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Microcontrollers are fun. They are the heart and soul of many everyday appliances. And most of all, microcontrollers are easy to use and to design with, from the point of view of a designer. Figure 2.1 is the block diagram of what a typical modern microcontroller, and especially those in the AVR series, can do. The block in the center of the figure represents the microcontroller. It can interface to motors, a variety of displays as output devices, communicate to PCs, read external sensor values, even connect to a network of similar controllers, and it can do all that without a lot of extra components. This leads to a small and compact system that is more reliable and cost-effective (because of the fewer number of components and the fewer number of interconnections).
Looking at the needs, decide whether it can be done simply. It requires substantial investment of time, money, and effort to put together a reliable microcontroller-based system. The advantages are small overheads when upgrading the system with small changes. It also helps to keep the inventory to a relatively small number of components.
Possible alternatives are:
- A dedicated digital circuit,
- A digital circuit based on a PLD (programmable logic device),
- An application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) based implementation.
The above-mentioned alternatives to microprocessors are quite similar and differ in only the implementation. A dedicated digital circuit might use discrete ICs for the various logic functions (AND, OR, XOR, etc.) while a digital circuit based on a PLD would be more compact given the programmable nature of a PLD. A PLD contains an array of various logic function blocks, the user selects the required functionality, and the interconnection between these functional blocks at the design level, thereby achieving a more integrated and compact solution. A PLD has a substantial amount of hardware, of which only a fraction gets utilized in average applications. The ASIC solution is like a PLD except that it is an optimized implementation.
Figure 1.1 is the circuit diagram for implementing an hypothetical logic equation using individual digital ICs. These logic gates, as seen in Figure 1.1, are available in various logic families (TTL, CMOS, etc.). The figure illustrates the IC numbers for the TTL family. To implement this equation, we need 3 ICs with about 57 percent utilization (the 7404 IC has 6 gates and we have used 3 of them, while the 7408 and 7432 has 4 gates each, of which we have used 5 gates—8 gates in all out of 14 available gates, i.e., a utilization factor of .57). The same equation is now implemented using a PLD (such as 16L8).
Figure 1.2 illustrates the internals of a PLD implementation. Each intersection in the AND array represents an AND gate, while each intersection in the OR array represents an OR gate. For this solution, we only need 1 IC. The PLD in Figure 1.2 has about 150 gates, of which we have used only about 12, representing a mere 8 percent utilization! (The actual 16L8 if used for this circuit has more hardware than seen in Figure 1.2.) A PLD-based circuit is also more power-consuming than a comparable ASIC circuit, which is due to the redundant hardware on the PLD chip.
In contrast, a microprocessor-based (in fact an Atmel AVR processor-based) circuit is illustrated in Figure 1.3. It is as small as the PLD-based circuit, and in terms of power consumption, is better than a PLD circuit. In terms of speed, the PLD will perform much faster than a processor. Of course, for the microprocessor circuit to work correctly, it must be programmed correctly. The program to implement our logic equation is discussed in a later chapter.
While we are trying to portray the microprocessor circuit in a positive light, it is worthwhile to be able to remember the relative merits and demerits of each implementation. It is not that the microprocessor is the solution to all problems. Sometimes you need to use a PLD in conjunction with a processor, and sometimes a PLD alone is required. One such implementation of a processor and a PLD working together is the subject of a later.
Less than a week after the Pirate Bay copyright trial ended with a guilty verdict, lawyers for the defense are calling for a retrial. Swedish radio station Sveriges Radio P3 news program revealed that Judge Tomas Norstrom holds close ties to pro-copyright organizations and his ruling may be considered a substantial conflict of interest. If it can be proven that Norstrom has a legitimate bias against the Pirate Bay Four based on his affiliations, there is a possibility the original verdict could be thrown out. Sveriges Radio reported that Norstrom is a member of the following pro-copyright or copyright-relevant organizations that may have impacted his decision-making abilities at the trial:
• The Swedish Association of Copyright, a discussion forum. While such an affiliation may seem harmless, other members of the organization include Henrik Ponten, Monique Wadsted, and Peter Danowsky — three key representatives in the entertainment industry’s case against Pirate Bay.
