info@triuneexhibitors.com other will be spearheaded by IOC. The
Defence and Aerospace SES 2014 Exhibition showcasing Indian ELCINA Electronic Industries JV partners will initially fund the new
5th Strategic Electronics Summit defence electronics sector, Association of India, New Delhi
July 30-31, 2014 buyer-seller meetings and Phone: (011) 26924597, 26928053; +91-9911445890 firms as part of their corporate social
Bangalore International industry study on strategic E-mail: info@elcina.com; rajesh@elcina.com
Exhibition Centre electronics sector opportunities Web: www.elcina.com responsibility (CSR) contributions.
IPCA-EFY Expo 2014 Exhibition for all OEM Indian Printed Circuit Association, Bengaluru By judiciously mixing conventional
August 6-8, 2014 manufacturers, LED, solar, Phone: (080) 25210109, 25210309 and non-conventional sources, the
Auto Cluster Exhibition Centre automobile, medical, defence E-mail: ipca@ipcaindia.org
Pune and R&D material suppliers government plans to substantially aug-
and end-users
ment power generation capacity in the
NEPCON South China 2014 sourcing platforms for Tim Wang
August 26-28, 2014 South Chinas electronics Phone: +86-21-2231-7016 country. Meanwhile, the government is
Shenzhen Convention & manufacturing industry E-mail: tim.wang@reedexpo.com.cn looking to use cleaner fuels to address
Exhibition Center, China Web: http://www.nepconchina.com/ehome/
the problem of growing pollution.
IFA 2014 A global trade show for Messe Berlin GmbH, Messedamm 22
September 5-10, 2014 consumer electronics and Phone: +49-30-3038-2217
IFA Exhibition Grounds, Berlin home appliances, presents E-mail: vonderropp@messe-berlin.de Indias domestic solar
manufacturing in problem
the latest products and Web: http://b2b.ifa-berlin.com/
innovations

ELCINA-EFY Awards Awards for excellence in EFY Enterprises Pvt Ltd The Directorate General of Anti-Dump-
September 12, 2014 electronics hardware Phone: 26810601/2/3, +91-8800094213
India Habitat Centre, New Delhi manufacturing and services E-mail: efyexpo@efyindia.com ing (DGAD) has recommended to the
Electronica India 2014 and Covers the whole spectrum MMI India Pvt Ltd Finance Ministry that India should im-
Productronica India 2014 of the electronics industry Phone: +91-9819418496; Fax: +91-22-42554719
September 23-25, 2014 from electronics production E-mail: kavita.chhatani@mmi-india.in
pose anti-dumping duty on international
BIEC, Bengaluru to electronic components Web: www.electronica-productronica-india.com solar panels imported from the US,
3rd Electronics Rocks 2014 A platform for design EFY Enterprises Pvt Ltd China, Malaysia and Taiwan, and awaits
October 10-11, 2014 engineers, R&D engineers, Phone: 26810601/2/3, +91-8800094213
Nimhans Convention & Exhibition entrepreneurs, academicians, E-mail: electronicsrocks@efyindia.com an approval for the same. Meanwhile,
Centre, Bengaluru hackers and hobbyists Web: www.electronicsrocks.com/
including talks, workshops,
Tata Power Solar insists that the Finance
discussions, product launches Ministry should step up and approve
and design challenges
the same as soon as possible since Indias
OSI Days 2014 Open Source conference in EFY Enterprises Pvt Ltd
November 7-8, 2014 Asia that aims to nurture Phone: +91-088000 94211 domestic solar manufacturing sector
NIMHANS Convention Center
Bengaluru
and promote the open source E-mail: atul.goel@efyindia.com
ecosystem in the sub-continent
could collapse by the end of the year
without anti-dumping duties.
Electronica/Productronica 2014 Electronic components, MMI India Pvt Ltd, Mumbai
November 11-14, 2014 production equipment, Phone: (022) 42554700, 42554723 The reality is that in the last three
Munich, Germany systems and applications E-mail: Andrea.dsouza@mmi-india.in
years there has been so much overca-
Intersolar India Exhibition and conference for MMI India Pvt Ltd
November 18-20, 2014 the solar industry featuring Phone: (022) 42554700 pacity and so much dumping that if we
Bombay Exhibition Centre, photovoltaics, PV production E-mail: brijesh.nair@mmi-india.in do not take dramatic action now, then
Mumbai technologies, energy storage
and solar thermal technologies within six months the Indian manu-
2nd EFY Expo- Western India For manufacturers, EFY Enterprises Pvt Ltd facturing industry will be dead. They
Edition 2014 engineers and traders to Phone: 26810601/2/3, +91-8800094213
November 26-28, 2014 source electronics components, E-mail: efyexpo@efyindia.com are already in fairly bad shape. People
Bombay Convention & Exhibition products and services and to Web: www.west.efyexpo.com have invested hundreds of millions
Centre, Mumbai find latest offerings and dealers
and distributors for products of dollars in equipment and facilities
LED Expo 2014 Exhibition and summit on MEX Exhibitions Pvt Ltd and that are now just sitting idle. Its
December 5-7, 2014 LED lighting products and Phone: +91-9312285142
Pragati Maidan, New Delhi technology E-mail: info@themediaexpo.com
a shame. Ajay K. Goel, CEO of Tata
2015 International CES A mega consumer electronics Consumer Electronics Association
Power Solar was quoted as saying.
January 6-7, 2015 event where new innovations Phone: +1 703-907-7605 Domestic manufacturers claim they
Las Vegas Convention Center and technologies are Web: www.cesweb.org
Las Vegas, USA showcased are bearing the brunt, losing out on
Electronics For You Expo 2015 Covering complete electronics EFY Enterprises Pvt Ltd business to the tune of ` 10,000 million
February 26-28, 2015 ecosystem, including Phone: 26810601/2/3, E-mail: efyenq@efyindia.com as more and more project developers
Hall 7 (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H) innovation, manufacturing, Web: www.efyexpo.com
Pragati Maidan, New Delhi design and sales prefer buying international panels at
EFY Awards To give recognition to the EFY Enterprises Pvt Ltd lower costs rather than going for in-
March 13, 2015 leading enterprises and Phone: 26810601/2/3, +91-8800094213
Bengaluru individuals in the Indian E-mail: efyawards@efyindia.com
house products. (Anti-)dumping is a
electronics field Web: www.efyawards.com short-term solution. The government
Look up under Events section in www.electronicsforu.com for a comprehensive list has to provide a level playing field
Since this information is subject to change, all those interested are advised and allow the Indian manufacturers to
to ascertain the details from the organisers before making any commitment. grow. Anti-dumping (measures are) a

