contents

electronics for you Plus | January 2015 | Vol. 3 No. 9

Buyers’ Guide

Technology Focus

Is Application Knowledge Enough to Buy the Right Programmable Power Supply

Internet of Things and Big Data: Predict and Change The Future

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Futuristic

Blue Brain: World’s First Virtual Brain

Do-IT-Yourself

Lighting

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Embedded

68 71

Internet of Things, Made in India

Today’s M2M Solutions Accelerate Your IoT Design’s Time-to-Market

Security

Towards an Extra Layer of Security: Two-Factor Authentication (Part 1 of 3)

Test & Measurement

Handheld Test And Measurement Devices Growing to The Standards of Benchtops

Exclusive : IBH Books & Magazines Distributors Ltd Newsstand Unit No.10, Bezzola Complex , Distributor Opp. Suman Nagar, Sion Trombay Road, Chembur, Mumbai 400 071 Phone: 022-40497401/02 Advertisements new delhi : Ph: 011-26810601 or 02 or 03 (Head Office) E-mail: [email protected] Mumbai : Ph: 022-24950047, 24928520 E-mail: [email protected]

Broadband Internet Access Using ADSL

Innovation

ALPS: Bridging AcademiaIndustry Gap

Interview

“If you have pervasive wireless charging, you will want to optimise for high-rate designs...”— Stuart

next issue

hyderabad : Ph: 040-67172633 E-mail: [email protected]

• Wireless Gesture-Controlled Robot.....................84

china : Power Pioneer Group Inc. Ph: (86 755) 83729797, (86) 13923802595 E-mail: [email protected]

• Current-Control Circuit for LED Lighting..............88

JAPAN : Tandem Inc., Ph: 81-3-3541-4166 E-mail: [email protected]

• Crystal-Locked Medium-Wave Transmitter..........90 • Low-Cost 6-Bit DAC.............................................92 • Illuminated Optical Magnifier................................94 • Capturing Images with USB Camera, Wi-Fi and Raspberry Pi........................................96

• Process Monitor.................................................106

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Interview

“Indian automotive engineers are gaining significant ground...”

— Natarajan M.M., VP, Arrow South Asia

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EFY Plus DVD

This Month’s DVD Contents

Buyers’ Guide

Selecting 3D Television Made Easy

114 Make In India

Market Survey: LED Market Could Grow Manifold in Next 15 Years

• 3D Printing • Coil Wound Components • Handheld T&M Equipment For Field Engineers

January 2015 | Electronics For You plus

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Telecom

Lipoff, IEEE fellow

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Back issues, : Kits‘n’Spares, New Delhi books, CDs, Phone: 011-26371661, 26371662 PCBs etc. E-mail: [email protected]

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• Live-Colour Detection Using MATLAB...............102

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Physics Nobel Prize 2014 for LEDs as Future Lighting Devices

Tech Focus

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Editorial : Editorial Secretary correspondence Phone: 011-26810601; E-mail: [email protected] (Technical queries: [email protected])

Bengaluru : Ph: 080-25260394, 25260023 E-mail: [email protected]

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Editor : Ramesh Chopra

singapore : Publicitas Singapore Pte Ltd Ph: +65-6836 2272 E-mail: [email protected] taiwan : J.K. Media, Ph: 886-2-87726780 ext. 10 E-mail: [email protected] United States : E & Tech Media Ph: +1 860 536 6677 E-mail: [email protected] Printed, published and owned by Ramesh Chopra. Printed at Nutech Photolithographers, B-38, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-1, New Delhi, on the first day of each month and published from D-87/1, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-1, New Delhi 110020. Copyright 2015. All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction of any material from this magazine in any manner without the written permission of the publisher is prohibited. Although every effort is made to ensure accuracy, no responsibility whatsoever is taken for any loss due to publishing errors. Articles that cannot be used are returned to the authors if accompanied by a self-addressed and sufficiently stamped envelope. But no responsibility is taken for any loss or delay in returning the material. EFY will not be responsible for any wrong claims made by an advertiser. Disputes, if any, will be settled in a New Delhi court only.

EFY Plus DVD Electronic Design Automation Using Altium Designer 15 I Create PostScript And Netlist Using XCircuit

III

Multi-Level Neuronal Simulation Using iqr

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Regulars 08 Feedback 10 Qs&As 12 Useful Websites 14 Technology News 80 First Look 110 Industry News 120 New Products 125 Business Pages Ads 139 Electronics Mart Ads 146 Product Categories Index 147 Advertisers’ Index www.efymag.com

FEEDBACK Sports Electronics I am an eighth-grade student who finds Electronics For You interesting and joyful to read. I often refer to my uncle’s copy for updating myself about current technology trends. However, most magazines cover articles on technology in the fields of medicine, education and agriculture only, and rarely on sports. I would really like to read a story on the contribution of technology to sports and request EFY team to publish the same in one of the forthcoming issues of EFY. Dishita Through e-mail EFY. It is a brilliant idea! We need to cover the role of electronics in sports too. We will try and publish stories on related topics as soon as possible.

EFY App in Android First, I would like to thank EFY customer support team. They replied to my query within three days. Second, is there any way I can get past issues of EFY on my Android phone? Santhosh Samuel Through e-mail EFY. You can download the free EFY app from Google Play store to your Android device to access subscribed issues of EFY. As for now, older issues can only be read at our Ezine portal. Please visit http://ezine. efymag.com/ for the same. We have also partnered with Magzter Inc. Using Magzter app, subscribers will be able to read subscribed issues on mobile platforms like Android, iOS and Windows 8, as well as PCs. We expect this facility to be rolled-out very soon.

Amateur Radio I am a huge fan of EFY and have read every copy since the last two years. This is regarding ‘Wireless Communication’ article published in November 8

January 2015 | Electronics For You

2014 issue. I am an electronics and communication engineer and found it to be very informative. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I am also an amateur radio operator, licensed by government of India (Ministry of Communication) for HAM radio operations in my region. Recently, I discovered that there are many HAM radio operators in Bengaluru, but first-time users do not get proper guidance on how to use the equipment or how to set up their own HAM stations. Please publish an article on amateur radio in the forthcoming issues of EFY as it will benefit the new generation of HAM operators. The article could include guidance techniques starting from how to obtain a HAM licence to how to set up your own station. It will be great if we have more HAM operators in the country as the scope for communication will increase and enthusiasts all over the country will find a new hobby. Efforts EFY puts into research and compilation for any article are highly commendable, and I do not think anyone is better equipped than EFY to guide the next generation of HAM operators properly. Shrinidhi G. Bengaluru EFY. Thank you for the feedback and suggestion! Please note that we have ABC of Amateur Radio and Citizen Band book available with our associates Kits‘n’Spares. You may contact them on 011-26371661 or visit www.kitsnspares.com for details.

EFY DVD In the DVD section of December 2014 issue, Opera version is wrongly printed as 24.0.1558.66. When I installed it, the version was found to be 26.0.1656.32. Praveen S. Javali Through e-mail

From Facebook: EFY’s Electronics Design Community I need one mini project. Please help. Mounendar Chintu EFY. You may visit www.kitsnspares.com for the project.  I need a simple automatic LED emergency light circuit. Khadija Choudhary EFY. You may refer to ‘Desktop LED Emergency Light’ circuit published in September 2014 issue.

‘Spot An Error’ Award Winners In ‘Crystal-Controlled AM Transmitter’ circuit published in October 2014 issue, an antenna is used in the circuit, but it is not mentioned in Parts List. Siddharth Kaul

Errata In ‘LED Scrolling Display’ DIY project published in November 2014 issue, on page 75, in the second column, “resistors R1 and R5” should be read as “rows R1 and R5.” On page 77, in the first column, “The eight npn Darlington connected transistors (T1-T8)...” should be read as “The in-built eight npn Darlington connected transistors in ULN2803...”

EFY. The file version for Opera web browser included in EFY DVD for December 2014 is 24.0.1558.66. Since the new version (26.0.1656.32) is now available, it automatically updates itself to this version during installation.

Power Amplifier for FM Transmitter In ‘Power Amplifier For FM Transmitter’ DIY article published in November 2014 issue, in the first paragraph, “Use of a good ground plane will further increase the range...” should be read as “Use of a good groundplane antenna will further increase the range...” Joy Mukherji, author www.efymag.com

Q&A

Things You Wanted to Know! is FPGA? Please provide Q1.What some notes and programs to explain it. Irfan Khan Through e-mail FPGA stands for field (in the field) programmable (reconfigurable, change logic functions) gate array (reference to ASIC internal architecture). It is a semiconductor device containing programmable logic components called logic blocks, and programmable interconnects. It means that we can program it for almost any digital function. The system works as follows: A computer is used to describe a logic function that is to be synthesised. Either a schematic or a text file describing the function will serve that purpose. Then, logic function is compiled, using the software provided by the FPGA vendor. This creates a binary file that can be downloaded into the FPGA. Next, FPGA is connected to a computer through a cable to download the binary file to the FPGA. The programmed FPGA behaves according to logic function. However, do keep the following points in mind: 1. You can download FPGAs as many times as you want, with different functionalities every time if you want. If you make a mistake in your design, just fix your logic function, re-compile and re-download it. You do not need to change the PCB, soldering or component. 2. FPGA designs run much faster than designs with discrete components. 3. FPGAs lose their functionality when power goes away (like RAM in

A1.

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January 2015 | Electronics For You

a computer that loses its content). You have to download files again when power comes back, to restore functionality. Learning material for the same is available on the Internet. EFY Tech Centers provide a nine-day handson short-term course on VLSI. The programming exercises are in Verilog and System Verilog languages, and tested on FPGA boards. want to know the points I Q2.Ineed to keep in mind while selecting an RFID IC and microcontroller. Anurag Bhist Through e-mail Radio frequency identification (RFID) allows for wireless transfer of data between a small electronic transmitting tag and a reader without the necessity of lineof-sight. A feature of RFID is that the read operation may occur over long distances and multiple reads may occur. To choose the right RFID tag for your application, there are a number of considerations, including: Frequency range. RFID products work on different frequencies, which are targeted for specific geographical regions, applications and performance requirements. Regulatory requirements associated for the region of operation are mandatory. Memory size. This depends on the size of the database to be tagged. Range performance. A tag’s read-range performance is usually considered the primary gauge of its suitability for a particular application. Environmental conditions. Where and how the tag or insert will be used plays a significant role in determining the right tag. Harsh environment, such as oil and gas exploration, construction and mining, will require rugged chips as compared to inventory and assettracking applications.

A2.

Cost of implementation and maintenance of the system. These are also to be considered while selecting the tag. A microcontroller is selected primarily on the basis of application. There are a number of considerations, including: 1. General-purpose or speciallybuilt for a specific application 2. Architectural features, which include: (i) 8-bit microcontroller for simple applications or 32-bit microcontroller for complex applications (ii) Number of ports to cater for input/output (I/O) requirements. If your requirement can be met with one input and one output pin, then you should opt for a 14-pin device instead of a 40-pin device which has a large number of I/O pins. (iii) Capacity of the program and data memory (iv) Availability of resident peripherals, such as timers, EEPROM, number of ADC channels, I2C, PWM, etc (v) Interrupt-handling capability (vi) Speed of operation (vii) Power requirement 3. Availability of development tools. Choose a microcontroller for which assemblers/compliers are available either as open source or are inexpensive. 4. Package. PDIP with leads suitable for normal PCB mounting or quad-flat package with no leads for SMD mounting 5. Easy availability in the market To conclude, choose a microcontroller that meets the requirements of the application, and whose available features are used optimally. Answers compiled by EFY joint director (training), Col. N.C. Pande (Retd). Letters and questions for publication may be addressed to Editor, Electronics For You, D-87/1, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase 1, New Delhi 110020 (e-mail: [email protected]) and should include name and address of the sender

www.efymag.com

useful websites

The Internet of Things Creating a network and connecting embedded devices to the Internet has always been fun. This month we have some websites that will introduce you to the world of the Internet of Things (IoT) and allow you to explore more niraj sahay

blogs.microsoft.com

This website introduces you to the IoT and Azure IoT services provided by Microsoft. It has many inspirational success stories about the IoT. Microsoft’s official IoT blog is the place to discover how businesses are unleashing the potential of the IoT by harnessing Microsoft’s cloud services, business intelligence, data analytics tools and operating systems. The website has a lot for IoT fans to discover. http://blogs.microsoft.com/iot/

openremote.com

OpenRemote is a professional, open source middle-ware for the IoT. You can integrate any device or protocol, and design any user-interface and intelligent system. Whether you are a do-it-yourself (DIY) enthusiast, an integrator or designer, a distributor or service provider, or an OEM, OpenRemote offers you a solution. In the DIY section, the website features Free Designer, which consists of an online designer, a downloadable controller and panel apps. The site has all the information required for getting started with OpenRemote, the open source automation platform. http://www.openremote.com/

thethings.io

You build cool things and then you connect it to the Internet. thethings.io is the missing link between your networked products and your website and mobile app. It makes your IoT work by providing a cloud solution, front-end UI and interoperability, so that you get more. It offers a free account where you can connect ten devices with very few limitations. The site charges one Euro per device per year for full-access to its back-end, analytics and interoperability features. With this, you can store and query unlimited data. https://thethings.io/

contiki-os.org

When we talk about the IoT, we cannot miss the operating system powering it. Contiki is an open source OS for the IoT. It connects tiny, low-cost, low-power microcontrollers to the Internet. The website has links to tutorials that help you get started with Contiki. It also has an active community, which can be very helpful for a beginner.

http://www.contiki-os.org/

iot.electronicsforu.com

Do you want to keep yourself updated on the latest in the IoT? iot.electronicsforu.com has information about IoT experts, IoT players and IoT products, along with articles on different IoT ideas. The website offers good reading material to understand the fundamentals of the IoT.

http://iot.electronicsforu.com/

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Tech News

Technology at your Service Powering slums with rejected laptop batteries

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BM India, in association with RadioStudio, a hardware R&D firm, has come up with a technology that can power slums in India and other developing countries using discarded laptop batteries. At a conference in San Jose, USA, researchers presented their invention and stated that 70 per cent of discarded lithium-ion laptop batteries have so much energy left that these can power an LED light on a regular basis for at least four hours each day throughout an year. Vikas Chandan, lead research scientist at Smarter Energy Group, said that the most costly component required for this process is the battery, and if this innovation is successful, then it can come from the trash. The rechargeable device has been dubbed UrJar, which has been made using parts of discarded lithium-ion laptop batteries to power an LED light and a mobile charger. UrJar means a combination of energy and box. Storage units were extracted from multiple battery samples and re-combined to form battery packs. Then, charging ports were added and a rigorous testing process followed. The device was offered to five users in Bengaluru slums. On-the-field testing was successful as participants found it safer, cheaper and easier-to-use. Users suggested adding more features like FM radio and some wires, which would not be vulnerable to rats. The cost of the device is expected to be around ` 600. Researchers have suggested more than one variant of UrJar, which can be charged by solar energy, and batteries other than lithium-ion ones can also be used. IBM has proposed that this technology should be offered to developing countries for free.

Flying robots to replace waiters in restaurants

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e have seen and heard of robots doing household chores, from being a baby-sitter to a driver, but a robotic waiter is a new concept. Infinitum-Serve, the world’s first commercial robot, aims to save human resource required for serving food. It is designed and developed by a small company, Infinitum Robotics. The robot will be launched in Timbre Group’s five restaurants in Singapore this year. The current set-up cost for five robotic systems is a low seven-figure. However, the cost can be reduced as demand and production increases. Both companies, Infinitum Robotics and Timbre Group, are trying to raise government funds to reduce deployment costs. This technology can help save the expenditure on manpower. The cumbersome task of tak14

January 2015 | Electronics For You

Flying robot serving food

ing orders, managing chefs, serving food and drinks can be taken up by Infinitum-Serve.

This spoon does not spill food

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oogle is working on developing a spoon that does not spill food. This spoon will help people suffering from tremors or Parkinson’s disease. The spoon has passed clinical-testing and has shown positive results— it has reduced shaking by 76 per cent. The company has developed algorithms that prevent the spoon from shaking. The technology senses when a hand is shaking and balances the spoon automatically to prevent spilling. Google’s Life Sciences division is behind this project. The device even has a fork attachment. Google got into this niche market with the acquisition of the start-up Lift Labs, a company responsible for the product. The Liftware spoon technology will help more than ten million people worldwide. Google’s co-founder, Sergey Brin, whose mother is suffering from essential tremors, has donated over US$ 50 million for the research. There are devices, like rocker knives, weighted utensils, pen grips, that have been developed in the past to help people with tremors, but the technology has never been used in this way before.

TV frequencies to deliver Wi-Fi

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erman scientists at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have proposed that some TV frequencies are available for free, and these can be extended as wireless area networks (WLAN) or Wi-Fi. These will help reduce dependency on frequencies for mobile communication. Low-range TV frequencies can penetrate obstacles like walls. Researchers plan to extend these frequencies for free communication to include lower ranges and to increase transmission power. As transmission power will automatically be adapted to prevent any kind of www.efymag.com

Tech News interference, such WLAN networks can also reach other communication partners across several kilometres. According to researchers, networks will be available for all passers-by on nearby streets so that data can be transferred to and from their smartphones.

Scientists light the way for future electronic devices

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esearchers from Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at University of Southampton have demonstrated how glass can be manipulated to create electronic devices that are smaller, faster and consume less power. Working in collaboration with Advanced Technology Institute at University of Surrey and University of Cambridge, ORC scientists Dr Jin Yao and Dr Behrad Gholipour have made prototype devices that use light to bring together different computing functions into one component. Dr Behrad Gholipour with his prototype device Silicon is reaching its fundamental limits and soon we will be unable to make the silicon chip any smaller or decrease the power consumption of these devices. Using a family of materials called chalcogenides, the team is looking for the next generation of materials, which could replace traditional semiconductors and conventional electronics that power today’s electronic devices. By doping a chalcogenide glass, in this case a material based on germanium and selenium, and forming a multi-layer structure with electrical contacts, Dr Gholipour was able to show the same switching behaviour as seen in a silicon transistor, but in a device made entirely from glass. He explained, “Non-equilibrium doping within chalcogenide glasses enables a unique informationprocessing platform within one material system. This allows traditional electronic computing, along with memory functionality, which opens up the optical spectrum, from the visible far into the infra-red, for nextgeneration optoelectronic and fully-optical computing applications.” This work builds on Dr Behrad’s PhD work for which he won UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Councils (EPSRC) prestigious ICT pioneer prize in the area of information in 2011. Using similar materials, Dr Yao formed long strips of different types of chalcogenides, connecting each end together to form a chain of materials. Dr Yao said, “When one end of the structure is hotter than the other, as might occur near the battery of your phone or computer, a voltage is produced through a process known as the thermoelectric effect.  This has the potential to make our electronic devices more efficient.”

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Tech News

Design Suite revolutionises wireless prototyping for software-defined radio

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I, the provider of solutions that enable engineers and scientists to solve the world’s greatest engineering challenges, has announced LabVIEW Communications System Design Suite, which combines software-defined radio (SDR) hardware with a comprehensive software design flow to help engineers prototype 5G systems. Wireless prototyping was previously undertaken by different design teams using disparate design tools. The LabVIEW Communications environment enables the entire design team to map an idea from algorithm to fieldprogrammable gate array (FPGA) using a single high-level representation. This LabVIEW tuned-in to a software-defined radio approach empowers designers to focus on innovation instead of implementation, which increases the rate and quality of their prototyping.                                                      LabVIEW Communications is optimised for an SDR platform with a hardware-aware design environment that provides control of physical configuration, hardware constraints and system documentation in a functional software diagram. This adds flexibility of the hardware to the software, which gives designers access to all components in the SDR platform. This solution helps designers achieve optimal performance by eliminating the need to manually map algorithms to different hardware architectures.

World’s fastest camera can capture 100 billion frames per second

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he fastest camera in the world, which can capture events up to 100 billion frames per second, has been successfully developed by a team of biomedical engineers at Washington University. Current imaging techniques allow only on-chip storage and operations of about 10 million frames per second. Researchers have claimed that it is the fastest 2D receive-only camera that uses a technique called compressed ultra-fast photography. This technique improves the imaging frame rate by magnitude and will result in a new regime of visions. An array of devices is included in this technology, like microscopes and telescopes, which get paired with lenses to capture events. World fastest camera

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Now BINAY Circadian PowerLED Lights Can Make You Healthy

BINAY kelvin-changing Human-Centric Circadian PowerLED Lights are designed to affect the human circadian rhythm positively for enhanced physical and mental well being BINAY has developed kelvin-changing Human-Centric Circadian PowerLED light fittings which have colour temperature changing properties. The colour temperature of the light emitted by these fittings can be manually changed as desired, or set to change according to a pre-set programme. These lights affect the body clock in the human body positively, encouraging the release of appropriate hormones depending on the time of the day (thus leading to increased alertness and productivity during daytime, and improved mental and physical relaxation in the evening).

Greatest importance for applications in: Workplaces such as office and factories (for enhanced productivity and improved alertness) Healthcare facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes (to facilitate patient recovery) Educational applications such as school and colleges (where enhanced mental concentration is required) Residential applications (alert and productive cool daylight during the day, and restful warm white in the evening)

Binay Opto Electronics Pvt. Ltd. 27, PANDITIA TERRACE,Calcutta 700 029, India Telephone: +91 (33) 4006 9875, 2475 0392, 2475 0030 Email: [email protected], Fax: 91-33-2242 1493

www.binayled.com Electronics For You | January 2015

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Tech News This technology is based on an existing piece of technology called streak camera, which is an ultra-fast device for measuring intensity variation of pulse of light in a given time. While streak cameras are able to record in one dimension only, new algorithms and components can record in two dimensions. After acquiring raw data, actual images are formed on a computer, using a technology called computational imaging. The camera’s immediate application is in biomedicine, and it can be used to detect diseases and reflect cellular environmental conditions such as pH or oxygen pressure.

A machine that can sniff better than dogs

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team of scientists at Duke University has developed a new method for sniffing toxic gases. This technology, which is more accurate than sniffer dogs, is based on terahertz radiations (T-rays). Scientists claim that with this technology, the presence of nerve gas within one kilometre can be detected. Terahertz radiations are a form of invisible light, which is more sensitive than sensors even below normal atmospheric pressure. These rays are already being used to detect tumours and for screening at airports. The research team is led by Henry Everett from Duke University. He believes that, this technology can have a high impact on security at military areas. It will become very easy to detect nerve gas in a specific perimeter as T-rays can be zapped with gas molecules in order to create a unique barcode-like fingerprint spectrum. The team performed a test in This machine can be set up around the perimeter which they blasted of an area where soldiers are living, as a kind of trip wire for nerve gas a cloud of gas with two-terahertz beam of similar energy as gas molecules and an infra-red laser. The experiment was similar to whacking a molecule with an infra-red sledge hammer. Scientists had to tune the wavelength of each beam to match with the type of molecule, and any change indicated the presence of gas. The team is currently working on the detection of toxic industrial chemicals like ammonia, carbon disulfide, nitric acid and sulphuric acid. This technology can be used by law enforcement officers to detect toxic gases coming from meth labs and other drug-related illegal activities.

Emotion-sensing technology that can detect mood

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ell’s emotion-sensing technology, the pet project of Jai Menon, chief research officer and IBM’s former chief technology officer, attracted a lot of attention at TED talk in Amsterdam.

According to Menon, his team has been working to gain more knowledge about the intention of an individual when he or she is using his laptop or mobile phone. The software can detect when a gamer is feeling bored with the game. If he or she is, the challenge level of the game will be adjusted accordingly and Dell laptops can detect your mood using related feedback will be emotion-sensing technology given to the gaming company. It is all about personalisation through user’s intent. Dell’s emotion-sensing technology is similar to GPS. Dell is looking at camera based inputs to identify your state of mind, and stress level will be detected through a speech-analysis software. So, it is all about your mood that is in focus right now. The technology can also be beneficial to healthcare sector. For example, Menon added, before a heart-attack, a person shows certain indications. This technology will be able to detect those indications and their aftermath to control the worst situation.

Bluetooth 4.2: the foundation of the IoT

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luetooth 4.2 and its specifications have been revealed that clearly indicate that it is meant for the world where everything is connected by the Internet. However, Bluetooth is not just about the Internet. It is time for Bluetooth 4.2 to step into action to make the Internet of Things (ToT) work. Bluetooth Special Interest Group, which develops new standards for wireless technology, has officially adopted version 4.2 of Bluetooth core specification. The new Bluetooth can increase privacy, speed and bring IP connectivity to all devices that support it. It means sensors and other smart devices will connect to the Internet directly via Bluetooth. Home-automation will be easier as smart products like light bulbs, thermostats and door sensors will be able to access the Internet without any mediating device. Hence, Bluetooth 4.2 is the foundation for the Internet of Things. This technology is said to be 2.5 times faster than its predecessor and will provide developers with the flexibility to innovate. It is estimated that by 2020, around 28 billion devices will be connected to the Internet, including cars, toasters, guitars and shavers, among others. The new Bluetooth 4.2 technology will connect these devices to the Internet using Bluetooth via a router or an access point without any intermediate device. Privacy and security issues are at the top of the technology. It addresses the loopholes in its previous specifications and makes it almost impossible to track any device via Bluetooth without user permission. Power consumption is also low, which means, Bluetooth will no more drain your gadget’s battery.

Check efytimes.com for more news, daily 18

January 2015 | Electronics For You

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Futuristic

Blue Brain: World’s First Virtual Brain

B Ranjith S. is B.Tech in applied electronics and instrumentation from Vedavyasa Institute of Technology

lue Brain is the world’s first virtual brain. It can think, take decisions and store anything in memory, just as the human brain does. Blue Brain project is the first comprehensive attempt at reverse-engineering the brain of a mammalian, so that through detailed simulations, functions of the brain can be understood. One of the main advantages of the project is brain uploading—even after a person dies, his knowledge will not be lost. Blue Brain can function exactly the same way as a human brain. This project is also used to understand various brain diseases. The development of this project allows scientists to

understand the human brain in more detail. Blue Brain project was founded by Prof. Henry Markram from Brain and Mind Institute at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) in collaboration with IBM. The simulation does not consist simply of an artificial neural network but involves a biologically-realistic model of neurons. It is expected to shed light on the nature of consciousness.

World’s first virtual brain A virtual brain is a machine that mimics the operations of a mammalian brain and produces output. This operation requires a powerful supercomputer. Blue Gene is a supercomputer developed by IBM to handle such situations, hence the name Blue Brain. It could be argued that artificial intelligence, robotics and even the most-advanced computational neuroscience approaches that have been used to model brain functions are merely if-thenlike conditions in various forms. This project will use adaptation and learning algorithms as these systems are more powerful.

Reconstructing Blue (neocortical) column

Fig. 1: Reconstructing the neocortical column

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To reconstruct Blue column, the three-dimensional morphology of the neuron is generated and the errors corrected. The corrected neurons are placed in a database to produce numerous clones. For the action-potential passage, ion channels are inserted in each neuron. www.efymag.com

Futuristic

Fig. 2:

ron

RTNeu

sation visuali

The simulator neuron is used with automatically fitted algorithms running on Blue Gene to insert ion channels and adjust their parameters to capture specific electrical properties of the different electrical types found in each anatomical class. Three-dimensional neurons are placed in the layers of the Blue builder, which is a circuit builder. Axo-dendritic touches are maintained and analysed by an algorithm known as collision algorithm.

Modelling and simulating the microcircuit In 1952, Hodgkin and Huxley published the highly-successful model of ionic currents that allowed simulation of the action potential. These simulations show the behaviour of an ion channel. This ion channel can be used in an artificial neuron for transferring the action potential. Neurons are simulated into microcircuits, which are embedded on a local circuit attached in the brain. From there, whole brains are simulated. Number of neurons are attached to a single neuron for efficient data 22

January 2015 | Electronics For You

uron

of a ne

Fig. 1 shows the neocortical column (NCC) microcircuit in various stages of reconstruction. These are arranged in layers. However, in this figure, only a fraction is reconstructed. Neurons are shown in 3D; redcoloured parts indicate dendrite and blue-coloured parts indicate axonal arborisation. When the microcircuit is built, the circuit is started. For this, the power of Blue Gene computer is used. All the 8192 processors of the computer are pressed into service. The process is highly parallel so it can easily solve highly-complex computation. As the electrical impulse travels from neuron to neuron, results are communicated via inter-13 processor communication (MPI).

RTNeuron transferring. Neurons will receive data and transfer it into thousands of other neurons, so the microcircuit must be small and less complex, but it must fully sustain the neurons. A massive increase in computational power is required to make this quantum leap—an increase that is provided by IBM’s Blue Gene supercomputer. The neocortical column is the basic functional unit of the cerebral cortex in mammals. These functional units are in millions in the cortex, which are similar in rats and humans. The laboratory has prepared for this reconstruction by developing the multi-neuron patch-clamp approach, recording from thousands of neocortical neurons and their synaptic connections. A four- to sixteen-day-old rat’s somato sensory cortex is used for recording, as visualisation of their tissues is optimal at this age. The template, Blue column, will be composed of ~10,000 neocortical neurons within the dimensions of a neocortical column (~0.5mm in diametre and ~1.5mm in height).

RTNeuron software, developed for Blue Brain project, is used for visualisation of the neural simulation. This software is specific to neural simulation. It is written in C++ and OpenGL language. It can accept the simulation output and render them into a 3D model so researchers can analyse the neural structure. Propagations of action potential are visualised so scientists can pause, zoom and analyse them.

Uploading the human brain One of the major advantages of the virtual brain project is its ability to upload human brain into the machine and keeping alive the knowledge of the human after his or her death. It can also remember things such as phone numbers, important events, historical facts, etc, without any effort. It can also take decisions and make calculations with ease. Nanobots are used here for scanning the human brain. These nanobots are always connected to the computer and are small enough to travel through the circulatory system. These can travel to the spine and brain, scan the human brain, analyse its structure and send data into the computer for further calculation.  www.efymag.com

Lighting

Physics Nobel Prize 2014 for LEDs as Future Lighting Devices

A Dr S.S. Verma is a professor at Department of Physics, Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering & Technology, Sangrur, Punjab

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ccording to Nobel committee citation, this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics has been awarded to Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano, Nagoya University, Japan, and Shuji Nakamura, University of California, Santa Barbara, for the invention of efficient blue-light emitting diodes (LEDs). These have enabled bright and energy-saving white-light sources. In the spirit of Alfred Nobel, the prize rewards an invention of greatest benefit to mankind, and by using blue LEDs, white light can be created in a new way. With the advent of LED lamps, we now have more long-lasting and efficient alternatives to older light sources. The committee added, “The LED lamp holds great promise for increasing the quality of life for over 1.5 billion people around the world who lack access to electricity grids. Due to low-power requirements, it can be powered using cheap, local solar power.” The blue LED invention has made possible a new energy-efficient and

January 2015 | Electronics For You

environment-friendly light source. There are many different kinds of LEDs and most common types are categorised by colour, viewing angle, lens type, dimensions, forward voltage, forward current, packaging type and intensity. Despite considerable efforts, both in the scientific community and in industry, the blue LED had remained a challenge for three decades. When these scientists produced bright-blue-light beams from their semiconductors in the early 1990s, they triggered a fundamental transformation of lighting technology. Red and green diodes had been around for a long time but, without blue light, white lamps could not be created. They succeeded where everyone else had failed. The invention of blue LED is just twenty years old but, it has already contributed to create white light in an entirely new manner to benefit us all. White LED lamps emit a bright-white light, are longlasting and energy-efficient. These are being constantly improved upon, getting more www.efymag.com

Lighting trodes is high enough, electrons in the depletion zone are boosted out of their holes and begin moving freely again. The depletion zone disappears and charge moves across the diode.

Circuit design Fig. 1: Semiconductor with extra electrons

Fig. 3: Circuit of an LED

efficient with higher luminous flux (measured in lumen) per unit electrical input power (measured in watt). The most recent record is just over 300-lm/W, which can be compared to 16-lm/W for regular light bulbs and close to 70-lm/W for fluorescent lamps. As about one fourth of the world’s electricity consumption is used for lighting purposes, LEDs will contribute to saving Earth’s resources. Materials consumption is also diminished as LEDs last up to 100,000 hours, as compared to 1000 hours for incandescent bulbs and 10,000 hours for fluorescent lights.

Electronics of LED In the case of LEDs, the conductor material is typically aluminiumgallium-arsenide (AlGaAs). In pure AlGaAs, all atoms bond perfectly to their neighbours, leaving no free electrons (negatively-charged particles) to conduct electric current. In doped material, additional atoms change the balance by either adding free electrons or creating holes where electrons can go. Either of these alterations makes the material more conductive. A semiconductor with extra electrons is called n-type material, since it has extra negatively-charged parti26

January 2015 | Electronics For You

Fig. 2: Semiconductor with extra holes

cles. In n-type material, free electrons move from a negatively-charged area to a positively-charged area. A semiconductor with extra holes is called p-type material, since it effectively has extra positivelycharged particles. Electrons can jump from hole to hole, moving from a negatively-charged area to a positively-charged area. As a result, holes themselves appear to move from a positively-charged area to a negatively-charged area. A diode consists of a section of n-type material bonded to a section of p-type material, with electrodes on each end. This arrangement conducts electricity in only one direction. When no voltage is applied to the diode, electrons from the n-type material fill holes from the p-type material along the junction between the layers, forming a depletion zone. In a depletion zone, the semiconductor material is returned to its original insulating state—all holes are filled, so there are no free electrons or empty spaces for electrons, and charge cannot flow. To get rid of the depletion zone, you have to get electrons moving from the n-type area to the p-type area and holes moving in the reverse direction. To do this, you connect the n-type side of the diode to the negative end of a circuit and the p-type side to the positive end. The free electrons in the n-type material are repelled by the negative electrode and drawn to the positive electrode. The holes in the p-type material move the other way. When the voltage difference between elec-

In an electronics circuit, an LED behaves very much like any other diode. LEDs are often used to indicate the presence of a voltage at a particular point and are often used as a supply-rail indicator. When used in this fashion, there must be a current-limiting resistor placed in the circuit. The resistor’s value should be calculated to give the required level of current. For many devices, a current of around 20mA is suitable, although it is often possible to run them at a lower current. If less current is drawn, the device will obviously be dimmer. When calculating the amount of current drawn, voltage across the LED itself may need to be taken into consideration. The voltage across an LED in its forward-biased condition is just over a volt, although the exact voltage is dependent upon the diode and, in particular, its colour. Typically, a red one has a forward-voltage of just below two volts, and it is around 2.5 volts for green or yellow. Great care must be taken not to allow a reverse bias to be applied to the diode. Usually, LEDs have a reverse breakdown of very few volts. If breakdown occurs, then the LED is destroyed. To prevent this from happening, an ordinary silicon diode can be placed across the LED in reverse direction to prevent any reverse bias being applied.

