Electro-ramblings

Generally I am amazed at how good stuff is.

For example, this weekend I spent a couple of hours fixing up a friend's cheap bicycle. It must have cost under £200, had been left out in the rain, and wasn't working too well. With a few careful squirts of oil, and a bit of spanner work, it was a proper bike.

Not a thoroughbred, but a vastly better bike than one you would have bought 20 years ago for a similar inflation-adjusted sum.

The latest Q5 interview is with Lumileds Luxeon product manager Sudhir Subramanya.

He talks about the future of LED packaging at Philips Lumileds design, including thermal conductivity, Luxeon V LEDs, and hex footprints.

The five short sharp questions this week are:

* Seoul Semiconductor has recently announced the P7, a large surface mount package with a lot of power handling. Does Lumileds have intellectual property that would allow it to match this package in thermal conductivity?

* You have the Luxeon V, Osram its Ostars, and Seoul its P7 - all multi-die packages. Do multi-die packages have a long term future or will single die packages replace them?

I once saw an artic fox in Norway.

The beautiful fluffy white creature trotted up and sat down only a few metres away, not at all fussed by a couple of cyclists sitting eating sandwiches.

Only I didn't get a photo because my camera had run out of film.

So when I bought a digital camera, I bought one that took easily available AA cells so that I could not run out of film or batteries.

And that worked well for a long time, until I wanted a camera with more than a 3x zoom.

The latest Q5 interview is with Mike Lloyd is managing director of Wiltshire-based design services company ML Electronics.

He reveals his thoughts on UK design houses, lower-cost rivals from China and India, and the possible impact of mixed-signal arrays.

The five short sharp questions this week are:

* Describe the role of a design house operating in the UK in 2008?

* Do you see a threat from lower cost centres for design in China and India and how can you meet the challenge?

Given the problem:

How do you pump water into a boiler using only steam pressure from that boiler?

I would come up with some sort of piston-based steam engine connected to a piston-based water pump.

Which identifies me as a thermodynamic dunce - as a much cleverer no-moving-parts answer was invented 150 years ago; which I came across in a book on steam engine technology.

Basic thermodynamic theory flourished in the mid-19th century, which puzzled me until Richard Wilson, editor of Electronics Weekly, explained it thus: "Because they had big brains and nothing else to think about."

• Null-Hypothesis
  An interesting site - Null Hypothesis, dubbed the journal of "Unlikely science". A complement to our own Engineer in Wonderland, perhaps.. It was a work related email, believe it or not, that lead me to the strange profession of frog-licking...
  (tags: Null Hypothesis, Unlikely science)

The latest Q5 interview is with Glenn Palmer, managing director of component manufacturer Murata Electronics UK.

He reveals his thoughts on changes in chip capacitor technology, whether high density power supplies will require new types of high reliability components, and the prospects for new dielectric materials.

The five short sharp questions this week are:

* What is the biggest change in chip capacitor technology in the last few years?

* Are we likely to see any new dielectric materials which will improve CV metric without comprising temperature stability?

Catch up on all the significant news from the Embedded Systems Conference, Silicon Valley 2008, with ARM, Freescale, Xilinx and Microchip Technology leading the way. Read the rolling Electronics Weekly roundup.

As usual, we've created a user-friendly URL - bookmark www.electronicsweekly.com/esc

Stories to note include:

* Controller chip boosts E Ink displays

* MIPS tool finds code hot spots

There are times when you read an article and realise the author has got right down to the bottom of the subject.

One such encyclopaedic treatise I came across a few years ago was a Linear Technology application note: 'Ultracompact LCD Backlight Inverters - A Svelte Beast Cuts High Voltage Down to Size' by Jim Williams.

I had never even heard of piezoelectric transformers when I started reading it, but by the end I could see their potential and knew exactly how I would try driving one if I ever had to feed a compact fluorescent lamp.

Jim Williams seems to have a knack of writing thorough applications notes - which I first came across in an old lab copy of a Linear Tech app note book.

The latest Q5 interview is with Joe Matano, managing director of specialist power system distributor UR Group.

