Bench Talk

A team of engineers in Germany is addressing the challenge of getting enough light with a new, app-controlled intelligent lamp. The HEAVN One is a desk lamp, a daylight lamp and a room illuminator, all in one. It takes the well-established idea of the health benefits of light, and expands it in three different ways.

How long do you think you’ll last before they find out that you are a fraud? The first quiz? The first exam? Do you think you might make it all the way to graduation on a fluke before they realize that you don’t deserve to be there?

Today’s video gaming industry is big business with total revenues for the industry in the U.S. hitting $23.5 billion last year—a 5% jump over 2014, according to the Entertainment Software Association, the industry lobbying body, which also hosts the Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show. All the major industry players—software and hardware—are reaping profit margins at record levels, with software sales leading with some $16.5 billion a jump of 7% from the 2014 figures and hardware manufactures seeing their best sales ever. The prediction is that this growth trend will continue mainly because software sales are largely viewed as the best barometer of the industry’s growth and overall health.

The practice of taking liberties with performance specifications to show a product in its best light is obviously nothing new in the electronics industry, and many others as well. If you’re old enough to remember, the output of stereo amplifiers and receivers was rated as “peak power”, which is typically five or six times higher than RMS power, but for the anointed it certainly makes the amplifier appear to be a real powerhouse. The output power of RF power transistors is even today sometimes specified at a single frequency where it’s highest, even though it falls off below and above it. And so on.

Have you ever had the urge to boil your iPhone SE in water, torch your iPhone 6 at a temperature of 6,000° F, or bake your iPhone 5S inside of a cake at 350° F? In case you needed me to tell you, don’t do it.

A new generation of driverless vehicles is dramatically changing the way automotive systems are designed and built. These driverless car systems will have significantly increased communication capability, linking vehicles together on the road and back to the cloud. All of this will be controlled by high end processors with complex 3D mapping and control algorithms, and all of this needs to be made secure.

When I was young, as most aspiring engineers do, I dreamed of going to outer space, specifically Mars. And I thought the only way to get there was aboard the NASA space shuttle. The cancellation of the shuttle program crushed that boyhood dream of mine, or so I thought. The recent commercialization of satellites and launch services, that may someday provide space exploration, has kept that dream alive for all of us. With some new innovation and the decades of experience out there I believe they will be able to make this dream a reality.

Choosing the type of control to use for various motor applications is a strategic choice that should be made before selecting a specific vendor or model. This is because there are many trade-offs when deciding to use a general-purpose processor that is well-suited for motor control, a computation-friendly FPGA, or a dedicated control IC (the latter is most often from a specialized motion-control vendor).

People have misperceptions about autonomy. Autopilots have been used in aircraft for decades. In newer planes and at properly equipped airports, the autopilot can also be used for landing, usually in dense fog with lots of radar equipment on the plane and on the ground, and the landing isn’t gentle. (Pilots occasionally perform a “greased in” landing, which is when touch down is so gentle you don’t even feel it. Be sure to congratulate your pilot if this ever happens.)

There is no other product that singularly captures the essence of the maker movement more than the 3D printer. It is difficult to describe the feeling you get when you use a 3D printer for the first time. It truly is a euphoric rush once you realize you have the ability to take a mere concept in your mind’s eye and bring it to a tangible reality. There are many technologies driving the plethora of additive manufacturing products available today including stereolithography, Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Electron Beam Melting (EBM) and the most universally recognized Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) method.