Development of LEDs LED, in electronics, is a semiconductor device that emits infra-red or visible light when charged with an electric current. LEDs operate by electro-luminescence, a phenomenon in which emission of photons is caused by electronic excitation of a material. The material used most www.efymag.com

Lighting often in LEDs is gallium-arsenide, though there are many variations on this basic compound, such as AlGaAs or aluminium-gallium-indiumphosphide. These compounds are members of the so-called III-V group of semiconductors, that is, compounds made of elements listed in columns III and V of the periodic table. By varying the precise composition of the semiconductor, the wavelength (and therefore the colour) of the emitted light can be changed. LED emission is generally in the visible part of the spectrum (with wavelengths from 0.4 to 0.7 micrometre) or in the near infra-red (with wavelengths between 0.7 and 2.0 micrometres). The brightness of the light observed from an LED depends on the power emitted by the LED and on the relative sensitivity of the eye at the emitted wavelength. Maximum sensitivity occurs at 0.555 micrometre, which is in the yellow-orange and green region. The applied voltage in most LEDs is quite low, in the region of two volts. The current depends on the application and ranges from a few milliamperes to several-hundred milliamperes. The term diode refers to the twin-terminal structure of an LED. In a flashlight, for example, a wire filament is connected to a battery through two terminals—one (the anode) bearing the negative electric charge and the other (the cathode) bearing the positive charge. In LEDs, as in other semiconductor devices such as transistors, the terminals are actually two semiconductor materials of different composition and electronic properties brought together to form a junction. In one material (the negative, or n-type semiconductor), the charge carriers are electrons, and in the other (the positive, or p-type semiconductor), the charge carriers are holes created by the absence of electrons. Under the influence of an electric field (supplied by a battery, for instance, when the LED is www.efymag.com

switched on), current can be made to flow across p-n junction, providing the electronic excitation that causes the material to luminance. In a typical LED structure, the clear epoxy dome serves as a structural element to hold the lead frame together, as a lens to focus the light and as a refractiveindex match to permit more light to escape from the LED chip. The chip, typically 250×250×250 micrometres in dimension, is mounted in a reflecting cup formed in Fig. 4: Inside an LED the lead frame. The p-n-type GaP:N layers rep- between electrons and holes in this resent nitrogen added to gallium- setup has an interesting side effect— phosphide to give green emission, it generates light. the p-n-type GaAsP:N layers represent Light is a form of energy that can nitrogen added to gallium-arsenide- be released by an atom. It is made up phosphide to give orange and yellow of many small, particle-like packets emission, and the p-type GaP:Zn,O that have energy and momentum layer represents zinc and oxygen but no mass. These particles, called added to gallium-phosphide to give photons, are the most basic units of red emission. light. Photons are released as a result Two further enhancements, de- of moving electrons. In an atom, veloped in the 1990s, are LEDs based electrons move in orbitals around on aluminium-gallium-indium-phos- the nucleus. Electrons in different phide, which emit light efficiently orbitals have different amounts of from green to red-orange, and also energy. Generally speaking, electrons blue LEDs based on silicon-carbide with greater energy move in orbitals or gallium-nitride. Blue LEDs can farther away from the nucleus. For an be combined on a cluster with other electron to jump from a lower orbital LEDs to give all colours, including to a higher orbital, something has to white, for full-colour moving dis- boost its energy level. plays. Conversely, an electron releases energy when it drops from a higher Producing light orbital to a lower one. This energy is If we try to run current the other released in the form of a photon. A way, with the p-type side connected greater energy-drop releases a higherto the negative end of the circuit energy photon, which is characterand the n-type side connected to the ised by a higher frequency. In case of LEDs, free electrons positive end, current will not flow. The negative electrons in the n-type moving across a diode can fall into material are attracted to the positive empty holes from the p-type layer. electrode. The positive holes in the This involves a drop from the conp-type material are attracted to the duction band to a lower orbital, negative electrode. No current flows so electrons release energy in the across the junction because the holes form of photons. This happens in and the electrons are each moving any diode, but you can only see the in the wrong direction. The deple- photons when the diode is made of tion zone increases. The interaction certain material. Electronics For You | January 2015

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Lighting Atoms in a standard silicon diode, for example, are arranged in such a way that the electron drops a relatively shorter distance. As a result, the photon’s frequency is so low that it is invisible to the human eye—it is in the infra-red portion of the light spectrum. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Infra-red LEDs are ideal for remote controls, among other things. Visible light emitting diodes (VLEDs), such as the ones that light up numbers in a digital clock, are made of materials characterised by a wider gap between the conduction band and lower orbitals. The size of the gap determines the frequency of the photon—it determines the colour of the light. While LEDs are used in everything from remote controls to digital displays on electronics, VLEDs are growing in popularity and use, thanks to their long lifetimes and miniature size. Depending on the materials used in LEDs, these can be built to shine in infra-red, ultra-violet and all colours of the visible spectrum in between. When current flows across a diode, negative electrons move in one way and the positive holes move in another way. The holes exist at a lower-energy level than the free electrons, so when a free electron falls, it loses energy. This energy is emitted in the form of a light photon. The bigger fall of electron means higher energy or frequency of light emitted.

LED applications Light emitting diodes are real unsung heroes of the electronics world. These do dozens of different jobs and are found in all kinds of devices. Among other things, these form numbers on digital clocks, transmit information from remote controls, light-up watches and tell you when your appliances are turned-on. Collected together, LEDs can form images on a jumbo television screen or illuminate a traffic light. 28

January 2015 | Electronics For You

Visible LEDs are used in many electronic devices as indicator lamps, in automobiles as rear-window and brake lights, and on billboards and signs as alpha-numeric displays or even full-colour posters. Infra-red LEDs are employed in autofocus cameras and television remote controls, and also as light sources in fibre-optic telecommunication systems. Any LED can be used as a light source for a short-range fibre-optic transmission system, that is, over a distance of less than 100 metres (330 feet). For long-range fibre optics, however, the emission properties of the light source are selected to match the transmission properties of the optical fibre, and in this case, infra-red LEDs are a better match than visible LEDs. Glass optical fibres suffer from lowest transmission losses in the infra-red region at wavelengths of 1.3 to 1.55 micrometres. To match these transmission properties, LEDs are employed that are made of galliumindium-arsenide-phosphide, layered on a substrate of indium-phosphide. The exact composition of the material may be adjusted to emit energy precisely at 1.3 or 1.55 micrometres.

LED advantages Basically, LEDs are just tiny light bulbs that fit easily into an electrical circuit. But unlike ordinary incandescent bulbs, these do not have a filament that will burn out, and these do not get especially hot. LEDs are illuminated solely by the movement of electrons in a semiconductor material, and these last just as long as a standard transistor. The interior of an LED is actually quite simple, which is one of the reasons this technology is so versatile. The lifespan of an LED surpasses the short life of an incandescent bulb by thousands of hours. LEDs also fit more easily into modern electronic circuits. The main advantage is efficiency as LEDs generate very little heat.

A much higher percentage of the electrical power goes directly to generating light, which cuts down on the electricity demands considerably. Tiny LEDs are already replacing tubes that light-up LCD HDTVs to make dramatically-thinner televisions. Though these often come in tiny packages, LEDs produce a large amount of light and are used in an ever-growing list of technologies. Although LEDs will continue to be widely used as small indicator lamps, the number of applications these can find is increasing as the technology improves. New very-high luminance diodes are now available. LEDs are even being used as a form of illumination, an application which these were previously not able to fulfil because of their lowlight output. New colours are being introduced. White and blue LEDs, which were previously very difficult to manufacture, are now available. In view of the on-going technological development, and their convenience of use, these devices will remain in electronics catalogues for years to come.

LED disadvantages While all diodes release light, most do not do it very effectively. In an ordinary diode, the semiconductor material itself ends up absorbing a lot of the light energy. LEDs are specially constructed to release a large number of photons outward. Most of the light from the diode bounces off the sides of the bulb, travelling on through the rounded end. Additionally, LEDs are housed in a plastic bulb that concentrates the light in a particular direction. Up until recently, LEDs were too expensive to use for most lighting applications because these are built around advanced semiconductor material. But advantages like energy-efficiency and longer lifespans have made LEDs a more cost-effective lighting option for a wide range of situations, competing with incandescent and compact fluorescents.  www.efymag.com

BUYERS’ GUIDE

Is Application Knowledge Enough to Buy the Right Programmable Power Supply

B Sneha Ambastha is a technical journalist at EFY

eing a test engineer, what is the first question you ask yourself when you decide to buy a programmable power supply (PPS)? Is it the price or features you look for? Now, when you think of features, is it only electrical properties like current, voltage or frequency that you think are important? So many questions to be answered, but do you have the answers? We all know that a power supply that has an internal microcomputer with an option to customise its working as per the tester’s requirement is called PPS. Now, the question is, what can be customised? Electrical parameters like voltage, current, frequency, time interval in which output is required, input and output formats can all be customised through different computer-programming languages like C, standard commands for programmable instruments (SCPI), etc. A PPS has a number of things associated with it, starting from remote-controlled interfaces to different compliance standards. All this makes it very difficult

Keysights 3631A 80W triple-output power supply

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January 2015 | Electronics For You

for the buyer to purchase the correct PPS, without knowing the options in detail.

PPS with different interfaces A PPS needs to be connected to a computer so that it can be programmed, and for that, it has plenty of interfacing options. With so many available options for interfaces, one can easily decide the right PPS required for testing. Every interface has its advantages that make the selection easy. On the contrary, you will find some PPSs that are compatible only with specific interfaces, like the XPD series from Ametek.

Remote interfaces required 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

RS232 GPIB LXi Ethernet (LAN) USB Analogue

RS232. The recommended standard number 232 (RS232) is a 25-pin D-type connector. However, low transmission speed, large voltage swing and large standard connectors affect it. GPIB. The general-purpose interface bus (GPIB) was created as Hewlett-Packard interface bus (HP-IB) with IEEE 488 standard as a standard digital interface for programmable instrumentation. LXi Ethernet (LAN). LAN extensions for instrumentation (LXi) is a standard that ensures inter-operability and communicates with systems using the Ethernet. It complements existing test and measurement systems like GPIB. Isolated analogue. An isolated analogue interface allows remote programming using analogue controls. It not only controls the power supply but also reads back output monitor signals. www.efymag.com

BUYERS’ GUIDE Mukul Pareek, marketing program manager, Keysight Technologies says, “Although all other interfaces have been there since quite some time, LXi Ethernet and USB interface are the latest and are widely-acceptable with the new type of PPS.”

Different output formats After interfaces, other features associated with a PPS are output formats. AC+DC. Do you only want AC output or are you also looking forward to other output forms like DC and AC+DC with an offset? If so, there are different types of PPSs today that can allow you to get different outputs based on test requirements. Even though wave generation is the task of a wave generator, some PPSs have added functionalities that allow you to generate advanced waveforms. Arbitrary waveform. These are custom-defined waveforms with either repetitive or single-wave shots. Some of these PPSs also have the ability to generate waveforms based on 1024 data points. Harmonic waveform. A harmonic waveform is one whose frequency is a multiple of fundamental frequency. Some PPSs can generate customdefined waveforms that are based on harmonic content. Transient generation. Another option that some PPSs have is the ability to generate custom-defined frequency fluctuations (like sweep, swag, surge or drop-out) and voltage. All PPSs have specific measurement options like voltage, current or power, but a few of them also have a harmonic analyser built-in to measure the Fund-50th harmonic and percentage of total harmonic distortion (TDH).

Technologies and features to look for If you want to categorise a PPS, you have plenty of options to do so. But the most important thing to identify is the format in which it is to be categorised. www.efymag.com

NI PXI-4110- programmable DC power supply

Rigol DP800 series programmable power supply

Compliance test options There are a number of compliance test options with which a PPS associates itself. 1. MIL Std. 704 2. RTCA DO 160 3. Boeing B787 4. Airbus AMD 5. Airbus ABD 6. IEC61000-4-13 7. IEC61000-3-2 8. IEC61000-3-3 9. IEC61000-3-11 10. IEC61000-3-12

A PPS can play two different roles at two different times. It can act as a source at one instance and as a sink at the other. This mode of operation is automatic, depending upon the type of application it is being used with. To explain this better, Chinmay Anand Mishra, technical marketing engineer, National Instruments says, “A PPS can be categorised as per the quadrant it is working in, that is, if it

is working as a current source or current sink.” Now, since this type of categorisation is dependent on the type of application, I will restrict myself to new technologies and features associated to categorise PPSs. Flexibility in voltage and current selection. Although a PPS can be used in many applications like semiconductor fabrication, X-ray generators and crystal-growth monitoring, its main application is in automated equipment testing. While testing, engineers need wide ranges of voltage and high currents. PPSs available till now had the maximum voltage and current settings that were not required together. Bench-top power supplies have a fixed current that results in reduction of power supplied with output voltage. New power supplies with wider voltage and current ranges are an added advantage. Built-in power-factor correction. Power saving is an important parameter to be considered, especially in testing and fabrication requirements where energy losses are usual, and a device with high power factor (PF) is accountable for less energy loss. A PPS with a built-in PF corrector or controller (PFC) makes sure that its PF is maintained between 0.95 and 0.99. All power supplies sent to Europe have a mandatory built-in PFC. Multiple outputs. Older PPSs were able to provide you one output at a time that could be changed with the type of input. However, new PPSs that have come up either have two completely-independent outputs, sometimes three or even four different outputs, of equal power. PPSs with these many output options have independent on/off switches to control the operations. Such outputs operate at constant current and constant voltage mode, with mode indication and automatic crossover. Electronics For You | January 2015

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BUYERS’ GUIDE Some Multi-Channel Programmable DC Power Supplies with Built-In PFC Brand

Model number

Voltage range

Maximum current

Maximum output power

Programming accuracy Voltage

Current

Voltage

Current

Interface

Price

GPIB and RS232 standard

US$ 1386.00

-25V to 25V

5A

80W

0.05% + 20mV, 0.05% + 20mV, 0.1% + 5mV

0.15% + 4mA, 0.15% + 4mA, 0.2% + 10mA

National NI PXI-4110 Instruments

-20V to 20V

1A

9W (from PXI backplane) or 46W (from APS-4100)

±0.05% + 4mV, ±0.05 + 10mV, ±0.05 + 10mV

±0.15 + 4mA, ±0.15 + 60µA, ±0.15 + 4mA

Rigol

DP831A

-30V to 30V

5A

160W

0.1%+20mV

0.2%+10mA

USB host & device, LAN, RS232, digital I/O, USB-GPIB (optional)

US$ 790

Rohde & Schwarz

HMP4040

0V to 32V

10A

384W

<0.05% + 5mV (typ. ±2mV)

<0.1% + 5mA (typ. ±1mA at I <500mA)

-Dual Ethernet/ USB interface -IEEE488 (GPIB) interface

US$ 2227.75

Keysight

E3631A

Rohde & Schwarz HMP4040 programmable four-channel power supply

Contributors to the story  Chinmay Anand Mishra, technical marketing engineer, National Instruments  Dheeraj Kapoor, assistant business manager, Aimil Ltd  Mukul Pareek, marketing program manager, Keysight Technologies

The mode indication informs if the output is getting generated in constant current or constant voltage mode, whereas the automatic crossover allows the change of mode automatically, based on requirement. These also have fine controls that allow the output voltage to be set within 10mV, whereas to limit the current, the control is loga32

January 2015 | Electronics For You

rithmic so as to give good resolutions at low-current settings. Internal lock. New PPSs have internal lock buttons that transfer the control of current and voltage to internal digital circuits by simply pressing a switch. These are initially controlled by analogue controls. This lock is kind of a digital-to-analogue

US$ 1687.95

converter that ensures complete security and exceptional stability to control settings. EMC-safe. Another feature of the new PPS is its safe design that meets electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) standards. This EMC-safe PPS comes with a fully-active PFC that reduces the level of harmonic current that is taken from AC supply lines. The sodesigned PPS also allows over-voltage trip adjustments for all outputs. Extendable to DC and AC+DC mode. This feature added to the PPS provides a DC voltage component as per requirement. It provides an external analogue input to amplify the scalable analogue signal from the available arbitrary signal generator. It has a self-diagnosis feature, which ensures reliability and quality in testing automatic test equipment. Noise detection. Some of the new PPSs are able to measure frequency harmonics. Dheeraj Kapoor, assistant business manager, Aimil Ltd says, “Frequency harmonics in the PPS helps measure the flowing current or noise in the application it is being used in. The amount of noise so measured can be easily identified by test engineers, and respective resolutions for the same can be worked on.”  www.efymag.com

Tech Focus

Internet of Things and Big Data: Predict and Change The Future Dilin Anand is a senior assistant editor at EFY

Anagha P. is a technical correspondent at EFY

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B

randed as the most overhyped technology by Garner’s hype cycle report, the Internet of Things (IoT) has seen a large number of technologies being built to harness the symbiotic relationship between data from the IoT and analytics of Big Data. The important thing to understand about the IoT is that, it is not just about reporting if lights are on in your parked car or to switch off your TV because you forgot to turn it off while leaving home. The real magic is in that, it can figure out potential situations that are about to happen and then go ahead and implement preventive measures before the problem actually occurs. The IoT in its full poten-

January 2015 | Electronics For You

tial is about literally changing the future. Of course, that is nowhere near easy because someone needs to set about…

... Tackling the chaos of things Amit Shah of Mformation believes that, from a technology point of view, anybody who can manage chaos is going to succeed. Most commonly, we see that a single system contains different discrete machines talking in different protocols like Zigbee, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. So, there is a lot of chaos in this franchise, making it very difficult for somebody off-stream to work with that chaos. Nowadays, you find many individuals and firms trying to figure out how to collate and analyse inputs and derive a

www.efymag.com

Tech Focus pattern that lets them make sense of this treasure trove of data. The challenge here is to understand how to federate it, that is, how integration takes place. Machine-to-machine device management service providers look at figuring out which among these enormous data are useful and how to segregate it into consumable chunks that can be sold to different organisations or enterprises. The approach they take is to develop an adaptation for each of these machines that communicate in different languages, and hence shield that chaos from the consumer, using an intelligent gateway that presents a unified, sensible view. There are many institutes, companies and ventures that have been set-up to crack this. University of Nottingham is one such example that recently received a £ 359,000 funding from the UK’s innovation agency for its value enhancement for data from assets & transactions (VEDAT) project. The objective of this project is to identify value from high volumes of complex data generated in real-time, through telematics technology—value that can be unlocked by other organisations for various fields like transportation, automation and medicine, to name a few. Let us take a look at the different sectors that the IoT and Big Data have had an effect on.

... Enabling intelligent manufacturing Manufacturers using the IoT is nothing new. Semiconductor firm Fujitsu grows their Kirei Yasai lettuce in a facility previously used to fabricate microchips. These lettuce do not just enjoy growing-up in a superclean location, these are farmed by data-driven agricultural technology, powered by sensor arrays working in tandem with cloud-computing solutions to crunch data and ensure that the environment remains at optimal levels throughout the growth process. This includes monitoring www.efymag.com

Fundamentals: Big Data and the IoT There are roughly three distinct stages for the Internet of Things (IoT). First, data is collected using sensors. At the next step, this data is analysed with the help of complex algorithms that were embedded into the IoT device or cloud based data processing. This is followed by decision-making (using analytical engines) and transmission of data to the decision-making server. If the information collected is quite large and complex that it becomes difficult to analyse using traditional data-processing techniques, we call it Big Data. Results made from this analysis are then transmitted to the actuator system, where the decision is implemented.

temperature, humidity and fertiliser composition as they try to figure out the best growing conditions and ways to control micro-organisms. Projects like these use solutions like Akisai, a food and agricultural cloud solution that leverages information and communications technology (ICT) to dramatically improve the efficiency of agricultural operations. Akisai will be used to continually analyse agricultural data for highlyproductive cultivation and facilitate the entire management process, including management, production and sales, for a more efficient agricultural operation. Another example of this, as mentioned in the Lopez Research report on building smarter manufacturing with the IoT, is Harley-Davidson’s use of the IoT in its York Pennsylvania motorcycle plant. Software in the plant keeps record of how different equipment perform, such as the speed of fans in the painting booth. The software then automatically adjusts the machinery when it detects that the fan-speed, temperature or humidity has deviated from acceptable ranges. Bosch, GE and Johnson Controls are some companies who are firm believers of Industry 4.0, where robots and other connected machine elements in a factory talk to each other to figure out the most optimal way to do something. This is no easy task. Solving challenges: Data-collection in a manufacturing environment. Connecting elements in a business together and into cyberspace is no simple thing, and that is

where firms like Rockwell Automation, along with Big Data analytics firms like Computer Systems Corp, come into play. When an application involves a large number of sensor networks that are sending data on continuous basis, it becomes important to capture that information effectively and keep as much of it for further analysis. Such analyses are important to understand trends, forecast events and other functions. In these cases, data size would grow non-linearly in a rather short period of time. In T. Anand’s opinion, such applications incorporating Big Data could be useful for manufacturers having deployed the IoT in a full-fledged manner. To ensure delivery of data collected from factory-wide IoT implementation, manufacturers need networks that can cope with RF challenges in the plant, harsh environmental conditions and reliability for transmission of alarms and realtime data-stream processing. Vendors like Cisco or Emerson Network Power might provide this service. For example, the Lopez research report mentions that General Motors implemented a standard based network architecture, called plant floor controls network (PFCN), to standardise the design of each plant network and establish a single engineering team that monitors and troubleshoots network operations globally. An alternative to transmitting huge amounts of unprocessed data over factory floors is to have the processing done in the device itself. Electronics For You | January 2015

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Tech Focus Nanotechnology joining hands with the IoT Sensors and actuator units make an IoT device a functional system that is capable of monitoring correct physical parameters and responding correspondingly. These sensors and actuators are prevalent at macro-scale in industrial applications, and these technologies cannot be scaled for numbers that IoT business-roadmaps foresee. Folks at Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE) at Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Bengaluru, assure that nanotechnology will help build novel sensors and actuators in IoT domains, such as ambient monitoring, automobile, health monitoring of buildings, biomedical applications and many more. Bulk sensors are replaced with components that are sensitive, rugged, stable, scalable, economical, have small form-factor and low-power, making it viable for the IoT. “Furthermore, nanotechnology promises to integrate sensors, actuators, processors, radios and energy-harvesting devices to make the Internet of nano-enabled Things in the near future for more potential applications,” say Dr Vijay Mishra and A. Peter Manoj, both from CeNSE.

This means that the system will now have to only transmit results to the central system, resulting in a lower amount of transmitted data. Conventional processing solutions are unable to crunch Big Data fast enough to keep-up with the neverending flow of incoming data. Bryan Fletcher, technical marketing director, and Ramani Sundesan, India managing director, both at Avnet, mentioned how programmable SoCs could be used to crunch this data by leveraging the massive parallel processing power of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) with embedded microprocessors. These complete systems on a programmable chip form a sort of reprogrammable CPU architecture. Some examples of vendors with these kinds of chips are Xilinx Zynq, Altera Arria and ActelSmartFusion families.

Predictive engine diagnostics Big-time engine makers, like Rolls Royce, BMW and Mercedes Benz, were into Big Data and the IoT business model back in mid 2000s, even before they were a buzzword. Their engine health-monitoring unit combines latest sensor technologies with data collection, management and analyses techniques, letting them accurately predict engine failures at an early stage. This optimises engine maintenance and repair schedule, thereby improving 36

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safety and providing better customer services at lower costs. Taking one step further in Big Data business model, Rolls Royce has partnered with seven other firms (University of Nottingham, Fraunhofer IPA, IK4 Tekniker, ETH Zurich, AREVA NDE-Solutions, Acciona Infrastructure and OMV Petrom) to develop a snake robot that is equipped with self-positioning, reasoning, planning and adaptation capabilities. The 1.25cm (half-inch) diameter robot named MiRoR (miniaturised robotic systems for holistic in-situ repair and maintenance works in restrained and hazardous environments) can take pictures of engines’ interiors and send it in real-time to experts who control it remotely. This will let engine experts quickly find faults in large, complex machines like aircrafts. Mercedes-Benz is an example of an automotive manufacturer who has embraced the IoT. The roadside assistance, safety and security features provided by this popular car manufacturer have been enhanced with the introduction of mbrace feature in their cars. Their new system now enables remote vehicle controls, performs remote engine diagnostics and delivers software updates to keep your car running perfectly. Of course, Indian electric car manufacturer Mahindra Reva Electric Vehicles has also had some of these features in their e2o car since 2013.

Microlise is another example of firms that provide vehicle and machine telematics solutions. A winner of JCB Supplier Award for Innovation, they monitor fleet performance and understand journey management to deliver a variety of solutions that help end-users reduce fuel consumption and fleet size while maintaining performance. Microlise has also partnered with VEDAT project, which received an enormous amount of funding earlier this year from the UK’s innovation agency Technology Strategy Board.

Energy management with Big Data Several terabytes of data coming from sensors and energy metres can be used for intelligent monitoring of power-usage and increasing the efficiency of the whole system. Smart buildings, a concept of making buildings smarter and energy-efficient using the IoT and Big Data analyses, is already being implemented by Nest Labs. Their first product is a smart, Wi-Fi-enabled, sensor-driven, programmable, self-adapting thermostat. It monitors the user’s temperature adjustments and uses sensors (temperature, humidity and activity sensors) and sophisticated algorithms to learn and identify patterns, which are later used to intelligently control the heating of the home, intuitively. It adjusts the temperature according to the time of the day, weather condition and human activities inside the home, thereby providing minimal and an effective use of energy. Being Wi-Fi-connected, the device follows current weather forecasts and adjusts the room temperature accordingly. It can also be controlled from remote locations using laptops, tablets and smartphones. Intelligent solar and wind analytics is another area that has seen many advances. Mumbai based two-year-old startup, Algo Engines, uses Big Data analytics to provide operational intelligence for solar power plants, wind turbines and other IoT equipment. Data from various sensor components www.efymag.com

Tech Focus Justice, served digital One interesting solution provided by the Big Data start-up SenzIT, in association with IBM, is the use of live digital-recording methods, artificial intelligence and complex analytics software to provide content capturing, management, tracking and analyses solutions for department of justice and the judiciary. Their products let the user capture live proceedings, right from the crime scene to police investigations to the court room, in the form of text and high-quality audio and video, on an enterprise-mobility platform. IBM’s powerful Worklight software is used to create a highly-secure mobile framework. An artificially-intelligent computer can use its own algorithms to aggregate these different types of information feeds, correlate them and present the analysed data in a form that is easily understood by the viewer. With latest technologies like Big Data analytics and enterprise video analytics being used, this method could realise otherwise unnoticeable insights, patterns and correlations in the huge amount of evidence and data, and hence provide a powerful, predictive and visualanalysis platform. “This method can also be used in smart classrooms, where the teacher can assess which student is less focussed or misbehaving in class,” says Shibi Salim, director, SenzIT, “and in medical applications, where the system suggests all possible medical conditions of a patient based on his or her symptoms and histories.”

like anemometers (to measure wind speed and direction), pyranometers (to measure solar irradiance on planar surface), pressure sensors, temperature sensors and humidity sensors can help understand the potential of energy available for conversion. Sensors within the equipment’s subsystems, such as generator, rotor system, gearbox, solar panels and inverters, give information on the electrical and mechanical performance of the system. Algo Engines interfaces with hundreds of different sensors, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and smart metres, and pulls information collected by them to the cloud, analyses this massive and complex data using IBM tools for better predictive maintenance and forecast. A web based platform is made available to the customer where they can gauge the health of the device, monitor its performance, and view forecasts and predictions of component failure. These factors further increase the efficiency, effectiveness and, hence, revenue of the system.

Advanced sensors, mobile apps and extensive databases are helping us reach the goal of personal health improvement. Converting thoughts into actions. Brain-computer interface (BCI), also known as brain-machine interface (BMI) or mind-machine interface (MMI) or direct neural interface, is a method that conjoins the human brain and machines, and lets you control external devices like bionic modules using your thoughts. The system consists of several powerful and precise sensors (typically multi-electrode arrays) that collect brain signals, a decoder that can detect and interpret neural signals related to each activity, and an external module like a computer screen or robotic arm that translates these electronic signals into corresponding actions. This technology is a breakthrough in the field of medicine as it can help restore disabilities of patients, and institutions like BrainGate and Pitt School of Medicine (University of Pittsburgh) are putting in a lot of research in this field.

Life-sciences and medicine

From existing to next-gen intelligent system

Big Data analysis in IoT networks is taking the idiom ‘prevention is better than cure’ to a whole new level.

Converting from an old-fashioned system to a next-generation intelligent connected system is going to

www.efymag.com

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Tech Focus be a major problem when adopting the IoT on a larger scale, and a lot depends on what the user already has in hand. Over a period of time, even without us realising, we are already upgrading the infrastructure. These are invisible upgrades. An example is the wireless network that started with no wireless communication and moved to 1G, 2G and 3G, and then to 4G LTE and WiMAX. In some cases, it requires partial or complete replacement of hardware. These are visible upgrades, like sensors or Wi-Fi-enabled bulbs. Many systems and protocols these days make it very easy to add an IoT component to the existing device. For example, systems based on highway addressable remote transducer (HART) protocol can be easily upgraded to WirelessHART, by using an adapter and a gateway. “But, sometimes the cost or effort required to backward-integrate can be so high that it would be advisable to replace the existing equipment with a new system altogether,” says Nihal Kashinath of IoTBLR.

Is IoT security a catastrophe waiting to happen Any communication that happens over-the-air needs to be secure. But, functionality and safety are found to be interdependent. Increasing the functionality will dilute the safety, as entrepreneurs focus their time, effort and resources on developing better features. In a similar way, giving more focus on security hampers functionality. The challenge is to strike the right balance between these aspects, and this becomes the deciding factor for long-term success of any system. Nihal Kashinath says that current IoT systems are not very secure because there is a lack of seriousness about security, given that attacks on connected devices have been sporadic. This is dangerous, since security should be in the fab38

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Major contributors to this story

A. Peter Manoj Jayakumar Amit Shah David Shimoni Nihal Kashinath SFTG - industrial VP of product president, Mformation Balasubramanian founder, IoT Bengaluru director, Emertxe collaboration, CeNSE development and (IoTBLR) Information Technologies - Indian Institute of engineering, Mformation Science

Shibi Salim director, SenzIT

T. Anand director, Knewron Technologies

ric of the connected-devices system, not as a separate module that is tacked on later. However, T. Anand believes that, as of today, systems are secure enough. In the long run, the design and architecture of these systems or applications would tell more. Cases of network security attacks are very few, considering the number of connected devices available these days, observes Shibi Salim. Developers are becoming more vigilant and focussing well on security aspects. “When it comes to data and bearer security, it is all managed by very well-defined standards and protocols,” says Amit Shah. This is a multi-layered approach. Security of data that we are sending on the cloud has multiple layers—social security number (SSN), username and password—and, a lot of sensitive data is obfuscated or made anonymous, so that even if you get hold of it, you cannot make sense of it. Then comes security of access— who can get hold of the data. When access is secured, data is segregated and controlled by a unique identifier, so one person cannot get hold of another person’s data.

Varun Deshpande business development manager, Algo Engines Pvt Ltd

Vijay Mishra technology manager, CeNSE - Indian Institute of Science

Many people are too intimidated by the idea of companies or people getting access to data that they might not want to share with them. Some examples are the positioning data Google receives through Maps app or the use of phones to take photos in high-security regions, thus losing privacy in the digital world. To solve such issues, there are solutions like geo-fencing that allow you to switch-off your device completely, switch to flight mode or disable certain functions when inside a virtually-defined location, thus protecting real-world privacy.

From inflated expectations to the plateau of productivity Gartner’s hype cycle report might have the IoT as its most over-hyped technology in 2014, but their analysts believe that it will only take five to ten years for it to reach maturity, or the plateau of productivity, according to the hype cycle. Coincidentally, the prediction for Big Data reaching the same level of maturity is also five to ten years. The year 2025 sure looks set to be an extremely promising year for us technologists.  www.efymag.com

Tech Focus

Internet of Things, Made in India

Janani Gopalakrishnan Vikram is a technicallyqualified freelance writer, editor and hands-on mom based in Chennai

F

ar from the days of racing to catch-up with technologies, an era has now dawned where Indian start-ups are forerunners in trendy fields like the Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data. Start-up companies are not just important but essential to the growth of a nascent technology. These play a very unique role in the ecosystem, bringing in fresh, new ideas and radical perspectives. Listed in this feature are ten interesting Indian start-ups in the IoT and Big Data space.

SenzIT (http://www.senzit.net/smarter-solutions/smarter-justice/) Enterprise solution provider SenzIT is working with IBM to transform the courtroom, a place that has defied the pace of modernisation in most countries. By digitally recording the whole sequence of events, right from the start of a case to the announcement of the verdict, and correlating those events with news and relevant videos gathered from here and there, SenzIT would try to ensure a fair and transparent trial. The solution will involve IoT devices, analysis of large amounts of data on a cloud platform, facial recognition and other advanced technologies.

Altizon Systems

Algo Engines

Azoi

(http://algoengines.com/) By harnessing the power of IoT and Big Data, Algo Engines provides opera-

(https://azoi.com) Although registered in the USA, Azoi is an Indian company. Founded several years back by two friends, the Gujarat based start-up continued to fiddle with futuristic technologies like gesture-recognition till they hit bull’s eye with their latest product, Wello. Wello is a health tracker disguised as a mobile phone case. Whenever you hold the case, its sensors measure vital parameters and pass on the figures to a smartphone app, which not only monitors your health

Algo engines

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tional intelligence to wind turbines, met masts and solar plants. In simple terms, it collates large amounts of data collected by sensors embedded in such powergenerating systems and converts them into actionable insights. By immediately remedying faults or changing settings based on environmental changes, the efficiency and effectiveness of these devices can be maximised. However, one must not underestimate the amount of data that needs to be analysed. Considering that hundreds of wind turbines would be flashing updates three times per second to the control centre, it is nothing short of very big data.

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(http://altizon.com/) Pune based start-up Altizon Systems is a serious player in the industrial Internet space. Their scalable Datonis platform includes sensor data appliances and software development tools, which manufacturers can use to build connected industrial equipment that constantly feed operational data to a cloud based platform for aggregation and analysis. A few original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are already using the solution to improve operational efficiency, remote monitoring and predictive maintenance.

www.efymag.com

Tech Focus

How you can use IoT C

ommercial products are the tangible face of technology, the aspect that common people can easily understand, and of course use. And, in that dimension, IoT is doing really well. From trendy wearables to smart energy savers, there is a vast variety of exciting IoT products available in the market these days, making it a popular shopping category this holiday season. In previous issues of Electronics for You, we have frequently covered trendsetters in this space, including Nest Labs’ smart (now self-learning) thermostat and smoke alarm, Belkin’s WeMo range of home-automation products, smart lights such as Phillips Hue and LifX, smart watches like Pebble, and fitness aids like Fitbit, FuelBand, Jawbone Up, and so on. Let us now take a quick look at more such exciting IoT products.

more customisation through if-this-then-that (IFTTT) programmability.

Neurio

Lively

(https://www.neur.io/) Neurio is a smart device that can infer a lot of things from your power-consumption pattern. When you install the Wi-Fi-enabled Neurio sensor in your power meter panel, its current transformers keep measuring the flow of electricity into your home. This usage information is transmitted to Neurio cloud, wherein your home’s power data is stored and constantly analysed. By monitoring the variations in energy consumption, Neurio can make useful inferences like when your dryer has finished its job or if you forgot to turn-off the air-conditioner, and notify you through SMS. The team is working to enable

(http://www.mylively.com/) The next best thing to being with the elders of your family is at least knowing constantly that they are well and assuring them of immediate help in emergencies. Packaged as an easy-to-setup-and-use smart watch, Lively literally stays with the users, making sure they are fine. It reminds them to take their medicines, watches if they are as active as always, and alerts concerned people, when required. It has a one-touch help button, which sets Lively care team into action. The personnel stay on the line, constantly talking to the senior citizen till help arrives. For use at home and within 457m (1500-feet) of

status but also identifies patterns that can help improve your lifestyle.

