Nuts and Volts - May/June 2018

4 May/June 2018

10 TechKnowledgey 2018

Events, Advances, and News

Read about these cool topics: • Fusion is Coming! Again!

• MEMS + Lens = Compact LIDAR • HPC from Lenovo • Pick a New Berry • Io T-on-a-Chip Introduced • Pop a Pic • 3D Breakthrough?

• Number One Again

14 Q&A

Reader Questions Answered Here

Topics discussed this time: • Moisture Monitor • IDE Madness • Lever Up with Steppers

18 The Ham’s Wireless Workbench

Practical Technology from the Ham World

Antenna Supports: What You Need to Know Aloft

For short-range and in-the-home wireless, you don’t need much more antenna than what is supplied with your router, dongle, or laptop. Handheld FRS (Family Radio Service) radios are great for inside a warehouse or around a campus. Once you start thinking about a longer link, you’ll need outdoor antennas and something to put them on. The goal of this column is to give you an idea of what options you have and point you to resources where you can learn the details of doing things right. Along the way, you’ll be introduced to some terms and techniques to help get you started.

70 The Design Cycle

Advanced Techniques for Design Engineers

EasyPIC Fusion v7 Development Board Really Clicks with Cellular IoT

Thanks to MikroElektronika, cellular Io T is within your budget. In this installment of Design Cycle, we’ll explore sending SMS messages using some cheap embedded cellular equipment and some just as cheap cellular service.

76 Near Space

Approaching the Final Frontier

Raspberry Pi Zero Flight Computer

People write a lot about the Raspberry Pi single board computer (SBC) and the Arduino microcontrollers. I’m a BASIC Stamp and PICAXE man myself but thought it might be fun to expand a little bit after all that I’ve read. I experienced several difficult days going from programming a PICAXE to programming a Pi. After a lot of hair pulling and head banging, I’m quite happy with my progress. Now, I can’t wait to send a Pi into near space.

80 The Spin Zone

Adventures in Propeller Programming

Programming in the Real World

It's a fair understatement to suggest that the Propeller is a different beast from other popular microcontrollers. In lieu of specialty hardware modules like UARTs, etc., the Propeller has eight processors (called cogs) that can be used to synthesize peripherals as needed. That said, the Propeller isn't completely devoid of extra hardware; each processor has two general-purpose counter/timers, as well as a shift-register intended to facilitate video output (though clever coders have used it for myriad other things). My focus this time is on the counters, and how their flexibility helped me knock out a critical application for fixing a lighting element in a superhero costume in very little time.

85 Open Communication

The Latest in Networking and Wireless Technologies

Seven Common Ways to Generate a Sine Wave The sine wave is a naturally occurring signal shape in communications and other electronic applications.

Many electronic products use signals of the sine wave form.

Audio, radio, and power equipment usually generates or processes sine waves. As it turns out, there are literally dozens of ways to generate a sine wave. This article presents some popular methods you should be familiar with.