Electronic Design

Inertial Sensing Technology Enables Ultra-Sensitive MEMS Accelerometer

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:50:00 GMT

Simple Circuit Provides Latching Fault Protection

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:50:00 GMT

Most switching power-supply controllers provide non-latching fault protection. Satisfying a requirement for a latchoff response to a fault often requires the addition of excessive and redundant circuitry. For power-supply controllers with an external soft-start pin, however, a simple circuit can be added to convert its non-latching fault protection into one with latched protection. For typical controllers, the startup sequence begins by charging the VDD...

Developers Can Expect To See Everyware Everywhere

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:50:00 GMT

Building a system from the ground up including all the software can be rewarding, but it’s a timeconsuming process that’s prone to errors. That’s why developers utilize off-the-shelf processor boards, operating systems, and run-time systems. Systems that aren’t built with a significant amount of off-theshelf hardware and software are rare. On the software side, C remains the dominant programming language of choice, with C++ bringing up the rear. C++ has...

Salary Aside, Engineering Remains A Great Profession

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:50:01 GMT

There has been a lot of bad economic news for engineers and almost everyone else since the financial meltdown of 2008. Hiring and salary freezes have become the order of the day, and benefits like 401(k) matches have been taken away. Add unprecedented reductions in salaries, whether as a flat percentage pullback or a via a shorter workweek, and employees are really feeling the pinch. Many of these occurrences are documented in this year’s salary survey,...

ADV: NI Vision Development Module

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:50:00 GMT

The Vision Development Module includes hundreds of image processing and machine vision functions for numerous programming languages, such as NI LabVIEW and Microsoft C++, Visual Basic and .NET. Along with programming libraries, the Vision Development Module also includes NI Vision Assistant and NI Vision Acquisition software. NI Vision Assistant is a vision application prototyping environment that automatically generates ready-to-run LabVIEW diagrams or LabWindows/CVI, C/C++, or Visual Basic code.

Break Through The TCP/IP Bottleneck With iWARP

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:50:00 GMT

T he online economy, particularly e-business, entertainment, and collaboration, continues to dramatically and rapidly increase the amount of Internet traffic to and from enterprise servers. Most of this data is going through the transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) stack and Ethernet controllers. As a result, Ethernet controllers are experiencing heavy network traffic, which requires more system resources to process network packets. The...

Where Are All The Jobs?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:50:00 GMT

Federal Reserve chairman Ben S. Bernanke caused a bit of a stir last month when he said that from a “technical perspective,” the recession is “very likely” over at this point. From a less technical perspective, he added that it could be months before unemployment rates dropped significantly. In fact, the Consumer Electronics Association’s U.S. Economic Forecast is projecting the unemployment rate for the country at 9.9% in 2010 and expects it to improve to only...