Taking apart a vintage Symphonic SL-149 record player

So audio guru Steve Williams sent me a bunch of pictures of a portable phonograph that he just bought. He collects these old cheap units. It’s kind of like collecting beetles, they are ubiquitous and dumb, but you have to admire their diversity. So Steve has an inordinate fondness for 1960’s vintage portable record players.

The Symphonic SL-149 record player ready for business. This is the kind of unit we used to put an old Pink Pearl eraser on the tone arm so it would stay in the groove.

He didn’t say where he got it, but eBay is full of such treasures.

Here is the Symphonic SL-149 record player in all its glory.

Steve wrote us a mock note, acting like he was a young kid that could not understand something this simple.

“Can any or all of you help me to understand the complex subtleties of this device? Note the schematic includes 5 resistors including a variable one, plus 3 capacitors, a little heat sink diode thingie, a motor, a switch, a tube, a transformer, a speaker, and this funny thing that creates electricity when bent back and forth via perturbations in a flat disc rotating beneath the arm thingie that the little crystal generator is located at the end of. Said disc being rotated via the motor through a rubber wheel connected to the table the disc rests on…”

“It’s all too simple to do anything. There must be some magic involved. Where is the software, what is the storage media, what is the underlying code? Where is the D to A converter for that matter?”

Here is the schematic that Steve Williams was marveling over. I know someone will be doing a Spice run on it now.

Of course, why buy this old precious stuff if you don’t immediately take it apart? Here are the guts of the unit. This is the kind of things my pals bring up with a Variac variable transformer, to try and condition that old paper capacitor. Usually it is these caps that go bad, putting a huge 120Hz ripple in the power supply, which you hear as a horrible hum in the sound.

Old phonographs are much more interesting inside, where there are mechanical motors and gizmos and tubes and such. Hand wiring—nice.

My pal Eric Shlaepfer restored an old Clough-Brengle oscillograph. Eric doesn’t just replace those old dried-out capacitors with new ones. He takes apart the old capacitors and puts a new one inside, so the restored ocsillograph still looks vintage. Bravo.

This is Schlaepfer’s trick to put a modern film capacitor into the guts of a dried out paper capacitor shell.

And in case you want to see Steve’s record player working, here is a YouTube video of a similar one playing a record.

[Update:] I sent this post to audio guru Steve Williams and he sent back a nice note:

“Thanks for the write up. Only minor correction is that the video on my YouTube channel is of the same player not a similar one. Yes, the cap is weak but the hum is only semi atrocious. Didn’t replace it yet. Put in a very similar NOS Crystal cartridge I had. The album is my very first LP. I sent the mass email and initially only Ron Quan responded. -“

‘It’s a very efficient circuit by using the tube to drop 25 volts AC for the motor winding. The crystal cartridge could deliver at least 0.5 volt AC into the grid of the 25L6. As I recall, these phonographs could play very loud. Of course, the tracking force was in the order of 5 grams or more. Ron’

“Of course Ron meant that the motor drops the other 90 some odd volts leaving 25 for the 25L6 filament in series. (Which AFAIK is  _not_  the same as a 6L6 with a different filament voltage.) –Steve”

 

All tiny AVR parts in a spreadsheet

I just made a spreadsheet of all the tinyAVR parts. All my pals love the MCU selector guide, but I have a lot of analog dinosaur buddies that prefer a spreadsheet to a web-based interface. You can sort the data and this spreadsheet has the filter box on the columns, so you can sort out things you care about and exclude the things you don’t. The spreadsheet fits on a 24-inch display, and you can print it out on a single B-sized sheet and use it as an infographic.

This screenshot shows how all the tinyAVR parts will fit on one 11×17 ledger-sized or B-sized sheet of paper.

I started with an Excel dump of the selector guide after adding every single parameter to the search. I then took all the tinyAVR parts, and rearranged the columns, throwing out the irrelevant ones. I also combined the automotive parts with the basic parts. That added two columns for automotive temp and automotive Vcc range. Adding 2 columns to remove 13 rows seemed like a good deal. The part name links to the product page on our website.

I made a column for each package. That took a long time. Semiconductor companies think of a part as the silicon die, with the package being almost irrelevant. We systems folk know the package might be the most important thing. I tried to put the smaller packages on the left, with those big ol’ DIP (dual-inline plastic) parts on the right side. There is a second sheet in the spreadsheet that shows all the parts by number and there I put the package size, in mm. In both sheets, the package name links to the definition page on our website.

The second sheet of the spreadsheet shows all the tinyAVR parts by number. I put the exact package size on this page.

Besides the packages and package size, I also spent a long time getting pricing. My buddy Wayne Yamaguchi requested this, and he is absolutely right, price is the most important spec of any part, and I hate when it takes 5 clicks to find it. These prices are a bit sketchy. All I did was click on the “Buy” link and select a handful of parts from each family, and then looked at the Digi-Key price, in 1000s. I put in the highest and lowest of the few I selected, but this is by no means scientific or dispositive, as the lawyers would say. What I should do is put the price in the “Package” column, so you know what the package is and what price we charge, but many parts are in the same package but have two Vcc ranges, so there is no unique way to encode this and keep the spreadsheet on one printable page. Maybe I can blow out the second page to show every orderable part number and its price and specs. Always time to do it over, never time to do it right.