Cooey (http://cooey.co.in/) Another Indian healthcare wearable, Cooey, constantly monitors health parameters like temperature,

App overview—How Neurio plans to change the world

heart rate, detailed weight break-up (fat, muscle, etc) and more. It unobtrusively monitors the health of kids, elders or anybody else, and alerts their guardians in times of need. Although there are many international products in this genre, what could make Cooey a better choice for Indians is the localised ambulatory care provided in emergencies.

CarIQ

Cooey’s wearables

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(http://mycariq. com/) CarIQ is India’s answer to smart c a rs. Wo r k o n

CarIQ started in 2012, following the team’s realisation that people make very smart decisions till the point of purchase, comparing various car brands, models and technologies. However, after the purchase, they flounder in decisions ranging from service, maintenance and security to the actual driving of the car. CarIQ platform, now available for pre-order, aims to connect a car to the cloud, enabling both the driver and the car itself to make smart decisions based on real-time data. Basically, data derived from the car’s microcomputer is passed on to cloud based servers, where it is analysed to generate insights about the condition of the car, credibility of the driver, www.efymag.com

Tech Focus it, the device does not require a smartphone, as it connects using a Lively hub. For outside use, it is paired with a smartphone app.

Toymail (http://www.toymail.co/) IoT has something for everybody, from elders to kids. Toymail is a service that combines an attractive mailman toy with a Toymail app. When you are away at work and want to connect with your kid, you can record a voice message, which will be conveyed to your child by the mailman toy. The kid’s childish reply also comes back to you, recorded by the mailman and delivered on your smartphone, just in time to make your day. There is also a service that delivers personalised daily messages to your child, with interesting thoughts, stories, news or something else that would be of interest to that age group.

RainMachine (http://www.rainmachine.com/) This IoT tool helps you connect with the weather, to save water and even your crops. This Wi-Fi-enabled touch-screen device sits in your garden or farm and connects with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which manages numerous satellites, radars and weather stations, to bring you the best weather forecasts. With a six-hourly weather update and extremely-accurate EvapoTraspiration calculations, it manages the watering needs of your garden or farm. When the Internet is down or there is no forecast information available, RainMachine quickly switches to historical data to help in its watering plans. You can remotely manage RainMachine using a smartphone app. Garden

fuel efficiency and so on. CarIQ platform will also assist businesses in delivering high-value personalised services, such as emergency response, to car owners.

Altiux (http://www.altiux.com/) Founded in 2013, Altiux offers product engineering services spanning segments like mobile, embedded and other technologies. On the IoT front, they offer a toolkit for speedy development and deployment of machine-to-machine (M2M) applications. The toolkit includes connectivity middleware components (BoxPWR), a management platform (Internet of Things and Everything www.efymag.com

IoT Inside… The tangible and functional IoT product you use, whether a smar t watch, energy monitor or motion sensor, is an amalgamation of many technologies and services. Here are the main components:  An embedded system inside the product  If required, one or more sensors that make the product aware of its environment  A unique internet protocol (IP) address, which identifies the device on the Internet  Wireless capability to connect to the Internet, directly or through a gateway  A backend platform, usually cloud based, which collates Big Data collected by these devices and packages it into a value-added service  A smartphone app that connects you, the device and the cloud platform

management is emerging as a popular segment in IoT and there are other products like Fliwer and Iro in this space.

Owlet baby (https://www.owletcare.com/) No equipment can ever be completely comfortable for a baby, but this is as comfortable as medical tests can get. Owlet is a snug-fitting shoe that constantly monitors your baby’s vital signs, including heart rate, oxygen level, temperature and sleep quality, and issues an alert when parameters are abnormal. It optionally transmits the information to a smartphone app for analysis by caretakers, doctors or parents.

Natalia project (http://natalia.civilrightsdefenders.org/) Even though this IoT gadget is a work-in-progress,

Else) and an intelligence framework (IOTelligence).

Transpose India

tagPlug

(http://transposeindia.strikingly. com/) Transpose India, a start-up born out of CEPT University, Ahmadabad, aims to use data to sort out endless traffic problems in India. The team at Transpose India believes that proper collection and analysis of data, about not just the number of commuters but also the environmental behaviour at various times of the day, can help ease the traffic even in places where it is generally thought that widening of roads is the only solution. Transpose has developed an assembly of components to develop economical, portable and intelligent

(http://www.tagplug.com/) A power-saving tool that is made for India. Basically, tagPlug is an easy-to-plug-in device that can replace any switch in your house. All you need to do is plug the device in, install and configure the app, and you are ready to remotely control that switch. You can turn your lights on or off when you enter or leave the house, program it to automatically switch-off once your phone is charged, set on/off times and more. You can pre-order the product from their website.

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Tech Focus it is worth knowing about. When somebody speaks up for justice, they are always under danger of attack by anti-social elements. In remembrance of the murder of human rights activist Natalia Estemirova in Chechnya in 2009, a Swedish organisation called Civil Rights Defenders has launched the Natalia Project. The system basically involves an IoT wristband for use by activists. When the alarm is triggered or the wristband is forcibly removed, it sends out an alert along with location information to a network, which immediately sends other members, who are located nearby, to the aid of the attacked activist.

MyTraps (http://mytraps.com/) A socially-impactful solution developed by Purdue based Spensa Technologies, MyTraps helps farmers to remotely monitor and manage pest attacks on their farms. The solution uses wireless insect traps, an online cloud service and a dashboard. Several Wi-Fi-capable insect traps called Z-Traps are installed across the farm to lure and capture pest samples. These samples are analysed and the information is wirelessly conveyed using a base station to MyTraps service and the user’s smart device. The user gets to see a satellite image of the field with details on the infestation, counts of pests captured in each trap, analysis of pesticide use and suggestions. This helps farmers to take further action to save their crops.

CubeSensors (https://cubesensors.com) These small, sleek, wireless, sensor-packed cubes provide a lot of actionable information to improve the quality of your life. Unlike fitness monitors that keep watching you—what you eat, how much you sleep and

sensors, which can be placed at problematic areas to capture videos and

whether you exercise—CubeSensors watch the environment and provide information about air quality, lighting, temperature, humidity, noise, pressure, etc, along with suggestions to improve the conditions.

Revolv (http://revolv.com/) Not just Revolv, other smart-home hubs including Iris and Staples Connect are also becoming popular these days, because managing umpteen apps to control the devices in your home can be painful. Smart-home hubs like Revolv help you bring together most standard, branded home-automation products under the control of a single hub, and hence a single app. So, you can switch-off all your lights, turn-on your oven, program the washing machine, and do many more such things using a single, easy-to-use interface.

Quirky’s egg minder (http://www.quirky.com) Egg minder is a smart egg tray that manages your stock of eggs. By telling you when eggs are about to go bad, it helps avoid wastage; and by alerting you when your stock is running out, it makes sure you have eggs for tomorrow’s breakfast. What makes this gadget worth a look is its simplicity. Egg minder is part of the Wink range of products developed jointly by product-development platform Quirky, GE and Electric Imp. Other products in the range include an intelligent personal dashboard, smart piggy bank, power strip and multipurpose sensor. Internet of Things is no longer a distant dream but an exciting reality, as is evident from the many IoT products populating store shelves.

wirelessly transmit relevant data like number of vehicles in real-time to the main server. The data is then sorted into data packages, which can offer insights into current and future patterns and trends. This can be used to come up with practical solutions to traffic congestion.

Inventrom

Children learning advanced robotics concepts using Inventrom’s products

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(http://www.inventrom. com) Goa based Inventrom not only provides kits and courses to learn about

robotics but is also focused on developing smart robots like Minion Bot and developing home-automation products to keep in line with the IoT boom. Their award-winning wireless programmer and wireless sensor node can be used by learners to experiment with their own connected products. The worldwide enthusiasm about Internet of Things and Big Data is surely getting reflected in India, too. It would be nice to see this ecosystem grow, because Indian start-ups will be able to provide products with a desi touch and more customised, localised services at affordable rates to us.  www.efymag.com

Embedded

Today’s M2M Solutions Accelerate Your IoT Design’s Time-to-Market

I Abhishek A. Mutha is senior technical correspondent at EFY

t is a well-known fact that wireless connectivity is a key component of the Internet of Things (IoT). Embedded systems in various disciplines, such as transportation, medical, smart grid, industrial, home and automation, are more often than not integrated with wireless connectivity called machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. These systems need not necessarily be M2M-capable, but these do include an assortment of sensors and other devices. M2M-enabled devices and sensors make use of different kind of wireless data-transfer methods and protocols, such as ZigBee, 802.11, Bluetooth 3.0 and 4.0, and wireless local area network (WLAN) or Wi-Fi, among others. Although each communication method is designed for specific ranges of usage and applications, these all play a role in connecting devices to the IoT.

Establishing M2M communication in a network comprising a variety of servers, sensors, equipment, controllers and storage devices is a complex process. Let us take a look at how today’s M2M chipsets and modules are addressing the challenges involved and supporting various protocols on a single chipset or module, making it a perfect choice for M2M networks of the future.

How to select the right chipset/module The usual selection of components goes through a lot of filters, like cost, availability, forward and backward compatibility, and others. Some other criteria include power-consumption and ease-of-integration based on the size of chipset and number of external components required. All chipset decisions must be based on the end use case being targeted, believes Arati Mekaraj, deputy general manager (DGM)–IOT, Rob-

Data transfer using ZigBee wireless technology

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Embedded ert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions. She says, “The solution must never begin from the chipset but must culminate in the chipset. The problem must drive the solution and not the other way around.” The designer should also look at characteristics and requirements of the end product, notes Narasimhan Venkatesh, senior vice president, Advanced Technologies. Some factors with respect to end products that need to be considered are number of sensors needed, amount of processing required, battery-life expectation, wireless or wired protocols to be supported, allowable size, regulatory requirements based on where it will be sold, etc. With these known, chipsets and modules can be chosen. Another deciding factor is timeto-market (TTM), indicates Anand T., director, Knewron Technologies, as any wireless chipset or module would need to go through tedious certification processes, such as FCC and CE. He says, “It is expected that usually modules would be available pre-certified from manufacturers. This means a lot of cost is already taken care of, in addition to the time involved, and that is going to make or break situation for many.”

Three difficulties to overcome for M2M-IoT products At a very high level for all M2M products, it essentially boils down to three factors while selecting the right chipset or module for your design, according to Anshuman Singh, founder, ReTiSense. He says, “One, what kind of data you are sensing and how to retrieve that? Two, how are you establishing communication between devices at short distances? Three, how are you establishing communication between devices at long distances?” Data sensing. Talking about the kind of data collected and the process, Singh notes, “One of the big challenges in M2M is not to verify whether the data can be sensed or not. If you look into any air-conditioning machine, generator, transformer or any industrialgrade machine, data is always present. 48

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Designer speak What are the main features that you look out for in M2M chipsets or modules for IoT applications? “Form-factor as low as chipset itself, lower cost, ease-of-integration and use, plus compatibility for forward and backward devices are some important parameters that I look for in chipsets or modules.” — Anand T., director, Knewron Technologies “Apart from good technical support from the module vendor, low-power requirements, reliability, ease-of-development and ruggedness of the module in field are other features that are a must.” — Darshan Virupaksha, systems engineer, Altiux Innovations & co-organizer IoTBLR

Key questions to address while selecting M2M chipsets for your IoT product The following criteria help identify key parameters and, thereby, support decision making:  Power availability. Is it mains-powered or battery-powered? Is it a remote location or an easily-accessible one? Do we need to go into deep-sleep or be always on?  Space availability. Is it a small device or large equipment? Does it have adequate airflow or is it constrained for space?  Operating environment. Is it in the comfort of a home, outdoors or a construction vehicle? 25°C or 125°C?  Computing requirements. Is it sensing and transmitting one simple signal or measuring 20 signals at high frequency, doing pre-processing, running front-end computing tasks? Do you need to run Linux, an Ethernet stack, analogue algorithms?  Future readiness. Is it scalable to the next-generation system easily? Or do you need to do a major overhaul?  Security and integrity. Is data confidentiality a critical topic? Can loss of integrity cause performance issues and create bottlenecks? Do you need on-chip security?  TTM. Is your customer expecting the product next month or in six months?  Cost. How much is the customer ready to pay? Are you in a commodity market or in the premium one?  Feature sets. How many features need to be packed in the box for the cost you are constrained by? — Contributed by Arati Mekaraj, deputy general manager (DGM) – IOT, Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions

The actual difficulty is in identifying the kind of data generated, collating it and making sense out of it.” Citing an example, he says, “The kind of data a Schneider generator or transformer generates and transmits would be very different from a General Electric (GE) machine. It would be very difficult, especially for a start-up, to figure out all those differences, get access to the kind of data they report and build some intelligence out of it.” Short-distance communication. Suppose there is a large installation of a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system that comprises many machines that work together. The ways in which small and medium sized businesses, such as hospitals or apartments, build

such a system is by getting various machines from different vendors at the best possible prices and having somebody to hook them up. Assuming that these machines are placed in close range, the question that arises is what kind of protocol is to be used for this short-distance communication to be possible, where the data is collated at a local hub or gateway. There are many protocols and each vendor favours a different kind of protocol for its machines. Singh says, “All big players are coming up with their own standards. The most pervasive are ZigBee, Bluetooth LowEnergy (BLE) and Wi-Fi. Google is coming up with 6LoWPAN. There are many variations as well of these local transmission protocols.” He adds, “Therefore to build a system with www.efymag.com

Embedded New Solutions in the Last One Year for M2M-IoT Products Company

Solution and type

Why you should pick this for your next IoT product?

Texas Instruments

SimpleLink Wi-Fi CC3100 Interneton-a-chip wireless network processor

• On-chip web server and embedded TCP/IP stack • Integrates all protocols for Wi-Fi and the Internet • 64-pin 9×9mm QFN package • Can connect to any 8-, 16-, or 32-bit MCU over SPI or UART interface • UART or SPI driver minimises host-memory footprint as low as 7kB of code and 700B of RAM memory for a TCP client application

Chipset solution

Texas Instruments

Redpine Signals

C C 3 2 0 0 S i m - • Wireless MCU that integrates ARM CortexpleLink Wi-Fi and M4 MCU running at 80MHz Internet-of-Things • Peripheral set includes parallel camera, I2S, SD/MMC, UART, SPI, I2C and four-channel ADC solution • Includes embedded TCP/IP and TLS/SSL Chipset solution stacks, HTTP server and multiple Internet protocols Lite-Fi RS9110

Chipset solution

Redpine Signals M2MCombo RS9113 Chipset solution

Sequans Communication

Colibiri LTE platform Chipset solution

Gemalto

Cinterion concept board Development board solution

wide adaptability, it needs to support all protocols, or the designer needs to segment devices and companies based on the kind of standards their machines support, as each protocol requires specific investment and knowledge-base that the designer needs.” Long-distance communication. Long-distance communication is not www.efymag.com

• Single antenna IEEE 802.11n with STBC support • Host interfaces include SDIO v1.2/2.0, SPI, memory-mapped interface (EBI) and other interfaces are I2C, SPI, GPIO and UART • WEP, TKIP and AES hardware engines for line-speed security support • On-chip processing and memory enables the option to offload Wi-Fi security supplicant • TCP/IP stack enabling zero-host load • Single-spatial stream, dual-band 802.11n + BT4.0 (Bluetooth LE dual-mode) + ZigBee (802.15.4-2006) • Host interfaces supported are USB 2.0, SDIO, SPI and UART • For adding LTE connectivity to M2M and IoT modules • FDD and TDD, up to 20MHz LTE channels • Supports VoLTE, location based services and Wi-Fi SoftAP • Host environments include Android, ChromeOS, Linux, Windows and MAC OS • Development kit that leverages EHS6 Java module, Cinterion solutions and SensorLogic application enablement platform for design of M2M solutions • Can be connected to Arduino-style sensor boards and includes a Cinterion M2M module for global 2G and 3G cellular connectivity

just about getting data to the server, it is about the whole stack—how to get the data to the server, how the server interprets and makes sense of it, informs Singh. Again, there are a lot of protocols, and each of these has its individual stack. Let us take a few examples. Singh says, “The most common and easy-to-understand is the Trans-

mission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) based protocol. You could send the data out from your local gateway to a server via IP version 6 (IPv6). One big problem with TCP/IP is that it is very expensive with regards to power, and the overhead is also very high, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of devices sending data.” IBM, a few years ago, came out with a protocol named Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), which, Singh notes, is a short messaging protocol, where the device or gateway would broadcast the message over a hub. Individual servers or applications that need access to the data can subscribe to it. He adds, “There are many other proprietary protocols that companies like Schneider or GE have built on datacollation. So, there is a big problem of fragmentation and how to build the application in a way that you can deploy multiple vendor machines.”

You can add LTE connectivity to your designs To make M2M- and IoT-enabled devices, there is a need for a simple Long-Term Evolution (LTE) platform, as industry experts believe LTEenabled IoT is an upcoming trend. As LTE gains momentum around the world, the market for single-mode LTE module solution provides a huge opportunity, as modules could be a worthy option for many IoT device makers. Electronics manufacturing companies have started incorporating LTE chipsets to bring to market a module optimised for the design of devices for the IoT. Such modules aim to target the needs of M2M and IoT device makers for a straightforward, all-inone, single-mode LTE chip solution for the design of reasonably-priced devices for numerous IoT applications. It is slowly growing as more and more economies are changing to LTE infrastructure these days. Faster data rates and high bandwidth demands are also fuelling these requirements. Electronics For You | January 2015

49

Embedded Major contributors to the story

Ambroise Popper, VP, Mobile Computing and M2M business unit, Sequans Communications

Anand T., director, Knewron Technologies

Darshan Virupaksha, Praveen Ganapathy, Anshuman Singh, Arati Mekaraj, Narasimhan director, business founder, ReTiSense deputy general manager systems engineer, Altiux Venkatesh, development, TI India (DGM) – IOT, Robert Innovations & co-organiser senior vice president, IoTBLR Bosch Engineering and Advanced Technologies Business Solutions

Ambroise Popper, VP, Mobile Computing and M2M business unit, Sequans Communications, says, “Although it only represents a small portion of the overall M2M market, demand for LTE-enabled M2M is growing fast today. By the year 2017, one market analyst predicts, 70 per cent of M2M modules will be LTE.” He adds, “Driving M2M applications for LTE are metering, home-automation, automotive accessories and wearables.” Although carriers and LTE module makers are focused on the M2M market for looking beyond peoplecentric mobile communications, the cost of deployment and operation is a deterrent, feels Venkatesh. He says, “Greater demand is for modules that offer wireless communication in unlicensed spectrum—protocols applicable being Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, ZigNee, ANT+, to name a few.” He adds, “It remains to be seen what the uptake on LTE-U (LTE in the unlicensed 5GHz band) would be.” Talking about implementation of LTE for IoT solutions in the current Indian scenario, Darshan Virupaksha, systems engineer, Altiux Innovations & co-organiser IoTBLR, feels, it is a milestone set too far to achieve. He says, “Although the all-IP architecture of LTE is a perfect fit for the IoT, the ecosystem is not ready yet. The upcoming government spectrum auctions might change the scenario.” He adds, “A couple of module vendors have 4G modems in the market, and one can say that, the demand has not attained critical mass. Telematics solutions and large-scale implementa50

January 2015 | Electronics For You

Modules v/s chipsets: Summary Modules are relatively more expensive and have a faster TTM. At risk is scalability and lack of supplier redundancy. Lesser development budgets and resources automatically point to modules. Chipsets are cheaper, but development effort and TTM is more. Can be a distinct advantage in a cost-sensitive volume segment. Inter-changeabilty and second supplier redundancy gains merit here. — Arati Mekaraj, deputy general manager (DGM) – IOT, Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions

tions like smart cities could be one of the first adopters of 4G in India.”

M2M chipset or an M2M module–how to decide For low volumes, like less than 50,000 units, modules would be best-suited, feels Virupaksha. On the other hand, he says, “Chipsets come with low per-unit cost, and there would be high certification costs included. It would be viable to go for chipsets only for volumes around one million or so.” Certification is a key factor to be considered by designers for today’s chipsets and modules. M2M modules come pre-certified. Praveen Ganapathy, director, business development, TI India says, “It could take four to six months for a designer to get his design certified if he starts from scratch. Having a certified module gives a greater edge, especially for a start-up looking to do a quick proof-of-concept, evaluate and get it to the market quickly.” He adds, “It really is a balance between volume, TTM and cost.” Some other benefits associated with using modules are shorter development period, higher per-unit

costs, ruggedness and reliability. A bare minimum of RF expertise is required to work with modules. Popper says, “A module requires much less research and development expertise from a developer when compared to a chipset.” He adds, “For carriers with hard certification programs, a pre-certified module makes more sense.” What is the biggest reason people would go for modules, questions Singh. He explains that, in the software world, it is very common to use a very high-optimised module and library if something is going to be repeated over and over again. This is transitioning to the hardware world as well. Singh adds, “A module that has been built for BLE, ZigBee or WiFi is packed immensely dense, such that the size and power consumption goes down significantly. If I am building my solution from scratch, I would probably not be able to get that level of integration and powerconsumption. So, that is why I prefer using modules.” Time-to-market is a very important consideration to make, informs Ganapathy. He says, “If you have a www.efymag.com

Embedded very short timeline, it is better to go for a module because you have something almost there as a product.” Another deciding factor for modules versus chipsets depends on the kind of target volume a designer has in mind. Singh says, “Let us suppose you have a target volume in 1000s. The expenses to be incurred would include cost of designing a radio circuitry and certification costs.” There are certain frequency bands restricted for transmission by government, which are different for different countries. Ensuring the fact that it is working perfectly across various geographies, and making sure the device’s harmonics do not interfere with restricted frequency bands, adds a lot of upfront cost to it, notes Singh. He adds, “It does not make sense to bear that cost for a volume in 1000s. But, if you are going to do a product to be manufactured in millions, then it makes sense to actually design everything from scratch.” For developers, it is going to be ease-of-interfacing and design-integration to the main board. Whether chipset provides that ease or module does, that would eventually be the deciding factor. However, Anand says, “It is expected that modules would be easier to interface and integrate, rather than chipsets, and they would also involve additional design care and complexities.” He adds, “An integrated chipset will be a lower-cost solution, but with design and certification challenges. I think, modules would win over chipsets in the long run.”

Modules will cost lesser in future The better the integration, the more cost-effective the designer is going to be at a system level, notes Ganapathy. He says, “The chipset cost might actually increase as more and more features are integrated, because earlier you might have had to use a separate microcontroller and RF device. Now, you have one chip performing both functions, including integration of front-end modules.” He adds, “So, as you integrate more, the system-on-chip may actually go up. But, when you look at the overall system cost, the price comes down. As volumes pick up, we could expect the prices of modules and chipsets to go down.” “Prices are decreasing as the volumes are increasing,” comments Anand on the pricing of modules. However, until recently, prices seem to have stagnated and, perhaps, are waiting to change in some direction depending upon the market demand. He adds, “They are set to go down in the near future.” However, there is one factor that may increase the price of modules and chipsets—functionalities and features. Anand adds, “If manufacturers could add more of those, they would be demanding premium and, hence, a bit higher price than basic counterparts.”  www.efymag.com

Electronics For You | January 2015

51

Security

Part 1 of 3

Towards an Extra Layer of Security: Two-Factor Authentication

T Hari Om Prakash is working as a scientist at Systems Engineering Group, ADRIN, Department of Space

he buzz in the web market is two-factor authentication (also known as TFA, 2FA, two-step verification, multi-factor authentication). Many users hold multiple accounts on multiple websites, and most of them use the same password for multiple accounts. If their password is hacked on one website, their accounts on other websites get vulnerable too.

Passwords are not secure enough—if someone gets your password, they can easily access your account and can do anything with your account like deleting your data, sharing your sensitive data with the public, hijacking, etc. By using two-factor authentication, it becomes more difficult for hackers to impersonate you and take over your account. With an increase in cyber attacks or exploitation of the first level, there is need for a second level of authentication that adds more security to services or contents like e-mail, bank accounts, social accounts, etc.

What is two-factor authentication

Fig. 1: Gmail login (Credit: Google/Gmail)

Authentication is concerned with assuring an authentic communication. Till now, you may be aware of onefactor authentication only, where you are asked for a user login name and password (for example: Gmail login in Fig. 1 and SBI online net banking login in Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: SBI login (Credit: State Bank of India)

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January 2015 | Electronics For You

www.efymag.com

Security

Fig. 3: One-time password (OTP)

Authentication Information

Login OTP SMS

TwoFactor Proxy

Session

Website

Session

Enter OTP Service Access

User

Usernames and SMS Addresses

Usernames and Passwords

Updates

Administrator

Fig. 4: Architectural view of two-factor authentication

One Factor Authentication

Password (What You Know)

Two Factor Authentication

Password (What You Know) OTP on Mobile (What You Have)

Fig. 5: Multi-factor authentication

Two-factor authentication provides an extra second layer of security with your traditional authentication system. Your account can be accessed only after successful authentication of both layers of security. Fig. 4 shows an architectural view of TFA. Two-facwww.efymag.com

tor authentication adds a second level of authenticaPassword (What You Know) tion—‘something you have’ like a OTP on Mobile (What You Have) phone OTP SMS (Fig. 3)—to the OTP on Mobile first level of au(What You Have) thentication which is ‘something you know’ like an account login and password. In an account login system, you have to enter the user ID and password. You can give out your user ID to anyone, but the password has to be kept a secret. In TFA system, after you enter your login details, you will get a second password or code sent Three Factor Authentication

to your registered mobile phone number or e-mail address, which is known as a one-time password (OTP). There might be a third level of authentication, or a replacement of second level, where you have to be physically present during authentication. This type of authentication technique is known as ‘something you are’—like a biometric finger scanning, eye scanning or a voice print. TFA requires a user to provide two out of three types of credentials before being able to access an account. The three types of authentication techniques (as shown in Fig. 5) are: 1. What you know—something a user knows like a password or PIN. 2. What you have—something a user owns like an ATM card or mobile phone. 3. What you are—something unique about a user like fingerprint or voice print.

What you know Sometimes called the first level of authentication, this simple approach includes authentication of personal identification number (PIN) or password. To prevent hacking, you have to create a complex password by using some alpha and non-alpha characters including special characters. One problem you might face when using this authentication technique is that you have to remember even complex passwords, while the next authentication techniques do not need any memory power. This kind of technique is commonly known as knowledge-factor authentication, where a user has to prove the knowledge of a secret in order to authenticate. Some examples of ‘what you know’ are: Password. A password is a secret word or string of characters used for user authentication. This is the most commonly used mechaElectronics For You | January 2015

53

Security Authentication Methods Listed with Examples and Their properties

Fig. 6: Pattern to unlock an Android phone

Fig. 7: SecurID e-tokens (connected and disconnected types) (Credit: RSA SecurID)

nism for authentication. Many TFA techniques rely on password as one factor of authentication. PIN. A PIN is a secret numeric password, typically used in ATMs. Pattern. A pattern is a sequence of cells in an array used for authenticating users, such as pattern-based authentication used in Android devices (Fig. 6).

What you have A user has to use what he or she has for authentication, such as an ATM card, mobile phone, etoken, etc. During authentication, websites or services will send a temporary password, OTP, to your registered mobile phone number. Some e-token devices (like connected tokens, where they are required to connect with the system) are just like pen drive dongles used to connect with the system. An e-token uses a digital signature or some kind of a secret key during authentication only. It is very difficult to use those keys outside the application. Other e-token devices (like disconnected tokens in Fig. 8, where they are not required to 54

January 2015 | Electronics For You

Authentication method

Examples Properties

What you know

User IDs

Shared

(something user

PINs

Easy to guess or predict

knows)

Passwords

Usually forgotten as complexity grows

What you have

Cards

Shared

(something user

Badges

Can be duplicated

owns)

Keys

Lost or stolen

What you know and

ATM + PIN

Shared + PIN is weak (written on

what you have

back, easy to guess or forget)

What you are

Fingerprint

Not possible to share

(something unique

Face recognition

Repudiation unlikely

about the user)

Voice print

Forging difficult



Iris scan

Cannot be lost or stolen

storing the keys. Some examples of ‘what you have’ are USB tokens [X.509 (PKI)], magnetic stripe cards, Dallas iButton, CASQUE, UniOTP, virtual tokens, audio port tokens, smartcards, ATM cards (swipe/ PIN), mobile phones, SMSes, smartphone push, RFID, one-time Fig. 8: User using CRYPTOCard (disconnected token) pads and e-tokens during authentication (dongle with signature and RSA SecurID).

What you are

Fig. 9: Two-factor authentication

connect with the system) have a digital display (SecurID token in Fig. 7) to show you the unique key every time you need to authenticate with the website. This factor is very prone to attacks. Keys can easily be stolen; if lost, a thief can use such keys to open the lock. So, it has become mandatory to use additional authentication or a secure way of

This type of authentication technique does not require a user to memorise a password because the password in this technique may be a finger, face, voice or eyes. However, these biometric properties alter over time. Applications used in this type of biometric authentication scan the face or finger first and then convert into text code or signature. This text code or signature is required to validate from an authorised system or server. In the next issue, we will see how various websites have implemented two-factor authentication. To be continued next month www.efymag.com

Test & Measurement

Handheld Test And Measurement Devices Growing to The Standards of Benchtops Anagha P. is a technical correspondent at EFY

T

he continuously-evolving technology, modification and creation of standards, and increasing requirements of customers are pushing the test and measurement equipment industry to move at a faster pace.  All players in this domain, whether big or small, are striving to manufacture and supply devices that fulfil these criteria. Traditional stand-alone test equipment are usually heavy, need to be connected to the line, and often do not work well in rugged outdoors, hard-to-reach or moving environments. This has led to one notable trend in this segment—increasing demand for handheld devices, observes Naresh Narasimhan of Tektronix India.

The myth about handhelds Handheld test and measurement devices

People often perceive handhelds to be inferior to benchtops in terms of functionality, performance, precision and accuracy.

But, if you look at today’s test and measurement industry, many models available in the market offer very good performance as compared to benchtop instruments. “Now, a handheld instrument is featured with full specifications that are able to meet specific end-user application requirements,” says Madhukar Tripathi of Anritsu India. “They offer better cost-performance to buyers,” he adds.

When and why to use handhelds There are three main scenarios where test and measurement is done on the field. The first is during installation, where technicians or engineers use the device to verify whether the system is up-and-running with the right frequency, voltage or such similar parameters. The second situation is during periodic, condition based or corrective maintenance of the system. This is where you need to assess the performance, recalibrate the system, identify and rectify the fault, and prevent possible issues that may come up. Third, it is used for system monitoring. An example is the monitoring of spectrum to check whether a band is available or not. Handheld devices are mostly used in field applications because such cases require portability. The device should have battery-operation capability and the battery should provide enough backup. “Highaccuracy and repeatability are desired, but not mandatory for field devices,” says Asish Jain of Keysight India, “because most field applications are a go/no-go test where the user wants to know whether the system is functioning or not.”

Where the industry is heading Listed below are some general trends we find in the handheld test and measurement industry. Improved measurement range. Elec56

January 2015 | Electronics For You

www.efymag.com

Test & Measurement tronics test and measurement instrument manufacturers have been trying to extend the range of measurement in a way that it can be used for more applications. But, with increased range of measurement, there comes an increased complexity of design. This should not compromise other features. Every component has to become smaller and more components have to be integrated without increasing the probability of leakages. Rohde and Schwarz (R&S) FSH handheld spectrum analyser series now offers a frequency range up to 20GHz, and Keysight FieldFox series RF and microwave analysers have models that cover a frequency range of about 26.5GHz, thereby covering most aerospace and defence applications. Smaller size. Technologies like quad flat no-leads (QFN) packaging have helped reduce the size of individual components and, hence, the device as a whole. In this technology, integrated circuits (ICs) are mounted on PCB surfaces without leads or through-holes. Another method of size-reduction used in the radio frequency range is by using monolithic microwave ICs (MMICs) instead of discrete components for functions such as power amplification, microwave mixing, and lownoise and high-frequency switching. This not only reduces the size but also lowers the power consumption, thereby improving battery life. The new RSA306 spectrum analyser by Tektronix is as small as 3.05x19.05x12.7cm and weighs just about 0.59kg. Integration of devices. Integrating multiple instruments into a single system is a major trend we now see across different verticals of the industry. Handhelds usually have several devices integrated into a single system with small form factor, and the cost is also much lower compared to benchtops. A single handheld instrument occupies very little space compared to benchtops. MW82119B PIM Master by Anritsu combines PIM www.efymag.com

Features of Different Handheld Devices Product

Model

Vendor

Features

Base station analyser

BTS Master MT8220T

Anritsu

Advanced support for 4G wireless networks as well as installed 2G, 3G and WiMAX networks. Combines two-por t cable and antenna analyser, spectrum analyser, power meter (with external power sensor), GPS receiver with antenna, bias tee, interference analyser with mapping channel scanner, vector signal generator and signal analysers.

Cable and antenna analyser

Site Master  series

Anritsu

Provides the widest frequency coverage of 1MHz to 40GHz. Features vector network analyser (VNA) measurement functionality. Designed for measuring coaxial and waveguide systems. Conducts measurements such as return loss, VSWR, cable loss, DTF, phase, Smith chart, two-port transmission measurements and two-port cable loss tests.

Modulation analyser

LMR Master S412E Anritsu

Targeted for land mobile radio (LMR), professional mobile radio (PMR) technicians and engineers in the field. TETRA analyser and TETRA coverage mapping options included. TETRA summary display to view data such as base and mobile colour codes, mobile network code, location area code, and mobile station maximum transmit power level.

Passive intermodulation (PIM) analyser

PIM Master MW82119B

RF and microwave analyser

FieldFox series

Spectrum analyser

FSH13 and FSH20

Spectrum analyser

RSA306

Anritsu

Integrates 40W battery-operated PIM analyser, 2MHz to 3GHz cable and antenna analyser. Supports PIM versus time, swept PIM, distance-to-PIM (DTP), return loss, VSWR, cable loss and distance-tofault (DTF) measurements. Rugged, with big display and intuitive UI.

Keysight

Maximum frequency range of 4GHz up to 26.5GH. Application-specific modes of operation, with software upgrade option. Features like QuickCal, InstaAlign and CalReady.

Rohde & Schwarz

Equipped with an amplifier that can be activated. Extended frequency to microwave range (9kHz to 13.6GHz and 9KHz to 20GHz). Features like LTE –advanced carrier aggregation.

Tektronix

Works in real-time, broad frequency range (9kHz to 6.2GHz), 40MHz real-time bandwidth, compact and weighs about 0.59kg. Comes with free SignalVu-PC software that provides advanced RF signal analysis capabilities. Less than half the price of conventional spectrum analysers.

Transport tester

Network Master Pro MT1000A

Anritsu

All-in-one network field tester. Supports high-speed fibre channel systems and expanded Ethernet diagnostic capabilities. Aimed at technicians who install and maintain mobileaccess, fixed-access, metro and core transmission telecoms networks.

