Ever wonder what’s going on in those portions of the spectrum outside the regular broadcast and public safety bands? This video from the just concluded Notacon 10 conference in Cleveland, OH, provides a summary of the radio spectrum assignments from the proverbial “DC to daylight”. This presentation by Stormgren concentrates on those radio frequency assignments […]
Category Archives: documentation
Freescale medical applications component user guide
Freescale Semiconductors has posted their Medical Applications User Guide. This 116 page PDF outlines the MCU, RF, sensor and display technologies offered with specific emphasis on their implementation in developing medical applications. Included are block diagrams of medical devices and overviews of contemporary medical electronics technologies.
Obscure mil doc: Telemetry Systems Radio Frequency Handbook
If you’re interested in obscure RF topics here’s a document for you. The Telemetry Systems Radio Frequency Handbook is a 133 page manual in PDF released by the US Army and found on the White Sands Missile Range website. It was prepared to assist in the development of improved RF telemetry transmitting and receiving systems […]
Authoritative GNU Radio training videos
Want free, in depth training on GNU Radio from an authoritative source? Then you’ll want to spend four hours viewing this series of videos by Tom Rondeau, KB3UKZ, the GNU Radio project manager since 2009. Tom provides a detailed, in-depth study of this Software Defined Radio experimental and development system. These videos are taken from […]
E-book: Hacking Politics details efforts to defeat SOPA/PIPA
Hacking Politics is a soon to be released book documenting the unlikely coalition which worked to defeat the SOPA and PIPA legislation in the United States. Edited by David Moon, Patrick Ruffini and David Segal, Hacking Politics is set to be released in April by OR Books in both e-book and paperback format. It is […]
ITU radio regs online FREE for limited time
Drone has sent us this information which should be interesting to radio comm enthusiasts around the world. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has decided to offer the current (2012) full set of “Radio Regulation” documents (Volumes I-IV) for FREE download for a limited time (through mid-2014 perhaps). Yes, this set includes the “ITU-R” documents. The […]
Understanding and characterizing timing jitter
Matthew Zaleski found this resource posted by National Instruments. It’s a fairly detailed whitepaper titled “Understanding and Characterizing Timing Jitter”. This looks like a good resource for anyone doing high-frequency communications. Via the contact form.
New book: LEGO and Arduino Projects
We’ve been informed of the new MAKE publication by authors John Baichtal, Matthew Beckler and Adam Wolf entitled LEGO and Arduino Projects: Projects for extending Mingdstorms NXT with open-source electronics. The purpose of the book is to acquaint beginners with the both Mindstorms and the Arduino platform and how they can be interfaced using open […]
Octopart Ipad app
Greg Shikhman writes informing us that Octopart has a new Ipad app for we have a new iPad Octopart app for finding and organizing part datasheets. This app is free and available from the Apple app store. No Ipod Touch, Iphone or Andoid versions are presently available. Via the contact form.
Cool doc: US military UHF TACSAT/DAMA
Here’s an interesting doc for any RF hackers interested in military satellite communications. Its the official US military manual on Multi-Service Tactics, techniques, and Procedures for Ultra High Frequency Tactical Satellite and Demand Assigned Multiple Access (DAMA) Operations. Pretty much everything you never even thought about regarding military UHF satellite comms. Includes complete charts of […]
Bus Pirate v3.6 added to the Fritzing library
Fritzing is an open source GUI based program that allows users to document their prototypes, share them with others, show them in a presentation, and create a pcb layout for professional manufacturing. Mikhail added the Bus Pirate v3.6 to their parts library, and Systemstech made a quick sketch of it connected to the DS1307 real […]
Analog Discovery training resources
Tim Kerby notes that there is now a Wiki for the Analog Discovery with lots of fantastic training materials. Check it out! Via the contact form.
Free Commodore ezine for retro enthusiasts
For all you Commodore retro enthusiasts, there’s an online mag for you. Known as CommodoreFree, its a free to download magazine dedicated to Commodore Computers and is available in text, HTML and PDF formats, as well as including Commodore 64 D64 disk images. This ezine covers covering programming, gaming, hardware and Commodore related meetings. Its […]
Xilinx CPLD design techniques online documentation
Xilinx has an online searchable database of information on programming their CPLD devices. It includes a number of cool tips and code samples for implementing bidirectional signals, clock dividers, global nets as well as information on CPLD attributes, the schematic library and controlling I/O pin voltages. In many cases code examples are provided in VHDL, […]
PropForth 5.0 and beginner’s guide available
PropForth 5.0 is available for use on the Parallax Propeller. As the PropForth crew explains, “It is an interactive development and run time system. You can communicate with PropForth using a standard serial port, or via ethernet and telnet depending on the capabilities of the system you are using. It has a rich set of […]
FT311D errata: The IC doesn’t work with Android v4.1 and above
We designed a breakout board for the FT311D Android Open Accessory (AOA) ICs. We got the prototypes in our workshop, and in the free PCB drawer. Only thing missing is for FTDI to start selling them. In this waiting period we stumbled onto the errata for this IC. There are two errors reported in the […]
Training module: Austria Microsystems AS1130 LED driver chip
Digi-Key has a training module on using the Austria Microsystems AS1130 LED Driver chip. The AS1130 can drive 132 LEDs with one chip via the “Crossplexing” technique similar to Charlieplexing. The AS1130 features include a built-in scrolling function. The 38 page PDF datasheet is available here. Drone via the contact form.
TI multicore programming guide
TI has released their Multicore Programming Guide. Their announcement states, “To meet the ever-increasing processing demand, modern System-On-Chip solutions contain multiple processing cores. The dilemma is how to map applications to multicore devices. In this paper, we present a programming methodology for converting applications to run on multicore devices. We also describe the features of […]
TI EMI/ESD protection guide
Electrostatic discharge (ESD) isn’t something you usually think about until after you’ve accidentally zapped a sensitive component and can’t figure out why it looks OK but isn’t working. Similarly, electromagnetic interference (EMI) usually isn’t taken into account unless it begins to negatively impact a new wireless design. TI has released a 41-page PDF entitled System […]
ARM board comparison chart
Avishay had been looking at several different ARM boards and wanted to find a comprehensive list of inexpensive boards. After viewing several lists which didn’t provide what he was looking for, he assembled this list of his own. It’s in tabular form, making it easy to compare board characteristics, and covers boards based on an […]