The major thing I want to add is the OrCAD 9.2 footprint name for the packages. I am afraid to do this now, since we have all been burned by narrow-DIP/wide-DIP and narrow -SOIC/wide-SOIC and what pin numbering to use on SOT parts, so that will have to wait for next time. If anyone has a proven definitive list of the OrCAD footprints, please let me know. paul.rako[yeah, the at sign]atmel.com

You can highlight all the parts and use the “Data>Sort” function to order them any way you want. I did it by Flash memory size and part name. You can also use the little filter boxes on each column to include or exclude, or even put in a logical range with equal or less than or all the other things. Its not exactly grep or regular expressions, but it can get the job done helping you to find the right part.

Excel filter boxes let you select just the parameters you care about.

I am told this spreadsheet works OK in Open Office/Libre. My pal Dave asked that any columns that are filtered be lit up red, but that takes a macro, and the VB macro may not work in Open Office, we are checking for that. Meanwhile, check there are 36 part families or that the little filter box does not have 3 pixels different to show the filter is on.

When you have filtered a column, it is almost impossible to tell, since the only indication is the icon makes this 3-pixel change.

Weasel weasel, CYA CYA, legal boilerplate—this is a hobby job, not an official Atmel document. If the selector guide had it wrong, it is wrong here too. I made my own mistakes too. And I already told you the pricing and the tiny1634 stuff was dicey. What I am hoping is that I can get some community support where you point out the errors, and tell me what to add. paul.rako[yeah, the at sign]atmel.com I also ask that you send this URL link to your pals, instead of just emailing the spreadsheet. That way the bosses will see you like this, and I can have the time to keep working on it.

If Hans Camenzind, the inventor of the 555 timer chip was still alive, he might have a copy of the tinyAVR spreadsheet up on his office wall. I miss Hans, at least he came to my Analog Aficionados party one year, before we lost him to the Grim Reaper.

 

Medical tech surging with the Internet of Things

Medical devices are proliferating at a bewildering pace. My pal Frank Fowler sent this YouTube video of how you can use your smartphone to take an EKG or monitor your vitals. Of course, we engineers know that the phone is just a passive display, the real action is in the sensors, signal conditioning and wireless tech used to get the signals to the cloud. It’s an embedded world and consumers are going to be blown away by all the useful products that we engineers will be bringing them. In addition to the pillars of microcontrollers and wireless, Atmel is committed to bringing security chips to market too. For medical applications like this, security is more than a nice feature; it may be a regulatory requirement to insure your data remains private.

The video demonstrates a little misunderstanding that the iPhone is in any way central to this. All it is doing is displaying data. It is the sensors and signal conditioning that are the real revolution. The late Jim Williams designed a scale so accurate it can measure your heartbeat (Fig 11). So a buddy of his quit Apple and did a startup where you put a pad under your mattress and it measures your heart-rate while you sleep. Once the embedded system gets the data, you can send it wirelessly to your TV or your phone or to the cloud cloud cloud. To think the iPhone is central to this is like thinking the box on your wall is the central part of making a TV program.

What is fascinating to me is how things just seem to work out. We will need storage for all this, and how convenient that Hitachi Data Systems, where my buddy Fowler used to work, makes boxes full of spinners that will hold all this information. In fact, when considering the cloud cloud cloud, it occurred to me that the suitable analogy is electricity production. Data is good. Electricity is good. We used to have a little generator in the basement. We used to have a little server in the basement. That was a pain, so we moved all the generators and servers to one central location. All that the cloud cloud cloud is doing is combining all the little generators into one big one, something the electricity people did 100 years ago. Soon the data people will go back to the mainframe, since why do all this dynamic load balancing across 5000 machines when you can do it across 50? And this is the great brilliant progress of our modern age. Indeed the cloud cloud cloud is almost irrelevant to the user. I don’t care if Dreamhost has one machine or a million, as long as they send out the pages quickly. The cloud cloud cloud helps that to a point, but it also lessens reliability and adds overhead. We live in wondrous times.

While stuffing blades into a web server and dynamically balancing them is neat, of far more interest to me is the embedded world. Here there is a delightful design challenge, getting low power to balance with high performance. My programmer pal John Haggis was showing off his Omron blood pressure monitor the other day;

This Omron blood pressure monitor can take your vitals in less than a minute.

The next task will be to connect the monitor to you phone via Bluetooth or Wi-fi. Now your phone can send the data up to the internet where it can be stored, analyzed, and shared with your doctor. You can envision the network effects taking hold, where your blood pressure results will dynamically modify the shopping list at your grocery store. If your blood pressure is low enough, maybe you can have some salty snacks this week. Keep it low and you might get a rebate on your health or life insurance. If your blood pressure shoots up the IoT can correlate it to that restaurant where you had a meal that caused it.

 

Electronic component art sculptures

My pal Phil Sittner sent a link to this picture of a rock band made out of electronic components. You have to love the title: L.E.D. Zeppelin.

Apparently that picture inspired this mom to make her own art:

All this creativity is near and dear to my heart, since my dear departed analog pal Jim Williams was also a lover of electronic art. One nice feature of Jim’s art was that it often functioned as a real working circuit as well as being a free-form sculpture.

So if you have an artistic bent, think about soldering up some items from your junk box to make something beautiful and fascinating.