Transport tester

Network Master Flex MT1100A

Anritsu

Supports testing from 1.5 Mbps to 100Gbps. Four 100Gbps ports, each of which can be used independently and simultaneously for network and network-equipment tests. Supports OTN, Ethernet, SDH/SONET, PDH/DSn, and fibre channel in field, lab, manufacturing, and research and development environments. Electronics For You | January 2015

57

Test & Measurement Major contributors to the story

Asish Jain application engineer, Keysight Technologies India Pvt Ltd

Madhukar Tripati senior manager, marketing and channel sales, Anritsu India Pvt Ltd

Naresh Narasimhan country marketing manager, Tektronix India

Srinivasa Rao Appalla manager, application, Rohde & Schwarz India

Controller area network (CAN) diagnostics with handheld Last year, PEAK-System Technik GmbH introduced PCAN-Diag, a handheld instrument for diagnosing CAN buses in open systems interconnect (OSI) layers one (physical) and two (data-link). It provides a wide range of functions for troubleshooting CAN bus, including bit-rate, sending and receiving messages (for maintenance purposes), termination, tracing (for recording) and playback of CAN traffic. The upgraded firmware also has a busload diagram displaying an additional graph for busload that is generated by error frames, in a split-view parallel to the busload by regular CAN frames. It has a built-in two-channel oscilloscope function that gives a more accurate picture of the waveform and lets the user analyse various CAN signals in detail. The data traffic from connected CAN bus is displayed in hexadecimal and symbolic format. Start frame, end frame and various events can be used as triggers.

and line-sweep testing capability in a single portable instrument. When taking instruments to the field, we need other accessories like calibration kits. Some of these accessories are now integrated inside the system. QuickCal is a patented technology by Keysight that provides in-built calibration to a device. This reduces the number of accessories to be carried to the field. Another feature introduced by this firm is CalReady, where the unit is factorycalibrated and calibration-ready at test ports. Application-specific devices and GUI. More integration would, in normal cases, affect the ease-of-use as the system becomes more complex with each instrument added to it. But the complexity also depends on what all instruments are being integrating into one. Maintaining the simple user interface (UI), while incorporating more devices, is one key challenge that test and measurement device manufacturers face with integration. Making any device application-specific solves this. This means that the latest handhelds can 58

January 2015 | Electronics For You

be configured with multiple capabilities, like spectrum analysis, network analysis, and cable and antenna testing, in a single unit. These have operating modes that are flexible enough to meet the needs of novice and expert users. For example, if the user wants to work on any of the mentioned solutions, he can set up the instrument in a mode that matches the requirements of that particular application. New features necessary for each application are unlocked with a software licence key and do not need hardware upgrade. So, there is a hierarchy of applications and then a hierarchy of individual settings for each of these applications. Precision and accuracy. Even though field applications need not necessarily have the best precision, accuracy and repeatability, handheld devices are no longer relaxed on these fronts. Srinivasa Rao Appalla of R&S comments, “Handheld models released these days that are suitable for outdoor use do not compromise much on performance against their benchtop counterparts.” With the

FSH spectrum analyser from R&S, base-station carrier frequency measurements can be made with the accuracy of an atomic clock. Ruggedness. Since instruments used in the field may have to withstand rough environmental conditions like rain, dust and heat, and have more chances of falling down, these should be good enough to operate in rough conditions without affecting their performance. Instruments like FieldFox do not have large cooling fans or vents; these dissipate heat through the body. This avoids percolation of dust and humidity inside the device when operating in a rugged environment, thereby avoiding damage to the instrument. Remote control. Many manufacturers now let users control the entire instrument through a remote device like a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone using a software or an app. This enhances portability and lets users take measurements in harsh conditions without actually being present there. Warming up faster. Every device has a warm-up time—time between turning on the device to get it up-and-running. Technologies like InstaAlign speed up this warming process. This means that the user can get the best accuracy even when the device has just started operating.

Why benchtop Handhelds can never replace benchtop equipment, and vice versa. The kind of scenarios and tests the technicians or engineers do in the field will be different from those performed in a research and development lab. Benchtops are often used during the design phase for testing and debugging. It provides engineers with a deeper, involved, precise and repeatable analysis. Meanwhile, handheld instruments have a basic capability, and perhaps a few advanced capabilities that are required by or could be an added advantage for people in the field.  www.efymag.com

Telecom

Broadband Internet Access Using ADSL

S Dr Rajiv Kumar Singh holds a Ph.D. in electronics engineering from IIT (BHU), Varanasi, and is currently employed with Lovely Professional University as assistant professor. Previously, he was associated with BSNL. He received senior research fellowship of UGC at Centre of Advanced Study at IIT

ervices like video streaming, voiceover Internet protocol (VoIP), online video gaming, online shopping, telemedicine and broadcasting of TV programmes are a few things that require high-speed Internet access for effective operation. Existing high-speed Internet services like co-axial cable, analogue modem, cable modem, integrated services digital network (ISDN), etc, are not capable of delivering such data rates due to their inherent limitations. The copper lines used for telephone networks carry voice signals in the frequency range of 300Hz to 3400Hz only. It has been found that these unshielded copper lines are capable of transporting signals at much higher rates over long distances. One such example is local area network (LAN), where these copper lines carry signals in the frequency range of 6MHz or more. So, it is possible to use these copper lines for data transportation along with voice services. Re-use of copper lines seems to be best suited since millions of connections for telephone networks are already in place. This implementation requires equipment to be added to the telephone exchange along with a small installation at the user’s premises. The digital subscriber line (DSL) is a transmission technology that utilises this available bandwidth to

Wireless ADSL router

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provide high-speed access to the Internet. Advances in electronics have largely made DSL a successful, faster and cheaper technology. All types of DSL utilise very complex digital-signal processing to overcome the inherent limitations of the existing copper pair. Until late 1990s, the cost of digital-signal processors for DSL was very high. But, the rapid development in VLSI technology has significantly lowered the cost of signal processors, which supported DSL as a commercially-successful technology. DSL family is collectively termed as xDSL and includes several different technologies like IDSL, HDSL, SHDSL, ADSL, RADSL, UDSL, Etherloop, VDSL and GDSL. These technologies vary from each other in terms of speed of transmission, symmetric and asymmetric bandwidth allocation, variation in speed between upstream and downstream, and maximum distance of signal transmission. Integrated DSL (IDSL) is an ISDN based technology, which provides data-flow rates of 144kbps up to a distance of 5.4 kilometres. High bit-rate DSL (HDSL) is a symmetric technology that offers speeds of 2.048Mbps over two copper pairs up to 4.6 kilometres. Single-pair high-speed DSL (SHDSL) is also a symmetrical technology that covers about three kilometres. With one pair of copper line, the SHDSL having a multiple of 64kbps payload provides symmetrical download and upload data rates ranging from 192kbps to 2.304Mbps. Moreover, SHDSL provides symmetrical data rates from 384kbps to 4.608Mbps in 128kbps increments for two-pair applications. Asymmetric DSL (ADSL) offers an upstream data rate of 500kbps and a downstream data rate of up to 8Mbps. Rate-adoptive DSL (RADSL) adjusts its upstream and downstream data rates depending upon line noise and distance covered. Uni-DSL (UDSL) is a universal service www.efymag.com

Telecom technology that is capable of providing all DSL services from one line card or home gateway. The aggregate downstream and upstream speed provided by UDSL is at least 200Mbps. Ethernet local loop is a nextgeneration DSL technology that incorporates the features of Ethernet and DSL. It is capable of delivering speeds up to 6Mbps over a distance of 6.5km on a moderate-quality copper line. Very-high-speed DSL (VDSL) is an asymmetric technology that is capable of delivering downstream rates of 13Mbps to 52Mbps and upstream rates of 1.5Mbps to 2.3Mbps over a single copper pair line. The distance covered is from 300 metres to 1.4 kilometres from the telephone exchange. Gigabit DSL (GDSL) technology is based on binder multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) technology and is capable of delivering 1Gbps up to 300-metre range. Currently, the primary focus in xDSL wire-line technology is the development and deployment of ADSL technologies and architectures.

Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) The Internet is used largely for downloading files, HTML and graphical content. Processes like uploading files or other content to servers are limited to very few users. Hence, the bandwidth required for downstream data is more than upstream data bandwidth requirement. Further, on the technical side, it was realised that it was possible to transmit data more quickly from an exchange to a user, but that, when the user sent information to the exchange, it was more sensitive to noise caused by electromagnetic disturbances (nearer to the exchange, greater the concentration of cables, generating more cross-talk). Thus, the upload signal is weakest at the noisiest part of the local loop, while the download signal is strongest at the noisiest part of the local loop. It therefore makes technical sense to have the digital subscriber line acwww.efymag.com

ADSL Versions Showing Up/Down Data Rates ADSL version Standard Year

Upstream data rate

Downstream data rate

ADSL

ANSI T1.413-1998 issue 2

1998

1Mbps

8Mbps

ADSL G.DMT

ITU G.992.1

1999-07

1.3Mbps

12Mbps

ADSL over POTS

ITU G.992.1 annex A

2001

1.3Mbps

12Mbps

ADSL over ISDN

ITU G.992.1 annex B

2005

1.8Mbps

12Mbps

ADSL Lite

ITU G.992.2

1999-07

512kbps

1.5Mbps

ADSL2

ITU G.992.3

2002-07

1Mbps

12Mbps

ADSL2

ITU G.992.3 annex J

2002-07

3.5Mbps

12Mbps

RE-ADSL2

ITU G.992.3 annex L

2002-07

800kbps

5Mbps

Splitter-less ADSL2

ITU G.992.4

2002-07

500kbps

1.5Mbps

ADSL2+

ITU G.992.5

2003-05

1Mbps

24Mbps

ADSL2+M

ITU G.992.5 annex M

2008

3.5Mbps

24Mbps

cess multiplexer (DSLAM) transmit at a higher bit-rate than the modem on the customer end. So, the idea was to use an asymmetric system, imposing a lower speed from the subscriber to the exchange. This idea was incorporated by the employees of Bellcore (now Telcordia Technologies), who developed ADSL in 1988 by placing wideband digital signals above existing voice signal on conventional twisted pair cables. This DSL based technology enables transmission and reception of data at speeds higher than legacy copper media. There are two competing and incompatible standards for modulating the ADSL signal, known as discrete multi-tone (DMT) and carrierless amplitude phase (CAP). CAP was the original technology used for DSL deployments, but the most-widely used method now is DMT. DMT modulation technique allows several bits to be represented by one transmission symbol. In ADSL, bit-rate allocation for a channel within the available bandwidth is not the same for other channels, and hence the term asymmetric. In other words, the upstream bandwidth is smaller than the downstream bandwidth. ADSL offers an upstream data rate of 500kbps and a downstream data rate of up to 8Mbps. ADSL-Lite, another variant of ADSL standard, offers upstream speeds up to 512kbps and down-

stream speeds of 1.5Mbps. Further, ADSL has many variants like ADSL2, splitter-less ADSL2, ADSL2+ and ADSL++.

ADSL standards ADSL versions, along with their respective upstream and downstream data rates, are listed in Table above. ADSL2 or G.DMT.bis is defined in ITU G.992.3 and is an improved version of ADSL, with data rates in downstream as 12Mbps and 3.5Mbps in upstream. Splitter-less ADSL2 or G.lite.bis is defined in ITU G.992.4 and is capable of providing 1.536Mbps downstream and 512kbps upstream. ADSL2+ defined in ITU G.992.5 can provide up to 24Mbps theoretical downstream speed, which is double the speed of ADSL2. The upstream speed is up to 3.5Mbps. Thus, ADSL2+ doubles the frequency band of typical ADSL from 1.1MHz to 2.2MHz. More importantly, ADSL2+ provides port-bonding known as G.998.x or G.Bond. This is a very attractive feature of ADSL2+ in which the download and upload speeds is the sum of individual speed of all provisioned ports to the enduser. It means that, if two lines with 24Mbps were bonded, the net result would be a speed of 48Mbps. ADSL++, another variant of ADSL, developed by Centillium Communications, is capable of providElectronics For You | January 2015

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Telecom TELEPHONE EXCHANGE INTERNET BACKBONE

MAIN DISTRIBUTION FRAME

DSLAM

FREQUENCY SELECTOR SWITCH

TWISTED PAIR CABLE D P

SPLITTER

VOICE SWITCH

PSTN

ADSL MODEM

Fig. 1: A typical ADSL set-up

TELEPHONE EXCHANGE INTERNET BACKBONE

DSLAM

FREQUENCY SELECTOR SWITCH

PSTN

MAIN DISTRIBUTION FRAME

TWISTED PAIR CABLE D P

VOICE SWITCH ADSL MODEM

Fig. 2: A typical ADSL Lite set-up

ing download speeds up to 50Mbps and uses the frequency band up to 3.75MHz.

ADSL set-up Basically, ADSL caters to connections between Internet service providers (ISPs) and subscribers. In order to provide ADSL connections, the existing telephone network is utilised and a network element called digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM) is installed at the central office/telephone exchange along with a modem placed at the subscriber’s home or workplace. The DSLAM works like a concentrator. It provides multiple DSL connections for access to the bandwidth available to the DSLAM from the Internet backbone. The connection to the subscriber is then given from DSLAM via copper lines. 62

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There are two types of DSLAMs— remote DSLAM and CO DSLAM. The remote DSLAM sits in the digital loop carrier (DLC) system in the neighbourhood of the subscriber. On the other hand, CO DSLAM sits in the telco’s central office and has a large capacity. The ADSL modem performs the task of converting the ADSL physical-layer signal into a format that can be understood by a computer or any other equipment connected to it. Fig. 1 shows a typical ADSL set-up. The frequency selector switch at the telephone exchange/central office is essentially a filter that filters out the incoming ADSL signal and diverts the voice traffic to the voice switch. The voice switch is further connected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). The data traffic is directed towards the DSLAM, which is

connected to the Internet backbone. The pair from DSLAM is terminated into the main distribution frame (MDF), from where connections are provided to subscribers via twisted copper-pair lines. These twisted pair lines terminate at a DP box placed near the subscriber’s home or workplace. The connection from the DP box is first run to the splitter that sits in the customer’s premises. The splitter, which is basically a low-pass filter, removes the plain old telephone system (POTS) signal (voice signal, 300Hz-3400Hz) from the incoming ADSL signal. The high-frequency filtered ADSL signal is then given to an ADSL modem. Finally, the connection is taken out from the Ethernet port of ADSL modem and is terminated to the subscriber’s computer. Another variant of ADSL that does not necessitate the need of a POTS splitter is known as splitterless ADSL and is defined in G.992.2 or G.Lite. ADSL Lite provides downstream speeds of 1.5Mbps and upstream speeds of 512kbps. Reduced data rates cause less interference in POTS signal, which provides freedom from a splitter at subscriber’s premises. So, it is possible to access the Internet by connecting G.Lite modems directly to phone jacks. A typical ADSL Lite set-up is shown in Fig. 2. This lower-version of ADSL results in significant cost-saving that can be passed on to subscribers. The plugn-play functionality makes ADSL Lite more attractive to subscribers.

ADSL working principle ADSL communication is a fullduplex communication system that is achieved on a pair of wires either by frequency division duplex (FDD), time division duplex (TDD) or echocancelling duplex (ECD). In FDD, two separate frequency bands are used, namely, upstream and downstream frequency bands. The modulation technique used in ADSL is either orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) or discrete multi-tone (DMT). OFDM and DMT are almost www.efymag.com

Telecom

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256 CHANNLES OF 4.3125kHz EACH

POTS

Power spectral density

the same thing. The similarities between OFDM and DMT are: 1. OFDM and DMT are both multicarrier communication, implemented digitally by means of a fast Fourier transform (FFT). 2. All sub-channels are orthogonal in both cases. 3. In both cases, the use of short cyclic prefix on the transmit signal allows perfect reconstruction of data at the transmitter. The main differences between OFDM and DMT are: 1. DMT refers to baseband wireline multicarrier communication, while OFDM is wireless bandpass multicarrier communication. 2. Because of the slowly varying nature of the channel, DMT allows spectral shaping by bit-loading to take advantage of measured channel characteristics. Scientists at Stanford University and Bellcore have chosen DMT for ADSL, while OFDM has been adopted for wireless communication. There is no reason why DMT and OFDM could not be interchanged in their usage. Actually, DMT implemented by FFT is orthogonal FDM. On the other hand, OFDM implemented by FFT is discrete multi-tone. In fact, there is no reason why OFDM should not refer to discrete wavelet multi-tone, wavelet packet modulation and any modulation based on orthogonalfilter banks since these all implement OFDM. It is well-known from Fourier theory that, any kind of signal can be broken-up into its individual frequency components. By utilising this mathematical concept, spectral components of any signal can be obtained from a filter. The centre frequency of the filter will decide the output signal from the filter. Thus, it is possible to obtain all or some frequency components of a signal by utilising several filters of required centre frequency. The algorithm used to transform digital signals (in time-domain) into corresponding spectral components

QAM MODULATED

4.3125kHz

1 2

0.3

3

26 27

26

4

28

254

29

138 UPSTREAM

1130 DOWNSTREAM

Frequency (kHz)

Fig. 3: An ADSL channel allocation using FDD

(in frequency-domain) is known as fast Fourier transform. Mathematically, FFT of a digital signal s(n) is given by: S(K) =

N–1

∑ s(n)e

–i2πKn/N

...................(1)

n=0

where, K=0, 1,..............,(N-1) Inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) is used to convert frequencydomain signal into its corresponding time-domain digital signal and is given by: s(n) =

1 N

N–1

∑ S(K)e

i2πKn/N

...................(2)

k=0

where, n=0, 1,...............,(N-1) Several modulation techniques are available for DSL technologies like carrierless amplitude modulation (CAP), multiple virtual line (MVL), OFDM and DMT. In ADSL, however, DMT is most widely used to utilise the 6MHz bandwidth available on the unshielded copper pair to provide high-speed Internet access. The usable frequency range is separated into 256 frequency bands or carrier channels, each of 4.3125kHz. Each carrier is then quadrature amplitude modulated to carry two bits per second. By varying the number of bits per symbol within a channel, the modem can be rate-adaptive. This is an important feature of DMT

that provides a possibility to allocate the number of bits per carrier according to its corresponding signalto-noise ratio (SNR). This is known as bit-loading and is of two types: margin-adaptive and rate-adaptive. Margin-adaptive algorithm minimises the bit error rate (BER) for a given bit-rate. On the other hand, rate-adaptive algorithm maximises the bit-rate for a fixed BER and pre-defined power constraints. The rate-adaptive bitloading is a reformulation of Shannon capacity formula, which gives the total achievable bit-rate b in N number of sub-channels as:

[∑ ( )]

max(b)=max

N

n=1

SNRn 1 log2 1+ 2 δ

.............(3)

But, SNRn = Enhn ..................(4) where, hn represents subcarrier SNR when unit energy is applied, En is the allocated energy per subcarrier, and is the difference between SNR needed to achieve maximum Shannon capacity and SNR to achieve this capacity at a given bit-error probability. In order to maximise the bit-rate, it is not always desirable to use all subcarriers because least-efficient subcarriers are not fruitful for transmission. The solution to bit-rate maximisation is known as waterwww.efymag.com

Telecom filling, and an algorithm is used to redistribute the energy to more efficient subcarriers to support higher data rates. The number of allocated bits per subcarrier is then rounded to the nearest integer. This is known as rate-adaptive bit-loading. American National Standard Institute (ANSI) standard T1.413 (1997) provides a frequency range of 0 to 26kHz for POTS signal. The frequency range from 30Hz-4000Hz is used for voice, and the range from 4Hz-25kHz is unused guard band. 26kHz-1130kHz frequency band accommodates 256 sub-channels, each 4.3125kHz wide. Centres of these sub-channels are also kept separated by 4.3125kHz. The centre frequency of each sub-channel is N x 4.3125kHz. The spectrum of each sub-channel overlaps that of its adjacent. It is not confined to a 4.3125kHzwide channel. The orthogonality of DMT makes this possible without interference. Sometimes, a small guard band is also used between upstream and downstream channels in order to prevent interference. The frequency layout of ADSL signal using FDD is shown in Fig. 3. Individual carriers in the upstream and downstream ranges are quadrature amplitude modulated to carry two bits per second per hertz to 15 bits per second per hertz. The bit-carrying rate of each band is allocated adoptively (rate-adoptive bit-loading) during the initialisation process, that is, the bit-carrying rate is decided by the SNR in the relevant channel in accordance with equation (3). The larger the SNR, the larger the signal space allocated to the band. If the SNR of a band is too small, that band may not be utilised. Sub-channel energy is redistributed to more efficient sub-channels that ultimately yield higher data rates. Theoretically, it has been found from Shannon’s theorem that the maximum information transmitted using quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is 64.7kbps/channel. So, the maximum transfer rate for 256 chan66

January 2015 | Electronics For You

nels results in 16Mbps. But, the circuit design constraints and attenuation in copper lines at high frequencies restrict high data-transfer rate. The attenuation in a conductor is dependent on the frequency of operation and is given by: α=

PL ..............(5) 2PT

where, PT is power transmitted that is decided by Poynting theorem and is given by integrating the real part of complex Poynting vector, and PL is power loss. At high frequencies, the current is confined to the surface of the copper line. The depth of penetration of electromagnetic wave, known as skin depth (d), is given by: Rs ....................(6) πµ0µr ƒ

d=

where, f is the frequency of operation, Rs is resistivity of the conductor wire, μ0 is absolute permeability and μr is relative permeability of the conductor wire material. Hence, it is clear that there exists only surface current on the surface of the conductor. Now, for metallic conductors of high conductivity, like copper pair lines, Ampere’s circuit law can be used to calculate surface current density JS and it is expressed as: Js = n⊥×H where, n⊥ is the normal to the surface of the conductor. Then, the timeaveraged power-loss per square metre due to current flow in conducting surface is given by: PL =

1 | J |2 Rs ....................(7) 2 s

Hence, time-averaged power-loss per unit length of the copper line is given by: PL =

1 2

∫

| Js |2 Rs ds ....................(8)

surface area

where, the integration is taken over the wall-surface of a unit length of the copper line, and RS is the resistance of the conductor for a unit length and unit width, and is called surface resistivity.

So, with all these constraints, only 8Mbps data-transfer rate is feasible, which is half the capacity. In echo-cancelling duplex (ECD), another method of allocating channels for upstream and downstream bands in ADSL, frequencies allocated for upstream data flow are used for both upstream and downstream data flow. This leads to a higher capacity for downstream flow since the lower 112kHz of the ADSL range contains better channels because at higher frequencies attenuation rises. In echo-compensation technique, the same frequency channel at the same time is used to send and receive information. The last transmitted data is preserved by the transceiver. The data received by the transceiver contains both the received data as well as the transmitted data (which is actually an echo). The transceiver then uses the retained transmitted information to cancel out the echo from the received signal. The transmitted and received information is separated using highly-precise echo-cancellation algorithms and high-speed digital-signal processors.

Conclusion The Internet is used largely for downloading files, HTML and graphical content, while uploading data files is rare and limited to very few users. This type of bandwidth requirement can be efficiently met by ADSL technology. ADSL caters specifically to connections between ISPs and subscribers, and uses FDD to superimpose the upstream and downstream data over POTS signal onto existing copper lines. A splitter at the customers’ premises separates the POTS signal from the high-frequency upstream and downstream data. These highfrequency data are routed through the modem to subscribers’ computers. The information-carrying capacity and robustness of ADSL wire-line broadband technology make it a successful high-speed Internet access technology.  www.efymag.com

Innovation

ALPS: Bridging Academia-Industry Gap

I Anagha P. is a technical correspondent at EFY

n this highly-competitive scenario, engineering firms prefer the most-skilled fresher candidate so as to reduce the time and resources spent on training. But, how do you provide industry based training in engineering and polytechnic colleges? Folks at iWave System Designs Pvt Ltd have come up with innovative and indigenous educational kits that solve this major issue to an extent. Advanced learning platform and solutions (ALPS) is a product developed with the idea of unifying industrial processes for learning about and working on embedded systems. ALPS offers a generic architecture that lets the user easily integrate and evaluate several pre-defined peripherals like displays, sensors, communication and input/output (I/O) interfaces. This means that users get hands-on experience on industry peripherals, hence introducing them to the field of embedded systems, providing a rich visual and interactive experience, and enhancing their industry knowledge. This interesting platform focuses on bringing about multidisciplinary industrial exposure in the educational segment. The entire kit was completely designed in India by the team led by Kumar Bhagavath, associate director, iWave, and it took a year to develop the final product out of just an idea.

Why ALPS Today, most student projects are based on microcontrollers. These designs are targeted to

ALPS allows users to easily integrate and evaluate pre-defined peripherals such as displays, sensors and I/O interfaces

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perform limited tasks, where the relationship of input and output are pre-defined. At times, a specific application may require features like image processing, real-time operations and touch-enabled LCD display. This calls for a processing capability that is many times faster, and high-speed memory devices. This is where ALPS comes handy. It is designed around a powerful processor that is scalable for automotive, industrial and consumer markets, and has a guaranteed lifetime of around ten to 15 years. Moreover, the product is integrated with various industry-relevant peripherals. Thus, ALPS provides an easy migration path for students to upgrade from microcontrollers to high-end processors.

The product The hardware of this platform consists of two parts: a single-board computer (SBC) and a daughter board. SBC is a Pico-ITX board based on Freescale’s i.MX6 ARM Cortex A9 processor, which is the intellectual property (IP) of iWave. It provides generic features such as processing, memory and power management with industry-relevant peripherals like Ethernet, USB, HDMI, audio, LAN and camera, among others. The daughter board is dedicated to student projects and is plugged to Pico ITX SBC, the specification of which can be changed based on educational needs. The device also covers interfaces like sensors, motor drives, converters, switches and multiple display options that are typically being used by engineering students in their projects. These two boards along with a 17.8cm (7-inch) graphical LCD with touch screen forms the final product. Having two separate boards for a single product gives manufacturers and users more adaptability. SBC is the brain of the device and has a complex architecture that should not be messed with. On the other hand, the daughter board is a simple PCB design that can be re-designed (add new www.efymag.com

Innovation features or remove exiting features) at any point of time, even after purchase. This opens up a lot of scope for further development of the product. Alps runs on Linux/Android operating systems. Open source tools, like Eclipse IDE and GNU tools, are used for software development. It is developed using Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE) on Linux platform. The entire software design and source code is available for customisation and users can modify the design to suit more complex projects.

Covering students’ needs One of the biggest challenges faced by developers was covering all peripherals that students typically work on for their projects in a small form factor. The team visited close to 80 engineering colleges for demonstration of their previous product and got to closely work with students to understand their project needs. Based on that experience, the team defined the specification for the carrier card and included interfaces commonly used for components like displays, sensors, communication and I/O.

For real-time applications Even though there are generic embedded learning platforms available in the market, ALPS is the only product integrated with very high-end technologies specifically designed for the educational segment, claim the developers. Though cheaper, Raspberry Pi sometimes fails to provide high-end video processing required for complex embedded projects. Another drawback is that Android, a very popular operating system these days, either does not run at all on Raspberry Pi or runs very slow. UDOO is a board that comes at par with ALPS SBC in terms of processing power. But, here the problem is that the interfacing of industry-relevant peripherals can be a difficult task for the student community. ALPS is a real industrial design and not just a hobby kit. It evidently goes into mass production of real-time 70

January 2015 | Electronics For You

Technical specifications of SBC Central processing unit (CPU) Storage Communication interfaces Audio and video interfaces Input power Form factor

• Processor: ARM Cortex A9 i.MX 6 Dual Lite (Quad-compatible) • RAM: 512MB DDR3 SDRAM (double-data rate type-three synchronous dynamic random access memory); expandable up to 2GB • On-board Micro SD (secure digital) slot • Standard SD/SDIO (secure digital input output) slots • 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet • Half mini PCIe (peripheral component interconnect express) card connector • Dual USB (universal serial bus) host connector • Micro USB OTG (on-the-go) connector • CAN (controller area network) header • JTAG (joint test action group) header • AC97 audio codec with audio out jack and audio in header • HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) port • LVDS (low-voltage differential signalling) connector with backlight and resistive touch • 8-bit CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) camera connector • Two lanes MIPI (mobile industry processor interface) camera connector • 5V, 2.5A • Pico-ITX (10cm×7.2cm)

projects involving medical electronics, automotive systems, industrial automation, mobile technologies and multimedia.

Technical specifications of daughter board

Taking it to students

Display interfaces

• RGB LCD: 800×480 pixels screen resolution • 16×2 character LCD • Four-digit seven-segment LED • Four general-purpose LEDs

Data converters

• Analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) • Digital-to-analogue converter (DAC)

Communication interfaces

• RS232 • RS485 • I2C header • SPI (serial peripheral interface) header

ALPS is a finished Sensors product and is available in the Motor and switch market. Along with interfaces the kit, iWave pro- vides assistance in Input power setting up the adForm factor vanced embedded system laboratory in those institutions, installing software and drivers, training the faculty and students on how to use the kit and providing technical support for the development of industry-relevant projects. The firm is already associated with more than 50 engineering colleges across the country. The cost of this kit ranges from ` 10,000 to ` 25,000 depending on the interfaces required by customers. “We are not thinking about much margin to start with,” says Kumar Bhagavath. The focus is on get-

• Accelerometer • Ambient light sensor • Proximity sensor • Temperature sensor • Magnetometer • Dual DC motors/single stepper motor • Six POS DIP (dual in-line package) switch • Four push-button switches • From SBC • 10cm×10cm

ting the product familiarised in the educational segment. “Once this is achieved, we will work on our margin, not by increasing the product price but by reducing our manufacturing cost,” he adds. ALPS kit comes with a number of basic and advanced projects and detailed documentation. These, along with the elaborate user guide, are meant to help students get started with the kit without any complications and gain easy hands-on experience with it.  www.efymag.com

Interview

Stuart Lipoff IEEE fellow

If you have pervasive wireless charging, you will want to optimise for high-rate designs...

High-rate wireless charging means adopting special designs to overcome heat released due to the pressure that builds up. Stuart Lipoff, IEEE fellow, speaks to Sneha Ambastha from EFY regarding many such design challenges and the steps to overcome them Q. Do you think that the new charging technologies will safety issues, the non-electrochemical active parts of the battery may need to have special design features to deal with heat and require new skills in a design engineer? A. The current skills would still be relevant but expertise in new technologies associated with low-frequency wireless power transmission would need to be developed. Engineers and designers will have a new degree of freedom in coming up with new designs that take advantage of wireless charging.

Q. Would these technologies lead to smaller devices? A. This will depend on how wireless charging is deployed in private (homes, offices, private auto) and public (stores, public transit, transportation terminals) spaces. If wireless charging is widely deployed, it will mitigate the need for more energy from the internal battery. Since the battery can be up to half the weight of a phone and up to 25 per cent of the volume of the phone, mobile phones OEMs may use smaller batteries, resulting in smaller devices.

guard against venting of the cell due to pressure build-up.

Q. Can both resonant charging and inductive charging technologies be incorporated in the same wireless charger? How would it affect the charging technology? A. Yes, both technologies can be incorporated in the same wireless charger, but this will add to the cost since we are talking about doubling the electronics. This would not be an issue for chargers in public places since these can afford to support multiple chargers. The one crossover place might be the private auto, where auto OEMs might want to factory-install chargers that are cost-sensitive, and thus would prefer a single well-adopted standard to support.

Q. Which, out of the power matter alliance and wireless power consortium, is the better technology to adopt?

Q. How would wireless charging technologies affect the A. The winner is not based on technical aspects of who shielding of devices? is better but, instead, who is the biggest actor. Like, if Apple A. The outside enclosure of the case needs to remain unshielded for wireless energy to reach inside. Inside, designers will have options to either selectively use shielding or just engage the internal layout of components and PCB traces to avoid electromagnetic interference. For example, the internal wireless charging energy-capture structure can be on the back side of the battery. This way, no additional shielding would be needed.

adopts a technology to put in all its future products, it will give a head-start to a standard.

Q. Can a wireless charger be made completely wireless? A. Yes, two concepts have surfaced lately: solar-powered wireless chargers, where you leave the charger in the sun and portable wireless chargers that have a big battery inside that you have to recharge from time to time.

Q. Is there a battery technology to complement the numerous smaller charging cycles in a day? Q. Does solar-powered wireless charging follow any parA. Batteries are electrochemical devices in which there ticular standard? are trade-offs in the internal structure and chemistry to optimise between total energy, charge rate (the time to charge it), discharge rate or lifetime (the maximum number of charge-discharge cycles). If you have pervasive wireless charging, you will want to optimise for high-rate (the ability to charge it very fast) designs that compromise total stored energy (so the design is different). Also, fast high-rate charging can create safety issues associated with heat build-up and pressure build-up in the cell. To deal with www.efymag.com

A. Solar charging and wireless charging are two independent ideas that can work together, but no standard is needed to enable solar-powered wireless charging.

Q. How does Sapphire glass help enable solar-powered wireless charging? A. Sapphire glass is very transparent and allows light to pass through to charge solar cells. However, solar charging can be achieved with Gorilla glass too.  Electronics For You | January 2015

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Interview

Indian automotive engineers are gaining significant ground... This interview takes a look at the automotive design scene in India and how it has evolved over the years with the presence of both Indian and off-shore design houses. It also takes a look at the exciting SAM project race car and how it works. Natarajan M.M., VP, Arrow South Asia, speaks with Dilin Anand of EFY Q. How popular have been the Indian engineering contributions to automotive design? A. We have seen the Indian automotive scenario right from the time when the only electronics that we could sell were rectifier regulators in two-wheelers or flashers. Now, Indian designs are being adopted for key areas, like control modules, instrumentation clusters, tyre-pressure monitoring systems, inside the car and under the hood. Today, activities around safety, engine management and body electronics, navigation and infotainment continue to be influenced by Indian designers.

Q. Where do you see the most R&D effort being made in automotive design? A. We see more designs being done on body electronics and integration of features in the body control module. We also see designs happening for power-train systems in India, with participation from Indian designers in designing driver-assist systems. Additionally, there are more designs happening on CNG systems as well as those associated with the emergence of the battery-operated vehicle.

Q. What is the level of importance big firms like yours associate with captive and independent design houses for automotive design? A. Indian automotive designers are gaining significant ground, where Indian manufacturers’ R&D teams or independent design houses supporting OEMs are able to keep going up the value chain. Limited to designing specific low- to mid-end body electronics designs in the past, they are now participating in the design of higherend technology. Global MNCs who have set-up their centres in India, enable us to support them with electronic components anywhere in the globe. Indian design houses are also known to influence many global and local automotive companies with designs that are superior in technology and features.

Q. What, according to you, is the most exciting automotive electronics design that your team has worked on? A. SAM project would be one. SAM is the name of the project and it also abbreviates for semi-automotic motorcar. 74

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Natarajan M.M.

vice president - South Asia, Arrow

The car is a 2014 model Corvette C7 Stingray, modified by engineers and medical researchers to be safely driven at high speed using head movements of a quadriplegic race driver. It was designed for a racecar driver named Sam Schmidt, who was diagnosed as a quadriplegic after a car crash that injured his spinal cord.

Q. What lies under the hood of this vehicle? A. Infra-red sensors in the cap worn by the driver provide the head position in real-time. These collect data that is used to deduce how the rotary actuators should be controlled. These actuators are placed in the steering wheel, gas pedal and brake pedal, and receive commands from infra-red sensors. There are also infra-red cameras that monitor the driver’s subtle head movements. A central processor in the car translates the sensor input into motion commands for the car. It is aided by an on-board GPS that updates 100 times per second, creating virtual boundaries, and provides data for the car’s self-correction in certain cases.

Q. How does it detect the intentions of the driver? A. Together, cameras and sensors form the essential motion-tracking system. When the driver wants to accelerate, he tilts his head back. This movement is detected by an Arrow computer, which then sends a signal to the actuator, causing it to accelerate the vehicle. The vehicle can be stopped by the driver by manipulating a pressure-sensitive sensor placed in his mouth. The pressure sensitivity allows him to control how hard he wants to brake the vehicle.

