Fast Forward Award 2018 at electronica: The Prize Ceremony!

Need a PCB design solution? Elektor PCB Service, in cooperation with Eurocircuits, offers an affordable, user-friendly option for anyone who needs PCBs in small and medium quantities.

The objective of the PaPiRus ePaper Screen HAT for Raspberry Pi is to make ePaper technology available to anyone, which is why it is a fully open source product with schematics and source code at GitHub. Besides the ePaper display, the HAT also has four pushbuttons, a real-time clock (RTC) and a temperature sensor.

A few years ago we placed a review about the Siglent SDS1102X and back then we were very enamoured by the quality and extensive capabilities of this affordable instrument. In the meantime there have appeared a few successors in this series of mid-range oscilloscopes by Siglent and here we're looking at a somewhat more expensive, four-channel model that has been available since the beginning of 2018: the SDS1204X-E, which is provided with two A/D converters with a speed of 1 GSamples/s.

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.

DJs and fans of light shows are devotees of USB/DMX512 converters to control their projectors from their laptop PCs. Unfortunately, those found in the commercial world are often not (well) isolated from the mains voltage. Here, on the other hand, an isolated DC/DC converter powers the isolated RS 485 transceiver. Like any DMX device worth of the name, this new converter has an XLR socket.

Not always the case, but here’s a video of unpacking and assembly that’s nice and easy. No fiddly SMD soldering. Everything is shown with the rhythm of an electronicist who gets his kicks with good old fashioned through-hole components. This kit is a dual-purpose pocket test equipment, an affordable frequency counter (1 Hz à 50 MHz) and crystal tester. It has five standard 7-segment displays. Look at the measuring range: 1 Hz to 50 MHz. Especially for this price!

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?

Competition in the e-mobility (electro-mobility) solutions market is heating up. Meshcrafts CEO/Co-Founder Paal Christian Myhre believes e-mobility is the future of public and private transportation. He talks about the future of the industry as well his company's innovative products.

The drone and autonomous robot industry is rapidly growing. Kevin Sartori talks about Auterion’s mission to extend the reach of open-source technologies to meet enterprise-grade requirements of companies in the commercial drone space.

Designers around the globe are constantly seeking affordable, easy-to-use rapid prototyping and electronics manufacturing solutions. Felix Plitzko (CEO and Co-Founder, AISLER) talks about his mission to bring next-generation professional electronics manufacturing services to designers in Europe and beyond. 

What makes the difference - The secret of swissbits product optimization