André-Marie Ampère Never Went to School - a Short Biography

The SmartScope is an especially handy and affordable USB oscilloscope, logic analyzer and signal generator. Internally the SmartScope is built around a powerful Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA, which also makes it suitable for use as an FPGA development platform. Elektor is now offering the unique SmartScope Maker Kit, which includes a special version of the SmartScope and two programmers with suitable cables.

The Chinese company Seeed Studio offers a lot of interesting things for electronics enthusiasts. Along with selling products from various manufacturers, Seeed develops and produces their own products, many of which are very innovative. Seeed has also developed their own miniature soldering iron, which is now available in a European version.

The XDS series oscilloscopes from the Chinese brand OWON has a number of features that you do not (yet) find on comparable models from other brands, and all that for a very sharp pricing. In this review I take a closer look at the affordable 4-channel XDS3064E, which has a whole lot to offer for less than 400 euros.

Pixy2 is an artificial vision sensor for rapid recognition of moving shapes and colours. It follows objects at a rate of 60 images per second and has algorithms for recognition of shapes and colours. To better follow moving objects, it may be mounted (as an option) on a pan-tilt support, and control the vertical and horizontal movements itself.

From your lab power supply, you look for power, infallible reliablility and stability of a gazlillionth of a volt. Hence the reticence towards anything in this area that is not a-na-lo-gue… Now the Siglent SPD3000X programmable power supply is, rightly, striking for its TFT liquid crystal screen. Since this one displays essential parameters and voltage waveforms in real time, does that carry enough weight to sway the opinion of old greybeards?

This Arduino project, described in the November & December 2017 issue of Elektor is both useful and original in many respects. It is notable for the use of a component a bit out of the ordinary: a load cell. For electronics purposes, this is a simple variable resistance which measures the mechanical deformation to which it is subjected.

According to an old saying in my country, ‘he who can distinguish good advice from bad does not need advice from anyone’. If this is true, we probably would no longer need YouTube. Do you go to YouTube to help choose tools for your electronics lab? I have thought for a long time that some comparative reviews which one finds there, like those for two soldering irons, could be useful, as long as you are focussed and critical. But I’ve ended up doubting that.

This is a submission from Microchip Technology Inc. on production-ready open source tools for managing its Adaptec® Smart Storage HBA, SmartHBA and SmartRAID offerings in OpenStack data centers.

This is a submission from Mouser Electronics on superior encoder technology. Rotary encoders have a critical role to play in modern motion control systems, allowing rotational movement to be tracked in real time, which enables accurate feedback data to be acquired that will ensure optimal long-term performance. Covering a broad and varied array of prospective applications, these items are now finding their way into numerous different systems – including industrial drives, factory automation equipment, robotics, etc.

This is a submission from Rutronik on the Panasonic HCI (Host Controlled Interface) Bluetooth RF module PAN1326C2. It's based on Texas Instruments’ CC2564C dual-mode Bluetooth controller that combines Bluetooth Basic Rate (BR), Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) and Low Energy (LE). The module supports up to ten BLE connections at the same time - thanks to independent buffering for LE without affecting the BR or EDR performance.

This is a submission from Rutronik on their global distribution agreement with Laser Components GmbH. Laser Components’ product range includes photodiodes, IR components, lasers, laser modules, fiber optics, and optical components. These products are used in a wide variety of industrial applications, primarily for positioning and marking in the medical, industrial, and laser systems sectors.