www.efymag.com Electronics For You | July 2014 119

 industry nEWS

Snippets The commission will include rep-

resentatives from the industry as well.
E-waste market to grow at 30 per cent The ministry is very positive towards this
A recently published report by TechSci Research titled, India E-Waste Management Market proposal, M.N. Vidyashankar, president
Forecast & Opportunities, 2019 revealed that the countrys e-waste market is expected to of the Indian Electronic and Semiconduc-
grow at a CAGR of around 30.6 per cent during 2014-19. The report stated that the southern tor Association (IESA), was quoted as
and western regions are the largest contributors to the countrys e-waste market. saying. The proposed commission would
Renewable Energy installed capacity stands at 12.95% also oversee hastening of the progress of
The India Renewable Energy Status Report 2014 released at the Green Summit 2014 electronic clusters being set up in different
in Bengaluru has revealed that the total installed capacity of green/renewable energy parts of the country.
stands at 32,269.6 MW, or is approximately 12.95 per cent of the potential available According to a Frost & Sullivan report,
in the country as on 31st March. The overall renewable energy potential from various the electronic design and manufacturing
sources in India is approximately 249,188 MW.
sector in India is expected to grow at 9.9
Karnatakas revised solar policy approved per cent (CAGR) to touch US$ 94.2 billion
The Karnataka government has cleared the revised solar energy policy for the state. Under by the year 2015. This is twice the growth
the policy, farmers will be encouraged to set up solar power plants to produce solar energy rate of the global ESDM market. But, at
up to 3 MW and sell it to electricity companies. The solar energy will be purchased by the
present, nearly 65 per cent of the demand
companies at a tariff fixed by the Karnataka Energy Regulatory Commission. The farmers
will get financial support to install solar plants on their land. The farmers will also be able to for electronic products is met by imports.
rent their land to investors for solar power generation at a rate fixed by the government. Sadly, even the 35 per cent balance that
is made in India is primarily low-value-
Renesas new subsidiary in India added manufacturing.
Renesas Electronics Singapore recently spun off its India operations into a new subsidiary,
for which Sunil Dhar has been appointed as the managing director. Since 2011, we have
been operating via our branch offices in Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai. In the last three years,
Philips re-entering mobile
Renesas has gained significant traction in the Indian market. Setting up a wholly-owned handset market
subsidiary will allow us to expand our footprint to accelerate business growth. says Dhar. Philips could not stay away from the
CeramTec opens office in India charm of Indian mobile handset market
for long and has made a re-entry in the
CeramTec, the manufacturer of technical high-performance ceramics for electronics and
many other applications, has opened an office in Panaji, Goa. The company deals in a market. The new range of mobile phones
variety of highly-specialised ceramic materials where other materials, such as plastic or from Philips include both smartphones
metal, cannot withstand the extremely high loads. and feature phones.
According to a company spokesper-
means to an end, after a while once the max. Surprisingly, the three companies son, the Philips brand of feature phones
industry gets on its own two feet and were followed by Datawind in the and smartphones have been launched
reaches a certain scale, then those du- fourth place. This is perhaps because in India by Sang Fei Consumer Com-
ties can be scaled back. Goel added. of the absence of many tablet sellers munications Co., a joint venture between
in the country. This rating is of course Royal Dutch Philips Electronics and
Tablet market in India drops in terms of the shipments received by Shenzhen SED Industry Co. Sang Fei
The tablet market may be growing all each company and not in terms of the has launched these phones about seven
over the word, but India does not seem to actual number of tablets sold. years after China Electronics Corpora-
play a big role in it. According to a recent tion (CEC), the parent group of Sang
report released by the IDC, the Indian Setting up of Electronics Fei, acquired the global mobile phone
tablet market has fallen by 32.8 per cent Commission proposed business of Philips. The acquisition hap-
year-on-year in the first quarter of 2014. Electronics industry representatives and pened in February 2007.
The report said that only 780,000 tablet semiconductor associations have urged According to the companys website,
shipments were seen in the quarter. newly appointed Minister for Commu- Sang Fei has come up with a new series
Further, the IDC reports that a lack nications and IT, Ravi Shankar Prasad, of Philips mobile phones. The India
of new buyers and the norms for compli- to set up an independent Electronics business of these phones will be headed
ance with the Bureau of Indian Standards Commission, much like the Telecom by SS Bassi, Sang Feis head of SAARC
(BIS) are responsible for the drop in the Commission, to address all matters operations, who has worked with Lenovo
sales of tablets. The lack of a decent budg- pertaining to the electronic design and India and Reliance Communications in
et is also the reason for the drop in the manufacturing sector. The first of its the past. Philips had a range for feature
sales of Android tablets in the country. kind Commission will play a key role phones in India, till the time of acquisition.
The IDC report also noted that in tackling all problems the industry is The company slowly disappeared and
Samsung is the top tablet vendor in facing, insisted the representatives. the space was filled by the home-grown
India, followed by Apple and Micro- manufacturers.
Check efytimes.com for more news, daily
120 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com
 new products
Recently introduced in India, From near and far
TEST & MEASUREMENT
All-in-One Instrument
National Instruments (NI) has
launched VirtualBench, which has
five essential instruments needed by
any designer/engineermixed signal
oscilloscope, digital input/output,
programmable power supply, digital
multimeter and function genera-
torincorporated into a single bench-
top instrument
with software
interface.
Virtual-
Bench reduces
the number of
instruments,
space require-
ment and cost for the users. The features
that make it revolutionary are the mixed
signal oscilloscope, high integration with
todays technologies, and very low price
compared to the equivalent devices of
other leading brands. The instrument
can be connected to PC using the stand-
ard USB port, or connected to PC and
tablet using Wi-Fi. The user interface is
very simple with all functionalities and
controls integrated into a single window,
and much similar to the UI of existing
modular instruments.
National Instruments, Bengaluru
Phone: 080-4119 0000
Website: http://ni.com
Digital oscilloscopes
Rohde & Schwarz has introduced RTE
digital oscilloscopes that offer fast and
reliable solutions for everyday test and
measurement tasks such as embedded
design development, power electron-
ics analysis and general debugging.
These are available with bandwidths of
200 MHz to 1 GHz.
The scopes highly accurate digital
trigger system with virtually no trig-
ger jitter delivers precise results. The
single-core A/D converter with more
www.efymag.com
than seven effective bits almost com-
pletely eliminates signal distortion.
With a sampling rate of 5 GS/s and