Q. How is the project shared among collaborators? A. It is a collaborative venture between Arrow, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Schmidt Peterson Motor Sports and Falci Adaptive Motorsports, a non-profit. Arrow is leading the development of the SAM car, the system’s integration and the engineering of specific systems for the car. Ball is leading the modification of the human-to-machine interface and driver-guidance system. Air Force Research Laboratory is monitoring the driver’s biometrics during laps as well as collecting data on how the driver interacts with the guidance systems. Dr Scott Falci is serving as medical director.  www.efymag.com

efy plus dvd

This Month’s DVD Contents This month’s DVD brings a collection of software that contains both design and simulation tools, along with utility software, to enable an easier design process. It also has a free SCADA tool for you to try Sneha Ambastha

Popular resources

Altium Designer 15

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Altium Designer is a useful EDA software package used for PCBs, FPGAs and embedded system design. It also works with associated libraries and release management automation tools. This is the latest version of this software and comes equipped with many advanced features, such as high-speed signal pairing with xSignals, incremental data exchange (IDX) mechanical computer aided design (MCAD) integration support and IPC-2581, and Gerber X2 support.

XCircuit XCircuit is used to draw electrical circuit diagrams and related figures with a publishable quality. It also produces circuit netlists through schematic capture. It regards all circuits as inherently hierarchical and provides both hierarchical PostScript output and hierarchical SPICE netlists for these. Circuit components are saved in and retrieved from libraries that are fully-editable. It is flexible enough to be used as a generic program for drawing just about anything and is competitive with powerful programs such as xfig.

iqr iqr helps users create and run simulations of large-scale neural networks. It provides a means to design complex neuronal models graphically, and to visualise and analyse their properties online. It is very flexible and requires very little time for simulation, enabling control of real-world devices in real-time. 76

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S.E.E.R. 2 S.E.E.R. 2 is a full-featured SCADA or historian or aggregate analysis system that has been developed to work as a front-end for mod_openopc. It has been written in pure PHP (an HTML 4.01 transitional) and is driven by web based user interface for universal deployment.

editor that supports GDS, OASIS and CIF formats. The project is under active development. It has a script designed to code and facilitate layout generation and is also used for configuration. The project uses the full power of OpenGL in terms of speed as well as an unrestricted number of colours and fill-patterns.

Bsch3V

PPMScope

BSch3V is a schematic capture program for Windows 7 or 8. Popularly known as Basic Schematic, Bsch 3V is the third version of this software that includes only basic functions to simplify operations. Its package contains BSch3V schematic capture (version 0.82.01), LCoV component library editor (version 0.82.01), PL3W parts list generator (version 0.81.10), NL3W netlist generator (version 0.81.10), NUT3W automatic numbering software (version 0.82.01), CE3Search searching utility for CE3 files (version 0.81.10), a component library and source code.

PPMScope is a do-it-yourself PIC16F877A microcontroller-oscilloscope that runs with a 20MHz clock. It has an open source design. Its bandwidth is lower than a commercial scope, so its use is limited to signals of 500kHz and below. It has a maximum sampling rate of 1MHz, with 5MHz equivalent sampling mode.

G-code for RepRap

Toped IC-layout editor

This is an interpreter for G-code language that allows you to perform human-machine interfaces (HMI) related to robotics tasks. It can control a three-axis Cartesian positioning system (for a CNC milling machine) with electronics compatibility to RepRap project. 

Driven by a built-in script interpreter, Toped is a cross-platform IC-layout

The author is a technical journalist at EFY www.efymag.com

efy plus dvd

Electronic Design Automation Using Altium Designer 15 Jai Sachith Paul

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lectronic product design is never a single-step process. Right from conceptualisation of the idea to its fabrication and packaging, the design should account for a variety of factors. The traditional electronic design environments make use of a divide-and-conquer approach. Here, each step is implemented separately on different platforms. These are later integrated to form a single design. This might result in the omission of some minute but crucial details, besides reframing and eating-up your limited budget. Also, you might not be able to meet your project deadlines, which can risk the time to market. Altium Designer from Altium is a one-stop electronic design environment that integrates schematic capture, PCB design, FPGA design, embedded-software development and manufacturing file support into a single unified application. Ultimately, this can help you eliminate data-translation and synchronisation issues.

What is new in Altium Designer 15 Altium Designer 15, the latest version of the software released in November 2014, comes with a powerful array of new features and enhancements to its core technologies. This version has also addressed some issues that were raised by the customers. Let us take a look at some of them. xSignals for high-speed designs. The signal-propagation rate in modern designs is very high and can even rise to 100 gigabytes per second. Deciding the design rules is not easy at these www.efymag.com

Fig. 1: xSignals in Altium Designer 15

propagation rates. The reason is simple. While the designer sees the function of the signal, PCB editor can only view the signal as a set of connected pins. This makes it difficult for the design engineer to specify key requirements of his design, such as length and matched-length design rules. The new feature from Altium called xSignals is introduced primarily to resolve this issue. xSignals helps the designer to treat the highspeed signal path in exactly the way he wants. That is, as a path in which the signal travels between the source and destination covering the termination components and branches. This path helps the designer to accurately plan and route groups of high-speed nets with more efficiency. Solder mask-expansion enhancements. In today’s PCB designs,

xSignal xSignal refers to a signal path between two nodes defined by the designer. This path can either be between two nodes within a net or in associated nets separated by a component. We can use xSignals to scope relevant design rules that are to be obeyed during design tasks, such as interactive length tuning.

there are situations where we need different expansion settings for top and bottom layers of applied solder masks. Altium Designer 15 is now equipped with pad and via-expansion settings by which we can have individual configurations for top and bottom layers. PCB rules and constraints editor can be used for defining and modifying solder mask-expansion rules for the board pad and vias. Electronics For You Plus | January 2015

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Fig. 2: Seperate 2D and 3D view orientations

for an increased collaboration between the electrical and mechanical computer-aided design (ECAD and MCAD) domains. Unfortunately, engineers working on these domains use different design tools, and communication between them is not so easy. As a solution, a coll a b o ra t i ve s t a n d a rd known as incremental design exchange (IDX) format has been introduced. This standard enables the two to graphically communicate ideas and proposals for change, without leaving their trusty Fig. 3: Specifying the solder expansion for an individual pad/via working environments. through the via/pad properties dialog Support for this standSeparate 2D and 3D view ori- ard of collaboration between ECAD entations. In previous versions of and MCAD domains is available in Altium Designer, on switching from Altium Designer 15. It will help in 2D view to 3D, or from 3D to 2D, the easy synchronisation of the enclosure region of focus remains the same. model, board shape and component But these two views are completely placement for the best mechanical fit. separated in the latest version. Each view retains the orientation, zoom What to expect and layer configurations of its previ- Reviews from various forums suggest ous display. that users are very satisfied with this We can also have an in-depth ex- product. A blogger feels that Altium amination of design-type features by Designer is a good product for a good clicking cntrl+cntrl. price. Initially, he was suspicious IDX MCAD integration support. about the online services given by the Electronic designs, nowadays, incompany. He mentioned that, if the volve more and more electrical and user becomes dependent, the compamechanical components. This calls ny could charge him more. But Altium II

January 2015 | Electronics For You Plus

is altogether different, concludes the blogger from his experience. Another user feels, “The graphical interface of this tool is the first thing that I noticed. The software looks new and fresh as compared to other CAD tools. The library consists of one single file. All CAD tools should follow this model. It makes transferring and sharing your library a breeze. Copying components from one library to the next is a simple copy-and-paste function. In general, the library manager could not be much better. The wizard has many component types to choose from and is very easy to use. All objects can be modified using the property option, which gives the designer lots of flexibility. The measure function is very good as well and provides all necessary information (centre to centre, edge to edge).” Some users of earlier versions had suggested that the designer should retain the orientation, zoom and layer configurations of its previous display, on switching to and from 2D and 3D displays. This issue has been resolved in the latest version of Designer. The user forgets not to comment on the exceptional quality of the 3D display that Altium Designer offers. Overall, users are very happy with the experience that Altium Designer can offer. Altium Designer 15 has worked on problematic areas of an electronic design engineer and improvised features, such as giving separate 2D and 3D view orientations. With new features, like xSignals and solder mask-expansion enhancements, Altium has prepared itself to meet the challenges offered by the latest developments of the electronics design industry. Altium Designer is a one-stop electronic design environment that can help you save time and money. The trial version of the latest in this software series, Altium Designer 15, is included in this month’s issue of EFY Plus.  The author works at EFY www.efymag.com

efy plus dvd

Create PostScript And Netlist Using XCircuit Sneha Ambastha

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ith so many design tools and features, it is really difficult to identify which design tool to select without knowing about its features, working ability and advantages. Above all, the most important thing is to find out how easy the tool will be to use. Many times, you come across a

Fig. 1: Symbol example

Fig. 2: Initial circuit window when starting XCircuit www.efymag.com

situation where the tool is so complicated that learning it takes more than three months, while you have only four months to complete your design. Here is an attempt from EFY to help you understand XCircuit to an extent that you will be able to make the right choice. Initially designed as a drawing program for undergraduate electrical engineers by Tim Edwards, XCircuit is now used worldwide not only for presentations but as an electronics design and automation (EDA) tool, too. Although the main purpose of XCircuit is to help create electric circuit models, it also allows you to create other two-dimensional schematics, like music typography, NAND gate, etc. It makes the task of creating complex circuits easy with the use of some basic design elements, like circles,

lines and rectangles. These design elements can be rotated, flipped and joined to create desired circuit schematics that are used by the schematic capture to produce circuit netlists. Unlike other design tools, XCircuit considers all circuits to be hierarchical, and thus provides hierarchical outputs. Edward says, “I use XCircuit probably more than any other tool, including for writing-out piano and violin scores and for writing Christmas cards.”

Graphical programming advantage Usually, what do you do? Create a circuit design using a design tool, write programming codes and then use the suitable format of codes in the circuit to check its working. In this process, you are required to learn a programming language (assemblylevel or hardware-level) to start with, which is quiet time-consuming. But, at the same time, if we have graphical design tools with which we do not have to spend time on coding, design graphics and the code for that will be auto-generated, like in case of MATLAB, it will be advantageous. Designers get this opportunity with XCircuit that uses a PostScript file format for both input and output. PostScript is a programming language that gives publishable quality circuit diagrams as outputs. Unlike most graphical programs that provide output in a custom format (for example, .fig files for xfig) that can be translated to other graphical formats, PostScript is in ASCII format and need not be translated as it is widely-accepted. This platform-independent programming format allows one to handElectronics For You Plus | January 2015

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efy plus dvd Quick overview Version: 3.8 (stable release) Licence: GNU general-public licence version 2.0 (GPLv2) Supported OS: Mac OS X, RedHat Linux, OpenBSD, Slackware 8 Linux, Ubuntu Linux, Pardus Linux, Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit Top three features: 1. Easy access to editing tools and library with a toolbar on the right 2. Message window to indicate the cursor position along with the version and revision number of the tool 3. Schematic-to-symbol representation switch with the press of buttons at the bottom Note: The latest version of XCircuit is 3.9, which is a development release.

Benefits of hierarchical design A hierarchical design has a number of benefits associated with it. 1. Replicating a block and making changes at block-level becomes easy. 2. Connectivity derived from blocks and ports enables name-conflict issues. 3. Captures constraints even when logic is being defined. 4. Reuse of functional blocks across multiple designs becomes easy as compared to the ones from flat schematics.

edit the output and view its source in detail. Being an interpreted language, PostScript helps XCircuit to create a set of definitions that can help it overcome a set of issues related to circuit drawing. The expansion of the set makes these compatible with earlier versions. Although PostScript is a printer language, it saves files in the same format that is used to print these. Thus, printing output designs with XCircuit is not that tough.

From 2D architectural designs to PCBs As discussed earlier, XCircuit can be used as a generic program to draw 2D designs and circuit architecture. You can design the architectural drawing, music typography, printed circuit boards (PCBs) and almost anything that requires the use of repeated standard set of graphical objects. Create your own library. Although the main aim of XCircuit is to create circuit diagrams, it can also be used to create symbols that can be saved in a library and used later during circuit design. Tim Edwards, who wrote XCircuit, says, “I created an example symbol in a library in XCircuit. I can now use that symbol as part of any drawing in XCircuit if I wanted to. I think XCircuit would be IV

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a good choice for arbitrary diagram drawing needs.” Easy LaTeX embedding. PostScript (.ps) format of files saved in XCircuit allows you to embed the circuit in LaTeX document easily. As LaTeX works on TeXnicCenter, you only need to open the document and select Insert Picture to use the saved file. Recover files on crash. XCircuit has been created in a way that a copy of its current work is saved in the temporary (/tmp) directory, which is removed when you exit the program.

However, if the program shuts down unexpectedly, or if the system crashes, the current work remains in the /tmp directory. Now, you open XCircuit again. It will prompt you to recover the file in the same way as Microsoft Office or Open Office. However, this feature has a small shortcoming. XCircuit creates a backup of files periodically, once in every ten minutes. Thus, changes made in the last few minutes of the crash do not get updated. Default single-click. Key and button bindings in XCircuit use the name Hold to indicate that these can be operated by pressing a key or button. It does not use the double-clicking option by default. However, the tool command language tcl/tk version of XCircuit makes use of tk Bind command to allow multiple clicks (double, triple and quadruple). These options are not available with default button bindings. Quick library messages. XCircuit has another message window at the bottom of its main screen to provide quick information regarding the library that has just loaded (for example, /usr/local/lib/XCircuit-3.2/ analoglib2.lps). In the non-tcl version of XCircuit, this message disappears after ten seconds. The message win-

Fig. 3: Front-end schematic www.efymag.com

efy plus dvd a single-page document. However, in case of multiple pages, the diagram is centred on the output page.

Pre-requirements  Development files for libX11 These development files are required for all versions of XCircuit, whereas all versions of XCircuit above 3.1 are tcl/tk-enabled.  Tcl scripting-language development environment  Tk graphical-toolkit development files  UNIX emulator Cygwin (for Windows)

What others say about XCircuit

Competitors  ExpressPCB  KiCAD

 LTSpice  TinyCAD Fig. 4: Help menu

dow shows various other messages like results, errors and warnings. Supports macros. XCircuit has been optimised for quick operations. It also supports multiple keyboard shortcuts or macros to allow easy shape-insertion and to edit circuit model. Element arrangements. XCircuit also has the option to position objects designed either over or under the previous object, so as to provide actual design experience. More importantly, you can do this by simply pressing exchange key X. Snap-to-grid. Another important feature of XCircuit is the appearance of grid on the design window to properly line-up critical elements with each other. Although XCircuit does not have an option to turn-off the grid without pressing snap function key S, it can reduce or increase the size of the grid using macros + and -. Multi-colour design. Every page in XCircuit has the default colour black, which is inherited by elements used in that page with colour value Inherit. Again, if you paint any element on that page with a different colour, all components in that element with colour value Inherit will adopt that colour. The idea is to be able to have multi-coloured circuit designs that will allow us to identify different components easily.

The comparision Comparison is good for identifying the best option but, when it comes to www.efymag.com

Fig. 5: XCircuit and the Tcl-Tck interpreter

XCircuit, comparing is a little tough. While other design tools are specific to one particular design, XCircuit is open to all. This means it is not limited to electrical circuit designs or other architectural designs. It can be used for both, till the time the design is either one-dimensional or twodimensional. Of course, it cannot be used for designing 3D architectures as done by Maya or AutoCAD. Another feature with respect to which XCircuit can be compared to other tools is its ability to provide publishable circuits in the format that is easily accepted by printers. If you consider ExpressPCB to design a circuit for a PCB, you will have to convert the file you saved into a format acceptable by the printer. Hence, another tool will be required for the same. XCircuit is based on PostScript program that toggles between embedded (EPS) diagrams and full-page diagrams. EPS format of the files retain the resolution of schematics, no matter how much you zoom, whereas full-page diagrams are actually multiple-page files that need to be adjusted accordingly for printouts. Encapsulated PostScript comes into action when working with embedded files. It incorporates the diagram into

It is always a good idea to find out about the experiences of others before getting a new product, and the same applies to design software. Every designer wants to know how many people have used the software he or she plans to use, and their experiences. A user of XCircuit at www.edaboard.com compared it to free design software like ExpressPCB and LTSpice. He said that these free software do not provide any satisfactory schematics that can be used in a report. He explained that XCircuit has an ability to save files as PostScript and embed them into LaTeX document for reporting purposes. He seems to have liked XCircuit so much that he considers it to be the best software freely-available so far. Other users at http://forum. allaboutcircuits.com/ find XCircuit difficult to install on a new operating system since they are unaware of supporting files. If you are looking for a program to create schematics and other designs, XCircuit is a free and open source alternative with many in-built features. The tool is flexible enough to be used for various other architectures even when you do not want to design electric circuits. Whether it is PostScript output or Spice netlist, XCircuit allows designers to come up with hierarchical circuit models. Based on UNIX/ X11 program, XCircuit has plenty of features and advantages one should know about. The stable version of XCircuit is included in this month’s DVD for EFY.  The author is a technical journalist at EFY Electronics For You Plus | January 2015

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Multi-Level Neuronal Simulation Using iqr Jai Sachith Paul

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uman brain is one of the most complex systems that we have ever come across. Despite valuable contributions of neurosciences, our knowledge of this system is very limited. Creating a model that can effectively describe the brain is a big challenge in itself. Also, we know that the brain is organised in various levels—from the sub-cellular process to the overall system. These levels are not mutually-exclusive but interdependent. Analysing the behaviour of such a system is a major challenge. The brain constantly interacts with the real world, perceives and behaves in real-time. This further increases the complexity of the brain. iqr is a multi-level neuronal simulation environment that helps meet these challenges. All challenges are converted into requirements and transformed into core elements of the simulation environment itself. iqr is implemented in C++, using the Qt widget set. The code of iqr is publicly accessible under GNU general-public licence (GPL).

Why iqr Take the case of any simulation software. Its design is made keeping in mind the best approach to understand the system under consideration. iqr is not different. It is developed with two main design considerations. First, the software is developed for large-scale neuronal systems with connectivity between neurons, more important than detailed models of neurons itself. Second, the high-speed neural simulations should be able to control realworld devices (robots) in real-time. The interfacing should be made available to a large number of hardware devices. www.efymag.com

Fig. 1: Graphical user interface in iqr

Independent of the activity, elements in the model are updated in a pseudo-parallel way. Instead of going for the conventional method of approximation of differential equations, computations are based on difference equations.

Feature highlights iqr has come up with a lot of userfriendly features for helping designers model large-scale systems that can accommodate thousands of neurons. “The ease of integration with hardware to build systems with neuronal network and the unique framework to define connectivity between the two groups of neurons are some of the features that make this software unique,” says Ulysses Bernardet, the main developer of this software. Let us take a look at some of the features of iqr. Designing complex neural models graphically. iqr has a very powerful

graphical user interface (GUI) with which one can design the system, control the running of simulation and change parameters at run-time. Models in iqr are organised in three levels: the top-level is the system comprising an arbitrary number of processes, which in turn consists of an arbitrary number of groups. The user can easily select a new element in the design from the browser on left side of the main window. Since connectivity is one of the major design considerations, the tool provides very flexible, easy-to-use and compact methods to ensure connectivity. Monitoring, analysis and storage of data. Monitoring and analysis of data in various elements in the model is very easy in iqr. Frequency and duration sampling is included in dataacquisition. The data sampler helps the user save the state of selected elements. Models in this tool are stored Electronics For You Plus | January 2015

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Fig. 2: Data sampler

in a format based on XML standard, and can thus be transformed to a wide range of other description grammars for neuronal models. Predefined interfaces to hardware devices. There is a wide range of predefined interfaces to hardware devices in iqr. Modules can run synchronised or in their own thread, independent of the updated speed of the main simulation. The main predefined interfaces include modules to control Khepera and Koala robots, Lego MindStorms and blimp robots. Changing model parameters at run-time. The possibility of changing model parameters at run-time helps the designer analyse responses of the system in various test cases and allows him or her to come into conclusion about the behaviour of the system.

Projects using iqr A large number of projects have made use of this excellent tool for neural simulation. iqr was used for building distributed adaptive control (DAC) series of models. In this project, a mobile robot could form associations about colour patterns during the exploration of an arena. Robots can precisely travel to target locations with the help of memory. We can also make use of iqr to prepare models of classical conditioning. For example, a model of learning in the auditory cortex can be made with the help of this tool. VIII

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Fig. 3: Space, time and connection plots

Competing neural simulators Some competing neural simulators are: NEURON. This is a simulation environment for modelling individual neurons and neuron networks. The latest version of NEURON is capable of handling diffusion-reaction models and integrating diffusion functions into models of synapses and cellular networks. The higher level of abstraction given by iqr, than highly-specific neuronal system simulators like NEURON, helps iqr to have its size reduced and speed increased. GEneral NEural SImulation System (GENESIS). This is yet another simulation environment for constructing realistic models of neurobiological systems. Functionalities of GENESIS are similar to that of NEURON. NEURONC. This tool was originally developed for modelling nerve cells in the vertebrate retina. Many enhancements have been made on this tool over years. It is now used as a general-purpose simulator for modelling a large number of nerve cells, each with a large number of compartments. The neuron model used in iqr is a point-model with no compartments. BRIAN. It is an easy-to-learn and use, highly-flexible and easily-extensible neural simulator intended not only to save time of processors but also scientists. The tool is written in Python and is available for almost all platforms. MATLAB. iqr helps us have an added number of biological constraints than a general-purpose simulation tool like MATLAB. The domain-specific predefined blocks help in creating complex systems, more easily than MATLAB. Also, the biological language used in iqr makes it preferable than a general-purpose tool.

Synthetic insect. One interesting project using iqr is a synthetic insect. The model integrated a number of subsystems such as decoding celestial information into a heading direction signal, efficient and biologicallygrounded storage of allo-centric information on distance and direction travelled, decoding of memory and computation of home vector, stabilisation of the course based on optic flow, prioritisation of actions and behaviour regulation. The behavioural task assigned to this robot was to explore the environment while searching for the target stimulus and return to the point of departure upon either finding the target stimulus or while exceeding a given duration threshold of the exploration phase. The current under-

standing of the neuronal organisation of the foraging behaviour in insects is incorporated in the model. The system that was developed was large-scale, comprising 132 groups of neurons organised into 30 processes. The organisation of this model is supported by iqr. iqr is a very useful simulation environment for large-scale neuronal systems. The software is an outcome of extensive research being done to sort out the challenges faced by engineers, while trying to understand neuronal systems, especially for constructing artificial brain-like systems. If you are looking for a really simple and easy-to-use neural simulator, iqr could be the ideal one for you.  The author works at EFY www.efymag.com

BUYERS’ GUIDE

Selecting 3D Television Made Easy

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D technology has entered into our lives smoothly with 3D televisions. Almost all big names in the world of consumer electronics have recognised the power of 3D technology and come up with 3D televisions. Whether Plasma, LCD/LED, 3D televisions have managed to grab eyeballs. 3D experience is enriched when viewed on a huge screen. Before investing in a 3D television, it is advisable that you learn about the little nuances.

Diksha Gupta is senior assistant editor at EFY

3D technologies There are different 3D technologies that can be used to achieve 3D effect.  Anaglyph technology. This technology works with glasses of different colour tints. Images for both eyes are displayed simultaneously and are skewed in such a way that these are relative to each other. Each eye sees the image in colours that cannot pass through the tinted glass of the other eye. This results in each eye seeing a unique image that gives a 3D impression. Active shutter glasses based 3D displays. Active shutter glasses come with polarisation filters and liquid crystals. If a small voltage is applied, these can turn the glass dark. Voltage is applied at the rate of 120 times per second, that is, 120Hz, allowing each eye-glass to

alternate between being transparent or dark. This facilitates the image to pass to the viewer’s eye. The glasses work in sync with the 3D television in such a way that only the left eye-glass is transparent when the frame for the left eye-glass is displayed, and vice-versa. Passive polarised 3D displays. A lot of movie theatres use passive polarised 3D displays. These display two images on the screen simultaneously, where each image has a different polarisation. What is interesting about this technology is that the 3D glasses used to view the image are regular glasses with a polarised filter on each eyepiece. Each eye receives a single image courtesy the difference in polarisation for each eye and polarisation for two images on 3D display. Glass-less 3D televisions. Many companies have come up with prototypes of glass-less 3D televisions, but several limitations have been observed in them, including lower screen resolution as compared to regular LCD or plasma 3D televisions and restrictive viewing angle. It might be a while before this 3D technology matures. 

How to choose your 3D television Now that you are familiar with 3D technologies available in the market, here is our guide to help you make the most informed

Some 101.6cm (40-inch) or above 3D televisions available in India

Price Features worth looking at

LG 47LB6500 119cm (47-inch) LED TV

Samsung 40H6400 101cm (40-inch) LED TV

Vu 65XT800 165cm (65-inch) LED TV

Sony BRAVIA KDL-46W950A 116cm (46-inch) LED TV

` 103,900

` 73,500

` 250,000

` 107,900

Full HD display with 1920 x 1080 resolution, built-in Wi-Fi

You can change channels, adjust the volume, switch the television off and more with basic spoken commands.

4K display with 3840 x 2160 resolution

It gives you a choice of 3D television broadcasts and 3D web videos, while letting you watch movies on your Blu-ray disk.

The prices mentioned here are from various e-commerce portals and are subject to change.

78

January 2015 | Electronics For You

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BUYERS’ GUIDE investment, particularly for 101.6cm (40-inch) size or bigger. Which technology do you like? This is the first and foremost question to ask yourself before selecting a 3D television. While the passive polarised 3D displays look pretty impressive, these can burn a hole in your pocket. So, if you are looking for a good 3D experience at a reasonable price, active shutter glasses based TV may suit you better. Plasma or LCD/LED. Before you actually buy one, you must understand what a 3D television is all about. In simple terms, a 3D television can project images and videos in a three-dimensional way. How the technology works is that, the eye sees the images from different angles, than in real life, and the brain puts that information together and interprets the third dimension. There is a wide range of 3D televisions available in the market that are coupled with display technologies including plasma and LCD/LED. The two technologies are different from each other in the way they process and display content, offering different experiences. One of the main differences is that of processing speed. While LCD technology has evolved over a period of time to offer better processing speeds (120Hz, 240Hz and 480Hz), plasma technology never faced the issue of processing speeds. Given their processing speeds, LCD televisions are generally incapable of showing 3D content in full HDTV 1080p. These are able to deliver 600 lines of effective resolution capability in case of 120Hz HDTV and 700-800 lines of effective resolution in case of 240Hz television. However, plasma technology is capable of delivering full 1080 lines of resolution, desired in case of 3D television. This is not a major issue because 600-700 lines of effective resolution is also pretty good for most purposes. Another advantage that plasma technology brings is in-depth perception. Plasma cells have a pixel structure that yields slightly better depth in a picture. However, LCD/LED televisions www.efymag.com

Comparison of Optional Viewing Distances 3D television size (cm)

Optimal viewing distance 720p (cm)

Optimal viewing distance 1080p (cm)

106.7

246.4

167.6

127

292.1

198.1

139.7

322.6

218.4

152.4

350.5

238.8

165.1

381

256.5

win when it comes to brightness and colour-vibrancy. Overall, plasma technology is good for handling 3D content; however, the quality may vary from brand to brand. Price. While you may want the best technology and experience, it is important you set a budget and check out the best options available in that range. In India, the price of a 101.6cm (40-inch) or slightly bigger 3D television starts at ` 40,000 and goes up to ` 160,000. Screen resolution and viewing distance. When you go to a shop to buy a 3D television, the sales person will often emphasise on screen resolution. While 1080p resolution sounds and views better than 720p resolution, the resolution should always be determined on the basis of display size and the distance at which the television is to be kept from the viewers. Refresh rates. If you are investing in a plasma 3D television, refresh rates are really not an issue because this technology has naturally high refresh rates and are well-suited for 3D technology. However, if you are buying an LCD/LED variant, look for a high refresh rate to avoid any perceivable flicker. The minimum refresh rate for an LCD 3D television is 120Hz. Online or brick-and-mortar stores. This is a choice that you have to make for yourself. Usually, there are deals offered by online stores. But, before you choose the online option, do visit a large retail showroom to take a look at the actual product. Also, read the terms and conditions of online stores to avoid any servicerelated issues at a later stage. 

O

TM

Peripherals for Industrial Automation

Analog Timers

NEW

ON Delay, Interval, Star Delta, Cyclic ON Operating Modes First OFF First, Forward-Pause-Reverse, True power OFF 30 Sec, 60 Sec, 3/10/30/60 Sec/Min, 1/3/10/30 Sec/Min/Hr, 1/2/4/8 Sec/Min/Hr, Time Ranges 1/10 Sec/Min/Hr # SPDT (1 C/O) Output Contact # DPDT (2 C/O) Contact Rating

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NEW

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T one F la s h e r

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Ac c e p t F u n c tio n

P us h B utto n O n F ront and /o r Te rm inals o n B ac k

S iz e

V o lu m e C o n tr o l Ye s , 1 0 to 1 0 0 % S u p p ly V o lta g e

2 3 0 V A C ,2 4 V D C , 2 0 -2 4 0 V A C ,1 2 -2 4 0 V D C

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Website: www.shavison.com Email: [email protected] SHAVISON ELECTRONICS PVT. LTD.

Unit No. G-5 , B Wing , Udyog Bhavan No. 2 , Plot K-3 , Anand Nagar MIDC , Ambernath (E) 421 506 , MH , India. TeleFax: +91-251-2620417/ 2620427 Cell: +91 98 203 62980 Ahmedabad : Integrated -09825709665 Ahmednagar :Tech Edge Controls - 09822012595 Ambernath : Chaudhary Enterprises 09822066303 Ankleshwar / Bharuch : Maharshi - 09879061845 Aurangabad : Chintamani Electricals - 09850045468 Baroda : Omega Instrumentation - 09687513744 Banglore : Certitude Tech - 08861876624 Chennai : Shree Krishna Enterprises - 09840332195 Deepak Agencies - 09840440065 Kochi : Alliance Automation - 09020480777 Coimbatore : Suriya - 09843356059 Delhi : Powertech - 09212260995 Durg : Aditya - 09827111400 Goa : Kedar - 09850041672 Jalna : Tech Edge - 09822012595 Karnal : Powertech 09212260995 Kolhapur : Kedar - 09850041672 Madurai : Jagan Industrial Traders - 09843062834 Mumbai : Lohar Chawl : A. Harilal -09321085554 Mahavir - 09821022778 Mulund: Yogesh - 9322251679 Andheri: Kalpesh - 9322231500 Nasik: Nasa - 09422271456 Noida : Nelumbo - 09560311660 Pune : Pendse Electrical - 09325093840 Shrirampur: Tech Edge Controls - 09822012595 Silvasa : Vijan - 09824700675 Thane : VE Electricals - 09819646729 Vasai : Plaschem 09371048482 Dealers enquiry solicited

Electronics For You | January 2015

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first look

Google Chromecast iBall Launches Voice-Calling 3G Tablet Launched In India The line between tablets and phone is cloudier than ever From your smartphone or tablet straight to the TV

A

thumb-sized media-streaming device, Chromecast plugs into the HDMI port on your TV. You can easily mirror your favourite entertainment and apps from your Android phone, tablet, iPhone, iPad, Mac or Windows laptop, or Chromebook to the big screen. The device works with a large number of apps, including YouTube, Google Play Movies, ErosNow and Google+, among others. You can log into any website in Chrome on your laptop, and from your Android device you can mirror your screen to the TV. Chromecast serves as a personalised remote control for your phone. You can use it to search and browse, play, pause, rewind, control the volume and even make playlists. And, even while doing all this, you can use your phone for other things. It automatically updates itself with new features and apps all the time, to make the experience better every so often. Price: ` 2999

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January 2015 | Electronics For You

i

Ball has launched its first octacore tablet, Slide Octa A41, which runs on Android 4.4 KitKat and is powered by 1.7GHz octa-core ARM Cortex A7 processor, coupled with 2GB RAM. The device measures 193x115x8mm and is available in black colour variant. The tablet sports 17.8cm (7inch) IPS full-HD display with 323ppi pixel density, 8MP rear camera with LED flash and 5MP frontfacing camera. It includes 16GB internal storage memory, which can be further expanded up to 32GB via microSD card.

The device comes with 3500mAh battery. It supports Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and USB OTG (on-thego) options. Price: ` 12,999

HP Launches Chromebook 14 G3 With Full-HD Touch Display Slim is in!

T

he 35.6cm (14-inch) HP Chromebook boasts of a sleek, compact, light-weight design, making it easy to carry around. The display features a full-HD SVA eDP BrightView slim WLED backlit touch screen (1920x1080p). Powered by NVidia Tegra K1 processor, with an integrated chipset, the Chromebook works at lightning speed. The device measures 34.4x24x1.8cm and weighs just 1.72kg. It supports up to 4GB maximum on-board system. It has an internal drive of 16GB, which can go up to 32GB. You also get 100GB Cloud storage on Google Drive with a two-year subscription. It supports a number of ports including one USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, one HDMI, one headphone/

Price: Approx. ` 27,800

microphone combo, one microSD and one 4.5mm AC-power connector. For connectivity, it features Marvell 88W8897 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2x2) Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. The Chromebook has a three-cell battery, which lasts up to nine hours, and comes with a 65W EM smart AC adapter.

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first look

GizMo ByTes Vavia Technologies unveils FreePaisa, a free mobile recharge Android app FreePaisa guarantees unlimited rewards (in the form of free recharges) to each subscriber as a bonus for downloading all apps listed within FreePaisa app. With FreePaisa, users get instant, free talk-time in minutes. It is the first app in India that pays users for using other apps. It also pays users for referring friends to use the app. This way the right apps are targeted at users and they are incentivised to try these apps. FreePaisa facilitates free, instant mobile recharge across all major operators in India. Post-paid customers can use wallet money for paying their mobile bills.

QuikWallet—India’s first true mobile wallet LivQuik, a start-up, has launched QuikWallet, an innovative payments service that enables secure hasslefree transactions. At a restaurant, to make a payment using this app, you can share a mobile number or name with the staff member serving your table. The bill is delivered to the number of the concerned person. This operation is completed by entering a CVV number and the bank’s password.

Nimbuzz introduces Holaa! Caller ID app for Android The instant messaging platform, Nimbuzz, has launched a caller ID app called Holaa! The Made in India app is similar to Truecaller app as it allows users to see caller details like name, location and photo (if available). It also allows blocking spammers or unwanted callers. Holaa! has been released in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Persian and Portuguese languages for Android devices.

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January 2015 | Electronics For You

ASUS Launches Strix Pro Headphones Headphones that work on instinct

S

trix Pro is powered by 60mm neodymium magnet drivers, which give users (gamers) the most accurate sound fidelity. It weighs only 320gm. The control box is USB-powered and includes a built-in microphone that actively detects and counters environmental noises, such as mechanicalkeyboard tapping and speech. Its environmental noise cancellation (ENC) technology intelligently filters out over 90 per cent noise. Strix Pro is compatible with most popular devices. The control box comes with 1.5m extension lead with separate headphone and mic plugs, for compatibility with PC and Mac. It even works with smartphones, tablets and PlayStation 4, owing to the four-pole 3.5mm audiomic combined adapter. Strix Pro is extremely portable and comfortable to wear. Its foldable design allows ear cups to lie

Price: ` 5999

flat, making the device ideal for packing and carrying around. The detachable microphone can be easily removed too. Named after the ancient Roman and Greek word for owl, Strix means the keenest hearing and sharpest eyesight. It means feeling your environment so that you detect and react to the slightest movement, and surviving on the edge of instinct.