The ABCs of ECDSA (Part 2)

Part 2 of The ABCs of ECDSA (“Sign-Here”) will describe how digital certificates are made and signed. In the previous article (The ABCs of ECDSA: Part 1), we examined the steps of ECDSA performing asymmetric authentication using digital certificates. You may have noticed that both Part 1 and Part 2 are in reverse chronological order; however, it makes better sense to first understand a bit about the actual authentication process before dissecting the details of making the certificate. (Just trust me on that.) Before we get into the nuances of the certificate, let’s recall that authentication is about keeping something real. Such things would be mobile, medical and consumer accessories; embedded firmware; industrial networks; and soon the new platforms of IoT, home automation, and vehicle-to-vehicle communications. Aside from those, there are several others given the fact that the need for authentication is increasing exponentially as more things communicate with each other, and through the cloud, are creating more opportunities for bad actors to apply their mal-intent.

Especially with the increased use of the Internet and the cloud for financial transactions and transmission of confidential personal/medical information, it’s critical to ensure that the sender of information is exactly who they are supposed to be, as well as that the data has not been tampered with. That is where authentication and hardware key storage come in. Here we will focus on asymmetric authentication. Asymmetric authentication using ECDSA is based upon a digital certificate, which in this case, is stored in the ATECC108A device.

So, now let’s go into the chip factory and see how the ECDSA certificate is made and stored in the device. Remember that ECDSA stands for Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm. The words “Elliptic Curve” are in the name because Elliptic Curve Cryptography (“ECC”) algorithms are used. No mystery there. The benefit of ECC is that it provides extremely strong security with shorter key lengths than other popular algorithms. Bitcoin, for example uses ECC predominantly for that reason.   (We won’t go into Bitcoin here.) “DSA” points to the fact that digital signatures are the key element of the process, which is also fairly self evident. The digital signing process is what we describe here, step by step. “Certificate” is the name given to the concept of putting certain types of data together in a prescribed format and then signing that data using hashing algorithms and signing algorithms. (Again, the usage of the certificate is covered in Part 1.)

While we are fully immersed here in cryptographic alphabet soup, we might as well add one more thing to it: The prescribed format used in the ECDSA in the ATECC108A is called ASN.1. ASN.1 basically defines what is what in the certificate, including the serial number, the public key and that sort of thing. It also defines the length of those data elements.

Now, back to building the certificate: The certificate is made and loaded in the key storage device in the chip factory. It is made from two main components:

1. The certificate data 
2. The signature

The certificate data is a collection of data from three sources:

1. Static data: Boiler plate type data that does not change, such as the name and address of the manufacturer. (This is the ASN.1 encoded stuff.)
2. Dynamic data: Data from the tester that can change with each device such as time, date, and serial number.
3. Client device’s public key, which has an algorithmic relationship to the client’s private key that will be securely stored in the client device.

The certificate data is formatted according to X.509 specifications (yes, more crypto jargon). X.509 defines the elements and order of the elements in the certificate, such as  serial number, public key, subject’s common name (i.e. the name of the certificate), authority ID (normally a SHA-1 hash of the public key), authority common name (i.e. the name of the authority that signs the certificate data), among other things. We will leave more about X.509 for another day.

The certificate data comprises just half of the certificate, the other half is the signature. What is a little tricky to understand at first is that the certificate data do two things: (1) become part of the certificate as it is, and (2) gets hashed and signed to make the signature. Both the certificate data itself and the signature make up the certificate.

The specific steps in order to make the signature begins with a copy of the certificate data being put through a hash algorithm to create a number called a hash value (or digest). ECDSA specifies a 32 byte digest length and SHA256 as the hashing algorithm. Once created, the digest is ready to be signed by the sign module in the factory.

The sign module is a piece of equipment that securely stores the signer’s private key. No one can get access to that key. The sign module uses the ECC sign algorithm to sign the digest of the certificate data with the signer’s private key. The result of that process becomes the “signature.” The signature then joins the original (i.e. unhashed) certificate data to complete the certificate. Note that the signing key is tied to the OEM’s root key to create the root of trust (the notion of root of trust will be addressed in another article).

The certificate is now finished and can be installed into the crypto device. Once the device is finished, it is then shipped to the customer’s factory to be assembled into an accessory, consumable, board or any number of things, i.e. a consumable water filter that later gets installed into refrigerator. In this scenario, when a new filter is installed by the consumer into the refrigerator when the old filter expires, the new filter will be authenticated by the host processor in the refrigerator according to the ECDSA process as described in The ABCs of ECDSA (Part 1).

Below is a video (sorry, no sound) that will visually help walk you through the steps noted above.

Benefits of asymmetric authentication with ECDSA include:

• Increased security because asymmetric authentication does not need secure key storage on the host (only the client)
• No need to update the host with secrets in the field (can update the public key at any time.)
• Uses the advantages of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (high security, short key, less computation)

Atmel CryptoAuthentication™ products such as Atmel’s ATSHA204A, ATECC108A  and ATAES132 implement hardware-based storage, which is much stronger then software based storage because of the defense mechanisms that only hardware can provide against attacks. Secure storage in hardware beats storage in software every time. Adding secure key storage is an inexpensive, easy, and ultra-secure way to protect firmware, software, and hardware products from cloning, counterfeiting, hacking, and other malicious threats. 