a maximum memory depth of 50M
samples per channel, the oscilloscopes
can accurately record the long signal
sequences required when analysing the
data content of serial protocols such as
I2C and CAN.
Rohde & Schwarz, New Delhi
Phone: 011-42535400
E-mail: sales.rsindia@rohde-schwarz.com
Website: www.rohde-schwarz.co
Insulation testers
The new MI 3200 TeraOhm 10 kV is
a digital diagnostic insulation tester
manufactured by Metrel and marketed
by Rishabh Instruments.
MI 3200 enables high insulation
resistance measurements up to 10 T,
step voltage test, PI, DD and DAR cal-
culation, capacitance measurement and
withstanding voltage test. The large
LCD screen enables real-time graph to
be displayed. Results can be stored and
downloaded to a computer via USB
or RS232 connection with the help of
optional software.
Major applications include test-
ing insulation resistance of rotating
machinery, cables, transformers, HV
generators, surge arresters and effec-
tive measurements in high noise envi-
ronments, such as charged substations
and switchyards.
Rishabh Instruments Pvt Ltd, Nashik
Phone: 0253-2202202/028
E-mail: tmi@rishabh.co.in
Website: www.rishabh.co.in
COMPONENTS
Wire-to-board and wire-to-
wire connectors
FCI has launched Minitek Pwr 3.0 and
Minitek Pwr 4.2 wire-to-board and
wire-to-wire connectors.
Minitek Pwr 3.0 is designed for
power applications with current rat-
ings up to 5A per contact. Engineered
for wire-to-wire and wire-to-board
applications,
its crimp and
snap-in recep-
tacles are used
to terminate
AWG 20 to 30
wires. Header assemblies for wire-to-
board interconnections include vertical
and right-angle variants.
Minitek Pwr 4.2 is manufactured for
high-current and high-density applica-
tions, and supports up to 9A per con-
tact. Both the products are designed for
dual-row and 2 to 24 circuits, but feature
greater versatility due to their diverse
wire-to-wire, wire-to-board and wire-to-
panel mount capabilities. Its crimp and
snap-in receptacle is used to terminate
AWG 16 to 28 wires.
FCI Electronics, Bengaluru
Phone: 080-25597149, 25550852
E-mail: communications@fci.com
Website: www.fci.com
LDO line-up
ROHMs new 16-model line-up of
LDOs is optimised for microcontroller
power supplies in
automotive body
and power train
systems. The new
power supplies in
the BD4xxMx se-
ries, together with
the BDxxC0A series, have been designed
for application in car infotainment
systems, bringing the total number of
automotive-grade LDO offers to 43.
The BD4xxMx series utilises state-
of-the-art power system 0.35m BiC-
DMOS processes and takes advantage
of ROHMs renowned analogue design
technology to achieve less than half
the no-load current consumption of
standard products, contributing to
significant energy savings. In addition,
a novel circuit design enables support
for ceramic capacitors, eliminating
Electronics For You | July 2014 121
 new products
the need for electrolytic capacitors to
prevent oscillation, reducing both the
mounting area and costs.
ROHM Semiconductor, Chennai
E-mail: niranjan@rohm.com.sg
Website: www.rohm.com
Automotive accelerometer
STMicroelectronics has launched AIS-
3624DQ, a 3-axis accelerometer with
digital output. It is the first to provide a
full-scale range of 24g (accel-
eration of gravity) while
meeting the automotive
industrys demanding
AEC-Q100 reliability stress
tests. The AIS3624DQ claims to bring
all the benefits of STs market-proven
stacked-chip technology to the automo-
tive market. This solution is based on
companys 20.3cm (8-inch) wafer manu-
facturing of MEMS products and offers a
more competitive solution than the others
who produce on 15.2cm (6-inch).
The product offers selectable full-
scale range including 6g/12g/24g. Other
features of the automotive accelerometer
include 16-bit data output, two digital
output lines (interrupt generators), nine
user-selectable output data rates (ODR),
power down, low power and normal
power modes, SPI and I2C digital output
protocols, embedded self-test and up
to 10,000g shock survivability. Housed
in a QFN 24L (4x4x1.8 mm3) package,
the AIS3624DQ is currently available as
engineering samples.
STMIcroelectronics, Noida
Phone: (0120) 2352999
Website: www.st.com
POWER SUPPLIES
Home UPS system
Luminous Power Technologies intro-
duced Zelio in April, a pure sine-wave,
state-of-the-art home UPS system,
designed to
work with
the most sen-
sitive home
appliances. Zelio has a unique feature
that displays the power back-up in
hours and minutes, which allows con-
sumers to plan their day and manage
122 July 2014 | Electronics For You
their appliances during a power outage.
The UPS can be used to provide
power backup for all domestic appli-
ances and is equipped with various in-
built protection features. This system
with next-generation architecture has
a digital signal processing core that
yields a high performance.
Luminous India, Hosur
E-mail: mktg@lumnousindia.com
Website: www.luminousindia.com
Power converter
Mornsun recently launched a higher
power Din-Rail AC-DC power sup-
plythe LI120, following the LI24 (24W)
/ LI72 (72W). It acts as the power sup-
ply for the industrial bus in the control
cabinet, can provide all units with 24V
supply, and can be used in industrial
control/electric and other distributed
power systems.
The LI120 adopts a new circuit de-
sign and embeds power factor correction,
which takes its
efficiency up to
92 per cent, while
pushing its stand-
by power con-
sumption down
to 0.75W. With
35mm installation
width, it saves considerable space for
users. In addition, the Din-Rail mount-
ing protects a circuit from the damages
caused by over voltage, overload or con-
tinuous short circuits.
Mornsun India
Phone: +91 9820194705
E-mail: sunil@mornsun.cn
Website: www.mornsun-power.com
SOFTWARE
3D PCB Design Tool
Altium has announced the latest
update to its signature PCB design
software, Altium
Designer 14.3.
The software has
been updated to
provide improved
support and new
features that facili-
tate design reuse
and more efficient electronics design.
Previously, MCAD designers had to
model rigid-flex boards as sheet-metal
parts, which limited the accuracy of
the design. With this update, designers
can open the folded model of a flex-
ible PCB in mechanical design tools to
ensure form and fit are correct. In ad-
dition, they can run detailed analysis
on the PCB, checking on connections
and heat flow.
Altium Designer 14.3 delivers
improvements to schematic wire
dragging, with development focused
on maintaining connectivity while
improving productivity. This includes
improvements to the handling of over-
lapping wires, net labels and junctions.
Altium Limited
E-mail: sreekanth.tammana@altium.com
Phone: +91 95915 91919 / +91 90366 04755
Website: www.altium.com
LEDs & LED LIGHTING
LEDs for headlights
Everlights high-power Argus series
of LED headlight modules feature low
thermal resistance and
a high heat dissi-
pation rate. The
overall package
size is reduced to
allow flexible space
for the component manufacturers to
design their headlight products.
This is a line of high-performance
headlight LED modules based on
ceramic substrates featuring high
heat dissipation rate up to 170W/
mK, far better than those provided
by conventional ceramic substrates. A
single chip running at 1A provides up
to 1200lm. With a properly designed
heat dissipating mechanism, a single
chip provides highly stable perfor-
mance even at 1.2A. The single-chip
Tj design that has passed the 150C
high-temperature test is perfect for the
harsh, extremely hot environment in a
headlight assembly.
Everlight Electronics India Pvt Ltd, Bengaluru
Phone: 080-41633111, 080-41623111
E-mail: salesindia@everlight.com
Website: www.everlight.com
www.efymag.com

