The graphical programming environment LabVIEW (LV) made its first appearance in 1986. Since then it has grown and evolved in a de facto industry standard for data acquisition, instrument control, and industrial automation applications without ever really changing its appearance. Now, 31 years later, National Instruments (NI), the publisher of the tool, has decided that the time has come to shift gears by introducing the all new LabVIEW NXG.

This timelapsed video shows you how easily the Arduino Tinkerkit* Braccio Robotic Arm kit can be assembled. While manipulating the different parts and screwing it together, you will learn a lot about how it actually works. The assembly is real fun, and thanks to the Arduino test sketch found in the examples, aligning the servomotors is a piece of cake too. Soon you’ll be familiar with the arm itself and learn how to control its movements through your smartphone.

Even though computers are still getting faster and faster every day, they just can’t keep up with the enormous amounts of data that we produce. The reason for this is that these computers are still based on an architecture that was developed some sixty years ago. In this architecture the processor is the central piece, memory comes second. To solve this problem researchers are working on a new computing paradigm called Memory Driven Computing.

Remarkably, the ERASynth from ERA Instruments uses a multi-loop PLL architecture to provide continuous frequency coverage from 250 kHz to 15 GHz in 1 Hz steps. That’s in contrast with single-loop fractional PLLs with integrated VCOs which, although great for generating RF signals with fine frequency resolution, are often plagued by high phase noise floors and an undergrowth of spurious artifacts. ERAsynth is an open source, crowd-funded project — now available on Crowd Supply — aiming to make multi-GHz RF signal synthesis accessible to everyone.

A powerful network of radio telescopes, spread around our planet, attempts for the first time to create an image of a black hole. Black holes are intangible gravitational ‘vanishing holes’, the existence if which was already predicted in 1915 by Albert Einstein. The South Pole Telescope of the University of Chicago is part of this Event Horizon Telescope, in which eight observatories, spread across six widely dispersed locations, together form a single virtual telescope, which is so powerful (has sufficiently great resolving power) that it could detect a penny on the surface of the moon...

In modern information technology there is a clear task separation between the light particles (photons) that are used to carry data quickly and reliably across large distances, and the electrons, which in computer chips take care of the data processing. That we don't use photons for data processing is (among other things) because they are not as easily controlled as electrons. Because photons don't have an electric charge they cannot be controlled using electric or magnetic fields…

Modern cars are packed from front to back with 'clever' chips; the software that is stored in them provides a large part of the functionality that the driving of a car requires (engine management, navigation, entertainment - just to give a few examples). And the end of this development is not in sight. For example, in 2018 all newly manufactured cars in Europe have to be 'connected'…

Here are some new integrated circuit transducers for AC and DC isolated current measurement up to 300 KHz that offer full isolation, despite their small size, by integrating the primary conductor for nominal current measurements of up to 30 A. The transducers are mounted directly onto a printed circuit board as SO8 or SO16 SMT devices and support overload currents up to 200 A peak for short durations.

Microchip is reaching out to Apple users with their Wi-Fi Software Development Kit (SDK). The SDK supports the Apple HomeKit platform which is known for the ease with which Apple MFi licensees can create fast, cryptography-enabled low-power designs. The new Wi-Fi SDK combines hardware cryptography suites within the CEC1702 system chip and associated protocols. In terms of hardware, the system consists mainly of an ARM Cortex-M4-based micro interfaced to the well-established WINC1510 low-power 802.11 b/g/n certified Wi-Fi module.

Is it over yet? Last weekend, the big story was of course the Ransomware attack that succeeded in infecting, encrypting and crippling around 250,000 PCs worldwide. There was hardly a newspaper or magazine that didn’t run the story but what impact did the attack make in the world of electronics?