If you have yet to read the first portion of this article, you can find The ABCs of ECDSA (Part 1) here.

 

 

 

18 awesome ways drones are being used today

For many, the term “drone” seems to conjure images of military use and war weaponry. As a result, the mere thought of these futuristic flying devices tend to pose security and privacy concerns to several people. When, however, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) used for defense purposes and those that may one day may buzz around the skies are quite different, and in fact, may change the world — for the better. According to ex-Wired editor and 3D Robotics CEO Chris Anderson, the (AVR-powered) DIY drone community will soon have more than 15,000 drones flying, compared to some 7,000 drones in use worldwide by military forces.

Martha Stewart, known by many for her expertise in and around the home, recently shared her love for UAVs in an essay that appeared on TIME Magazine’s website on July 29th, writing that drones could be “a useful tool.” So without further ado, let’s take a look at just some of the many ways these flying apparatuses are already revolutionizing the world around us.

1. Farming is tough, and drones are making it easier. With their aerial abilities, farmers can now see if their irrigation systems are working, how their crops are growing, even see if any of the plants are sick by using infrared technology. This enables farmers to make critical decisions about where and when to fertilize, plant or water. Though these observations and improvements may only equate to cents per acre, when practiced over thousands of acres, that can translate into much greater amounts.

2. Going to Hollywood! UAVs have already been adapted by a number of film makers looking to capture more innovative shots with less limitations. Think about it, drones are enabling creators to achieve the effects that would otherwise require wires, spider cam rigs, dollies, cranes, and crane operators. “You can innovate in a number of different, interesting ways to shoot a scene [using unmanned aircraft],” Howard Gantman of the Motion Picture Association of America recently recently urged the FAA.

3. Capturing the beauties life has to offer. Given its aerial abilities, drones have been able to capture things in ways never before seen. The result? Something truly breathtaking. Take for instance, Dave Anderson. The charter captain runs whale-watching charters out of Dana Point, California. He recently used a small camera-equipped drone to capture video of a “mega-pod” of hundreds of common dolphins as well as three gray whale migrating off the coast of San Clemente. In a separate venture, the drone returned footage of a family of humpback whales off of Maui. Then, there’s Nashville entrepreneur Robert Hartline, who decided to capture the city’s 4th of July fireworks show from the air using a drone-and-camera apparatus.

4. Trying to sell your house? Drones can help. Once reserved for luxury-home listings, aerial photos and videos are popping up in ads for moderately priced places, thanks to the use of relatively inexpensive drones — a method that grown incredibly popular throughout California, where the hills, beaches, water and vineyards can enhance even the most mundane home. Move over still photos and open houses, the next real estate listing may be accompanied by a drone tour.

5. Weaving high-rise structures: A team of researchers at ETH Zurich recently programmed drones to build and weave high-rise structures. While the test was relatively simple, the idea of choreographing drones to act as aerial construction workers is pretty fascinating. In spider-like fashion, the drone spools cable behind it as it zips between supports. It is weaving a structure high above where ordinary building equipment can easily reach. The team is also teaching drones to build towers from foam bricks. “There is no physical connection with the ground, so they can move construction elements to any location, and fly in and around existing structures,” explained Federico Augugliaro of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich.

6. Covering the news. When it comes to reporting, there’s nothing more important than catching the action as it happens. In what may become the next trend in journalism, students across the country are already learning how drones could help them be better reporters, and some reporters have already begun using UAVs to capture the day’s news.

7. Putting out wildfires. Drones are becoming an incredibly useful tool for firefighters, especially those who have the seemingly impossible task of putting out wildfires. Not only are the aircrafts being used to spot the fire and tracking its movement, but they can actually fight fires as well, ultimately keeping people out of harm’s way. Take for instance 2007′s Southern California wildfires, UAVs equipped with infrared sensors penetrated walls of smoke to relay information about the size of the blaze. After Haiti’s devastating earthquake in 2010, the Air Force dispatched its “Global Hawk” drone to map the damage in Port-Au-Prince so NGOs could establish target areas for their relief work. And even more recently, drones were deployed after Super Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines. Unlike helicopters, which can take up to an hour to arrive on the scene and gather information, drones are operational within three minutes.

8. Preventing endangered species. Tracking endangered is not an easy feat; however, with its unparalleled aerial abilities, drones may become the next tool in preventing poaching. Take for instance the team of Indonesian scientists, who have been using drones to keep track of a population of endangered Sumatran orangutans by floating above the treetops and watching how the apes are dealing with deforestation.

9. Saving the world. From authorities potting environmental violations to the EPA testing air quality, a wide range of scientists are using drones to keep tabs of the environment. NASA is even using drones to test the makeup of the ozone. Drones used for environmental monitoring is already the topic of many an academic paper, and the trend is only supposed to get more popular. Even in Italy, drones have been used to monitor illegal dumping for years.

10. Saving lives, too. A graduate student from Austria recently took life-saving equipment to the next level. Stefen Riegebauer devised a system whereby drones could deliver defibrillators to heart attack victims much faster than it would take an ambulance to get there. UAVs can prove to be an asset in time-critical situations, such as ski patrollers using beacons on small drones to search for buried avalanche victims.