Live Telecasting
on Your Web
I saw Live Telecasting on Your Web
DIY article published in May issue.
This is an informative and interesting
project. My son has done this project
and successfully telecast a birthday
party on the Internet. I thank you for
publishing this type of do-it-yourself
article!
Sanak Kumar
Electrical Manager
BHEL, Bhopal
EFY: Thanks for the feedback!
Article for EFY
I want to write an article for EFY
on Digital Image Processing with
topics ranging from basic imaging
algorithms like Sepia, Grayscale,
Negative, etc to a bit advanced image
processing like kernel filters and frac-
tals. The language can be either Java
or Python, as per your choice.
Abdul Fatir
IIT, Roorkee
EFY: Please see the guidelines for
contributing articles at http://
efymag.com/Guidelines_for_EFY_
authors.doc and email your articles
to editsec@efy.in
Remote Control Tester
The Remote Control Tester circuit
published in May is interesting.
But easier method is to use a digi-
tal camera or camcorder. Point the
remote towards the camera and
press any button. You will be able
to see IR LED flashing on camera
screen.
Krishna Murty
Through e-mail
PCB Design Software
I need PCB design software that does
not require Internet connection dur-
ing installation. Please help.
J.C. Adhyaru
Vadodara, Gujarat
www.efymag.com
LETTERS
EFY: You may refer to DIP Trace,
FreePCB and Layout Editor software
included in the DVDs provided with
EFY Plus February and April issues. To
buy the back issues contact EFY associ-
ates KitsnSpares on info@kitsnspares.
com
FM News Channel Using
Raspberry Pi
I liked Personal FM News Channel
Using Raspberry Pi & RSS DIY article
published in November 2013 issue.
Where can I buy one Raspberry Pi
board and accessories for making this
project?
Karthik Hegde
Through e-mail
EFY: You can purchase Raspberry Pi
board from KitsnSpares. For details,
you may visit their website at http://
kitsnspares.com/user1/buyproduct.
asp?id=79
Making FM Transmitter
I am a student interested in making an
FM transmitter circuit. Please give me
related circuits.
Ram
Through e-mail
I want short-range as well as long-
range FM transmitter circuit diagrams.
Please help.
Bikram
Nepal
EFY: You may refer to Wireless
FM Microphone circuit published
in January issue under Circuit Ideas
section. This circuit is nothing but
a simple FM transmitter with loud-
speaker used as a microphone.
You may also refer to long-range
FM transmitter circuit from
http://electronicsforu.com/new-
electronics/lab/search_lab.
asp?words=transmitter
High-Speed DWDM
Technology
In High-Speed DWDM Technology
article published in May issue, under
Letters
Spot An Error Award Winner
In the e-Style First Look section
published in June issue, specifi-
cations of the Intex Aqua I5 HD
is wrongly mentioned as 1GB of
RAW instead of 1GB of RAM.
Madhuram Mishra
Through e-mail
Errata
1. In the component layouts for
the PCBs of Real Time Clock with
Temperature Logger and Safety
Timer for Home Appliances cir-
cuits published in March issue,
the 0.1u value printed between
XTAL2 and R2 and between IC3
7805 and LED1, respectively, is
not required.
2. In the Wi-Fi Embedded
Webcam circuit published in Sep-
tember 2013 issue, under Software
section, in second paragraph, EFY
EVD should be read as EFY DVD.
3. In the Humidity Indicator
and Controller circuit published
in February issue, switch S1
should be read as on/off switch
instead of 0n/off switch in com-
ponent layout for the PCB.
Praveen S. Javali
In the Temperature-Sensing
Diodes Selector circuit published
in January issue, the IC1 (7818)
and IC2 (7809) should have been
included in the parts list.
Akkanagamma S.M.
Multiplexing techniques sub head-
ing, in second paragraph, TDMA is
wrongly mentioned as Time Division
Multiplex Access instead of Time Divi-
sion Multiple Access. Again, in fourth
paragraph, FDMA is mentioned as
Frequency Division Multiplex Access
instead of Frequency Division Multiple
Access.
Madhuram Mishra
Bhopal
Electronics For You | July 2014 123

