Will 5G be lethal? Peruse a certain kind of website these days and you’ll find warnings about the lethality of RF transmissions in the frequency ranges slated for 5G networks. One site quotes Devra Davis, director of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the U.S. National Research Council, who warns that our sweat…

Everything you thought you knew about IoT security is wrong Listen to the advice being given for securing IoT devices and you are likely to be told that the level of security should be scaled to meet the probable threats. Internet-connected home thermostats, for example, should be designed to prevent compromise by hobbyists and serious…

Now or later? No time for time-of-use energy savings One of the big justifications for smart home electronics and internet-of-things pipedreams is a concept called time-of-use electricity billing. Long used for industrial concerns, the plan is to bring TOU billing to households, so they’ll be charged more for electricity they use during periods of peak…

Don’t let the LED blue light blues get you down TAKE A LOOK at some of the websites devoted to alternative medicine and you’ll likely come across headlines like, “The Dangers of LED & Blue Lights Will Blow Your Mind!” or, “LEDs: The Blue Light Risk,” or “Artificial lighting and the blue light hazard.” These…

Connecting the car is the easy part At the annual conference of the Society of Automotive Engineers, no small number of technical papers cover issues surrounding driver interactions with features on the car dashboard. Touchscreens in particular are a hot topic. You can find SAE papers with impressive-sounding titles such as, Touch Interactive Display Systems:…

Will high test instrument costs keep the next Steve Wozniak out of the tech business? Back in the heyday of personal computing, it was possible to do state-of-the-art work without making a big investment in test equipment. To see what I mean, consider the development of the first 5.25-in. floppy disk drive for the Apple…

Hiring hint: Look for soft skills in young engineers Do schools teach young engineers the right skills? It is easy to find a lot of opinions on that subject from academics. It is more difficult to find assessments from experienced engineers who actually work with new grads. That’s why the comments of Richard Lukaszewski are…

The down side of free samples If you’ve had hassles trying to get component samples for a project, you can thank the efforts of a few enterprising students for making your life more complicated. Here’s a microcosm of what has happened with sample parts: The folks at Texas Instruments used to have a liberal policy…

  The danger of treating autonomous vehicle control as a solved problem A panelist made an interesting comment during the recently concluded TU-Automotive connected car conference near Detroit. It happened during one of the many sessions devoted to software infrastructure and connected services. “In Silicon Valley, autonomous vehicle control and driving is viewed as a…

SEEN A GHOST? BLAME ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS WE’D like to think that the average viewer who tunes into a TV show on the SciFy channel called Ghost Hunters might get a laugh out watching investigators prowl around places that are reported to be haunted. But the show participants seem to be completely serious and unconcerned about…

In this issue: 2 The tough problems in power design 8 Teardown: Inside Ikea’s smart LED bulb 28 The basics of thermistors in thermal management 43 How to be smart when selecting a fan for forced air cooling   The tough problems in power design AN ANNUAL RITUAL takes place in the upper echelons of…

In this issue: 22 Energy efficiency in LLC resonant conversion topologies 37 Better thermal design means better efficiency   Energy efficient doesn’t mean cost efficient I once had a root cellar illuminated by a single incandescent light bulb, the kind of bulb that is being phased out thanks to energy efficiency regulations. I would use…

You’d have to say there are a lot of used oscilloscopes floating around. A quick search on eBay recently turned up 16,355 listings for used scopes. A Craigslist search for scopes near me in Cleveland, Ohio found 16 instruments on offer, interesting in that Cleveland is not exactly a capital of high-tech. One wonders if…

In this issue: 8 Teardown: What’s inside a Phillips Sonicare electric toothbrush A novel ac rectification and coil-driving scheme may characterize the electronics found 14 Basics of designing with permanent magnets It can be tricky to correctly specify magnetic materials for power circuits and actuators. 26 Test Instruments help tame power factor and signal integrity…

The energy efficiency scam by Leland Teschler, Executive Editor Dan Carnovale sounds extremely pissed off. He says he has three gizmos on his work bench right now that are all marketed as devices that can be hooked onto power lines to save energy. And, he claims, “All of them are garbage.” Carnovale manages the Eaton…

What’s Inside 16. The circuit protection for wearables and the IoT Circuit protection technologies and board layout strategies help promote safety, reliability and connectivity.22. The IoT and connected highways Dedicated short-range communication techniques could usher in connected cars and safer driving.42. A case of IoT fatigue? Market studies show consumers are less enthusiastic about connected…

No nostalgia for old test instruments The media constantly reminds us that the capabilities we can get in our laptop computers and PCs have grown exponentially over the past few decades. Though it has gotten much less press, the same phenomenon applies to electronic test instruments. For evidence, consider the Heathkit Model 10-4205 oscilloscope I…

In this issue: • Wireless charging for your coffee maker • How to spec inductive coils • How to sniff out EMC problems • Analyzing millimeter frequencies with external harmonic mixing • Cellular amps boost mobile and M2M applications • Better materials for better antennas • Testing wireless devices for electromagnetic compatibility • Basics of…

In this issue: • Power converters with GaN • How to evaluate cutting edge power semiconductors • Working with Wirewounds • Cool calculations – Thermal analysis • Choking off EMI/RFI in off-line switchers • Small batteries for wireless devices • Selecting power supply connector pins