11. Helping in disaster relief. “Drones don’t just end human life, they also save it,” tech journalist Matthew Harwood previously told Security Management Magazine. As extreme weather becomes increasingly severe, technology will play a critical role in monitoring and response and the Air Force, NASA, and several NGOs all agree that drones are becoming indispensable in disaster relief operations. Natural disasters and other times of emergency call for timely distribution of medication and aid. Fortunately, drones can make this more efficient. A company called Matternet is using drones to drop food and drugs right where they’re needed in remote African villages. Drones have the ability to ensure access to basic needs in places where roads become impassable in rainy seasons, or where they might not exist at all.

12. Getting into the sports action. Not only is it entertaining to watch games from above, it also can provide coaches a unique and valuable perspective on how their players are doing. Sports teams are already doing just that, using the UAVs to develop everything from game strategy to analyzing athlete performance. Drones have even made an appearance at the Olympics, where they were used to film ski and snowboarding events in Sochi.

13. Fighting crime in the neighborhood. Police departments across the country are buying drones that they can use for surveillance and other protection-related activities. Even the FBI is using them.

14. Inspecting oil rigs. Offshore oil rigs are notoriously tough to maintain, which as we know can be potentially dangerous. Given their ability to fly into hard-to-reach places, UAVs are able to better monitor oil fields and pipelines, which can be vast and tough for a human to track.

15. Creating art. Graffiti artist KATSU recently devised abstract paintings using drones with spray cans.

16. We’re going to finish the article, but first let us take a selfie drone…

17. Delivering pizza: Domino’s Pizza recently turned some heads and opened up some eyes when they posted a video of a drone delivering a pizza. The idea was that drones could get the pizza to your house faster so it would be hotter and more delicious.

18. Delivering other things, too. The easiest way to order the shopping is to simply load up a shopping app for next-day delivery, but drones mean you could end up having items the same day. That brings us back to Amazon and its plan to deliver your purchases with drones. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says, “It will work and it will happen, and it’s gonna be a lot of fun.” UPS followed suit this week and revealed that they, too, were working on a drone delivery system. Will it work? China has already gotten into the drone-delivery game with  Shenzhen-based courier service, SF Express.

So, as you can see, as drones continue to become more affordable, accessible and easier to use, we can expect a future that’ll be both autonomous and airborne.

Chip Design Mag goes 1:1 with Jacko Wilbrink

ARM recently announced that it had licensed processor and security IP to Atmel for use in devices requiring image, video and display capabilities. The license includes the ARM Cortex®-A7 processor, ARM Mali™-V500 video accelerator, Mali-DP500 display processor and ARM TrustZone® technology, which can now be integrated into a variety of wearable devices, toys and even automated factory tasks reliant on image processing.

The energy efficiency and small die area of the ARM Mali-V500 and Mali-DP500 enables full HD 1080p60 resolution capabilities on a single core, reducing the cost for price-sensitive consumer applications. They also both incorporate ARM TrustZone technology for hardware-backed content security from download to display, which is becoming more important as more mobile devices are used for such content downloads.

Following the announcement, Chip Design Mag‘s Caroline Hayes had a chance to sit down with Jacko Wilbrink, Atmel Senior Product Marketing Director, to discuss what the adoption of ARM Mali means for both parties. The interview can be found below.

CH: What existing strengthens will Atmel bring in using the Mali IP?
JW: Low power will remain an important differentiator for Atmel MPUs including those embedding Mali IPs going forward. The Mali IPs will bring smartphone and tablet experience and applications to many products including power sensitive user interface centric wearable and battery operated products.

CH: What markets will the licensed IP address, e.g. wearables?
JW: With the cost of TFT displays coming down and the demand from consumers to improve the user interface/user experience of a fast growing range of products beyond smartphones and tablets, there is a growing need for MPUs with graphical processing and video capabilities. Industrial graded products with long life support, professional documentation and support are important benefits Atmel offers over alternative multi-core ASSPs designed for smartphones and tablets.

CH: What architectural features of Mali will be used in these areas?
JW: The licensed IPs allow Atmel to scale up their MPUs in performance and functionality including 3D graphics, HD video decoding and encoding and efficient memory bandwidth usage. The multi-core Cortex-A cores offer the ability to optimize the price performance point while maximizing software reuse across an Atmel MPU platform.

CH: What benefits of the Mali architecture will be exploited initially and how?
JW: Full compliance with video and graphics standards is critical for our customers. Power efficiency, Android support and efficient memory usage and bus bandwidth optimization are important benefits offered by the Mali IPs.

CH: When will the first Mali-based devices be rolled out?
JW: The first design is planned to sample to early customers by the end of 2015.

To learn more about the collaboration, you can find the original announcement here.

Sewn open: Arduino and soft electronics

As several other recent threads on SemiWiki have pointed out, the term “wearables” is a bit amorphous right now. The most recognizable wearable endeavors so far are Google Glass, the smartwatch, and the fitness band, but these are far from the only categories of interest.

There is another area of wearable wonder beginning to get attention: clothing, which has drawn the interest of researchers, makers, and moms alike. The endgame as many see it is smart clothing: the weaving of electronics, sensors, and conventional fabrics into something called e-textiles. However, while athletes, soldiers, and other niches may get sensor-impregnated jerseys sooner, affordable clothing based on exotic advanced fabrics for most consumers may still be 20 or 30 years away by some estimates.