Q.Iwith
am trying to build a project
Matlab that uses colour
detection at its core. I have worked
on various algorithms available on
the Internet but they do not seem to
work for me. Can you help me with
detailed steps for colour detection us-
ing Matlab?
Pooja
Through e-mail
A. Colour detection through Matlab
is fairly easy with all the required
functions already inbuilt. The basic al-
gorithm is as follow:
1. Primary colours such as red,
green and blue can be detected easily.
The algorithm actually works in sepa-
rate steps.
2. First take a snapshot from a real-
time video. The function that you can
use for it is mentioned below. This will
Fig. 1: Snapshot from a real-time video
Fig. 2: Gray image
124 July 2014 | Electronics For You
immediately return one single
image frame from the video
input object as shown in Fig. 1.
data = getsnapshot(vid)
3. Convert this RGB snap-
shot to gray. The function used
for this process is mentioned
below. The output is shown in
Fig. 2.
img = rgb2gray(data)
4. Extract the red/green/ Fig. 3: RED component extracted from RGB image
blue colour components from
the original RGB snapshot.
Function data(:,:,1) extracts
all the red colour components
from the RGB image. Similarly,
for green use data(:,:,2) and for
blue data(:,:,3). The output is
shown in Fig. 3.
5. Subtract the red-colour
components from the gray-
colour snapshot using below-
mentioned function. You will
get the output image as shown Fig. 4: Subtracting red from gray image
in Fig. 4.
diff_im =
imsubtract(data(:,:,1),
rgb2gray(data))
6. Now remove the
noise from the image
by using filter function
shown below. Median
filtering is a nonlinear
operation which is often
used in image process-
ing to reduce salt and
pepper noise. A median
filter is more effective
than convolution when Fig. 5: Converting gray image to binary image
the goal is to simultane-
ously reduce noise and preserve diff_im = im2bw(diff_im, 0.18)
edges. 7. Now you can measure the pa-
B = medfilt2(diff_im, [3,3]) rameters of that bright image and place
7. Convert the filtered im- a rectangular box over it using math-
age into binary image using the ematical calculations which will show
binary function shown below. the presence of red colour at that place.
You will get a bright image at stats = regionprops(diff_im,
the place of red object. The out- BoundingBox,Centroid)
put image diff_m replaces all Thats it!
pixels in the input image with
luminance greater than level Answers compiled by EFY technical editor, Ankit
Gupta. Letters and questions for publication
with the value 1 (white) and
may be addressed to Editor, Electronics For You,
replaces all other pixels with D-87/1, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase 1, New
the value 0 (black) as shown in Delhi 110020 (E-mail: editsec@efyindia.com) and
Fig. 5. should include name and address of the sender
www.efymag.com
 interview
There exists a phenomenal growth
opportunity in the voice and music arena
Designing audio devices used to be simple, but modern designs are
very integrated and efficient. This interview looks at what has changed,
and helps you keep on top of the changes. Joep A.J. van Beurden,
chief executive officer, CSR plc speaks with Dilin Anand, senior
assistant editor at EFY Joep A.J. van Beurden
Q
What is transforming the audio electronics industry?
What we see now is a single chip, a piece of silicon that
has audio codec, memory, processor and power management
all rolled into one. This is like a complete voice and music
platform. For instance, if you open a pair of headphones,
there is usually just one chip inside. This single chip takes
care of the entire sound quality and music experience that you
have when you listen to it. It is a very strong audio platform
that also streams Bluetooth from your iPod or your phone. It
goes into headsets, sound bars, speaker docks and then the
next big opportunity is to have the same system streamed into
the entire house using a combination of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
Q
Why should people get into designing devices with Blue-
tooth Smart?
With Bluetooth Smart, we talk about wearables such as
the Nike+ FuelBand, and an enormous amount of verticals,
that are still small. but a lot of people are very excited about
it because it can grow exponentially. Voice, music and auto-
motive might be the sectors which pay the bills today for us.
However, Bluetooth Smart is very exciting but it is still more
investment than revenue, although we have shown very good
growth. People talk about a 100 billion connected devices in
10 years time, a large chunk of these are going to be con-
nected through Bluetooth Smart.
Q
What is the most exciting product that you have seen in
audio?
The excitement is all about streaming audio. Two products
were launched at CES this year, which are pieces of silicon and
software that allow you to access any musical source that you
have. You can take it from the cloud and stream to Spotify, or
you can take it from the DLNA server, iPod and Android. The
stream gets into your hub, and then your hub can distribute it
to your entire home with even different streams to each room.
This is really exciting and there exists a phenomenal growth
opportunity in the voice and music arena for the coming years.
Q
When can we see mesh networking in Bluetooth Smart?
In CES, we demonstrated which I thought was a world
first, a design that functioned through Bluetooth Smart
meshed. In our booth, we had 25 different lamps that you
could actually address individually through what was a
126 July 2014 | Electronics For You
chief executive officer, CSR plc
long hallway. At the far end of the hallway, beyond normal
Bluetooth Smart range, were these lights that needed to be
controlled. But because it was meshed, the control was not
a problem. We could address individual lights, a group of
lights, or all of them at once.
Q
What would it take to do something similar with Zigbee?
What I feel is that you can go Zigbee and get the mesh ca-
pability, but now you need a Wi-Fi access point, and it becomes
cumbersome starting there. For instance, in Philips products that
are currently available in the market using Zigbee, there are only
three lamps and you need a separate access point for it. So, if you
have 21 lights you then have seven different queues on your
phone, and you can see how it goes on from there.