• The Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property, an organization devoted to implementing stronger copyright laws. Norstrom sits on the board.
• .SE, The Internet Infrastructure Foundation, another harmless-sounding affiliation with another questionable allegiance: Monique Wadsted is also a member of this group that oversees the .se name domain and handles domain disputes.
Peter Althin, the lawyer who represents Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde, told The Local that in setting up this case, several lay judges were thrown out due to conflicts of interest. That Norstrom somehow sneaked past this deletion process raised suspicion and anger in the defense team. Norstrom claims that his decision was not colored by his associations. “My view has been that these activities do not constitute a conflict of interest”, he told Sveriges Radio. It’s evident that Judge Norstrom has strong ties to the pro-copyright lobby. I think he should have stepped down from the case in the beginning. That he didn’t shows a serious perversion of justice. Last Friday, Pirate Bay was sacked with a bill for 30 million Swedish kronor (US$3.6 million) and a one-year prison sentence for the Pirate Bay Four: Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstrom.
Oracle Corp [NASDAQ:ORCL] plans to enter the computer hardware market by buying Sun Microsystems Inc [NASDAQ:JAVA] for more than $7 billion, swooping in after Sun’s talks with IBM [NYSE:IBM] fell apart. The announcement on Monday surprised many Oracle watchers, who believed the company can boost profitability at Sun’s software businesses but were unsure if it can be as successful with Sun’s hardware unit amid stiff competition against IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co, Dell Inc and new entrant Cisco Systems Inc. “It’s an out-of-the-box, left-field type of a deal because Oracle is buying a predominantly hardware business,” said Jefferies & Co analyst Ross MacMillan. “The push-pull of the deal is the uncertainty of the hardware business with the earnings accretion of the software business.”
Oracle will pay $9.50 a share for Sun, which values the high-end server and software maker at about $7.06 billion, based on 743 million shares outstanding as of the end of its second fiscal quarter on December 28, according to Sun. Sun had previously rejected IBM’s offer to pay up to $9.40 a share, according to sources with knowledge of the matter. Shares of Sun jumped 35.7 percent to $9.08 in morning Nasdaq trading, while Oracle shares fell 3.7 percent to $18.36. Shares of IBM, which did not immediately return calls for comment, fell 1.8 percent to $99.49 on the NYSE. Oracle President Safra Catz said on a conference call that Oracle intends to make the hardware division profitable. Sun’s top-selling products are high-end servers and storage equipment.
WASHINGTON, April 20 (Reuters) – Oracle Corp (ORCL.O) is unlikely to face serious antitrust objections as it moves to enter the computer hardware market by buying Sun Microsystems Inc (JAVA.O) for more than $7 billion, antitrust experts said.
They did not anticipate that federal regulators would be troubled by the deal since Oracle primarily focuses on database and business oriented software and Sun sells mainly high-end servers.
“Far from competing, the products of Sun are largely complementary with Oracle’s products. Indeed, Oracle software is frequently installed on Sun servers,” said Beau Buffier, an antitrust lawyer with law firm Shearman and Sterling LLP.
“Of course, Sun has some important software, such as Java and its Solaris operating system, but in these key areas there really is no meaningful competition with Oracle,” Buffier said.
Oracle’s database and related software already work closely with Sun’s Java software and Solaris operating system.
International Business Machines (IBM.N) may have abandoned its bid to buy Sun partially because of perceived antitrust concerns, according to a research note from Stifel Nicolaus.
Sun previously rejected IBM’s offer to pay up to $9.40 a share, according to sources with knowledge of the matter. Oracle will pay $9.50 a share for Sun.
“We believe an Oracle-Sun deal faces significantly fewer obstacles in the antitrust review than an IBM-Sun deal would have, particularly as it does not raise the issues regarding consolidation in the server and storage markets that would have been problematic for a deal with IBM,” the research note said.
Thomas Morgan of the George Washington University Law School pointed to the U.S. Justice Department’s unsuccessful challenge to Oracle’s purchase of software rival PeopleSoft in 2004 as a reason that regulators would be unlikely to oppose this less controversial deal.