Vivo Unveils X5Max In India The world’s slimmest smartphone

V

ivo X5Max is only 4.8mm (0.19inch) thick. It weighs 146gm and sports 12.7cm (5-inch) 1080x1920 pixels super AMOLED display. It is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon octa-core 64-bit processor, with 2GB RAM. The phone has an internal memory of 16GB. The device runs on Funtouch OS 2.0, which is based on Android 4.4. It has 13MP primary camera and 5MP secondary camera. It is backed by 2000mAh Li-Po battery. On connectivity front, Vivo X5Max supports OTG, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS options. The smartphone features a number of sensors, including gesture

sensor, light sensor, proximity sensor, accelerometer, electronic compass and gyroscope. Price: ` 32,980

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do-it-yourself

Wireless Gesture-Controlled Robot

I

n this project we are going to control a robot wirelessly using hand gestures. This is an easy, userfriendly way to interact with robotic

systems and robots. An accelerometer is used to detect the tilting position of your hand, and a microcontroller gets different analogue values and generates command signals to control the robot. This concept can be implemented in a robotic arm used for welding or handling hazardous materials, such as in nuclear plants. The author’s prototype is shown in Fig. 1.

mar

Nitin Ku

Circuit and working The block diagram of the wireless gesture-controlled robot is shown in Fig. 2. The circuit diagram of the transmitter section of the wireless gesturecontrolled robot is shown in Fig. 3 and of the receiver section in Fig. 4. ATmega328. ATmega328 is Fig. 1: Author’s prototype a single-chip microcontroller from ACCELERO− MICRO− 433MHz ENCODER Atmel and belongs METER CONTROLLER TRANSMITTER HT12E ADXL335 ATMEGA 328 MODULE to the mega AVR series. The Atmel (A) : TRANSMITTER 8-bit AVR RISC 433MHz MOTOR based microconDECODER RECEIVER DRIVER HT12D troller combines MODULE L293D 32kB ISP flash (B) : RECEIVER memory with readFig. 2: Block diagram of the wireless gesture-controlled robot while-write capa1

IC1 7805

3

R2 10K

2

7

AVcc

20

AVREF

21

PD0/RXD

PC5/SCL

28

3

PD1/TXD

PC4/SDA

27

4

PD2

PC3

26

PD3

PC2

25

9

PB6/XTAL1

PC0

23

10

PB7/XTAL2

PB5/SCK

19

PD5

PB4/MISO

18

PD6

PB3/MOSI

17

PD7

PB2

16

PB1

15

AGND

22

1

C3 0.1u

2

C4 0.33u

R1 1M

11 12

CON1 9V PP3 BATT.1

X TAL1 16MHz C1 22p

C2 22p

PC6/RESET

IC2

LM1117−33 2

13 14 8

PB0 GND

16

18 Vcc A0

DOUT A1

14

5V GND

13 Y X

12

CON2 ADXL335

TE AD11

A2

IC4 HT12E

A3 A4

AD10 A5

11

10

AD9

A6 A7

AD8 GND

Fig. 3: Transmitter section of the wireless gesture-controlled robot January 2015 | Electronics For You

15

OSC2 OSC1 17

1

TP0

84

R3 750K 3

IC3

C5 10u 6 PD4ATMEGA328PC1 24 TP2 16V 5

S1 POWER ON/OFF

Vcc

GND

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

bilities, 1kB EEPROM, 2kB SRAM, 23 general-purpose I/O lines, 32 general-purpose working registers, three flexible timers/counters with compare modes, internal and external interrupts, serial programmable USART, a byte-oriented 2-wire serial interface, SPI serial port, 10-bit A/D converter, programmable watch-dog timer with an internal oscillator and five software-selectable power-saving modes. The device operates between 1.8 and 5.5 volts. It achieves throughputs approaching one MIPS per MHz. An alternative to ATmega328 is ATmega328p. ADXL335. This is a complete three-axis acceleration measurement system. ADXL335 has a minimum measurement range of ±3g. It contains a poly-silicon-surface micro-machined sensor and signalconditioning circuitry to implement open-loop acceleration measurement architecture. Output signals are analogue voltages that are proportional to acceleration. The accelerometer can measure the static acceleration of TP1 ANT.1 gravity in tilt-sensing TP3 applications as well as dynamic acceleration resulting from motion, shock or vibration. The sensor is a po1 2 3 4 ly-silicon-surface miTX1 cro-machined structure 433MHz TRANSMITTER built on top of a siliMODULE con wafer. Poly-silicon springs suspend the structure over the surface of the wafer and GND DATA Vcc ANT

aquib javed khan

www.efymag.com

do-it-yourself

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Vcc DATA DATA GND

GND Vcc

ANT GND

ger on HT12D decoder further enhances the application flexLEFT RIGHT RX1 TP5 ibility of 212 series of encoders. 433MHz RECEIVER 1 18 M1 M2 A0 ANT.2 Vcc 11 14 6 3 R8 MODULE The HT12D also provides a 2 16 47K OUT3 OUT4 OUT2 OUT1 A1 OSC1 15 4 GND 38kHz carrier for infra-red IN4 3 15 10 5 A2 OSC2 GND IC6 IN3 systems. 7 GND 12 IN2 4 17 L293D A3 VT 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 2 13 Transmitter. The transmitGND IC5 IN1 5 14 EN1 EN2 VCC2 VCC1 A4 DIN ter consists of ATmega328 miHT12D S2 8 16 1 9 6 13 GND crocontroller (IC2), ADXL335 A5 D11 POWER ON/OFF 7 12 accelerometer, HT12E enA6 D10 coder (IC4) and 433MHz RF 8 11 R4 R6 R7 R5 A7 D9 TP6 220E CON3 220E 220E 220E transmitter module (TX1). 9 10 GND D8 4.5,1.5Ah In this circuit, two analogue TP4 BATT.2 LED4 LED2 LED3 LED1 outputs from ADXL335 pins (x, y) are connected with Fig. 4: Receiver section of the wireless gesture-controlled robot input pins (23, 24) of the microcontroller. Analogue signals are converted to Parts List Table I digital signals through Semiconductors: Movement of Robot and Decoder Outputs the microcontroller. IC1 - 7805, 5V regulator IC2 - ATmega328 microcontroller Robot Input 1 Input 2 Input 3 Input 4 Digital outputs from IC3 - LM1117-33, 3.3V regulator (accelerometer) (D11) (D10) (D9) (D8) pins 16, 17, 18 and 19 IC4 - HT12E, 212 series encoder IC5 - HT12D, 212 series decoder Forward (-Y) 0 1 0 1 of the microcontroller IC6 - L293D, dual H-bridge motor are directly sent to Backward (+Y) 1 0 1 0 driver pins 13, 12, 11 and 10 LED1-LED4 - 5mm LED Right (+X) 1 0 0 1 Resistors (all 1/4-watt, ±5% carbon): of encoder IC4. This Left (-X) 0 1 1 0 R1 - 1-mega-ohm data is encoded and R2 - 10-kilo-ohm R3 - 750-kilo-ohm amplitude is proportional to accelera- transmitted via RF module TX1. R4-R7 - 220-ohm Receiver. The receiver part contion. Phase-sensitive demodulation R8 - 47-kilo-ohm sists of 433MHz RF receiver module techniques are then used to deterCapacitors: C1, C2 - 22pF ceramic disk mine the magnitude and direction of (RX1), HT12D decoder (IC5) and C3 - 0.1µF ceramic disk L293D motor driver (IC6) to run the the acceleration. C4 - 0.33µF ceramic disk motors. Here, receiver module RX1 L293D. This is a 16-pin DIP packC5 - 10µF, 16V electrolytic Miscellaneous: age motor driver IC (IC6) having four receives the transmitted signal, which CON1, CON3 - 2-pin connector input pins and four output pins. All is decoded by decoder IC to get the CON2 - 6-pin connector XTAL1 - 16MHz crystal four input pins are connected to out- same digital outputs. Four outputs TX1 - 433MHz transmitter module put pins of the decoder IC (IC5) and of IC6 drive two motors. The robot RX1 - 433MHz receiver module moves as per tilt direction of the acthe four output pins are connected to M1, M2 - DC-geared motor, 100rpm S1, S2 - On/off switch DC motors of the robot. Enable pins celerometer in the transmitter. The Batt.1 - 9V PP3 battery are used to enable input/output pins direction of the robot movement is as Batt.2 - 4.5V, 1.5Ah lead-acid battery ANT.1, ANT.2 - 17cm long single-strand wire per logic listed in Table I. on both sides of IC6. antenna Encoder (HT12E) and decoder - ADXL335 3-axis accelerometer (HT12D) ICs. The 212 encoders are Software program a series of CMOS LSIs for remote- The software program is written in provide resistance against accelera- control system applications. These Arduino programming language. are capable of encoding information We programmed a fresh ATmega328 tion forces. Deflection of the structure is measured using a differential ca- that consists of N address bits and microcontroller with the help of Arpacitor that consists of independent 12 N data bits. Each address/data duino IDE 1.0.5 and an Arduino Uno fixed plates and plates attached to input can be set to one of two logic board. states. Programmed addresses/data First, we have to load bootloader the moving mass. Fixed plates are driven by 180° are transmitted together with header code into the microcontroller. For out-of-phase square waves. Accel- bits via an RF or infra-red transmis- that, we used Arduino Uno for in-syseration deflects the moving mass and sion medium upon receipt of a trigger tem programming (ISP) given in the unbalances the differential capacitor, signal. The capability to select a TE IDE, by selecting File → Examples resulting in a sensor output whose trigger on HT12E or a data (DIN) trig- → Arduino ISP. Once the bootloader Electronics For You | January 2015

85

do-it-yourself

Fig. 5: An actual-size PCB layout of the transmitter circuit

Fig. 7: An actual-size PCB layout of the receiver circuit

Fig. 6: Component layout of the transmitter circuit

Fig. 8: Component layout of the receiver circuit

Table II

Test Points Test point

Details

TP0

0V (GND)

TP1 5V TP2 3.3V TP3

Train of pulses

TP4

0V (GND)

TP5 4.5V TP6

Train of pulses

efy Note The source code of this project is included in this month’s EFY DVD and is also available for free download at source.efymag.com

is uploaded into the microcontroller, gesture.ino code of this project can be uploaded.

Construction and testing An actual-size, single-side PCB layout of the transmitter circuit is shown in Fig. 5 and its component layout 86

January 2015 | Electronics For You

in Fig. 6. An actual-size, single-side PCB layout of the receiver circuit is shown in Fig. 7 and its component layout in Fig. 8. The transmitter section can be held in your palm or on the other side (refer Fig. 9). The receiver module is mounted on the robot. Mount all components on the PCBs shown here to minimise assembly errors. Fix the receiver PCB and 4.5V battery on the chassis of the robot. Fix two motors, along with wheels, at the rear side of the robot and a castor wheel on the front. After uploading the main code into the microcontroller, remove it from the Arduino Uno board and insert it into the populated transmitter PCB. Now, switch-on the power supplies in the transmitter as well as receiver circuits. Attach the transmitter circuit to your hand and move your hand forwards, backwards and sideways. Directions of the robot movement are given in Table I. The robot will stop if you keep your palm hori-

Fig. 9: Transmitter module mounted on the back of the palm

zontal, parallel to the Earth’s surface. For troubleshooting, first verify that voltages at various test points are as per Table II.  Aquib Javed Khan is pursuing B.Tech from Orissa Engineering College, Bhubaneswar. He is interested in mechatronics systems www.efymag.com

do-it-yourself

Current-Control Circuit for LED Lighting Yogesh Shukla

L

ED is basically a low-voltage device, which requires specified DC current and voltage across it for its operation. It can adapt to different power sources. Here is a circuit for controlling the current in LED lamps without using a decoupling capacitor at the supply voltage. This circuit uses an LED driver instead. The main problem that affects the working of low-voltage LED lamps, with a chopped power supply, is the

Test Points Test point Details TP0

GND (reference for measurement)

TP1 24V TP2

10kHz to 100kHz when S2 is at position 1

Parts List Semiconductors: IC1 - Max16832 LED driver IC T1 - BC557 pnp transistor T2 - BC547 npn transistor Resistors (all 1/4-watt, ±5% carbon): R1 - 10-kilo-ohm R2, R4 - 100-kilo-ohm R3 - 2-kilo-ohm R5 - 220-ohm D1 - 1N4007 rectifier diode D2 - 1N5819 schottky diode LED1-LED6 - 1-watt white LED Capacitors: C1, C2 - 1µF, 50V electrolytic Miscellaneous: CON1 - 2-pin terminal connector CON2 - 2-pin connector S1 - On/off switch S2 - 2-way rotary switch - 24V DC power supply

88

January 2015 | Electronics For You

edi

s.c. dwiv

continuous charging and discharging of the decoupling capacitor. By switching off the LED when the supply voltage is low, discharging of capacitor can be avoided if an LED driver is used. The driver protects the LED from input voltage fluctuation by providing a constant output for the operation.

from the LED driver circuit. This circuit detects the starting of the off-time and switches off the LED before the decoupling capacitor is heavily discharged. The driver circuit switches on the LED when the supply voltage is high. The dimming capability of the driver can dim the LED output up to 100 per cent. Circuit and working During its on time, the base of transistor T1 gets a positive voltage. Fig. 1 shows the circuit diagram of the current-controlled circuit for a low- This drives pnp transistor T1 into off state. Since there is no current in voltage LED lighting system. It is built around Max16832 (IC1), six 1-watt R2, transistor T1’s collector will be white LEDs (LED1 through LED6), at zero volts. Transistor T2, being an npn transistor, will also be in off state. transistors BC557 (T1) and BC547 Transistor T2 and resistors R3 and R4 (T2), and few other components. LED driver MAX16832 used in form an inverter, which converts the the circuit has dedicated DIM input logic zero at collector of T1 to logic one at collector of T2. This turns the (pin 7) for switching the LED current. Signal to drive DIM input is extracted LEDs on via DIM pin of IC1. As soon as D2 the off time TP1 1N5819 LED1 − LED6 = 1W WHITE LED starts, the input voltage drops L1 R5 rapidly, but the LED1 LED2 LED3 LED4 LED5 LED6 470uH 220E CON1 envelope detecSENSOR 24V 1 CS tor comprising TIM_I 8 diode D1 and TP2 2 IN IC1 DIM 7 capacitor C2 MAX16832 C1 R4 reacts slowly. C2 3 GND LX 6 1u D1 100K 1u 50V The base volt1N4007 50V R1 4 5 GND LX age at T1 drops 10K 2 S2 faster than its 1 2−WAY T1 3 SWITCH emitter voltage. BC557 S1 T2 POWER CON2 T1 switches on BC547 R3 R2 PWM TP0 when -0.7 volts 2K 100K PULSE is achieved at GND its base-emitter. Fig. 1: Circuit diagram of the current-control circuit for an LED lighting system This changes

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do-it-yourself

Fig. 2: An actual-size PCB layout of the circuit

the logic level of DIM from one to zero. This transition results in switching off of the LED driver immediately. Hence, the load from decoupling capacitor C1 is removed. When the on time starts, the base voltage goes up, T1 is switched off and the driver turns on. This circuit works in two modes using a two-way switch—constant mode and PWM mode. In constant mode, when switch S2 is at position 3, LED1 through LED6 glow constantly (with the same intensity). In PWM

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Fig. 3: Component layout of the PCB

mode, switch S2 is at position 1 and signal (frequency range from 10kHz to 100kHz) is connected at CON2. You can test the circuit in PWM mode using a function generator. The intensity of LEDs varies inversely w.r.t. the frequency applied, i.e., at lower frequencies intensity is more, while at higher frequencies intensity is lesser.

Construction and testing An actual-size, single-side PCB layout for the current-controlled circuit for a low-voltage LED system is shown

in Fig. 2 and its component layout in Fig. 3. After assembling the circuit on the PCB, enclose it in a suitable plastic box. Keep the switches on the front side of the box for power-on and PWM selection. Affix connectors CON1 and CON2 at the rear side of the box for power supply and PWM connections, respectively. Verify that the parameters at various test points are as shown in the table.  Yogesh Shukla is an electronics hobbyist

Electronics For You | January 2015

89

do-it-yourself

Crystal-Locked Medium-Wave Transmitter joy mukherji

H

ere is a low-power AM transmitter for the medium-wave broadcast band. This circuit is perfect for broadcasting your favourite music around the house. The transmit frequency for the circuit is crystallocked to 1500kHz.

Circuit and working Fig. 1 shows the circuit diagram of the crystal-locked medium-wave transmitter. It is built using a 14-stage divider and oscillator CD4060 (IC1), an nchannel MOSFET transistor 2N7000 (T1), low-power audio amplifier LM386 (IC2) and a few other components. A 24MHz crysTest Points tal (Xtal1) is used in conjunction with Test point Details IC1 to generate the TP0 0V (GND) carrier frequency. TP1 12V The crystal freTP2 1500kHz quency is divided TP1

7

Q4 16

C3 100n

S1 ON/OFF POWER

CON1 12V

11

R1 1M

9

10

X TAL1 24MHz C1 22p

12

8

C2 22p

V DD

Q5

5

Q6

4

Q7

6

Q8

14

Q9

13

Q10

15

Q12

1

Q13

2

Q14

3

RESET

01

IC1 CD4060

00

Vss

ANT. RFC1*

C6 100n

G C5 100n

Fig. 2: An actual-size PCB layout of the transmitter circuit

8 5

T1 2N7000 S

RFC1*, RFC2* −− SEE PARTS LIST

January 2015 | Electronics For You

6

C4 100n

D

Fig. 1: Circuit diagram of the crystal-locked medium-wave transmitter

90

R3 1K

RFC2* R2 1K

TP0 GND

C7 10u 25V 1

TP2

_

00

by 16 by IC1 to give the final output frequency of 1500kHz at pin 7 of IC1. The square wave from IC1 drives the class C amplifier built around T1. The MOSFET works as a fast on/off switch. TV balun core RFC2 converts short pulses into a sine wave and also blocks RF from entering audio amplifier IC2. Additional filtering is provided by TV balun core RFC1 and capacitor C4. The amplified signal is coupled to the antenna via capacitor C6. The AM modulation is achieved by varying the drain voltage of T1. When no audio signal is present, the output of IC2 remains high. The audio modulation changes this voltage during modulation peaks. Potmeter VR1 controls the modulation depth and should be adjusted for maximum modulation without distortion. The audio should be loud and clear on a medium-wave AM receiver. Use of a different crystal will change the frequency of the transmit-

3

IC2 LM386 2 7 4

VR1 10K POT C8 10u 25V JACK1 AUDIO IN

edi

s.c. dwiv

Parts List Semiconductors: IC1 - CD4060, 14-stage divider and oscillator IC2 - LM386 low-power audio amplifier T1 - 2N7000 n-channel MOSFET Resistors (all 1/4-watt, ±5% carbon): R1 - 1-mega-ohm R2-R3 - 1-kilo-ohm VR1 - 10-kilo-ohm potmeter Capacitors: C1, C2 - 22pF ceramic disk C3-C6 - 100nF ceramic disk C7, C8 - 10µF, 25V electrolytic Miscellaneous: CON1 - 2-pin terminal connector S1 - On/off switch RFC1 - 10 turns, 28SWG, TV balun core RFC2 - 50 turns, 28SWG, TV balun core - 24MHz crystal XTAL1 JACK1 - Audio-input jack ant. - Wire antenna (around 10m or more) - Shielded cable

ter. Crystals in the range of 10-24MHz can be used to cover the mediumwave band from 625kHZ to 1500kHz.

Construction and testing An actual-size, single-side PCB layout for the transmitter is shown in Fig. 2 and its component layout in Fig. 3. Assemble the circuit on the PCB. Keep all leads as short as possible. Use good-quality shielded cable between the audio source and transmitter. Use a 10m or longer piece of wire for the antenna. a 12V hum-free regulated power supply is recommended.  Joy Mukherji is an electronics hobbyist and a small-business owner in Albany, New York, USA. His interests include designing radio frequency circuits

Fig. 3: Component layout of the PCB www.efymag.com

do-it-yourself

Low-Cost 6-Bit DAC

mar

Nitin Ku

Petre tzv Petrov

F

or controlling the load of appliances such as cooling fans, low-wattage heaters, thermostats, low-wattage light sources, small electrical toys and test benches for loudspeakers, we need a power source whose voltage can be controlled in small steps and is capable of providing current of more than 1A. For that, we require low-resolution digitalto-analogue converters (DACs) with three to seven bits. Here is the circuit capable of setting output voltage between 1.25V and 15V in 64 steps. The circuit can be adapted for a lot of applications.

Circuit and working The circuit of the low-cost 6-bit DAC is shown in Fig. 1. The DAC is built around IC 7406, hex inverter (IC3). We may also use IC 7407 with six followers without changing the PCB. Steps are generated with the help of 6-bit digital input code D0 (LSB) through D5 (MSB) at CON2. Consequently, 64 combinations are possible starting from 000000 to 111111. At each comParts List Semiconductors: IC1 - 7805, 5V regulator IC2 - LM317, positive-adjustable regulator IC3 - 7406, hex inverter buffer (or 7407 non-inverting buffer) BR1 - 1A bridge rectifier module D1-D4 - 1N4007 rectifier diode LED1 - 5mm red LED Resistors (all 1/4-watt, ±5% carbon, unless stated otherwise): R1 - 100-ohm, 2-watt R2 - 120-ohm R3 - 680-ohm R4 - 2.2-kilo-ohm VR1-VR6 - 1.5-kilo-ohm potentiometer Capacitors: C1 - 0.1µF, 400V polyster C2 - 1000µF, 25V electrolytic C3, C4, C6 - 0.33µF ceramic C5 - 22µF, 16V electrolytic C7 - 1µF, 25V electrolytic Miscellaneous: CON1, CON3-CON5 - 2-pin connector CON2 - 7-pin connector X1 - 230V AC primary to 18V, 1A secondary transformer F1 - Fuse, 500mA

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bination, you will have a pre-determined output voltage between 1.25V and the possible maximum 15V. Inputs D0 through D5 are TTL and CMOS compatible. These can be generated by microcontrollers, parallelinterface adapters such as PPI8255A, PIA6820/1 and Z80-PIO. In the simplest case, inputs can be driven with switches connecting inputs D0 through D5 to ground 0V or to 5V. The size of the steps is programmable with trimmer potentiometers VR1 through VR6. Consequently, we can produce regular or irregular steps according to the need, depending on the characteristics of the load being controlled. You can set any output voltage with any potentiometer between

1.25V and the maximum. For example, if you have a transformer for 18V AC, you can set outputs between 1.25V and around 15V with any potentiometer. For adjustment in the simplest case, apply a set of seven test codes, as listed below, on CON2; output on CON3 will be as under. Test code with 7406 (invert with 7407): 000000 Vout=Vmax (unadjustable) 000001 Vout=1.25V (VR1) 000010 Vout=3V (VR2) 000100 Vout=5V (VR3) 001000 Vout=7.5V (VR4) 010000 Vout=9V (VR5) 100000 Vout=12V (VR6) The maximum output voltage on CON3 and CON4 is with code 111111 on the outputs of IC3 and depends on the input voltage of IC2. Please note that, if you use 7407, the codes will be non-inverted, and if you use 7406, the codes will be inverted. The 6-bit input digital code D0

C1 0.1u, 400V

D1 1N4007 1

F1 500mA

X1

1

3

L CON1 230V AC 50Hz N R1 100E, 2W

IC1 7805

BR1 1A

3

2

C3 0.33u

4

C4 0.33u

D3 1N4007

CON2

14

D0 D1 D2 D3 D4 D5

1

IC3 7406

Vcc

2 N1 4

3 N2 5

6 N3

9

GND

8 N4

11

10 N5

13

12 N6 GND 7

VR1

3

D2 1N4007 C5 22u 16V

C2 1000u 25V

2

C6 0.33u

CON5 5V

IC2 LM317 1

2

R2 120E

VR2

C7 1u 25V R3 680E

R4 D4 2.2K 1N4007 LED1

VR3 VR4 VR5 VR6

CON3 DC MOTOR

CON4 VOLTMETER

VR1 − VR6 = 1.5K GND

Fig. 1: Circuit of the low-cost 6-bit DAC www.efymag.com

do-it-yourself mon configuration built around step-down transformer X1 (secondary voltage 18V to 20V with current 1A or above), bridge rectifier BR1 and voltage regulator IC 7805 (IC1). The mains power is applied on connector CON1. 5V is available at Fig. 2: An actual-size PCB layout of the low-cost 6-bit DAC connector CON5. The selection of mains transformer X1, bridge rectifier and heat sinks for IC1 and IC2 depends on the required maximum output current from the DAC. IC1 and IC2 can be mounted on a common heat-sink after proper mounting is done. The load is Fig. 3: Component layout of the PCB connected to connector CON3. through D5 is buffered with 7406 or A DC voltmeter with 50V range is similar (IC3). With an open collector, connected at CON4 for measuring the IC works as a translator/buffer the output voltage. The DAC can be between standard TTL levels to higher tested with 12V/5W/0.4A light bulb, 12V/0.3A fan, heating element for voltages needed for LM317. thermostat with nominal current up to If the requirement of current is more than 1A, then select adjust- 0.3A and maximum current below 1A able regulator IC2 from series LM317T and similar loads. (1.5A), LM350 (3A) or any compatible Construction and testing adjustable-linear regulator. This makes the DAC adaptable to An actual-size, single-side PCB layout a lot of applications. In many cases, for the low-cost 6-bit DAC is shown there is no need to start the output in Fig. 2 and its component layout in voltage from 0V. This makes the solu- Fig. 3.  tion even simpler. a researcher and Input digital code D0 through D5 Petre Tzv Petrov was assistant professor at is buffered with IC3, which should be Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria, and expert-lecturer obligatory with open connector. The at OFPPT, Casablanca, preferred device is 7406 or better, with Kingdom of Morocco. He is currently working as an outputs that can work with up to 30V. electronics engineer in the Power requirements are from a comprivate sector in Bulgaria www.efymag.com

Electronics For You | January 2015

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do-it-yourself

Illuminated Optical Magnifier Millind M. Sutar

W

Circuit and working

edi e often s.c. dwiv face problem while reading the values of ICs and miniature SMD components, detecting cracks or shorts in tracks in a PCB, or reading a finely-graduated vernier scale. Here is a solution to the problem in the form of a simple optical magnifier that simultaneously magnifies and illuminates the object.

The main constituents of the magnifier are a convex lens with focal length of about 10cm for magnification of the object, a set of eight white LEDs to illuminate the object, an LED driver circuit for powering the LEDs and some other components. Fig. 1 shows the circuit diagram of the optical magnifier. Snubber capacitor C1 at the input reduces the line-input voltage of 230V to a very-low-level AC voltage. PART−1 PART−2 The full-wave bridge rectifier, A comprising diodes D1 through R1 C C1 L1# 100E,0.5W 1u, 400V D4, converts the low-level AC L D3 D1 voltage into DC voltage. C2 is 1N4007 LED1 1N4007 LED5 a smoothening capacitor. Series N CON1 C2 current-limiting resistor R1 and LED2 LED6 230V AC 3.3u, 400V 50Hz series inductor coil L1 avoid D2 D4 LED3 LED7 1N4007 1N4007 voltage spikes. Two branches of the LEDs LED4 LED8 are connected in parallel. Each D B LED1 − LED8 = WHITE LED L1# = SEE PARTS LIST branch has four LEDs connectFig. 1: Circuit diagram of the illuminated optical magnifier ed in series as shown in Fig. 1.

Construction and testing

Fig. 2: A suggested PCB layout for the optical magnifier

Fig. 3: Component layout of the PCB

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January 2015 | Electronics For You

An actual-size, single-side PCB for the optical magnifier is shown in Fig. 2 and its component layout in Fig. 3. Before assembling the circuit, cut the PCB across the dotted line and assemble the circuit on two separate PCBs as part 1 and part 2. The PCB for mounting the LEDs (part 2) is in annular shape as shown in Fig. 3. LEDs are placed around the lens as shown in Fig. 4. Drill eight holes to house LED holders. You can also have a press-fit arrangement. Enclose PCB part 2 in the PVC pipe in such a way that light from the LEDs falls on the object

Parts List Semiconductors: D1-D4 LED1-LED8 Resistor: R1 Capacitors: C1 C2 Miscellaneous: CON1 L1

- 1N4007 rectifier diode - 5mm white LED - 100-ohm, 0.5W, ±5% carbon - 1µF, 400V polyester - 3.3µF, 400V electrolytic - 2-pin connector - 20 turns of 20SWG enamelled copper wire on toroidal core (OD=20mm, ID=12mm and height=6mm)

LED

VIEW

LENS

OBJECT

PCB PART−2

PCB PART−1

Fig. 4: Cross-sectional view of the optical magnifier

but the LEDs do not obstruct the view. Enclose PCB part 1 in the side tube. Power PCB part 1 by connecting it to the mains by a flexible power cord. Ensure proper wiring insulation to avoid shock while us- Fig. 5: Author’s ing the magnifier. prototype Fit PCB part 1 that has the circuit for powering the LEDs in the side tube as shown in Fig. 4. Outer diameter of PCB part 1 will be the same as the inner diameter of the side tube. Connect points A and B on part 1 to points C and D on part 2, respectively, through external wires. The arrangement shown in Fig. 4 is schematic and not to scale. The outer diameter of the lens will decide the overall arrangement. You will have to make suitable clamps to hold the lens and PCBs inside the tube. The prototype used by the author is shown in Fig. 5.  Millind M. Sutar is assistant professor of Physics at S.M. Dr Bapuji Salunkhe College, Miraj, Dist. Sangli, Maharashtra www.efymag.com

do-it-yourself

Capturing Images with USB Camera, Wi-Fi and Raspberry Pi p kumar sandeeni theo & Sa

Somnath Bera

E

ver since this tiny, credit-cardsized computer, Raspberry Pi, appeared in the market, it has caught the imagination of every electronics and computer hobbyist around the world. The powerful Linux operating system combined with 26 input-output (I/O) pins can do many amazing things out-of-thebox. This article explains how to interface a USB camera and Wi-Fi with Raspberry Pi. It also explains the steps for making a webcam server using VLC Apache2 server software.

Linux PC. After inserting the SD card, issue an ‘ls /dev/sd*’ command at a terminal prompt and see what name has been given to the card. bera@Acer-AOD255E:~$ ls /dev/sd* /dev/sda /dev/sda2 /dev/sda4 /dev/sda6 /dev/sda1 /dev/sda3 /dev/sda5 /dev/sda7 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdc

Here, my SD card has been identified as /dev/sdc. Now, go to the folder where you have extracted 2012-09-18-wheezy-raspbian.img file. This image file now needs to be written on the SD card to make it work as the operating system. Any mistake here will lead to the loss of

Raspberry Pi operating system Several formats of Linux are available for installation on this tiny board. Among these, the most popular ones are Archlinux, Wheezy Linux, qtonpi, Fedora and xbmc. I prefer Wheezy Linux because it is Debian style, where installation and tweaking is quite easy. The 2014-09-09-wheezy-raspbian.zip is available for download on raspberrypi.org. The wireless adapter, which comes in the form of a Wi-Fi dongle, can be installed out-of-the-box, so can be the USB cameras. The steps to interface a USB webcam and Wi-Fi with a Raspberry Pi (model-B) board are given below. The USB webcam interfaced to a Raspberry Pi board is shown in Fig. 1. Preparing the operating system. After downloading the zip file (wheezy-raspbian), extract the image in a folder on your computer and insert a 2GB or bigger-size SD card in the card reader slot. At this stage, check the identity of the SD card— sda, sdb or sdc—as shown in your 96

January 2015 | Electronics For You

Fig. 1: USB camera with Raspberry Pi

entire data on your computer hard disk. Look for the highest order, like sdc, sdd, etc, to identify your SD card. To be absolutely sure, just unplug and re-plug the card a few times and notice the changes. At the terminal prompt, issue the following command: bera@Acer-AOD255E:~/Desktop/RaspberryPI/OS$ sudo dd if=2012-09-18-wheezyraspbian.img of=/dev/sdc bs=2M

This will use dd, the powerful image-creator program of Linux, and transfer the image to the SD card.