Q
What is interesting about designing for automotive industry?
Automotive market as a whole has a little bit more visibil-
ity, and the reason is that it is the very nature of that industry.
Design cycles are very long and it can take you up to two
years to start the design process, ending it and actually get-
ting the chip into the car. Now, once your component is in the
car, it is not easy to get it designed out. So although it takes
a while to get in, the benefit is that once you are in, you stay
in. Cycles are longer when compared to consumer electronics
where it is mostly six months, and therefore the visibility is
a little bit better. It is very competitive, just as competitive as
the smartphone which is ultra competitive.
Q
How does the design process usually work in the automo-
tive industry?
We talk to the OEMs to be able to understand what it is that
they want, so that we can put it on our roadmap. The actual sale
is usually to so-called tier 1 companies. These are companies
that are selling a complete sub-system, like a head unit or a
powertrain or what have you, to the car manufacturer. For in-
stance, if you get a win with Toyota, you are going to deal with
a company called Denzel. Or there is another company called
Continental, or you have Visteon, or Robert Bosch. These are the
tier 1 customers that we physically ship to, where they integrate
it into a larger subsystem and that subsystem gets installed into
the car. In automotive infotainment we are moving from a world
in which we sell individual components into a completed info-
tainment bundle, using SoCs for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc.
www.efymag.com
 interview
There is no starting point
for IoT devices
If you were tracking our stories, you would know how
a product conforms to the IoT criteria. Now, it is time to
move forward so you can actually build a product for IoT.
T. Anand, managing director of Knewron, discusses with
Dilin Anand from EFY some basic elements and building
blocks for IoT-based products
Q
For the uninitiated, could you describe the primary build-
ing blocks of an IoT system?
The Internet of Things primarily needs three building
blocks to make it functional. These are, a thing itself, which
could be a door-lock or water-tank, etc; a connecting mecha-
nism, such as RF transmitter/receiver, NFC, Bluetooth, etc;
and a stable and secure communication method or protocol.
In order to make an IoT product, converting it into a useful
and meaningful application is going to be the key.
Q
What are the fundamental elements that any IoT designer
should first understand?
Technically, it is easier to make a product and have RF
or Bluetooth connectivity built into it. However, that does
not necessarily make it an IoT-enabled product. Because the
application that product serves doesnt dictate so. From a
designers perspective, security, identity management, se-
mantics, compatibility with multiple communication stand-
ards, lower power, lower costs and nil or least interference
would be the major criterion for IoT-based products. In some
very specific cases, safety will also be a significant factor to
be considered. Interestingly, designers also need to answer
many trivial but critical questions, such as: What would
smartphones, TVs, refrigerators, cars, locks and smart clothes,
and whatever else, would talk about with each other?
Q
Should the designers wait for more suitable chip tech-
nologies?
People are not waiting for technologies since there is no
starting point for IoT devices. These are being designed and
developed continuously with recursive modifications as and
when newer technologies become available. If we wish chip
designers to integrate some critical protocol into their hard-
ware design, developers need to start making and using it in
software form for some time. On the other hand, if chip design-
ers create some enabler for better use of technology, developers
would prefer to use it rather than re-invent the wheel.
Q
What would be the top two things on an IoT product de-
signers wish-list of IP?
Developers have embraced a plethora of incompatible
128 July 2014 | Electronics For You
T. Anand
managing director, Knewron
protocols for communicating with their devices. As a result
of that, devices connected to the Internet often cant speak
to each other, even if they want to. Protocol therefore is a
prime need to be addressed at this stage. Such protocols
and mechanisms or semantics could take shape of IP in
coming days. Processors, on the other hand, are delivery
mechanisms for the IPs. For instance, a processor can have
ubiquitous protocol built in its hardware to enable IoT-based
devices and applications deliver more value at lesser cost.
Built-in communication stacks could be a great advantage in
designing and building IoT-based devices or systems since
major time is usually spent in integration of protocol stacks
with external things.
Q
Could you share some insight into security, or the lack of
it, in IoT?
As I foresee, most of the security issues would be related
to intercommunication between things (or devices) connected
on network, where alteration of data and information might
occur. This alteration or interference could further result into
misrepresentation of things, disruption in interconnected
systems or even some unprecedented stoppage of certain
work. And the best way to address most of the issues would
be to take pre-emptive actions in design phase of these appli-
cations, protocols, methods, etc. Through multilayer device
design approach, threats could be contained on the outer
levels, which could add to safety of the device.
Q
Which areas are gaining in value, and which ones are on
the losing side?
Well, sensors are the future of distributed data. We are
starting to move a sea of data, have our movements moni-
tored and our environments measured and adjusted to our
preferences, without need for direct intervention. This means
new opportunities for sensor designers, active sensor mecha-
nisms and wireless technology/protocol developers. Addi-
tionally, as general-purpose computing is becoming a thing
of the past, most of the things that are based on it would start
becoming smaller and then disappear. The industrial internet
means that machines will no longer be constrained by the
quality of their on-board intelligence.
www.efymag.com
 product categories index

