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by Max Maxfield I’m currently running around in ever-decreasing circles shouting, “Don’t Panic!” because I’m trying to spin too many plates and juggle too many balls and I was never trained to spin and can’t juggle. Hmmm, now that I come to think about it, that’s not strictly true because I once read a book on the art of juggling and — as a result — I can juggle nine fine china plates, but only for a very short period of time. The term mechatronics refers to an interdisciplinary branch of engineering that focuses on systems that combine electronic, electr...

by Max Maxfield I’m a big fan of having hobby projects. In addition to taking one’s mind off the toils, troubles, and tribulations of the world, I think that having a new “thing” that you want to do is the best way to set about learning how to do it. Take adding a new programming language to your repertoire as an example. One way to do this is to wade through the language reference manual (yawn). Another approach is to come up with some algorithm or task you wish to code in this new language, and then research how to achieve this goal. Of course, I’m not saying t...

by Max Maxfield Many of today’s electronic systems feature multiple printed circuit boards (PCBs) and/or modules. (For the remainder of this column, unless such interpretation is inconsistent with the context, we will assume the term “board” to embrace the term “module.”) Not surprisingly, the system’s designers often wish to pass data back and forth from board to board. Oftentimes, these inter-board signals involve relatively low-speed data transfer via general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins or low-bandwidth serial interfaces like I2C (inter-integrated circu...

by Max Maxfield I can’t believe it; we’ve finally arrived at the ultimate part of what started out as a mini-series and ended up being a mega-epic. In a moment, we’re going to consider FPGA (hardware) and MCU (software) solutions to the switch bounce problem, but first… Just in case you arrived late to the party, in Part 1 we introduced the concept of switch bounce; in Part 2 we delved deeper into the bouncing associated with SPST and SPDT switches; in Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 we considered how to debounce our switches using RC networks, monostable multivibrators...