Right now, we have these anything-but-soft computing structures – chips, circuit boards, displays, switches – adaptable for some clothing applications. Still missing are some key elements, most notably power in the form of energy harvesting or smaller and denser batteries. The influence of water-based washing machines and their adverse effect on most electronics also looms large.

How do we cross this gap? It’s not all about advanced R&D; these types of challenges are well suited for experimentation and the imagination of makers. Several Arduino-compatible maker modules – all based on Atmel microcontrollers – have jumped in to the fray, showing how “soft electronics” can help create solutions.

Maybe I’ve built one or two too many harness assemblies using expensive, mil-spec circular connectors, but the fascinating thing to me is what makes all these boards wearable. Small size is nice, but anybody knows a project needs wiring, right? You’ll notice the large plated holes on the first several offerings: these are eyelets for conductive thread, literally intended to sew these boards to other components like fabric pushbuttons. Many projects also use snaps, similar to 9V battery connections, to disconnect boards for conventional washing of the garment.

The other side of this is the software. One of the attractive features of Arduino is the IDE, real live C-style programming simplified for the masses, with functions designed to perform I/O on the Atmel MCU. Code is edited on a PC or Mac, and compiled into a sketch and uploaded to the board. There are so many examples of code for Arduino maker modules out there available in open source, it makes it easy to find and integrate functions quickly.

If that all sounds crazy, consider the pioneer for this is Leah Buechley of the MIT Media Lab, one of the thought leaders of the maker movement and an expert on e-textiles. She is the brain behind the LilyPad, the original 2” diameter Arduino wearable circa 2007 commercialized through SparkFun, with the most recent version featuring the ATmega32u4 and native USB.

Adafruit took the next steps with two wearable boards.FLORA is slightly smaller than the LilyPad and retains the same familiar circular profile and ATmega32u4 MCU.GEMMA goes even smaller, 1.1” in diameter, packing an ATtiny85 on board with a USB connection for easy development.

Not to be outdone by circles, squares and rectangles are still in the mix.SquareWear 2.0 comes in two versions, the 1.7” square variant with a coin cell socket onboard, both including the ATmega328 MCU with simulated USB, high current MOSFET ports, a light sensor, and a temperature sensor. Seeed grabbed the ATmega32u4 and designed it into the Xadow, a tiny 1” x 0.8” expandable unit with integrated flat cable connectors for daisy chaining.

These aren’t just toys for creating flashing LEDs; there is no shortage of sensors and connectivity, including displays, GPS, Bluetooth, and more compatible with these wearable maker modules. Their popularity is growing: Becky Stern of Adafruit claims there are over 10,000 units of FLORA shipped so far, and they are the darlings of maker faire fashion shows and hackathons.

Besides the upside for makers, maybe this sewing angle will finally allow us to explain electronics to our moms, after all. Until we get to the fulfilled flexible future of e-textiles and more advanced technology, the conductive thread of soft electronics will stitch together creative ideas using somewhat familiar tiny modules with today’s microcontrollers.

This post has been republished with permission from SemiWiki.com, where Don Dingee is a featured blogger. It first appeared there on May 21, 2014.

Exploring the Internet of Things and wearable tech market

Earlier this year, my wife and I drove to Southern California in search of information on the wearable computing market. After stops in Irvine, San Diego, and some play time in La Jolla we returned in time for the CASPA Symposium: “The Wearable Future: Moving Beyond the Hype; the Search for the Holy Grail and Practical Use Cases.” CASPA is the Chinese American Semiconductor Professionals Association and their Spring Symposium was at the Intel HQ Auditorium in Santa Clara with a standing room only crowd.

The big attraction for me was the keynote speaker Dr. Reza Kazerounian, SVP & GM, Microcontroller Business Unit of Atmel. I originally ran across his name during my research for “A Brief History of STmicroelectronics” (the piece I did last week) as he was CEO of ST Americas from 2000 to 2009. It was truly an honor to hear Dr. Reza Kazerounian speak.

“The Internet of Things (IoT) is opening up fresh horizons for a new generation of intelligent systems that leverage contextual computing and sensing platforms, creating new markets. One of these platforms is the wearable category of devices, where the combination of sensors using low-power sensor fusion platforms, and short-range wireless connectivity, are giving rise to a variety of exciting end markets. From self-quantification to a variety of location-based applications, to remote health monitoring, wearables are becoming the harbinger for a whole host of services. With the right set of biometric sensors combined with local fast data analytics, wearables have the potential to revolutionize the health care industry. These devices can provide real-time data and contextual information along with all the health care requirements, improving the quality of care, and lowering the overall cost of care. This discussion will review the underlying technologies needed to make the “always-on health care revolution” happen, and explore how the future of medicine is being shaped by wearable devices.”

Contextual computing is the key term here and, yes, I had to look it up. The application I’m most interested in, besides fitness, is security. I want my smartphone to know it is me holding it by my movements, voice, and usage. I remember back when my credit card kept getting security flagged when I started traveling internationally. Once Visa profiled my usage it never happened again. As the smartphone takes over our financial lives, security will be even more critical, absolutely.

There are three key components to wearable market silicon: Low power, low cost, and low area. Billions of these devices will be deployed over the next 10 years so the market will by far exceed smartphones. The wearable market will be very fragmented which opens up opportunities for entrepreneurs around the world. In fact, Dr. Kazerounian predicted that 15% of those devices will come from companies that are less than 3 years old to which I agree wholeheartedly.