When it prompts for ‘su’ password, enter it. (In Windows, there are several graphical image-creator programs like Nero Burner that can be used in a similar fashion.) The above command may take several minutes. Look for HDD Lamp Busy indication. When the lamp stops blinking, go to the desktop and safely remove the SD card. (Rightclick on the SD card and then click on Safely Remove.) Connecting the display/monitor. Connect the TV screen or monitor to Raspberry Pi board using a composite video cable (AV cable) or HDMI cable, insert the SD card into the SD card slot and switch-on the power supply. The TV screen/monitor even on the right AV channel may refuse to come up the first time. When that happens, remove the power-supply cord of Raspberry Pi board once (keeping the monitor’s power supply on) and then re-plug it. Now, the monitor should come on live, if the SD card is not removed. Once the Raspberry Pi starts booting up, it will prompt you for login name and password. The login for Wheezy linux is pi and the password is raspberry. Once entered, Raspberry Pi will open the text screen. Enter Startx command at the prompt to start the beautiful GUI desktop screen (Fig. 2). The first time when I saw the image on www.efymag.com

do-it-yourself

Fig. 2: Raspberry Pi desktop screen

my television screen, I was mesmerised. To make Raspberry Pi open the GUI screen every time it boots up, all you have to do is to make a change in the raspi-config page. Select Sudo Raspi-config and bring the cursor down on Automatic GUI Boot Up. Select → Finish → Reboot. And, it’s done. Connecting the USB camera and Wi-Fi dongle. Connect the Wi-Fi adapter and webcam to USB slots. You will run short of USB ports now because Raspi-B model has only two USB ports. Find a USB hub with multiple USB ports and grab a hub that has a small, 5V power supply input to it. (Remember, wireless needs more power. Therefore, if the hub is not powered by a suitable 5V supply, the Raspberry Pi may malfunction.) Power-on the USB hub; connect the wireless adapter (Wi-Fi dongle), web camera, keyboard and mouse to the USB hub. Go to Raspberry Pi desktop and double-click the wireless module (Wi-Fi Config). Most wireless adapters are easily detected and installed on Raspberry Pi. Set up a Wi-Fi connection. After double clicking Wi-Fi Config icon, the wpa-gui page will open up. Click Search and a list of available wireless connections will come up. Select a connection and enter the IP address, if required, or leave it as it is for DHCP mode, select the authentication mode (mostly WEP) from the pull-down menu and then enter WEP key in the first blank space. Click Fin98

January 2015 | Electronics For You

ish and Connect. The symbol will turn to Connected. (For connecting to a mobile hotspot like cell phones, the WPA2 psk type authentication is used. Select the same from the pull-down menu.) Checking network connection. To check whether your Wi-Fi is connected to the network or not, you need to go to Terminal and issue ping command as given below. pi@raspberrypi:/$ ping raspberrypi.org

If you get continuous ping response, it means you are online and connected. Otherwise, you need to check the connections and, if required, need to go through the steps below. Enter the following command at Raspberry Pi terminal: pi@raspberrypi:/$ dmesg | grep ^usb

This command will furnish details of the kernel ring buffer of all the devices installed, starting with the word USB. Look out for 802.11 and the manufacturer’s name (realtek or ralink) associated with it. This means that the hardware is built on that chip and Raspberry Pi needs the driver (say realtek) for it. (On the latest Raspbian OS, this step is not required because it finds the suitable driver automatically.) Driver installation. You can issue the following command to search the driver on your Raspberry Pi computer: bera@Acer-AOD255E:~/Desktop/RaspberryPI/OS$sudo apt-cache search realtek

The command will give details of the packages available for that manufacturer. Since your Raspberry Pi is still not connected to the Internet, you need to go to a Linux PC that has an Internet connection and search for realtek drivers online. Go to the manufacturer’s website and download Debian wireless package (e.g., firmware-realtek.deb, firmwareralink.deb) from their website. Copy this package in the /home/pi folder of the SD card and issue the following command to the Raspberry Pi:

pi@raspberrypi:/$ sudo apt-get install firmware-realtek.deb

This will install the right firmware on Raspberry Pi. Once the firmware is installed, disconnect the wireless adapter and reconnect it to Raspberry Pi. This will restart the kernel search process for the right software driver. With the firmware installed, setting-up the connection is pretty straight forward now. Go back to the desktop and double-click WiFi Config icon and follow the steps mentioned above under Set-Up a Wi-Fi Connection section. Setting up the webcam server. ffmpg has some issues on Raspberry Pi as a result of which ffserver does not work easily. Some staunch Raspberry Pi supporter claims to tweak it to work but I find it very complicated and not worth when various other easy choices are available. Apache2 server with webcam software makes our job very easy but, before that, to ensure the webcam is working, we have to install VLC software. Along with showing webcam images, VLC can play all kinds of media files including *.flv files, which was not possible in the earlier OS. Installation of VLC Apache2. To install it, issue the following command: pi@raspberrypi:/$ sudo apt-get install vlc apache2 webcam

This will install the wav trio— webcam, Apache2 and VLC media player. Go to the desktop, in the media section, click on VLC media player. Go to File → Capture Device, and see if the camera images appear or not. VLC is smart enough to find your first camera at /dev/video0 and the video driver as video4linux2 (if not, select from the pull-down menu). It will take some time for the images to appear on the screen. The images may appear broken at many places, but do not worry about it now. Webcam software has no default configuration file to run with, so we have to make one now using Nano editor. Nano is the most beautiful, www.efymag.com

do-it-yourself yet versatile, text editor for Debian Linux. Close the current window and open a terminal to write the following commands:

(mine is a DHCP by my wireless router). Issue the following command at the terminal window:

pi@raspberrypi:/$ sudo nano /etc/

pi@raspberrypi:/$ifconfig

device = /dev/video0

This will give details of the IP addresses of the wired as well as the wireless network of Raspberry Pi board. Look out for WLAN configuration—WLAN IP address of my Raspberry Pi board as assigned by my router is 192.168.1.2. So, I enter the following address in the address bar of the browser on my laptop:

width = 176

http://192.168.1.2/

webcam.conf [ftp] host = localhost dir = /var/www file = webcam.jpg tmp = imageup.jpg local = 1 [grub]

height = 144 delay = 5 quality = 75 trigger = 180

Save the file with ctrl+o command. Exit Nano using ctrl+x command. Close it and go back to the terminal window. Note that, the webcam has a versatile software, with an ability to continuously ftp the captured image to a remote server, where the main webpage may be the host. But, in this case, we have made local = 1, which means that we will host it on Raspberry Pi’s Apache server page (var/www directory) itself. The delay = 0 means the cam will take pictures non-stop. Since this will put a lot of load on the tiny Raspberry Pi board, a delay of five (means, taking one snap every five seconds) will be more justified for Raspberry Pi. Checking the working of Apache server. We will now check whether Apache web server is working or not. In the Raspberry Pi computer, open a Midori browser page and enter the address as: http://localhost

Apache will open a page, indicating the server is up-and-running (even though there is no content page available in the server). So far, so good. Now, we have to see whether the same page is available over wireless or not. Before that, we have to know the IP address of our Raspberry Pi board www.efymag.com

The same page opens up in my laptop. This confirms that Apache is up-and-running on Raspberry Pi board. Automatic capturing of images. Open the terminal window and enter the following command: pi@raspberrypi:/$sudo webcam /etc/ webcam.conf &

The last ‘&’ command means the process will execute in the background. Now, go back to a remote laptop and enter the following address in the browser address bar (To stop the webcam, use ctrl+c command or find out process ID number and then kill it by $sudo kill–9xxxx, where xxxx is the process number.): http://192.168.1.2/webcam.jpg

A still-image facing the camera will now appear on the top-left corner of your laptop. This confirms that the webcam is working. You may try to open the same page in Midori browser on Raspberry Pi, but it may take several minutes to open, as most of its resources are busy handling webcam images. Do not worry; the page will open on the remote laptop quite comfortably. Change the direction of the camera and refresh the browser on your laptop, and the image will change. Unless the browser window is refreshed, the picture will not change. Now, we will create an automated page-refresh in Raspberry Pi itself. Automated page-refresh from Raspberry Pi. Let us now use Nano to create a simple html page in

/var/www directory of Raspberry Pi. Note that, /var/www is an Apache document root directory. Whatever we write here will be available, to view, from any PC connected to the network. pi@raspberrypi:/$ sudo nano /var/www/ webcam.html

My Raspi Webcam

Save using ctrl+o and exit using ctrl+x keys on the keyboard. Now, go to the remote laptop and open the page http://192.168.1.2/webcam. html The image will be auto-refreshing every second now. But, this may be a little irritating to the eyes, so we may need to enter a delay factor here. In the webcam, html CONTENT=”0” can be made to CONTENT=”5” for a more soothing refresh once in every five seconds. You can strip Raspberry Pi board from the mouse, keyboard and monitor, and the webcam will still work non-stop—such is the power of Raspberry Pi and Linux. Complete automation. Now, how about an automated script? So that, every time you boot or even before login, Raspberry Pi will fire-up the webcam command. You can get rid of the monitor, keyboard and mouse from Raspberry Pi board. For that, we will put the command in /etc/rc.local file, and every time, on boot up, the webcam will start. Open a shell script file webcam.sh in /home/pi and enter the following command: pi@raspberrypi:/$ sudo nano /home/pi/ webcam.sh Electronics For You | January 2015

99

do-it-yourself #! /bin/bash webcam /etc/webcam.conf &

Save it and exit.

pi@raspberrypi:/$ sudo chmod +x /home/ pi/webcam.sh // make it executable

Now, in the /etc/rc.local file, enter this line before ‘exit 0’ line like this: pi@raspberrypi:/$ sudo nano /etc/ rc.local ….. ….. /home/pi/webcam.sh exit 0

Save it and exit. Now, strip-off the keyboard, mouse and monitor from Raspberry Pi, and reboot it. Then, go to the remote laptop and open the page http://192.168.1.2/webcam.html. Look for the time stamp at the bottom of the picture. It should change every five seconds. If so, you have just made Raspberry Pi an automated webcam server. Setting time and date. To reduce the cost of Raspberry Pi board, its manufacturer has not included a realtime clock (RTC) on the board. So, every time on boot-up, the time goes back to an earlier date. However, you can change the date using the following command:

When asked for password, enter raspberry and you are good to go. Change the date and time using above command and check the webcam (which is already running now) time stamp on http://192.168.1.2/ webcam.html page. You will see the current time running now. Capturing live images using motion software. There is another versatile, video-rendering open source software available, which works well along with Raspberry Pi. Motion software, besides streaming video, can detect sudden motion of an object in the frame area and take snapshots or videos, depending on the threshold limit set in /etc/motion.conf file. To install motion software, follow the steps as given below.

Fig. 3: Raspi-config window $sudo apt-get update

pi@raspberrypi:/$ sudo date –set=

$sudo apt-get upgrade

’2014-11-06 23:30’

$sudo apt-get install motion

But, how to get your Raspberry Pi board running without a keyboard, mouse and monitor? Simple, through ssh (secure shell) command. Before stripping the I/O devices, run the raspi-config command (Fig. 3), select ssh option and enable it. Click Finish and reboot it. Reboot Raspberry Pi board and access it from a remote PC or laptop through Wi-Fi. That is, after successful installation of the Wi-Fi dongle, you can reboot Raspberry Pi computer and run it on headless mode (no keyboard, mouse and monitor). Wi-Fi should be connected on the same network to access Raspberry Pi computer using ssh command. Issue the following command: pi@raspberrypi:/$ ssh -l pi 192.168.1.2

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By default, motion remains off. You need to edit motion configuration file. To do so, enter the following command in the terminal: $sudo nano /etc/motion/motion.conf

Motion configuration file will appear and you can change a few settings. Most importantly, though, we need to change the following: daemon off (to switch on—this can be changed near the top of the file). Save it, exit Nano editor and open the next motion file using the following command:

$sudo service motion start

Wait for a minute and then navigate to your Raspberry Pi’s IP address at 8081 port. It should be something like http://192.168.1.2:8081. You can enter this IP address on the Web browser in Raspberry Pi or the remote laptop to access the image being captured by the webcam. You will find your Raspberry Pi webcam churning out streaming pictures. You can do further settings in motion.conf file as follows: $sudo nano /etc/motion/motion.conf

Find Threshold under Motion Detection Settings. The default value is 1500. The threshold value 1500 means that, if there is a minimum disturbance of 1500 pixels in the picture frame of the camera, it will trigger an event. Take a snapshot (or video) and dump it to /tmp/ motion directory. However, since 1500 is a small value, you may change it to 6000. At this point, you may change the webcam port to 5678 as 8081 is very common. Find On Picture Save in motion. conf file and create a pipe in front of it. Write the program you want to start additionally. For examples, I have added my program sendmail1. php (as shown below). on_picture_save echo ‘Alert’ | echo %f > /tmp/motion/img.txt | php -f /var/www/ sendmail1.php

( H e re, p h p - f / va r / w w w / sendmail1.php is my program that motion kicks into life.) You will find many parameters in motion.conf file and you can change them to make motion much more interesting. 

$sudo nano /etc/default/motion

Change start_motion_daemon= no to start_motion_daemon=yes. Now, we need to start motion server by issuing the following command:

Somnath Bera is an avid user of open source software. Professionally, he is a thermal power expert and works as an additional general manager at NTPC Limited www.efymag.com

do-it-yourself

Live-Colour Detection Using MATLAB Vivek Panchabhaiya

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any real-world applications like motion detection, object detection and colour detection require real-time image processing. Here, we present a method to detect live-coloured images or objects using a camera and MATLAB program. If any RGB (red, green and blue) colour comes in front of the camera, it detects a particular colour depending on the user’s command. This concept can be used in many

applications like colour-object finder and colour-detector robot, among others.

Image processing Image processing is a method of converting an image into digital form and performing operations on it to get an enhanced image or to extract some useful information from it. Most image-processing techniques involve treating the image as a two-dimensional signal and applying standard signal-processing techniques to it.

Colour-detection algorithm In the colour-detection method, primary-colour (red, green, blue) objects can be detected easily. The algorithm used for colour detection actually works in separate steps as given below: Fig. 1: Main output panel of the colour-detection program 1. Take a snapshot of the original red object/image. 2. Convert that original snapshot to grey image. 3. Extract red component from the original snapshot. 4. Subtract red-colour components Fig. 2: Checking the device ID from the grey image. (We will get another grey image.) 5. Remove noise from the new grey image by using filter command. 6. Convert the filtered image into binary image using binary command. (We will get a bright image in place of the red object.) 7. Measure para m e t e rs o f t h e Fig. 3: Formats supported by the camera 102

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bright image and place a rectangular box over it using mathematical calculations, which will show the presence of red colour at that place. Similarly, we detect green and blue colours by extracting green and blue colour components from the original snapshot and then subtracting those green and blue colour components from the grey-colour snapshots and follow the same from step 5 onwards.

MATLAB program Here, the graphical user interface (GUI) is developed in MATLAB to take advantage of its features. A GUI allows users to perform tasks interactively through controls such as buttons and sliders. The main output screen of the colour-detection program is shown in Fig. 1. The program has a main function (detection.m) among many other functions. Do not edit the functions as those are the linkers and non-executable codes. The only executable code is detection.m that uses those functions. First, you have to find formats supported by the camera and device ID by using the following command (also shown in Fig. 2.): info = imaqhwinfo(‘winvideo’)

This command is used to find the device ID you are using so that you can change the device ID number in your source code. In this example, our device ID is 1, so we have written 1 in the code as given below. vid = videoinput(‘winvideo’,1,’YUY2_ 320x240’);

YUY2_320x240 is the resolution supported by the camera. There are other formats in MATLAB that you www.efymag.com

do-it-yourself can check using commands given below (also shown in Fig. 3). info.DeviceInfo(1) info.DeviceInfo.SupportedFormats

In Fig. 3, you can see that there are many formats that your camera can support. When you get the supported formats and device number, you can make changes in the source code as per your requirement. Some important functions used in the program are: data = getsnapshot(vid). This function immediately returns one

Fig. 4: Snapshot of the original image

Fig. 5: RGB to greyscale

single-image frame from the videoinput object as shown in Fig. 4. img = rgb2gray(data). It converts the true RGB-colour image to greyscale intensity image img. And rgb2gray converts RGB images to greyscale by eliminating the hue and saturation information, while retaining the luminance as shown in Fig. 5. data (:,:,1). It extracts all redcolour components from the original image. It does the same for green data (:,:,2) and blue data (:,:,3), as shown in Fig. 6. diff_im = imsubtract(data (:,:,1), rgb2gray(data)). It is used to subtract red components from the grey image as shown in Fig. 7. B = medfilt2(diff_im, [3,3]). It is used for median filtering, which is a non-linear operation often used in image processing to reduce saltand-pepper noise. A median filter is more effective than convolution when the goal is to simultaneously reduce noise and preserve edges. diff_im = im2bw(diff_im, 0.18). It converts the greyscale image to a binary image. The output image diff_m replaces all pixels in the input image with luminance greater than value one (white) and

Fig. 6: Red component extracted from the original image www.efymag.com

replaces all other pixels with the value zero (black) as shown in Fig. 8. stats = regionprops(diff_im, ‘BoundingBox’,’Centroid’). It measures a set of properties for each connected component (object) in the binary image. The image stats are a logical array and can have any dimension.

Testing procedure To test this program, follow the steps mentioned below. 1. Install MATLAB 7.10 (R2010a) or higher version in your system. Launch it from the desktop shortcut. You will see a blank command window. 2. Download the source code folder from EFY DVD as mentioned in EFY Note (on next page). 3. Check the device ID using command as shown in Fig. 2 and write the device ID number in the source code. 4. Run the program detection.m. A GUI will appear as shown in Fig. 1. 5. Click RED and the camera will start capturing the live image. The redcolour object will be detected, which is

Fig. 8: Grey image to binary image

Fig. 7: Subtracting red from grey image Electronics For You | January 2015

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do-it-yourself indicated by a rectangular box or frame around the object as shown in Fig. 9. 6. Similarly, click GREEN and the green-colour object will be detected as shown in Fig. 10.

7. Click BLUE and the blue-colour object will be detected as shown in Fig. 11. Note. After clicking on one colour, you have to wait for a few seconds till the camera stops detecting object frames. Then, press another colour

efy Note

Fig. 9: Red-colour object being detected by the program

Fig. 10: Green-colour object being detected

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for detection. Otherwise, it will show an error. You can change the duration by changing the value in the source code as shown below. while (vid.FramesAcquired<=200)

In the code, we used 200 frames, but you can change this value as per your requirement. 

The source code of this project is included in this month’s EFY DVD and is also available for free download at source.efymag.com

Vivek Panchabhaiya is B.Tech in electronics and communication from SRCEM, Gwalior

Fig. 11: Blue-colour object being detected

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do-it-yourself

Process Monitor

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his utility program is used for monitoring the working of a real-time file system, registry and process or thread activity in a PC. It helps early fault-detection and immediate identification of out-oflimit variables for real-time process control, giving users the possibility to remedy potential failures before these occur. It can be used as a tool for system troubleshooting and malware hunting.

machines when memory requests gets higher than the available free pool. This is typically because of the fact that the unused memory was not released over time or processes recursively request for more memory blocks. Here comes the need to monitor dynamic memory requests of processes. Especially, on a development system, memory requests monitoring, as well as memory-usage pattern at different time quantum, becomes vital to capture leaks.

Operating system processes

How a process monitor works

When a process needs to store temporary data, it can request a memory block from the central memory pool by way of dynamic memory-allocation. However, the total available memory is limited at any point of time. If one process eats up all the free memory, then other processes will not be able to get their required memory. Implications of a memorystarved process can lead to shutdown or unexpected crash. Clearly, none of these results are desirable to a programmer, so the processes should never reach such a state or the system itself should not starve for memory-allocation. It is the responsibility of each process to free dynamically-allocated memory when the process is completed. The memory, when freed, goes again to the central pool, where it can be reallocated to another process on demand. When a process dynamically allocates memory and does not free that memory after use, that process heads to memory leak. Memory leaks add up over time and, if these are not cleaned, the system eventually runs out of memory. For example, we come across an out-of-memory situation on Linux

Processes use malloc, realloc and free function calls for dynamic memory requests. These functions are actually like a wrapper to real __libc__ memory function calls, which does the real allocation. Since we want to monitor and log details of these requests like requested block size in bytes, allocated region (i.e., pointer address), etc, we have to hook the control flow in between these wrapper functions and the real __libc__ procedure call. To demonstrate this, we have a daemon (or Linux process), say, pmd, where we use malloc and realloc function calls for requesting memory blocks (and releasing these) periodically. We have written a set of intermediate functions to hook the flow. From inside the hook function, we log details of the request. For logging purpose, we use a kernel module, pmm and a character device for communication. The kernel module becomes necessary when we want to understand and process the memoryusage footprint of a process at any point of time. Based on the memory footprint against time, the user can decide whether the process is a leaking memory or not. I leave this

L. Karthikeyan

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part of kernel programming open for readers to develop according to their requirements. For implementation, the kernel module simply does the following: 1. Register a character device for the user space process to communicate 2. Use the device for logging memory-allocation requests from the user space daemon 3. Use /proc file system to display logs

Software program The program includes following packages: pmd.c (Linux user space daemon), pmm.c (Linux kernel module), pmm.h (common header file). and makefile (Linux kernel makefile). User space process. The pmd is a user space process (or daemon) that runs an endless loop. The malloc and realloc are invoked for dynamic memory-allocation requests. We have added some functions for the purpose of hooking in-between. The hook functions, which we introduced, log memory request details by way of character device ioctl (input/ output control), registered by our kernel module. /* This is our daemon’ main function */ int main( int argc, char *argv[]) { char *chr; daemonize();/* Makes this Linux process as daemon */ openlogs(); /* This enables the hooking of local memory request functions for logging */ while (1) { /* Endless loop; daemon’s main execution loop */ sleep(10); chr = (char *)malloc(sizeof(char)*100); /* malloc call */ sleep(10); chr = (char *)realloc(chr, sizeof(char)*200); /* realloc call */ sleep(10); free(chr); /* free call */ } closelogs();/* This disables the www.efymag.com

do-it-yourself hooking; the daemon exits */ return 0; }

…. // Reactivate hooks

The hooks work with the following additional code:

hooks_active = 1;

// Preprocessor defines

return result;

#define malloc(A)

}

malloc_(A, __FILE__, __FUNCTION__, __LINE__) #define realloc(A, B) realloc_(A, B, __FILE__, __FUNCTION__, __LINE__) #define free(A) free_(A, __FILE__, __FUNCTION__, __ LINE__) voidopen logs() { hooks_active = 1; …. } // Intermediate function which decides to go via our malloc hook or directly to __libc__ function void *malloc_(size_t size, const char *file, const char *fn, constintln) { // Caller pointer void *caller = __builtin_return_ address(0); if (hooks_active) { returnmy_malloc_hook(size, caller, file, fn, ln); } return __libc_malloc(size); } // Malloc hook void *my_malloc_hook(size_t size, void *caller, const char *file, const char *fn, constintln) { void *result; // Deactivate hooks for logging hooks_active = 0; // Call real libcmalloc result = __libc_malloc(size); // Do logging printf(“Memhook-malloc: sz=%d, caller=%u, result=%u, file=%s, func=%s, line=%d\n”, size, (unsigned int)caller, (unsigned int)result, file, fn, ln); /* Prints on the console */ www.efymag.com

When hooks_active = 1, the control flow will be: Malloc() ->malloc_() ->my_malloc_hook() -> __lib_malloc() (->pmm_ioctl() to kernel module). When hooks_active variable is zero, it will be: Malloc() ->malloc_() -> __libc_malloc(). Kernel module. The pmm is used as a kernel module. The module init() registers the character device, say, pmmdev, and its fops (device open, ioctl, close) structure. The pmm_ioctl() is the main contact point for the module, which has following ioctls: PMM_RECORD_LOG ioctl for recording the memory request from hook functions. On receipt of malloc or realloc logs, these will be added to the log list. And, on receipt of free log, it will be compared with already logged malloc logs and, when a match is found, both malloc and free logs will be removed from the log list. (Because, the matching pair of malloc and free will not increase the memory footprint of a process.) PMM_SET_CONFIG ioctl for starting or stopping logging for a particular user process. PMM_GET_CONFIG ioctl for getting current configuration (kernel thread-execution cycle, etc). PMM_MONITORED_PIDS for getting the list of monitored user processes. Initialise proc entry (say, /proc/ pmm) for user interaction. Our proc has two entries. Cfg. Displays the module’s configuration. This is used to start or stop scanning the kernel task structure by our kernel thread and modifying its frequency. Pid. Used to display logs (memory-allocation logs sent from the user space daemon) to the user. Electronics For You | January 2015

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do-it-yourself 0x10012008 Caller: 0x10000e60 main() 207 pmd.c {REALLOC @06:57:21} Sz: 200B Prev Pointer: 0x10012008 Pointer: 0x10012008 Caller: 0x10000e84 main() 209 pmd.c

Fig. 1: Screenshot of the program output

efy Note The source codes of this project are included in this month’s EFY DVD and are also available for free download at source.efymag.com

given below. 1. For compiling our user daemon, issue the following command: # gcc pmd.c –o pmd –g –I .

2. For compiling the kernel module (kernel makefile is included): # make

The meanings of these outputs are given below. type of log. {@} Sz. Pointer. Caller. Location. function-name, linenumber and file-name. The above details will give user the system status and health conditions. To stop the process, issue following commands:

Start pmthread, a kernel thread. The thread runs over the kernel task structure to find out whether current monitoring user space daemons are in active or killed state. Note. The kernel thread can be enhanced to process memory footprint at any point by accessing vm and rss sizes for understanding its overall increase in usage against the time quantum.

3. For installing the module, issue the following command:

For further development

# cat /proc/pmm/pid

["INTERVAL" (Scan Interval) :=10000]

Sample output

["SCAN" (Scan on:1/off:0) := 1]

Some sample outputs are given below. Issue following commands on the terminal:

["STOP_PID" (Stop a monitor) := 0]

Check for other data members of kernel task_struct structure of user space processes for getting the complete picture of vm and rss sizes, shared library size, CS and DS segment sizes and much more. Using simple math, we can find out the overall memory consumption of processes that can be used for memoryleak alerting. Hook functions can be separated as shared library so that these become a ready-made solution for developers seeking a programmable memory-leak logger infrastructure.

Testing procedure Steps to test involve compilation and verification as a root user from the terminal. Follow the sequence as 108

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# insmod pmm.ko

4. For starting the daemon, issue the following command: # ./pmd

A typical output of this command run in Ubuntu system is shown in the screenshot above (Fig. 1). 5. For viewing memory request logs, issue the following command:

# cat /proc/pmm/pid

The output will be something like this: [1] PID: 21113, Comp: pmd, PPID: 1, State: 1, Log count: 2

This means, the pmm proc is registered by the kernel module. It displays the format of pid file memory logs. (Here, PID of ‘pmd’ process is 21113.) Issue following commands on the terminal: # ./pmd

The output will be something like this: {MALLOC @06:57:11} Sz: 100B Pointer:

#ps -ef | grep pmd root 20604 2 0 06:27 ? 00:00:00 [pmthread] root 21113 1 0 06:30 ? 00:00:00 ./pmd

Issue the following commands on the terminal: # cat /proc/pmm/cfg

The output will be something like this: Configs:

["START_PID" (Start a monitor):=21113]

This output displays configuration objects including interval, scanning and start-and-stop status. For exanokem INTERVAL configuration is currently set to 10000ms and this can be changed using the following command: #Printf “INTERVAL 5000” >> /proc/pmm/cfg

To start monitoring on a PID, use the following command: #Printf “START_PID >> /proc/ pmm/cfg

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L. Karthikeyan is B.E. (computer science) from AC Tech, Karaikudi. He is working as a technical lead, HCL Technologies, Chennai. He likes to read and write articles related to computer science and finance www.efymag.com

Make in India

Industry News In Focus

Govt approves electronics development fund

Chairman Wu and Mrs Wu step down from CRS Electronics board of directors

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o boost local manufacturing, the Cabinet has approved communications ministry’s policy to set up an electronics development fund (EDF), which will invest in electronics and information technology (IT) entrepreneurial ventures. The policy frame for the EDF is aimed at resolving unavailability of adequate risk capital through venture funds for research and development, innovation and intellectual property creation in the companies operating in four areas—electronic system and design, manufacturing, nano-electronics and IT. The corpus of the fund, which has been left open-ended, will be managed by Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) or similar financial institution to fund start-ups and other ventures that promote EDF policy. A national policy on elec­tronics had anticipated that EDF will be a fund-offunds to participate in daughter-of-funds (angel funds and venture funds). The plan is to leverage these funds to acquire foreign companies, so as to shift the manufacturing of products currently imported in large volumes into the country. The current domestic demand for electronics in India is about US$ 45 billion and is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22 per cent up to 2020, according to the government’s department of electronics. As per the current growth rate, the production of electronics hardware in the country is likely to grow to US$ 42 billion by the end of 2014 and US$ 105 billion by 2020.

MNRE announces duty exemption for roof-top solar projects  

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inistry of New and Renewable Energy has announced excise duty exemption certificates (EDECs) with immediate effect for solar power developers setting-up off-grid solar 110

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CRS Electronics Inc. announced the resignation of Chang Jiang Wu and Lian Wu from the board of directors. The company is a leader in the emerging, rapidly-growing market of highefficiency LEDs.

Samsung has restructured leadership team in India BD Park has been appointed as global business head of Samsung and is relocating to headquarters in Korea after six years in India. While in the country, he was managing director of Samsung India and president of South West Asia operations, and he made the Korean firm the country’s largest consumer electronics and smartphone maker with more than ` 400 billion revenue.

photovoltaic power projects for all roof-top solar projects with a minimum capacity of 100kW. This is expected to reduce the overall cost of the project, while making solar panels cheaper for end-users. MNRE stated that, in order to meet the demand of off-grid projects, they have developed a satisfactory manufacturing capacity in the domestic market and will also issue EDECs to encourage domestic manufacturing.

IIT Kanpur installs first roof-top solar plant

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IT Kanpur has installed its first roof-top solar plant at its campus. The 50kW plant was inaugurated last year, after which efforts to strengthen it were made. The installed plant has a capacity of 344kWp Roof-top solar

HyunChil Hong, president, Samsung Electronics Latin America, is going to take over as the new president of Southwest Asia regional headquarters, where he will become the new MD of Samsung India. Samsung has appointed Indian engineer Pranav Mistry as vice president of global operations. He was earlier the vice president of R&D and head of think-tank team based in the USA. Rajiv Mishra has been appointed as head of corporate social responsibility division in India, adding to his current role of vice president of internal and external communications. At the same time, Samsung India’s deputy MD Ravinder Zutshi is retiring from the company. He has been one of the first employees of Samsung India and was recently heading government relations for the firm in India.

(kilowatts peak). Prof. RS Anand said that in phase I, the solar power plant has been established on rooftops with the breakdown as follows: western lab (212.45kWp), western lab extension (28kWp), faculty building (80.08kWp) and northern lab II (24kWp). He stated that this power PV plant has a mix of high-efficiency and normal-efficiency silicon modules based technologies. The total cost of the installed 344kWp solar PV plants is close to ` 30 million. Prof. Anand mentioned that in the second phase over 1400kWp roof-top solar plants

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Make in India Calendar of Forthcoming Electronics Fairs/Exhibitions/Seminars/Events Name, Date and Venue

Topics to be covered

Contact address for details

VLSI conference January 3-7, 2015 The Leela Palace, Bangalore

IoT—Building a smart connected world

VLSI Design & Embedded Systems Conference E-mail: [email protected]

2015 International CES January 6-9, 2015 Las Vegas Convention Center Las Vegas, USA

A mega consumer electronics Consumer Electronics Association event where new innovations Phone: +1 703-907-7605 and technologies are Website: www.cesweb.org showcased

NEPCON 2015 January 14-16, 2015 Tokyo Big Sight, Japan

Asia’s largest exhibition for electronics manufacturing and SMT

IEEE/IEEMA INTELECT January 22-24, 2015 Bombay Exhibition Centre, Mumbai, India

INTELECT provides a peer- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers less platform for all players in E-mail: [email protected] the ecosystem to come Website: http://www.ii-intelect.org/ together to exchange ideas and share their vision through a conference themed Smart Electricity for Emerging Markets

Reed Exhibitions Japan Ltd Website: http://www.nepconjapan.jp/en/

Techtrade 2015 A platform to promote January 28-February 1, 2015 Make In India AES Ground, Ahmedabad, Gujarat

Techtrade Exhibition and Conferences E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.techtrade.co.in

ELCINA Source India Focuses on the development February 5, 2014 of the Indian electronics Chennai Trade Centre, Chennai, supply chain India

ELCINA Electronic Industries Association of India Phone: +91 (011) 26924597, 26928053 Fax: 26923440 E-mail: [email protected]

SPS Automation India February 5-7, 2015 Mahatma Mandir, Ahmedabad

Industrial control systems, sensor technology, ideal business platform

Messe Frankfurt Trade Fairs India Pvt Ltd Phone: +91 22 6144 5900 Website: www.in.messefrankfurt.com

Electronics For You Expo 2015 February 26-28, 2015 Hall 7 (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H) Pragati Maidan, New Delhi

Covering complete electronics ecosystem, including innovation, manufacturing, design and sales

EFY Enterprises Pvt Ltd Phone: 26810601/2/3 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.efyexpo.com

ICT World Expo-2015 February 27-March 01, 2015 Mysore

To identify and promote ICT manufacturing companies to make India an ICT manufacturing country

MAIT Mobile: +91-9910990553 Website: www.mait.com

CONNECT Show April 21-22, 2015 Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, Melbourne, Australia

An annual trade show organised in partnership with the Victorian government, which runs together with ten business summits, including the next big thing summit and slush down under, designed for business people to understand how the convergence of a number of technology mega-trends are creating a perfect storm of disruption which will impact the way we live and do business in the future

CONNECT Show Phone: +61 (2) 8908 8555 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://www.con-nect.com.au/

International CES Asia, 2015 May 25-26, 2015 Shanghai New International Expo Center (SNIEC), China

Tech powerhouses to innovative startups, 3D printing, robotics, sensors, the Internet of Things and wearables

Shanghai New International Expo Center (SNIEC), Shanghai, China Phone: 703.907.7603 E-mail: [email protected]

IFSEC International 2015 June 16-18, 2015 London, UK

The global stage for security innovation and expertise

IFSEC International Website: http://www.ifsec.co.uk/

AUTOMATION 2015 August 24-27, 2015 Hall No.1 & 5, NSE–Mumbai

Automation exhibition showcasing technologically- empowered machineries catering to industrial automation, factory automation, robotics, drives and controls, logistics, hydraulics and pneumatics, and building automation

IED Communications Ltd Phone: 91-22-22079567, 22073370 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.iedcommunications.com/index.php

Look up under ‘Events’ section in www.electronicsforu.com for a comprehensive list

Since this information is subject to change, all those interested are advised to ascertain the details from the organisers before making any commitment.

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will be installed. He also said that these plants are functional and monitored based on performance. The established plants will produce 502,240 units of electricity per year at an average rate of 4kWh/ kWp/day. Thus, the cost of installation will be recovered in less than ten years. The solar plants came into action in September-October 2014 and had successfully generated 81,700 units of electricity till November 28, 2014, which was fed into IITK grid.

Panasonic aims to make it large in India with Make in India campaign

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ndian economy is banking a lot on the recently-launched Make in India campaign, which is aimed at boosting investment and manufacturing opportunities in the country. Panasonic has shifted its focus to solar panels, car navigation systems and batteries, reducing their dependence on consumer electronics like smartphones and plasma TVs. Panasonic president Kazuhiro Tsuga expressed his optimism in the campaign as investment future looks great for the country. He helped the company come out from a troubled time in a businessoriented way and showed strong confidence in automotive, eco-solutions and surveillance businesses, which target to increase the company revenues to US$ 84 billion by 2018-19. Tsuga shed light on his plans, keeping in line with Make in India campaign, and proposed manufacturing investments in the country, including their factory at Haryana.

Government bags electronics manufacturing proposals

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he government has bagged the proposal for electronics manufacturing from companies like Panasonic, Continental, Bosch, Samsung, Motherson Sumi, Sonic and Tata Power worth ` 150,00 million. After the launch of Digital India campaign, Indian government has reElectronics For You | January 2015

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Make in India

Snippets RBI highlights norms for trading platform for MSMEs receivables RBI has permitted setting-up an exchange based trading platform in order to help MSMEs facilitate financing of bills raised by small entities to corporate and other buyers, including government departments and PSUs. While issuing the guidelines, RBI notified that trade receivables discounting system (TReDS) should entail minimum paid-up equity capital of ` 250 million and nonpromoters would not hold more than ten per cent of equity capital of TReDS.

Government asks Samsung, LG to establish manufacturing facilities The government of India has extended an invitation to South Korean giants like Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics to establish their manufacturing units in India, as part of Make in India initiative. The minister of communications and information technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, explained that the government aims to establish 20 manufacturing clusters, and the states will benefit

financially if they provide 50 acres of land each for the clusters. India is putting in all possible efforts to transform the country into a smart digital nation.

Freescale acquires Zenverge and its transcoding technology Freescale Semiconductor has acquired Zenverge, a semiconductor company and developer of advanced HD content processing ICs. Zenverge’s transcoding technology enables conversion of one media stream into multiple streams, each individually-formatted and optimised for specific Internet-connected devices or platforms, where it will be displayed. Among the supported formats planned is the ultra-HD (HEVC) standard, which features an outstanding 4K resolution while delivering up to 50 per cent bandwidth savings due to highly-advanced data compression. This technology also allows secure-sharing of HD video and other rich digital content, while providing seamless integration of content distributed across the cloud and throughout the world’s networks.

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n a major boost to India’s defence sector, Prime Minister Modi, in a joint statement with Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, said that Russia has offered to fully manufacture in India one of its most advanced helicopters. Modi said that he discussed a wide range of new defence projects with Putin. Modi also proposed that Russia should locate manufacturing facilities in India for spares and components for Russian defence equipment. Russia has also agreed to supply nuclear reactors to India. These will have the highest standards of safety 112

January 2015 | Electronics For You

Internet of Things (IoT): India of Tomorrow 

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ceived more than 50 proposals for resources such as automotive electronics, consumer appliances and strategic electronics. It has also provided an in-principle approval for establishing ten electronics clusters with investment of almost ` 50,000 million via public–private partnership (PPP).

Russia offers to make one of its most advanced helicopters in India

ments. This procurement will come in effect from April 1, 2015. As per the government release, certain efforts adopted by the government to enhance procurement from MSEs involve one-on-one interaction with CPSUs to enhance procurement from MSEs, stakeholder consultation workshops to generate awareness about and understanding of the policy, facilitating match-making of buyers and suppliers, and setting-up of grievance cells. For the same, a review committee has been constituted for development of MSME sector and a software based on ITC HS code has been developed. MSME sector accounts for eight per cent of GDP and contributes around 40 per cent of the total exports and 45 per cent of the manufacturing output. According to the fourth All India Census of MSMEs, there are 36.176 million enterprises in this sector, amongst which around 1.564 million are registered.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi shake hands during their joint press conference at Hyderabad House

in the world. This provides a major boost to the Make in India drive.

