Cheap semiconductor spectrometer has high-end performance

Velleman's CS400 is the flagship model in their range of four metal detectors. When I got the chance to try out, I didn’t think twice - after all, I live quite close to where there are the ruins of an old castle, an ideal hunting ground for buried treasure — or so I thought...

The free LTspice electronic circuit simulator has become the simulator-of-choice for thousands of electronics engineers all over the world. To get the most out of this tool a good manual explaining all the menus and functions will save the user a lot of time and lead to better results.

If only we could say that "No StromPi 3 was harmed during the making of this review“ we would be happy, but unfortunately it didn't work out that way. Power supply HATs for the Raspberry Pi are nothing new and some may even question why we are reviewing a new version of the StromPi and not a PiJuice or Pi UPS + HAT? To answer that question, this review looks into what the latest version of the StromPi brings to the table and shows how we can use it...

An honorary mention has been awarded to Cocktail Joe, an affable robotic barman with a light show, at the electronica Fast Forward contest. All through 2018, startup enterprises created by brilliant electronic engineers, have strived in the hope of winning their share of a €150,000 total prize pool. Congratulations to all the finalists, whom you can see in this video of the awards ceremony at Munich.

In an interview with Jan Buiting, Eben Upton explains: “If you can make a device that will withstand a child’s bedroom, it will certainly withstand a factory!” […]. When those who have bought their first RPi for their own edification, at home, then taking it into their professional lives, they have to explain to their colleagues that this board, seen as a toy, is more reliable than a lot of devices that claim to be industrial.”

Elektor LABS proudly present a kit to help you assemble your VFD-tube Clock from the article published half a year ago. You’ll build it within about 4 hours, pre-cut acrylic sheet case included, using normal soldering tools and any computer with Arduino IDE. To keep the time synchronised our new VFD-tube clock employs an NTP server. Besides time, it also displays date and temperature in several display formats. Various sensors are supported. The RGB background lighting is user configurable (with a wireless Android app).

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.

Microchip announces a new family of single-chip maXTouch® touchscreen controllers designed to address challenges in the design of modern automotive capacitive touch systems with screens up to 20 inches in size.

Microchip, via its Microsemi Corporation subsidiary, announces an extension to its Mi-V ecosystem by unveiling the architecture for a new class of SoC FPGAs at the RISC-V Summit, Dec. 4 to 5, 2018. The new family combines the industry’s lowest power mid-range PolarFire™ FPGA family with a complete microprocessor subsystem based on the open, royalty-free RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture (ISA).

Delicacies from Our Man in Munich: electronica 2018 Review. electronica Fast forward powered by Elektor Winners: Teiimo, Wizama and Querom. NXP Cup 2019 BMW Group most popular employer in the automotive industry

Microchip announces a highly integrated LoRa® System-in-Package (SiP) family with an ultra-low-power 32-bit microcontroller (MCU), sub-GHz RF LoRa transceiver and software stack. The combination of long-range wireless connectivity with low-power performance is designed to accelerate the development of LoRa-based connected solutions.