One of the big challenges is low power connectivity. For now these devices will be talking to our smartphones and that means ultra-low power connectivity. Coincidentally, Atmel recently announced a new SmartConnect family that combines Atmel’s ultra-low power MCUs with its wireless solutions and complementary software into a single package:

“Ultra-low power wireless connectivity is critical for embedded applications in the era of the Internet of Things,” said Reza Kazerounian, Sr. Vice President and General Manager, Microcontroller Business Unit, Atmel Corporation. “Atmel’s SmartConnect technology is about simplifying the use of embedded wireless connectivity technologies and enabling users to accelerate their time-to-market. This simplicity allows all players to participate in the IoT market, fueling the innovation needed to accelerate adoption.”

Celebrating their 30th year, Atmel is an IoT market leader with an interesting history that you can read about it here. 

This post has been republished with permission from SemiWiki.com, where Daniel Nenni is a featured blogger. It first appeared there on Marcn 9, 2014.

What will smartphones look like in 2020?

Thanks to Moore’s Law, electronic devices are increasingly packed with more power and functionality, improving our life qualities with more convenience, productivity, and entertainment. Just to put things in perspective, Steve Cichon of Trending Buffalo shows that an iPhone (assuming an iPhone 5S at the beginning of 2014, when his blog was written) can replace $3,054.82 worth of electronics sold in Radio Shack in 1991, according to a flyer post in The Buffalo News.

“It’s nothing new, but it’s a great example of the technology of only two decades ago now replaced by the 3.95 ounce bundle of plastic, glass, and processors in our pockets,” says Steve Cichon.

As cool as we think our smartphones are today, I dare to say that two decades later by 2035, when people compare their personal electronics (assuming they don’t use the term “smartphones” anymore!) against the current smartphone features, they would be amazed by how big, heavy and slow these electronics are today. If you still don’t get what I mean, take a look at this 1991 Sony Walkman Commercial, and try to recall how cool the Walkman was in 1991.

While I certainly do not have the crystal ball that tells me what kind of personal electronic devices people will be using by 2035, I would like to make a few guesses of what smartphones would look like in just 5 years, say 2020.

User Interface

I believe touchscreen [with touchscreen controllers] will still be the main user interface for smartphones by 2020. While Generation Z are called “digital natives,” I think kids who are born after Generation Z would be “touch natives.” Toddlers and young children playing with iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad today will attempt to touch all display interfaces as their way of interacting with electronics in the coming years. I also believe smartphone interfaces would expand beyond just touch, and there are two possible expansions within five years: gesture controls and voice commands.

Gesture control refers to hand or facial interactions with the smartphone.  Samsung’s Galaxy S4 (with Air View) and Amazon’s Fire Phone (with 4 corner cameras) made interesting attempts for enabling hand and facial gesture recognition, but unfortunately, these features were not very successfully adopted by consumers because they were hard to learn, limited by hardware capabilities, and unreliable or inconsistent to use. But smartphone OEMs will continue improve their designs, and smartphones will eventually be capable of reliably recognize our intentions by tracking our hand or eyeball motions, or facial expressions.

Voice command is widely popular today, but will become a lot more useful in five years. Think of Apple’s Siri, Google’s Google Now and Microsoft’s Cortana, as cloud computing becomes more artificial intelligent with more data and computational power, they will become more dependable for average consumers to adapt. I hope that by 2020, my daily commutes with Apple’s Siri will no longer be worse than talking to my 2-year old son — Siri will help me change FM radio channels or launch a Podcast via Carplay in my dashboard. I will also be able to ask Google Now to order a pizza for me (topped with bacon, pepperoni and sausage, of course) without directly talking to the pizza-shop guy. Google Now will tell me when the pizza might arrive (based on the traffic congestion conditions), and open the door for me through my Nest, which as a Bluetooth connection to my front door’s electronic lock.

Integration

Needless to say, smartphones will be further integrated come the year 2020. Smartphone integration will follow a much similar path as the PC’s integration, except it will take place A LOT faster. Integration doesn’t always mean electronic components will disappear; rather, it can also mean that more hardware performance is integrated into the device. Today’s leading smartphones are packed with a Quad- or Octa-core Application Processor, running between 1.3 to 2.5GHz. By 2020, I’m guessing that smartphone CPUs will be 8 to 16-cores, running between 2.5-4.0 GHz range, (they probably will eat today’s Intel Core i7, designed for high-performance PCs, for lunch.)with 8-10GB RAM and 500-750 GB of storage.

I also believe smartphones will integrate more hardware components for better “context-awareness.” Today’s leading smartphones are easily packed with 10 sensors — gyro, ambient light, accelerometer, barometer, hall sensor, finger scanner, heart rate monitor, among a number of others. I think more microphones (today’s camera usually has at least two microphones) and cameras (again, at least two today) will be packed into the devices to enable improved awareness — 4, 6 or even 8 microphones and cameras are quite possible by 2020. For instance, having multiple microphones enables listening from different positions inside the phone and at different frequencies (i.e. not only voice commands); in addition, it will allow the smartphone to determine its location, its surroundings (whether inside or out) how far it is away from the voice command and even how to improve noise cancellation. Also, having multiple cameras will allow the device to better track facial expressions (Amazon’s Fire Phone is a good example), to capture better 3D and panorama images, or to refocus photos by post-processing (hTC One M8 is a good example).