advertisers product category index

Products Page No. Products Page No. Products Page No. Products Page No.

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Batteries & Power Supplies Digi-Key Corporation ............................................ 5

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(Nimra Products) ........................................... 141 Element14 India Pvt Ltd. ...................................... 1 Alfa Electronic Components ............................... 98 3B Semiconductors Pvt. Ltd. ............................ 139
Brisk Electronics ............................................... 139 Fujistsu Semiconductor Pacific Asia Limited Binay Opto Electronics Pvt Ltd (D) ................ 18-19

Digital Promoters (I) Pvt Ltd (M) ....................... 141 Singapore ........................................................ 51 Buljin Elemec Pvt Ltd ........................................ 142 Solar Products

Elektro Power Systems .................................... 141 MediaTek India Technology Pvt. Ltd.................. 131 International Corporate ..................................... 143 Elektro Power Systems .................................... 141
Elnova Ltd (m) .................................................. 143 Microchip Technology Inc. .................................. 65 MAPP Solar Energy Systems Pvt. Ltd. ............. 143

Exide Industries Ltd (C) ...................................... 57 Millenium semiconductors ...................................11 PCBs, Assemblies & Sub Assemblies Shreyansh Electronics (D) ................................ 142

G-Tek Scientific Ltd ........................................... 137 Mouser Electronics (Hong Kong) Ltd .................. 13 Anamika Enterprises ........................................ 143 Systellar Innovations ........................................ 137

Guna Power Systems (B) ................................. 141 Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd. ........................... 81 Mitsutek Electronics (D) .................................... 142

Integrated Batteries India P Ltd (D) .................. 141 Renesas Electronics Singapore Pulraj Electronics Pvt Ltd .................................... 25 Telecom Products
J.K. Power ........................................................ 142 Pte Ltd ........................................................... 125 SMD Electronics Pvt Ltd.................................... 143 u-blox Singapore Pte. Ltd. India Liaison Office..... 4

Kandhari Photo Electronics P Ltd ..................... 142 ROHM Semiconductor ........................................ 33

Mornsun Guangzhou Science & Technology Sancon India Pvt. Ltd. ...................................... 129 Plugs, Sockets & Connectors Test & Measurement Equipment (Including

Co. Ltd ............................................................111 Shavison Electronics Pvt. Ltd. ............................ 14 Miracle Electronic & Devices Pvt Ltd .................. 75 Indicators & Monitors)

Nippon India (D) ............................................... 137 ST Microelectronics Marketing Pvt. Ltd .............. 45 Agilent Technologies India Pvt Ltd........False Cover

S.M Semiconductors (D) .................................. 142 Toshiba India Pvt. Ltd........................................ 125 Reseller and Distributors Agilent Technologies India Pvt Ltd.............Gate fold

Sakthi Accumulators Private Ltd ....................... 143 Digi-Key Corporation ............................................ 5 FLIR Systems ..................................................... 47

SM Electronic Technologies Pvt. Ltd. ................. 21 Consumer Electronics & Appliances Element14 India Pvt Ltd. ...................................... 1 Max Technology & Co. ........................................ 37

Srishti Electronics ............................................. 143 Canon India Pvt. Ltd. ........................................ 149 Embedded Systems Solutions Pvt Ltd. ............ 139 Methode Electronics India Pvt Ltd....................... 53

Stab-Brain Systems .......................................... 142 Techno Power ................................................... 141 LWI Electronics Inc. ............................................ 23 NI Systems (India) Pvt Ltd .................................... 7

Madhu Subtronic Components Precision Mastech Enterprises (Hong Kong) Ltd.135

Cabinets, Enclosures & Accessories IT Products Pvt Ltd ............................................................. 41 Rohde & Schwarz ............................................... 63

S K Metal Works ............................................... 142 Embedded Systems Solutions Pvt Ltd. ............ 139 Progressive Engineers (R) ............................... 140 Tektronix India Pvt Ltd. (D) ......................... 15, 152

EFY Magazine Attractions During 2014

Month Technology Focus EFY Report Buyers Guide t&m

January Electronics of Things Industrial Automation Electronics Rework Stations Automated Test Equipment (AOI, etc)

Handheld T&M Equipment for Field

February Smart Grid Smart Grid Electronics Thermal Imaging
Engineers

March Smart & Electric Vehicles Automotive Electronics How to Make Your Lab Static Proof Function & Signal Generators

April Smart Homes Inverters & UPSSOHO & Industrial Digital Multimeters Multimeters

May FPGA (Programmable Chips) Connectors & Terminals FPGA Training Kits Data Acquisition Systems

Desktop Manufacturing Equipment

June 3-D Printers Certification & Quality Labs EMC Test Equipment
(SMT, Reflow Ovens, 3D Printers)

PCB Industry in India: Suppliers &

July Raspberry Pi Budget Friendly Oscilloscopes Oscilloscopes
Manufacturers

August Security 2.0: Latest products Aerospace & Defence Electronics Wi-fi & RF Modules Incircuit Test Systems

