Software developers have largely accepted the merits of agile development and commonly debate the value of one agile practice against another. Agile software development is a creative process that does not need all details to be defines in advance. Agile software development is a group of software development methodologies based on iterative and incremental development, →
AC current levels 0.25mA Maximum Leakage Current for Class II equipment in IEC 950 (Information Technology Equipment, I.T.E.) (no protective earth ground in the equipment, double insulation or reinforced insulation) 0.5mA Earth Leakage Current limit in IEC 601-1 (Medical Equipment) (this is general value, here are also other leakage current requirements in IEC 601-1) 0.5mA →
Unless you add a measurement instrument to your computer, you have only the sound card as an analog I/O port. You can use the sound card to digitize ac analog voltages but only within a limited range. You can, however, add some signal processing and measure a wider variety of signals, even those that produce →
When I was last night again fixing old Nokia N73 cellular phone (needed a touch of soldering iron to make volume button to work again) I remember this article I saw few days ago. Are engineers early adopters? article claims that engineers aren’t early adopters of the latest technology. They are more like past the →
Watch out for well-made (counterfeit) chips. Counterfeit parts are big headache. Saelae tells that they noticed first that many more boards than normal were failing the functional test. The USB chip was running hot. It turned out that every last part was an old revision corresponding to a different (obsolete) part number – the parts →
How to present mathematical expressions using a language that has so little markup for them? Sometimes you can use MathML, but often you need to resort to images. Useful tools and tricks article mentions a nice on-line LaTeX equation writing tool at CodeCogs.com: You type in LaTex or MathML and it creates an image of →
Ethernet switches are the ubiquitous building block of any intelligent network. Ethernet technology is deployed in virtually every organization’s data center. Wide Area Networking (WAN) and Metropolitan Area Networking (MAN) providers need to provide their customers with Ethernet services. Ethernet has also become the de facto networking technology in industrial automation even in mission-critical local →
HackerThings web site is a list of products programmers and hardware hackers would want to own. HackerThings tries to aggregate the coolest products for the extremely tech-minded individual and discerning hacker. Products are posted to HackerThings on a purely is-this-awesome basis. Updates are posted daily. This is an interesting service to follow. →
Eureka! Ditching DRM Decreases Piracy article tells that new paper to be published in the upcoming issue of Marketing Science shows that removing DRM from music leads to a decrease in piracy. Or phrased differently, DRM appears to be an incentive for people to pirate music instead of buying it. The researchers from Rice and →
EMC Basics #5: I/O as critical circuits article gives some useful tips on the EMC issues related to inputs and outputs. Digital inputs/outputs — The key concern for digital interfaces is ESD. A secondary concern is radiated emissions. Radiated susceptibility is rare with digital I/O, although possible at very high RF levels. The solutions for →