Further, component-level integration will continue to happen. With increasing applications processor power, the A/P will be able to take over many digital processing from discrete components inside the phone, although I think Sensor Hub will continue to drive low-power, context-awareness tasks while the A/P sleeps.

Display Technology

Do you envision 4K displays (i.e.3840 x 2160) on your smartphone? Today, Apple’s “Retina Display” in the iPhone 5S offers a 326 pixel-per-inch, and many new smartphone displays exceed that pixel density. Smartphone displays are increasing in sizes, moving from 3.2″ and 4″ just a few years ago to 4.7″, 5.2″, 5.5″ and even 6.4”. As the screen sizes increase, as will the display resolution, while keeping the high PPI density.

I think both LCD and AMOLED displays will continue to exist in 2020, as both technologies have their advantages and disadvantages for smartphone applications. From a consumer perspective, I would expect both types of displays to improve on resolution, color accuracy (for example, Xiaomi’s latest Mi4 display has a color gamut covering 84% of the NTSC range, and that’s even better than Apple’s iPhone 5S display), power consumption and thinner assembly allowing for slimmer industrial design.

As smartphones with 2K displays be introduced by the end of 2014, it isn’t unreasonable to say that 4K displays would be used in smartphones, perhaps by or even before 2020.  However, everything has a cost, and the extra pixels that our human eye cannot resolve will consume power from the graphic engine. Would you prefer to trade off some pixel densities with longer battery life? Personally, I think we do not need a 4K smartphone screen. (And yet, I may laugh at myself saying this when we look back five years from now.)

Battery Technology

The thirst for more power is always there. With increased processing capabilities, context-awareness and better display technologies, we can only assume that future smartphones will require more power than what they are carrying today. Today’s top-tier smartphones can package a battery around 3000 mAh. That’s plenty of juice for a day, but consumers always crave for longer battery life or more powerful smartphones with longer video streaming time. Luckily, research on new battery technologies have been increased, thanks to the explosion of portable electronics. I believe there are two types of technologies that will be available and improve our smartphone experiences by 2020:

Battery with higher density: Forbes recently reported that a group of researchers at Stanford University designed a new solution to increase the capacity of existing battery technology by 400%. This is just one of the promising researches we’ve seen in recent years that could one day be deployed for mass production in just a few years. For the same size of battery that lasts for a day of use in 2014, we can expect that smartphones will last for a week without charging by 2020. On the other hand, smartphone OEMs can also select to use a smaller size battery in the smartphone, and in exchange, use the extra room inside the smartphone to integrate other components and features.

Battery with rapid charging capabilities: A gadget-lover’s dream is to get a full-charge of their smartphones within 5 minutes of charging. Today, UNU’s Ultrapak battery pack can deliver a full charge to devices after just 15 minutes of charging itself up. This isn’t to say the technology is ready for smartphone integration, due to various reasons; however, we’re seeing smartphones adopting rapid charging technologies today (such as Oppo’s Find 7) and we should expect that smartphones will have a much shorter charge time thanks to various rapid-charging standards, such as Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0. Several smartphone models have adopted this standard, including Xiaomi’s Mi3, Mi4, Samsung Galaxy S5 and hTC One M8.

Smartphone Camera

Last but certainly not least, I think smartphone cameras will certainly undergo many improvements by 2020. In fact, the smartphone camera performance is one of the features driving smartphone sales. A safe and simple prediction is that camera’s pixel density would continue to increase as CMOS sensor technology advances. Today, Microsoft’s Lumia 1020 has 41 megapixels, yet I don’t see an average consumer needing that many pixels even by 2020. Personally, I would be very happy with a camera that offers 15-20 megapixel — good photographers understand that pixel isn’t the only determining factor for a good camera, as it is only one of the key aspects.

I am not expecting the camera in a smartphone is capable of optical zooming. Instead, I’d much rather have a smartphone that’s light and portable. In fact, today’s smartphone cameras are pretty good by themselves, but there are always improvements can be made. I think the iPhone 5S cameras can be better with image stabilization, the Galaxy S4 camera can be better with faster start-up and better low-light sensitivity, and the hTC One M8 camera can be designed better with more pixels and improved dynamic contrasting.

Here is a my wishlist for a smartphone camera that I would carry around in 2020, and it’s perhaps not the “2020 Edition of Lumia 1020” camera:

• 20 megapixel with Image Stabilization, perhaps a wide, f/1.0 aperture
• HDR, Panorama view
• Excellent white balance and color accuracy
• Excellent low-light sensitivity
• Full manual control
• Extremely short start-up latency, and fast and accurate auto-focus
• 4K video recording @ 120fps (with simultaneous image recording)

I may not be a fortune teller, but there you go… that’s my prediction for what a smartphone will look like in the year 2020. Would you be interested in spending your hard-earned dough in 2020 for a smartphone with the above spec? Everyone has an opinion on what the future entails, and my idea of a smartphone five years from now are as good as those of the readers of this blog. I think we would all agree that the advancements in technology will continue to improve the quality of lives. As smartphones become more personal and depend ended upon, we’ll all reap the benefits from the smartphone evolution.