Circuit Cellar №237 2010

Circuit Cellar №237 2010

 

The Circuit Cellarstaff has been looking forward to April
for a while now—and not just because reaching this month
on the calendar means we’ve made it through another long
New England winter. April 2010 is special for another
reason: color. We’re proud to announce that this is the first
full-color issue in the history of Circuit Cellar.That’s right,
we can run any photo, any diagram, or any advertisement in
color.
Why is this a historic moment for Circuit Cellar?Well,
it’s obviously a huge perk to be able to see every image in all
its brilliance. But the greater significance is that the act of
converting to full color highlights the strength of the rela-tionship between Circuit Cellar and Elektor. It’s no coinci-dence that only a few months after joining forces with
Elektorwe’ve begun to pack more of an aesthetic punch on
each page of the magazine, as well as to its cover.
One of the earliest editorial discussions between Circuit
Cellarand Elektorcolleagues was about immediate “deliv-erables” we could bring to readers. Our goals wereto (a)
enhance readers’ overall Circuit Cellar experience and (b)
signify the strength of the Circuit Cellar-Elektorunion.
Incorporating full-color pages was quickly agreed upon.
“Color is great,” you say. “But what’sthe big picture?”
Well, like any new partnership, ours has been marked by
enthusiastic conversations, exciting brainstorming sessions,
and insightful idea swapping. The result of these exchanges
has been the invigoration of all staffers with a sense of repur-pose: Each month, we shall deliver fresh need-to-know infor-mation to engineers—and more. Our mission is to give you
morecontent, more color, more topics, and more fluid con-nections between the magazine, its website, its authors, its
advertisers, its contests, its code, and its other products.
This issue starts another season of innovative projects and
novel embedded programs. Let’s get started.
Kicking off the issue, Jeff Shoemaker tackles the topic of
converter performance and presents tips for working with
on-chip ADCs (p. 18). Turn to page 26 to learn how Jeff
Bachiochi brought audio recording capabilities to an embed-ded design with a playback IC. On page 38 Peter
Montgomeryfinishes his series on building a serial network
hub with details about the software, hardware, and network
packet transmission. In “Smart Control,” Alexandre
Guimaraes presents a useful DIY reflow soldering controller
project (p. 46). Ed Nisley finishes his “Totally Featureless
Clock” series on page 54 with a presentation of the overall
design. On page 62, RobertLacoste explains how to build a
picoammeter for your workbench. Tom Cantrell completes
the issue by presenting an exciting multidimensional SBC
you’ll find handy for futuredesigns (p. 68).

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