“On that precedent, the acquisition of a hardware company is likely to be even less of a problem,” he said. “It looks like the kind of thing that is likely to go through.”
But Morgan also raised the possibility that President Barack Obama’s administration might use the case to prove its determination to be a tougher antitrust enforcer than the Bush administration was.
“This case is likely to be a test at least of the early attitude of the Obama administration,” said Morgan. “One might expect to see, or one might watch to see, if this is a place that the new Justice Department leadership would choose to at least try their stuff.”
The deal would make Oracle the world’s fourth-largest maker of servers, with the No. 2 slot in the high-end of the market, which was worth about $17 billion last year. Oracle is already the world’s No 2 maker of business software after IBM.
The U.S. Senate on Monday evening approved the nomination of former Federal Trade Commission member Christine Varney to head the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
Source: Reuters
I was doing some quick checking around for some information on charlieplexing (I needed a definition and as usual the last place I looked was of course on Wikipedia D’oH!) Anyway in my travels, I came across this…
 A Charplex Applet by Alexander Brevig http://hosting.alexanderbrevig.com/arduino/help/charlieplex
Thank you Alexander Brevig
 It looks like those confused by the multitude of Intel processors out there needn’t linger in indecision any longer, as Intel itself has now come up with a new scheme that it hopes will help simplify the buying process significantly. As you can see above, that consists of a new rating system that gives processors between one and five stars, which Intel says indicates “relative performance, not a price-performance type of thing.” As you might expect, the five-star rating is reserved for the like of the Core i7 and Core i7 Extreme, with the one-star ranks apparently occupied solely by various Celeron processors — the Atom, it seems, is in a class all its own. Somewhat less notably, Intel has also taken the opportunity to roll out some spruced processor logos, which should already be showingi themselves in stores along with displays featuring the new star rating system.
 As expected, Intel’s finally pulled the covers off of two new Atom chips.
Joining the Intel Atom’s first birthday party are two new family members: the Z550 at 2 GHz and the Z515 at 1.2 GHz.
The Z550 is the fastest Atom yet, thanks to its clock speed. Feature-wise, it’s the same as the rest of Atom family with Hyper-threading being the main trick along with the thrifty under-3-watt power envelope.
The Z515, while slower at a top speed of 1.2 GHz, is a little more clever with the new Intel Burst Performance Technology which will run the chip at slower speeds (with lessened power demands) until the demand is there for full throttle.
Intel didn’t immediately reveal pricing for either chip, but expect the Z550 to be in the more expensive netbooks and nettops, while the Z515 will likely only be found in smaller mobile Internet devices.
 Without a doubt, the current economic climate causing the consumer confidence falling and jobless rates have been rising and the GDP falling faster than it did during 1982 recession, the mood that many of us feel is that thing are not going to turn quickly, or anytime soon. However, there are some economists, market observers and historians that are busy pointing out that there are opportunities to be made in the fallow ground for that make for a fertile field for innovation and invention.
In the 80s and during the recessions in the past, even though we suffered from the effects of the period, we also saw pronounced periods where technology and innovation. In fact, inventors and innovative entrepreneurs should be smiling. That timeworn proverb about “an ill wind that blows no good” truly applies in an economic downturn. No doubt, in garages across the country, innovators are hard at work and electronics hobbyist and dabblers are busy over their soldering irons as opportunity bangs on the doors. But it is a very different call that they will be answering, and to take up the opportunity, we need to step back and take a hard look at the current environment.
The companies are all desperate for great ideas to boost their bottom lines, but they are most interested in products that can rapidly and inexpensively dovetail into their current manufacturing patterns and existing plant and equipment. This is not the time for major capital investment, retooling and expansion. They also seek products that will easily sell in cash poor (or at the very least lessened and conservative) developed markets. No, there is no surplus cash for huge promotions and ad campaigns. We will see a trend by these companies to use marketing techniques that only cost should leads and sales arise, and will try and spend less accordingly.