He reveals his thoughts on engineers changing their approach to power system design, the state of the UK electronics manufacturing industry, the impact of EuP and the two biggest technology opportunities in the UK.

The five short sharp questions this week are:

* How would you describe UR's business and its plans for 2008?

* How are engineers changing their approach to power system design?

In an increasingly busy and time-poor world, it is almost impossible to imagine our daily lives without the use of wireless communications.

To help guide you through the mist of wireless network information, we have broken down the best of our coverage into bite-sized, manageable morsels for you to digest at your leisure - namely, an easy to use (but still quite comprehensive) A to Z guide of wireless communications. Of course, feel free to read more about wireless networks, with the link provided to Wireless networks: Your Electronics Weekly guide.

Without further ado, allow us to present the A to Z of wireless communications. There's no need to thank us. Enjoy.

Just to let you know that the fifth installment of Warren Savage's monthly column on Semiconductor IP is already live on the site - Warren Savage On: Gumming Up the Works?

Unprecedented levels of IP reuse. Record levels of patent applications. Patent trolls... On the face of it, he believes, we are facing a potential "perfect storm" to disrupt the semiconductor industry...

He begins:

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers", William Shakespeare so famously wrote in Henry VI. Out of context and perhaps a bit rash, but a key topic in last week's IP Symposium revolved around the question of whether legal reform is necessary as more and more intellectual property is transacted in our global economy.

On the face of it, we are witnessing a confluence of factors that create the quintessential perfect storm to disrupt the semiconductor industry:

Years of experience, and quite probably many tragedies, have made the UK wiring regulations what they are - good, sensible rules - albeit written in a somewhat impenetrable form.

For all the right reasons, no power sockets or wall-mounted switches are allowed in bathrooms, and light fittings near the bath, shower and hand basin must be special water resisting types.

However, what I find a little nuts is that there seem to be no special rules for the room immediately under the bathroom - normally the kitchen.

The latest Q5 interview is with Graham Martin, chairman of the EnOcean Alliance, which promotes self-powered wireless monitoring and control systems for sustainable buildings.

He reveals his thoughts on the need for a low-power altrernative to ZigBee comms, the 'green credentals' of the Alliance, and a domestic retrofit market for EnOcean-enabled products.

The five short sharp questions this week are:

* ZigBee exists. Why does anyone need another low-power wireless building control technology?

* Are EnOcean's wireless links related to ZigBee in any way?

Not long ago I was finishing off rewiring a kit car.

It is a DRK. Not this one but one very similar.

The job started when the original Renault 4 wiring loom melted following a fault in the headlight.
Not all circuits in the original car have fuses - thank you Mr Renault.

Days of work added fuses to every circuit, removed metres of spare wire and other junk from the loom, and allowed the owner to rearrange the dash - dumping the awful original instrument cluster in the process.

Upside down under the dashboard it was the usual delightful battle with bits of wire, crimping tools, pliers, and other odds and sods.

Check out a new feature newly loaded online at ElectronicsWeekly.com - Embedded technology: designers choose from the latest fabrics

As serial-fabric technologies become the limiting factor to system performance, he believes, designers will head to the laboratory and come through with the next-generation high-speed data-delivery system...

Among the points covered by the in-depth article are:

* Low-voltage swings and point-to-point transmission paths allow serial switched-fabric systems to extend data rates into the multi gigabit range.
* Switched-fabric architectures can adapt to system failures by routing data around defective paths or processing modules while repairs are made.
* Multiple serial-fabric communications options in board-level specifications may lead to industry fragmentation and product-interoperability issues.

Like many people last year, I had a slug infestation.

Now, I claim not to be a cruel person, but the little buggers were eating just about everything in the garden and I wanted them dead.

As I am not keen on the lingering death induced by slug pellets, or their effect on the food chain, an electronic slug-o-cutor had to be the answer.

I couldn't buy one, so one had to be invented.

At this point, don't get too excited, because I never did build anything for it seems that digging over most of the plot in preparation for laying a lawn also kills slugs.

But I enjoyed the design challenge, and this was my thinking.