Procurement from MSEs made mandatory for government

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alraj Mishra, union minister for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) informed Lok Sabha recently, that it is mandatory to procure 20 per cent of products and services from micro and small enterprises (MSEs) for all central public sector units (CPSUs), central government ministries and depart-

Check efytimes.com for more news, daily

he Internet of Things (IoT) is on the verge of transforming every aspect of everyday life—a paradigm shift in how we interact with the environment and with each other. IoT-centric solutions can transform India completely, primarily in the domains that are the main stay of existence, namely, agriculture, security, healthcare, energy and education, to name a few. The IoT, in combination with sensors and wearables, heralds enormous opportunities for fundamental research in chip design, system engineering, new materials, sensors, communication, embedded software and various allied fields. The IoT and wearbles opportunity is huge and rapidly becoming the next-big wave post mobile-phone wave, which is going to impact all aspects of electronics, semiconductor and IT industry. According to Frost and Sullivan (F&S), there would be 80 billion connected devices in the year 2020, while Cisco Ventures predicts a market of more than US$ 10 trillion for the IoT industry by 2022 worldwide. India has the potential of more than US$ 10 billion for the IoT by 2020. www.efymag.com

make in India Market Survey:

LED Market Could Grow Manifold in Next 15 Years

A Sneha Ambastha is a technical journalist at EFY

Architectural wall lights

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few years ago we did not consider LED lights as a viable option, but today the scenario has changed. The price of LED lights has come down, awareness has increased and the quality of lights has also improved. Till last year we considered price of the light as the only important factor while making a purchase. Today, we want a quality product without compromising on price. The LED Expo 2014 held recently in New Delhi provided a lot of exposure when it came to new technology and completely indigenous products. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make in India concept seems to have had a lot of influence on the LED market, as the expo featured many indigenous products. Some manufactures had assembled complete lighting systems by outsourcing the raw

January 2015 | Electronics For You

materials from abroad and manufacturing the fixtures in-house. However, there were others who had manufactured everything inhouse, starting from modules to the lights, following all procedures, like die-casting, in-house at their manufacturing units.

Diversity in the market There is a lot of diversification in India when it comes to the LED market today. Companies from automotive industry, random access memory (RAM) manufacturing industry and many more are moving into LED lights business. According to Sumeet Verma, general manager, research and development, Dixon, the LED expo this year did not have any new products, but there were others who found a lot of new components that could help in the growth of this sector in the country. Let us take a look at some of these. Dimmable lights. The kind of lights that most of us have been using till now are the ones with fixed luminosity. But the trend is changing with the advent of LED lights. Today, we have dimmers installed in LED lights. These help adjust the brightness from ten per cent to 100 per cent without any stroboscopic effect. To explain it better, let us consider an example. If the actual power of the lamp and the lantern is 10W, then its brightness can be adjusted by running it with 1W to 10W, and there would be no aliasing or shadowed-image effect, as in case of other lights when intensity is increased or decreased. Although dimmable lights do not require any special wiring, these have a rotary dimmer switch installed through the power supply to adjust brightness. In such cases, one dimmer switch can control more than one lamp at a time for multiple spaces. Intelligent solar-charge controllers. The name explains it all. It is a microconwww.efymag.com

make in India ing, and when to switch on and switch off the load, indicating battery-dip discharge, battery status, charging status and load status with Swot the help of an LED. Such solar-charge Weaknesses Threats • Few manufacturing units • Availability of LED lighting controllers are either • Lack of skilled manpower products from abroad at a stand-alone devic• Almost no training facilities competitive price es or are integrated SWOT analysis within battery packs. These play an important role in both solar lights and solar LED lights. Wireless dimmers. Everyone in India dreams of a fully-automated house with an option to control lights. So, what can be better than wirelessly controlling the lights using a mobile phone or tablet? Today, the market has a new set of dimmers to control the lights. These Architectural LED lighting dimmers are controlled by a home-automation system over Wi-Fi. A lot of free applications are available online to control such dimmers. These are compatible with both constant-current and constant-voltage power supplies, with a flicker-free dimming performance. These dimmers are available for indoor lightings in both industrial as well as residential segments. Some such dimmers have constant-currentlimiting and output-voltage-shutdown features to protect lights in faulty situations. Smart street-light controllers. These controllers have a microconPanel-integrated solar street-light troller and a real-time clock that does not need to be re-programmed even troller based solar-charge control- if the battery fails for a longer duraler that controls the rate of current tion. It is programmed on the basis of drawn from electric batteries. The longitude and latitude, as per sunrise microcontroller inside the charge and sunset timings adjusted for each controller helps prevent overcharg- month to cater for all seasonal needs. These have an in-built autoing and against overvoltage that may otherwise hinder the performance of recovery system for power-failure that facilitates smooth operation of a battery and pose safety risks. In fact, the microcontroller in the street-lights and a keyboard, along charge controller takes care of a num- with a relay-control facility, for faster ber of tasks, like measuring solar cell service. The relay has an option to be voltage and battery voltage, deciding controlled both manually as well as when to start and stop battery charg- automatically. It is said to save about Strengths • ‘Make in India’ concept • Upcoming government policies and plans • Different architectural designs without any compromise on light intensity • Market’s focus on quality products rather than quantity

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Opportunities • Increasing awareness among customers • Increasing market demand • Customer’s acceptance to new technology and products

January 2015 | Electronics For You

eight per cent of energy against all manual operations, conditional timers and any photo sensors. With the help of such controllers, one can also control street-lights through a computer in one’s house. These controllers can control many street-lights at a time. Passive infra-red (PIR) controllers. PIRs have been in use since quite some time to identify the presence of a human being in a high-security area. But the use of PIRs in lighting systems is totally new. It was not that long ago when I came to know that this type of light-automation is only a concept. In fact, only a year ago, I was discussing with some industry players, how this would soon be possible with the growth of LED lights in the market. A new PIR controller has a wide range of input voltages that provide flexibility in the configuration of LEDs. It has a wide detection angle of about 102×92 degrees with about 92 detection zones for an effective lighting control. With this type of controller, you do not have to worry about turning off the lights at your home and office when you are away. If the controller detects no human being within its detection range, it would turn off the lights. These controllers have an adjustable turn-off time, starting from a few seconds to a few hours. Therefore the controller can be adjusted to turn off the lights soon after the last person leaves the covered area. Filament LEDs. The filament LEDs made in India are designed to light up automotive lights (two-, three- and four-wheelers). Although the patent for these LEDs is still pending in India, these come with life-time warranty. Bulbs made of such LEDs cost the same as incandescent bulbs. Intensity inspectors. These are portable cameras for measuring the light intensity of LED chip and module, with an effective measuring range of 0.0005cd/m2 to 10cd/m2. Designed not only for high-speed measurement for inline inspection, these cameras also measure light intensity of megacontrast displays. www.efymag.com

make in India These are based on a telescopic system that allows measurement of absolute values of spectral radiance of the light source, without being in contact with it. There are control switches to increase or decrease the number of measurements. In highspeed mode, such cameras provide a measured data in one second to seven seconds. Integrated light and panel. Usually, with solar LED street-lights, we have LED lights hanging on a pole with a solar panel fitted on top of the pole and a bulky battery connected to the lights. This configuration is quite heavy as well as costly. To tackle this issue, an innovative streetlight model was launched this year that has the solar panel integrated with the light. The panel is at the back, light is on the front and battery is inside. The battery gets charged through the panel and then passes the current to the light.  K. Rengarajen, director, Luminogloz Solutions Pvt Ltd, says, “As of now, the solar street-lights are very costly, although more power-efficient. Companies are getting into these types of structures for a cost-effective model. If we take an example of 15W integrated solar street-light, it costs around ` 10,000 plus taxes, whereas a regular (solar) light costs around ` 25,000 plus taxes. While there is a huge difference in the price, the warranty and output on both types of street-lights is the same.” Single-stroke printed circuit board (PCB) printers. We find different types of PCB printers in India, specially for printing PCBs for LED lights. One such printer is a 1.2m street-light PCB printer that uses single-stroke printing technology. The regular surface mount technology (SMT) process includes three steps—printing, pick-n-place and reflow, and this printer is part of SMT for stencil printing. L. Sampath, managing director, emst Marketing Pvt Ltd, says, “There is a very good market for such printers in India, as there is a huge demand for street118

January 2015 | Electronics For You

eager to learn new things. And the industry does not  Hemant Jain, honorary secretary general, UCCI want to sacrifice quality at  K. Rengarajen, director, Luminogloz Solutions Pvt Ltd the cost of price. Rakesh  L. Sampath, managing director, emst Marketing Pvt Ltd Shah, director, JSK In Praveen Madaan, country head, SMT division, Juki novative Technology Pvt  Rakesh Shah, director, JSK Innovative Technology Pvt Ltd  Sumeet Verma, general manager, research and development, Dixon Ltd, says, “Today, we have  Vijay Kumar Gupta, CEO, Kwality Photonics Pvt Ltd completely indigenous and in-house product development, so that it does not hit your pocket and also saves electricity.” On the other hand, Hemant Jain, honourable secretary general, UCCI, says, “With Make in India, quality plays an important role, and we want to project the best quality at a very competitive price.” He adds, “Even though the government says that they are helping through the policies, they are actually not. They charge PIR sensor about 14.5 per cent as VAT for LED lights and, in turn, a huge demand lights. Such high tax is acceptable for PCBs.” when you buy from other countries On the other hand, we have a like China and sell the LED lighting PCB printer that can handle a PCB product in India with high margins. size of up to 1500mm. This is con- Look, if they have to promote it, the sidered to be a good option for all tax imposed should either be two per lights, starting from a tubelight to a cent or very minimal.” small bulb. Another feature of this Jain adds, “The government printer is that it can use all types should work on the local eco-system, of components required in the LED import duties, taxes, and bring in light manufacturing process. “The some subsidies to encourage more challenge with such machines is and more manufacturing. Currently, maintenance and reliability. However, import duties on products are about the best thing about these printing 30-40 per cent.” machines is that these are highly Whereas, Vijay Kumar Gupta, reliable and maintenance-free,” says CEO, Kwality Photonics Pvt Ltd, Praveen Madaan, country head, SMT says, “The demand for LEDs is very division, Juki.  encouraging now. It has come to a When it comes to LED lighting, take-off stage where the government these are just some initiatives in as well as the market is working to terms of innovation. We hope to see take it to a new level. Lately, Energymore as the market grows. Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) has also funded the procurement of Current market status and LEDs for various municipalities and expected growth public entity companies.” Even though everyone has their The LED lighting industry started almost five years ago in India, when own take on the market scenario or the government policies were not so government policies today, the LED well-known. If things were different, lighting industry as a whole is on the we would have been at a competi- verge of growth and has a long way to tive stage in the market with respect go. It is not only improving the quality to other countries, including China, of products but also attracting more Japan and Thailand. However, it is entrepreneurs, which is also increasstill not too late as the industry is ing the demand for manpower. 

Major contributors to this report

www.efymag.com

Make in India

new products

Components IDC connector

FCI’s new Griplet connector offers a robust solution for miniature IDC wire-to-board connections. The lowprofile and compact design makes it an ideal connector where space is tight and ease-of-installation is important. Each connector has a

LECTRONIC GMBH (Germany), has been designed specifically for that purpose and follows its predecessor TDC-GP22. The new GP30 is currently available as a Beta prototype and will soon be available in its final version this year. Brilliant Electro-Systems Pvt Ltd Phone: +91-22-23875565 / 66336908 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.brilliantelectronics.com

Silicon-carbide diodes

height of 3.7mm and a footprint of 4.0x6.1mm. Specially designed for a stackable pitch up to 12 positions, common housings are available to secure and protect terminated components. It provides a highly-reliable connection, and is suitable in harsh and industrial market applications where direct connection between individual wires and PCB are required. FCI Electronics Phone: 09895709609 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://www.fci.com/

SoC for water meter

A key feature of a modern ultrasonic water meter is measuring electronics. It runs measurements and transmits data to an external microcontroller. The new system-on-chip (SoC) TDC-GP30, from ACAM MESSE-

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January 2015 | Electronics For You

STMicroelectronics has revealed new automotive-qualified silicon-carbide (SiC) diodes for advanced on-board battery chargers (OBCs) in electric vehicles such as plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) that demand high powerhanding capability within a confined space. These diodes allow designers to build smaller power modules, which are good for automotive applications. These employ advanced technology to prevent high-current spikes from damaging the device. ST’s new SiC diodes are automotive-qualified, and feature increased reverse-breakdown voltage of 650V, satisfying voltage derating factors applied by designers and car manufacturers to ensure suitable safety margin between normal and short-term peak voltages across semiconductors used in OBC. STMicroelectronics Phone: +91-120-2352999 Website: www.st.com/sic-auto-diodes

Motor drivers

Texas Instruments has expanded its motor driver portfolio with a new 12V motor driver family that reduces spin-up time to just seconds and makes tuning stepper and brushed DC motors easier than ever before. The DRV8846 incorporates a new, proprietary adaptive current control technology that automatically tunes motor performance for precise, smooth and quiet mo-

tion. The DRV8848 simplifies designs by using a simple pulse-width modulation (PWM) control interface and minimal external components. Key features and benefits of the DRV8846 and DRV8848 are:                          Zero tuning effort. Adaptive current regulation, available on DRV8846, dynamically changes current regulation schemes according to load conditions, with no configuration required. This simplifies systemlevel tuning and debugging, which allows end equipment manufactures to get their products to market more quickly. Smooth, quiet motion. DRV8846’s 1/32 micro-stepping indexer, coupled with adaptive current regulation, provides minimal current ripple, which enables smooth, precise motion profiles and reduced acoustic noise. High integration. The DRV8848 can operate without current sense resistors, leaving supply decoupling capacitors as the only external components required for operation. More precise motor operation can be achieved by including resistors and enabling on-chip current regulation. Full-fault protection. Advanced on-chip protection, including overcurrent protection, thermal shutdown, under-voltage lockout and diagnostics with fault condition feedback, protect both the motor driver and motor, reducing design complexity and increasing system reliability Texas Instruments Website: www.ti.com

Aluminum electrolytic capacitors

YXJ series is developed as an improved version of YXF series that was widely used in secondary filtering of power supply units. YXJ www.efymag.com

Make in India achieves miniaturisation, higher ripple-current capability and lower impedance compared to YXF. It offers a smaller size, while maintaining the same or better capacitance, impedance, ripple current and lifetime specifications. YXJ is best suited in the applications of smart meters that form the central function of a smart-grid system. The main features of this product are: Size.Φ5×11L to Φ16×35.5L Temperature. -40°C to +105°C Rated voltage. 6.3V to 100V DC Capacitance. 0.47µF to 15000µF Lifetime. 4,000 to 10,000 hours Rubycon India Phone: 91-022-28543154 Website:  www.rubycon.co.jp

Test & Measurement LED stroboscope

The Fluke 820-2 stroboscope is a simple, easy-to-use tool for investigating and observing potential mechanism failure on a variety of machinery without making physical contact with the machine. The rugged, compact strobe allows maintenance teams to identify the running speed of rotating equipment without stopping operation, and perform stop-motion diagnostics of parasitic oscillations, flaws, slippage and unwanted distortions. It also enables teams to identify serial numbers and other markings on fastmoving parts. It features a seven-LED highintensity array with uniform flash characteristics that allows for high flash rates from 30 to 300,000 flashes per minute. The solid-state LEDs have no filament, gases, hollow cavities or glass to compromise its rugged construction. The adjustable flash-duration feature of the stroboscope is ideal for applications with higher rpm or larger rotating objects with high surface speeds, where objects may 122

January 2015 | Electronics For You

move during the brief period of a single flashing, resulting in a blurred image. This feature allows users to decrease the flash duration making the image appears sharper. Fluke Corporation Website: www.fluke.com/india

Temperature sensor

The new AX8fixed-mount temperature sensor from FLIR combines thermal and visible cameras along with FLIR’s proprietary MSX technology in a small, affordable package. Enabled by FLIR’s ground-breaking Lepton thermal imaging core, AX8provides early detection of temperature-related issues in electrical and mechanical equipment, guarding against unplanned outages, service interruptions and equipment failure. AX8 thermal imager has 4,800 active temperature points per image, provides streaming temperature data over industry-standard interfaces (Ethernet/IP and Modbus TCP) for easy analysis, has a built-in web interface and includes a full suite of analysis and alarm functions that automatically send alerts when the AX8 detects elevated temperatures. Measuring only 54 x 25 x 95mm, AX8 integrates easily into electrical installations or any manufacturing environment. Its streaming thermal, visual, and MSX video is output in standard MJPEG, MPEG, H.264 formats adds multi-purpose image capabilities. FLIR Systems Inc. E-mail: www.flir.com/ax8

Cable-fault pre-locator

KUSAM-MECO underground cablefault pre-locator model KM-CFL-620 is an automatic fault locator that adopts ARM, FPGA and dot-matrix colour LCD display technology. It combines pulse-reflecting technology (TDR) and intelligent-bridge testing (Bridge) for measuring the exact location of the fault. It is a

microprocessor based fault locator with a user-friendly menu. It tests almost all power cables, telecom and signal cables. With a megameter and an ohmmeter, it allows insulationresistance and loop-resistance tests. It has a USB port for uploading test data to the computer. It comes with a carrying case, rechargeable battery charger/ adapter, connecting test cables, software CD, 4GB pen drive and user manual. Kusam Electrical Industries Ltd                             Phone: 91-22-24181649 / 24124540 E-mail: [email protected]

CAN analyser

A compact, isolated USB to CAN interface, CANdoISO allows a PC to be connected directly to an embedded CAN bus. The USB and CAN ports are separated by a 500V galvanic isolation barrier. The analyser is fully-compliant with CAN 2.0A & CAN 2.0B Bosch specifications. It has ISO 11898-2 (high-speed CAN) physical interface, rugged CAN transceiver capable of withstanding 40V between CAN bus lines and ground, and CAN baud rate adjustable from 12.5k to 1M baud. It can recognise CAN data, remote and error frames, report CAN bus status and internal status, and calculate average CAN bus load every second. All CAN frames are time-stamped (25.6us resolution and 20ms + 100ppm accuracy). The analyser supports three modes of CAN bus operation, namely, normal, listen-only and loopback; and low-level CAN message filtering. It is fully-compatible with higher-level protocols such as J1939, DeviceNet and CANopen, and is USB v1.1, 2.0 and 3.0 compatible. It can be powered via USB ports (100mA max. www.efymag.com

Make in India in normal mode or 500µA max. in suspend mode). Its internal firmware is upgradeable from PC over USB. It complies with the requirements of EU directive 2004/108/EC on EMC. Netronics Website: http://www.cananalyser.co.uk/ candoiso.html

Signal analyser

The Tektronix RSA306 is a compact, low-power spectrum analyser that is designed for portability. It can be used with laptops and tablet PCs that have a USB 3.0 connection, and draws all of its power (less than 4.5W) from that connection. This analyser acquires samples using a fast digitiser and continuously updates spectra in the realtime acquisition bandwidth via a Fourier transform. Wider spans are generated by moving local oscillator frequencies in the instrument and stepping in chunks of the real-time bandwidth to the desired frequency range. The basic specifications of RSA306 are: Frequency range. 9kHz – 6.2GHz Acquisition bandwidth. 40MHz Measurement power range. +20dBm to -160dBm Spur-free dynamic range. -50dBc Amplitude accuracy. ±2.0dB Minimum signal duration. 100µsec Operating temperature range. -10°C to +55°C Weight. 590 grams Tektronix Phone: 080-30792726/41 Website: http://www.tek.com/

Power Supplies Wireless charging solution

Bringing customers one step closer to the wireless Internet of Tomorrow, Freescale Semiconductor extended its wireless charging portfolio by introducing the industry’s first 15W Qi-compliant wireless charging solu124

January 2015 | Electronics For You

tion. This paves the way for ultrafast wireless recharging for a variety of larger mobile devices, including tablets, large-screen smartphones, and portable industrial and medical equipment. Delivering three times the power of common 5W charging solutions, this system provides efficient charging of larger form-factor devices with higher capacity batteries, while enabling faster charging of smaller formfactor devices by delivering higher power. For example, a typical tablet with 4000mAh battery might take over eight hours to charge from a standard USB port, while Freescale’s solution could reduce this charge time dramatically to just a few hours. Freescale Semiconductor Inc. Website: www.freescale.com

Modular UPS

Delta Electronics has launched Modulon DPH series UPS 75/150kW, to join its existing 200kW model. It has a fully fault-tolerant design achieved by self redundancy of the power module with in-built control mechanism. Full-control logic allows the system to self-synchronise in case of failure and automatically switch to back-up to ensure continuous operation. Modulon DPH is designed for seamless scalability for both

vertical and horizontal expansion. Scaling from 25kW up to 75/150/200kW, the UPS supports high flexibility for datacentre growth and provides the benefit of pay-as-you-go, without over-sizing the UPS in the initial phase of datacentre operations. The flexibility of Modulon DPH allows parallel expansion of up to four units to a maximum of 800kW. Modulon DPH does not compromise on power efficiency performance. Its superior power performance (kVA=kW) and industryleading AC-AC efficiency (95 per cent at 30 per cent light load and 96 per cent from 50 per cent load) enables customers to save significant energy costs.  Delta Power Solutions (India) Pvt Ltd www.deltapowersolutions.com

Miscellaneous Plug-and-place SMT assembly system Lynx, the new, small form-factor plug-and-place SMT assembly system, is suited for high-mix SMT

production. With 180 feeder lanes on 0.85sqm, it offers the highest feeder density on the market. The system’s very high component flexibility is combined with unique capabilities to accurately place 0201 components backed by the latestgeneration digital camera, fast laser centering and image processing systems. With user-friendly Essemtec software package, well-proven machine reliability and low maintenance requirement, Lynx ensures steady and reliable flexible production, confirming its motto of Optimise-Operate-Rely. Essemtec AG Website: www.essemtec.com www.efymag.com

product categories index

advertisers’ product category index Products

Page No.

Automation & Robotics Anamika Enterprises ........................................ 142 Core Technologies ............................................ 126 Dynalog (India) Ltd (D) ....................................... 21 Eita Technologies ............................................. 141 ELECTROSOFT SYSTEM ............................... 128 Max Electronics (P) .......................................... 139 Microchip Technology Inc. .................................. 63 Renesas Electronics Singapore Pte Ltd.............. 45 Rhydo Technologies P Ltd ................................ 125 Srishti Electronics ............................................. 143 ST Microelectronics Marketing Pvt Ltd ............... 41 Techno Power ................................................... 141 Avionics & Defence Equipment Digital Promoters (I) Pvt Ltd (M) ....................... 139 Batteries & Power Supplies Arham Electronics & Electricals (Nimra Products) ........................................... 139 Axis Powertronics Pvt Ltd (D) ........................... 140 Baid Power Services Pvt. Ltd. .......................... 143 BB Battery India Co. Pvt Ltd................................ 19 Crown Electronic Systems (D) .......................... 140 Elektro Power Systems .................................... 143 Exide Industries Ltd (C) ...................................... 59 Indus Industries ................................................ 130 Kandhari Photo Electronics P Ltd ..................... 141 National Controlling & Equipments (D) ............. 140 Perfect Systems ............................................... 140 R.R. Electronics (D) .......................................... 139 Sakthi Accumulators Private Ltd ....................... 142 SM Electronic Technologies Pvt. Ltd................... 15 Stab-Brain Systems .......................................... 140 Veeral Controls Private Limited .......................... 97 Cabinets, Enclosures & Accessories Chhabra Electronics ......................................... 140 Elcom International Pvt Ltd ............................... 132 IND-SPHINX Precision Limited ........................ 132 Perfect Metal Works (B) ................................... 141 S K Metal Works ............................................... 141 Shrey Plastic Moulders ..................................... 143

Products

Page No.

SPM Electronics ............................................... 141 Universal Electronics (D) .................................. 137 Components (Including Active & Passive) Alfa Electronic Components ..............................115 Allegro Micro ....................................................... 67 Buljin Elemec Pvt Ltd ........................................ 143 Digi-Key Corporation ............................................ 5 Element14 India Pvt Ltd. ...................................... 1 Gurudatta Industries ......................................... 143 Kaytron Components Pvt Ltd ............................ 143 LWI Electronics Inc. ............................................ 23 Mornsun Guangzhou Science & Technology Co. Ltd ............................................................. 39 Rockforest ........................................................ 139 Rubycon Singapore Pte Ltd (India Liaison Office) ...................................... 128 S.M Semiconductors (D) .................................. 142 EDA Tools (Including Designing & Drafting Aids) NI Systems (India) Pvt Ltd ................................ 149 Educational Training Kits ELECTROSOFT SYSTEM ............................... 128 ISOFT ............................................................... 131 Rhydo Technologies P Ltd ................................ 125 Industrial & Manufacturing Equipment Elnova Ltd (m) .................................................. 140 Max Technology & Co. ........................................ 33 Materials (Including Chemicals & Consumables) Able Inc. ............................................................ 142 Chandsons Industries ....................................... 140 ConinsPune ...................................................... 126 DELTA MAGNETS LTD ...................................... 51 Motors Rhydo Technologies P Ltd ................................ 125 Optics & Optoelectronics Alien Energy Private Ltd ................................... 137

Products

Page No.

Binay Opto Electronics Pvt Ltd (D) ................ 16-17 Buljin Elemec Pvt Ltd ........................................ 143 GSR Infocom Pvt. Ltd. ...................................... 141 Key Operations & Electrocomponents Pvt Ltd.... 95 Navaid Energy Pvt. Ltd. .................................... 142 Printed Electronics Pvt Ltd ............................... 141 Pyrotech Electronics Pvt Ltd ............................. 132 Steller Electronics (P) Ltd. ................................ 126 PCBs, Assemblies & Sub Assemblies Buljin Elemec Pvt Ltd ........................................ 143 Circuit Systems (I) Ltd (D) .................................. 89 Mekatron Systems Pvt. Ltd................................ 142 Plugs, Sockets & Connectors Elcom International Pvt Ltd ............................... 132 Virginia Panel Corporation ................................ 101 Reseller and Distributors Digi-Key Corporation ............................................ 5 Element14 India Pvt Ltd. ...................................... 1 Key Operations & Electrocomponents Pvt Ltd.............................................................. 95 LWI Electronics Inc. ............................................ 23 Rhydo Technologies P Ltd ................................ 125 Safety & Security Products Matrix Comsec Pvt Ltd ......................................... 9 Millenium semiconductors ...................................11 Sensors & Transducers PIC GmbH .......................................................... 55 Rhydo Technologies P Ltd ................................ 125 Solar Products Aura Emergency Systems (D) .......................... 141 Elektro Power Systems .................................... 143 Gurukirpa Electronics ....................................... 139 Kandhari Photo Electronics P Ltd ..................... 141 Max Electronics (P) .......................................... 139 Navaid Energy Pvt. Ltd...................................... 142 Raj Electronics .................................................. 142 Srishti Electronics ............................................. 143

Products

Page No.

Switches & Relays Elcom International Pvt Ltd ............................... 132 Millenium semiconductors ...................................11 PIC GmbH .......................................................... 55 Shavison Electronics Pvt. Ltd. ............................ 79 Trontek Electronics Pvt. Ltd. ............................. 129 Universal Electronics (D) .................................. 137 Telecom Products Virginia Panel Corporation ................................ 101 Test & Measurement Equipment (Including Indicators & Monitors) Countronics (D) ................................................ 139 Dinteck .............................................................. 141 FLIR Systems ..................................................... 47 Good Will Instrument Co. Ltd ........................... 148 Keysight Technologies India Pvt Ltd...........Gatefold NI Systems (India) Pvt Ltd ................................ 149 Tektronix India Pvt Ltd. (D) ......................... 69, 150 Toshiba India Pvt. Ltd ......................................... 25 Uchi Embedded Solutions ................................ 140 Vidyut Yantra Udyog (D) ................................... 137 Timers, Watches & Clocks Shavison Electronics Pvt. Ltd. ............................ 79 Trade Shows and Events All India Photographic Trade & Industry Association .................................................... 127 NEPCON Japan ............................................... 105 NI Systems (India) Pvt Ltd......................... 105, 149 Training and Certification Institutes CADD Centre Training Services Private Limited ........................................................... 133 Core Technologies ............................................ 126 Wires & Cables Miracle Electronic & Devices Pvt Ltd .................. 37 Rank Infotech (D) ............................................. 128

EFY Magazine Attractions During 2015 Month

Technology Focus

Market Surveys

Buyer’s Guide For Electronics Labs

January

IoT & Big Data

LED Lighting

Programmable Power Supplies

February

3D Printing

Coil Wound Components

Handheld T&M Equipment For Field Engineers

March

Wearables (Smart Humans)

SMT Manufacturing Equipment

Digital Multimeters

April

3G, 4G & Beyond: Latest in Telecom

Industrial Inverters & UPS For Corporates

FPGA Based Dev Boards

May

Virtual Electronics (on Web)

Telecom & Electronics

3D Printers (Under ` 100,000)

June

Printed and Flexible Electronics

Educational & Training Products

Wi-Fi & RF Modules

July

Smart Cars

Automotive Electronics

Budget Friendly Oscilloscopes

August

Smart Homes

PCB Industry in India: Suppliers & Manufacturers

Development Boards (Microcontroller based)

September

Medical Electronics

Aerospace & Defence Electronics

Soldering/Desoldering Stations

October

Robotics & Automation (Smart Machines)

Solar Electronics

Latest Tools to Manage ESD For Your LAB

November

Renewable Energy

Industrial Automation

Desktop PCB Mfg Equipment

December

Smart Lighting

LCD Display Components

Programmable Power Source

146

January 2015 | Electronics For You

www.efymag.com

advertisers’ index

advertisers’ index Client name

Page No.

Client name

Page No.

Client name

Page No.

Able Inc. (www.winenter.in).....................................................................142

ELECTROSOFT SYSTEM (www.electrosoftsystem.com)....................128

Perfect Systems......................................................................................140

Alfa Electronic Components................................................................... 115

Elektro Power Systems...........................................................................143

PIC GmbH (www.pic-gmbh.com).............................................................55

Alien Energy Private Ltd (www.alienenergy.in).......................................137

Element14 India Pvt Ltd..............................................................................1

Precision Mastech Enterprises (Hong Kong) Ltd...................................135

All India Photographic Trade & Industry Association (www.aiptia.org)..127

Elnova Ltd (m) (www.elnova.com)..........................................................140

Printed Electronics Pvt Ltd......................................................................141

Allegro Micro (www.allegromicro.com).....................................................67

Exide Industries Ltd (www.exide4u.com)................................................59

Pyrotech Electronics Pvt Ltd (www.peplectronics.com).........................132

Anamika Enterprises...............................................................................142

Good Will Instrument Co. Ltd (www.goodwill.com.tw)...........................148

R.R. Electronics......................................................................................139

Arham Electronics & Electricals (Nimra Products).................................139

GSR Infocom Pvt. Ltd.............................................................................141

Radisson Instruments.............................................................................139

Aura Emergency Systems......................................................................141

Gurudatta Industries...............................................................................143

Raj Electronics........................................................................................142

Axis Powertronics Pvt Ltd ......................................................................140

Gurukirpa Electronics (www.gurukirpaelectronics.com).........................139

Rank Infotech (www.rankinfotech.com).................................................128

Baid Power Services Pvt. Ltd.................................................................143

HK Wentworth (India) Pvt Ltd...................................................................65

Renesas Electronics Singapore Pte.Ltd...................................................45

BB Battery India Co. Pvt Ltd.....................................................................19

IND-SPHINX Precision Limited..............................................................132

Rhydo Technologies P Ltd (www.rhydo.com).........................................125

Binay Opto Electronics Pvt Ltd (www.binayLED.com).......................16-17

Indus Industries.......................................................................................130

Rockforest...............................................................................................139

Buljin Elemec Pvt Ltd (www.flexiblepcb.com)........................................143

ISOFT......................................................................................................131

Rubycon Singapore Pte Ltd ...................................................................128

CADD Centre Training Services Private Limited....................................133

Kandhari Photo Electronics P Ltd...........................................................141

S K Metal Works (www.skmetals.com)...................................................141

Chandsons Industries.............................................................................140

Kaytron Components Pvt Ltd..................................................................143

S.M Semiconductors...............................................................................142

Chhabra Electronics................................................................................140

Key Operations & Electrocomponents Pvt Ltd.........................................95

Sakthi Accumulators Private Ltd.............................................................142

Circuit Systems (I) Ltd (www.mycsil.com)................................................89

Keysight Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. (www.keysight.com)........... Gatefold

Shavison Electronics Pvt Ltd (www.shavison.com).................................79

ConinsPune............................................................................................126

Kits‘n’Spares...........................................................................................121

Shrey Plastic Moulders (www.shreyplasticmoulders.com)....................143

Core Technologies..................................................................................126

LWI Electronics Inc. (www.livewireinfo.com)............................................23

SM Electronic Technologies Pvt. Ltd........................................................15

Countronics (www.countronics.com).....................................................139

Matrix Comsec Pvt Ltd (www.cognitoindia.com)........................................9

SPM Electronics (spmelectronics.com)..................................................141

Crown Electronic Systems(www.crownelectronicsystems.com)............140

Max Electronics.......................................................................................139

Srishti Electronics (www.acedigital.co.in)...............................................143

DELTA MAGNETS LTD (www.Deltin.com)...............................................51

Max Technology & Co. (www.maxtechnoloindia.com).............................29

ST Microelectronics Marketing Pvt. Ltd....................................................41

Digi-Key Corporation (www.digikey.com)...................................................5

Mekatron Systems Pvt. Ltd.....................................................................142

Stab-Brain Systems................................................................................140

Digital Promoters (I) Pvt Ltd ...................................................................139

Microchip Technology Inc. (www.microchip.com).....................................63

Steller ElectronicsLtd..............................................................................126

Dinteck....................................................................................................141

Millenium semiconductors (www.millenniumsemi.com)........................... 11

Techno Power (www.technopowersystems.com)...................................141

Dynalog (India) Ltd (www.dynalogindia.com)...........................................21

Miracle Electronic & Devices Pvt Ltd (www.toroidal.com)........................37

Tektronix India Pvt Ltd (www.tektronix.com/2170)...........................69, 150

EFY Group: EFY Expo India.......................... 72, 73, 75, 77, 81, 83, 87, 91

Mornsun Guangzhou Science & Technology Co.Ltd ..............................39

Toshiba India Pvt Ltd.................................................................................25

EFY Group: LED Bazaar........................................................................ 113

Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd..................................................................95

Trontek Electronics Pvt Ltd.....................................................................129

EFY Group: Subscription.................................................................144-145

National Controlling & Equipments.........................................................140

Uchi Embedded Solutions......................................................................140

EFY Tech Center.........................................................................................7

Navaid Energy Pvt Ltd (www.navaidenergy.com)..................................142

Universal Electronics (http://www.easternradio.co.in)...........................137

EID (Sales).............................................................................................. 117

NEPCON Japan (www.enepcon.com)...................................................105

Veeral Controls Private Limited (www.veeral.com)..................................97

Eita Technologies....................................................................................141

NI Systems (India) Pvt Ltd (www.ni.com).......................................105, 149

Vidyut Yantra Udyog (www.vyu-microwave.com)..................................137

Elcom International Pvt Ltd (www.Deltin.com).......................................132

OSI Days...................................................................................................33

Virginia Panel Corporation......................................................................101

electronicsforu.com.................................................................................109

Perfect Metal Works................................................................................141

Page numbers subject to final dummy corrections

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