The buyers’ needs and priorities have changed in a very marked way, as well. Household budgets are tightening and people are looking for cost-cutting innovations and affordable escapes or distractions from their own private depression. Gone are the investments in large ticket items, the family car will have to last a few more years, the new house and associated mortgage put on hold. We will see a noted domestic trend toward Internet shopping. In times like this, the family is more likely to gather around clever board games and inexpensive video games, and the manufacturers will need to realise that these much cheaper alternatives will supplant high-cost entertainment systems. Companies such as Sony and Microsoft may see that the return on the lost cost of manufacture of the PlayStation and the Xbox may take a little while longer.
Let us hope that like the trends of the past, economy-altering and enduring innovations will emerged from the workbenches of small business entrepreneurs and independent inventors rather than from huge bloated R&D budgets which have been the trend for the past decade. In good times and bad, the independent innovator and small business entrepreneurs and I for one hope that they’ll do it again.
 The FTDI FT232RL SMD package Lets look at the FTDI series of components for USB Interfacing. The CP210X devices are perfect for generalpurpose USB to RS-232 conversions. When it comes to the Arduino, AVR and PIC hardware platforms, the FTDI FT232R USB UART IC is a better fit. Like the Silicon Laboratories USB interface ICs, the FT232R is a single chip solution that encapsulates the USB protocol. The main feature of the FT232R is that it integrates the USB termination resistors, the clock, the crystal, and configuration EEPROM all into one convient package. It can support data rates between 300 bps and 3 Mbps, internally, there is an internal 256 byte receive buffer and 128 byte transmit buffer to ensure that the flow of data remains uninterrupted. The FT232R is also considered a “drop-in” replacement for the industry standard RS-232 conversion ICs and is suitable for use with the RS-232, RS-485, and RS-422 protocols.
Continue reading USB INTERFACE ICs, The FTDI FT232R
My sensibilities are somewhat shaken by the fact that the church is right now saying that Condoms are causing the spread of Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs—such as gonorrhea, syphilis, and HIV), and that the only solution lies in abstinence and monogamy. This is very disturbing, and human nature as it is means that there will be sex, and there will be relations outside of the marriage. I find it interesting that there are elements within the Church that used to debate the use of condoms to combat STDs. To date, it is not specifically addressed by Catholic doctrine, and is currently a topic of debate among theologians and high-ranking Catholic authorities. A few, such as Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels, believe the Catholic Church should actively support condoms used to prevent disease, especially serious diseases such as AIDS. However, to date statements from the Vatican have argued that condom-promotion programs encourage promiscuity, thereby actually increasing STD transmission. Now however, the Pope on Tuesday he told reporters accompanying him on his trip to Africa that Aids “is a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, and that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”.
It is however refreshing to see that the Vatican has backed down on this stance on the Pope’s rejection of condoms as a means of preventing Aids. Is this a very rare admission of papal fallibility? In any case I feel the Church’s influence over social and religious opinion and morality will assist in at least lessening its condemnation on the use of contraception (condoms) as a way of preventing and lessening the spread of STDs and especially HIV and AIDs.
Original TimeOnLine Article Here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5934912.ece
 The Magsafe(tm) power connector from Apple is a wonderful idea. It was introduced in conjunction with the MacBook Pro at the Macworld Expo in 2006. The MagSafe connector is held in place magnetically. As a result, if it is tugged on—for instance, by someone tripping over the cord—it comes out of the socket safely, without damaging it or the computer or pulling the computer off its table or desk.
However, if your Magsafe(tm) power pack dies, you are left with no option but to either search eBay for a second-hand functional unit, order a replacement from Apple, or use a universal power supply. Unfortunately, most of these power supplies use a variety of solutions that as sometime less than ideal. Sometimes the bulky nature of the adapter/socket assembly causes the connectors to fall out, causing you to leave in the morning with a flat battery. And other times, they just seem ugly and less than ideal.
So to solve this, Mooner, DIYed the cable from his defective power supply and connected to a Kensington universal power supply… Have a look at his work, I admire the quality in which it is executed.
Link: http://www.timesight.com/KensingtonMagSafe.html
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