Imagine you have two pieces of a magnetic latch and switch sensor in a three-pin package. What do you get when you combine the two devices into one? Indeed, a dual magnetic latch and switch sensor in a four-pin package. This doesn’t sound very exciting, but what if we tell you that the device we are talking about actually combines two separate silicon dies into one package? Still not impressed? Well, according to the manufacturer of these new devices, you should.

We are pleased to let you know that the Elektor Store now has the 13th edition of the ever popular Linear Audio series now available for your enjoyment. This issue boasts the usual format of a series of bookzines dedicated to technical and audio perception. 

Measuring current with an oscilloscope is difficult because the common of the oscilloscope’s input is internally connected to the protective earth of the mains voltage. Current clamps can measure the current without potential, but are slow and usually do not have an output to connect to an oscilloscope. Current clamps for oscilloscopes exist, of course, but are expensive. The circuit presented here shows that a potential-free current measurement can be realized with relatively few but high-quality components.

New for Microchip’s well established 32-bit PIC32 microcontroller range are a high-resolution 2D graphics controller and 32 Mbyte of SDRAM. The GPU is aimed at developers of embedded products wanting high-quality images and animations on displays up to 12 inch. Up to 24-bit colour is available in multiple input and output formats – with a global colour palette lookup table (CLUT) supporting 256 colours built in. Three independent composition layers are available, and there is an integrated DMA controller to offload the CPU for clipping, rotation (90°, 180°, 270°) and transparency.

Volvo (“made by Sweden”) is forming a new joint partnership with Autoliv, called Zenuity, with a focus on developing self-driving automotive software. The plan is to eventually get to the point where they can field self-driving cars for sale, based on Nvidia’s Drive PX in-car AI computing platform, by the not-so-distant target year of 2021. Nvidia’s Drive PX is already being used to power self-driving vehicles in road testing today, including Nvidia’s own demo vehicles. Volvo and Autoliv’s Zenuity will use Nvidia’s AI car compute groundwork as the basis for their own software development, with the hopes of speeding up the development progress of Volvo’s commercially-targeted autonomous vehicles.

The printed circuit board (PCB) pooling service from Eurocircuits is supported by a set of online tools that give the user more control over and a better visibility of what exactly will be manufactured and how. The use of these tools is free and does not require placing any orders, and as such they are great for improving a PCB design before deciding to get it manufactured. One of these tools is the Panel Editor, a tool to design, ehm, panels.

After the waves made in the wireless world by the ESP8266, we can now expect a tsunami caused by its big brother, the ESP32. Along with a dual-core processor, it has onboard Bluetooth, more RAM, and IO extensions. The ESP32 can be programmed with the Arduino IDE. Later this year, Elektor Magazine will also write about the native development tool IDF. For the time being and for you, Elektor soldered the castellated/edge-plated ESP32 module on a breakout-board which easily fits in all your experiments on breadboards and elsewhere.

To fly is a wonderful thing and humanity has always gazed skyward with an envious eye at birds that soar effortlessly through the heavens. Greek mythology identified Icarus as an early casualty, more recently Otto Lilienthal made fantastic hang glider designs in the late nineteenth century and where would we be without the contribution by the Wright brothers? Over the years there have been many attempts to make a vehicle that you can drive on land and also in the air. Now the wait is over…

Researchers at Queen's University's school of Mathematics and Physics in Belfast together with Stanford University, the University of California, California State University and the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan have succeeded in developing new, dynamic hybrid materials that not only conduct electricity at unprecedented speeds, but are light and durable and can be easily produced in large conventional semiconductor plants...

At the end of last year the feud that has for so long split Arduino asunder seemed to have been resolved. Massimo Banzi announced at the World Maker Faire New York that a single united IDE is being created in a nonprofit foundation. He went on to say “The Arduino Foundation will allow us to champion the core values of the Arduino Community within the open source ecosystem and make our commitment to open source stronger than ever.” It also has a manifesto (in PDF) outlining many beautiful ideas and goals for the foundation. There are also some troubling undercurrents...