September Smart Robos Solar Electronics EDA Tools for Circuit Design Virtual Instruments

Development Boards (Microcontroller

October Open Source Electronics Educational & training Products Analysers (Network, Protocol, Spectrum, etc)
based)

Wireless Communication Technologies

November Security & Surveillance Soldering / Desoldering Stations RF Devices (Wireless Devices)
(Zigbee, RF to 5G & beyond)

December Smart Lighting LED Lighting Programmable Power Source Power Analysers/Power Meters/Supplies

146 July 2014 | Electronics For You www.efymag.com


Client name Page No.
3B Semiconductors Pvt. Ltd...................................................................139
Agilent Technologies India Pvt. Ltd........................... Gatefold / False cover
Alfa Electronic Components.....................................................................98
Anamika Enterprises...............................................................................143
Arham Electronics & Electricals (Nimra Products).................................141
Audac Transducers.................................................................................141
Binay Opto Electronics Pvt Ltd............................................................18-19
Brisk Electronics.....................................................................................139
Buljin Elemec Pvt Ltd..............................................................................142
Canon India Pvt. Ltd...............................................................................149
CeramTec India - Innovative Ceramic Engineering Pvt. Ltd..................133
Chandsons Industries.............................................................................143
Digi-Key Corporation (www.digikey.com)...................................................5
Digital Promoters (I) Pvt Ltd....................................................................141
Dynalog (India) Ltd (www.dynalogindia.com)...........................................29
EFY Group: Android App........................................................................ 117
EFY Group: E Rocks 14...........................................................................31
EFY Group: EFY Expo India.....................................................................87
EFY Group: EFY Expo West....................................................................67
EFY Tech Center.......................................................................................17
Elcina Electronic Industries Association of India......................................35
eleb2b.com..............................................................................................138
Electronic Assembly (www.lcd-module.de)..............................................49
Elektro Power Systems...........................................................................141
Element14 India Pvt Ltd..............................................................................1
Elnova Ltd (m) (www.elnova.com)..........................................................143
Embedded Systems Solutions Pvt Ltd. .................................................139
Exide Industries Ltd (www.exide4u.com).................................................57
FLIR Systems (www.flir.com)....................................................................47
www.efymag.com
advertisers & organisation index
advertisers index
Client name Page No.
Fujistsu Semiconductor Pacific Asia Limited Singapore..........................51
Full Page Subscription Form....................................................................83
Good Will Instrument Co. Ltd.................................................................148
G-Tek Scientific Ltd.................................................................................137
Guna Power Systems.............................................................................141
HK Wentworth (India) Pvt Ltd ..................................................................59
Indus Robotics & Automation Research Pvt Ltd......................................69
Integrated Batteries India P Ltd (www.integratedbatteries.com)............141
International Corporate...........................................................................143
International Rectifier Hong Kong Ltd..........................................................
IPCA-EFY Expo........................................................................................43
J.K. Power ..............................................................................................142
Kandhari Photo Electronics P Ltd...........................................................142
KitsNSpares...........................................................................................105
LWI Electronics Inc. (www.livewireinfo.com)............................................23
Madhu Subtronic Components Pvt Ltd....................................................41
MAPP Solar Energy Systems Pvt Ltd (www.mappsolar.com)...............143
Matrix Comsec Pvt Ltd (www.cognitoindia.com)........................................9
Max Technology & Co. (www.maxtechnoloindia.com).............................37
MediaTek India Technology Pvt Ltd........................................................131
Methode Electronics India Pvt Ltd............................................................53
Microchip Technology Inc. (www.microchip.com).....................................65
Millenium semiconductors (www.millenniumsemi.com)........................... 11
Miracle Electronic & Devices Pvt Ltd (www.toroidal.com)........................75
Mitsutek Electronics................................................................................142
Mornsun Guangzhou Science & Technology Co. Ltd............................ 111
Mouser Electronics (Hong Kong) Ltd ......................................................13
Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd..................................................................81
NI Systems (India) Pvt Ltd (www.ni.com)...................................................7
Client name Page No.
Nippon India (www.nipponindia.com).....................................................137
Precision Mastech Enterprises (Hong Kong) Ltd...................................135
Progressive Engineers ...........................................................................140
Pulraj Electronics Pvt Ltd (www.pulraj.com).............................................25
Renesas Electronics Singapore Pte.Ltd.................................................127
Rohde & Schwarz (www.rohde-schwarz.co.in)........................................63
ROHM Semiconductor..............................................................................33
S K Metal Works (www.skmetals.com)...................................................142
S.M Semiconductors...............................................................................142
Sakthi Accumulators Private Ltd.............................................................143
Sancon India Pvt. Ltd..............................................................................129
Shavison Electronics Pvt. Ltd. (www.shavison.com)...............................14
Shrey Plastic Moulders (www.shreyplasticmoulders.com)....................142
Shreyansh Electronics............................................................................142
SM Electronic Technologies Pvt. Ltd........................................................21
SMD Electronics Pvt.Ltd.........................................................................143
SPM Electronics (spmelectronics.com)..................................................143
Srishti Electronics (www.acedigital.co.in)...............................................143
ST Microelectronics Marketing Pvt. Ltd....................................................45
Stab-Brain Systems................................................................................142
Systellar Innovations (www.systellar.in)..................................................137
Techno Power (www.technopowersystems.com)...................................141
Tektronix India Pvt Ltd. (www.tektronix.com/2170)..........................15, 152
Toshiba India Pvt. Ltd..............................................................................125
Towa Engineering Works........................................................................141
u-blox Singapore Pte. Ltd. India Liaison Office (www.u-blox.com)............4
Page numbers subject to final dummy corrections
Electronics For You | July 2014 147