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Android for electronics design engineers

Reading time5 min
Views2.5K

There is a list of well-known electronics design tools for Android which can be found in every review for the last 10 years: “Electrodoc”, “Every Circuit”, “Droid Tesla”, “Electronics Toolbox”, “RF & Microwave Toolbox” and so on. Also, there is a lot of trash on the market that turns finding a good tool into a quest.

This short review is about an unknown but cool tool “Circuit Calculator” working on Android devices and intended for professional electronics designers.

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How much does a startup in the 3D printing industry differ from others, and how to present a project to the investors

Reading time7 min
Views448

3D printing startups often struggle. Despite growing demands and optimistic predictions, the pandemic negatively affected the industry: the material shortage, logistical problems, lockdowns and factory shutdowns form the conditions that are far from perfect. But new interesting ideas still emerge and it seems that the pandemic is far from being the main problem for startups. 

Technically, each of those businesses goes through similar stages: from searching for ideas and like-minded people to attracting investors and scaling up. But this article will not cover the product release but will rather be focused about the things that a startup would face out of its ‘garage’.

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Josef Prusa Team Unveiled a 3D Printer with the CoreXY Kinematics

Reading time4 min
Views1.4K

This is a moment when Joseph Prusa, a godfather of 3D printers with the kinematics named after him, released a 3D printer with a CoreXY kinematics. But his team isn’t planning to move away from an older solution. In this article we will talk about what the Original Prusa XL will look like, as can be seen in the pictures from the Formnext 2021 exhibition. 

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Full motion video with digital audio on the classic 8-bit game console

Reading time13 min
Views1.6K

Back in 2016 an United States based music composer and performer Sergio Elisondo released an one-man band music album A Winner Is You (know your meme), with multi-instrumental cover versions of tunes from numerous memorable classic NES games. A special feature of this release has been its version released in the NES cartridge format that would run on a classic unmodified console and play digitized audio of the full album, instead of the typical chiptune sound you would expect to come from this humble console. I was involved with the software development part of this project.

This year Sergio makes a return with a brand new music release. This time it is all original music album You Are Error, heavily influenced with the video game music aesthetics. It also comes with a special extra. This time we have raised the stakes, and a new NES cartridge release includes not only the digitized audio, but full motion videos for each song, done in the silhouette cutout style similar to the famous Bad Apple video. Yet again, this project is crowdfunded via Kickstarter. It already got the asked amount in a mere 7 hours, but there is still a little time to jump on the bandwagon and get yourself a copy. In the meantime I would like to share an insight on the technical side of both projects.

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SEPIC-Ćuk split-rail converter average model

Reading time4 min
Views1.8K

SEPIC-Ćuk split-rail converter can be used to make positive and negative supplies from a single input voltage for relatively well-matched loads like operational amplifiers.

Transient models are time consuming. Average models reduce modeling time drastically.

The PWM switch average models for current- and voltage-mode are described in details in Christophe Basso’s book “Switch-Mode Power Supplies, Second Edition: SPICE Simulations and Practical Designs”. Using of these models for SEPIC and Ćuk converters is also shown.

This text shows how to use the PWM switch average model to design a split-rail SEPIC-Ćuk converter.

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Controlling Brushless Motors using Raspberry PI

Reading time5 min
Views3.7K

In this video tutorial, we will control a pair of brushless motors from a Raspberry PI computer. We will use one of the computer's USB ports to connect a network of brushless motor controllers. We will power the computer, the controllers, and the brushless motors using a single battery, similar to a autonomous vehicle design.

The first motor is an outrunner type, a kind of what you would use for a vehicle propulsion. The bigger motor comes with a quadrature encoder which means it can be used as a powerful servo.

I made a cable to power my set up. On one end, the cable has a socket for plugging the battery. The cable splits into a two parallel parts to power the controllers, and the Raspberry PI. The bottom part of the cable further splits to power a pair of brushless motor controllers.
By the way, the controllers need 7 to 60 Volts DC. I put proper connectors at the ends of the cable, so that I could just plug it into the controllers.

Servosila brushless motor controllers come in rectangular or circular form factors. The controllers have USB and CANbus ports for connecting to control computers such as Raspberry PI.

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RS485 — a standard for industrial networks. What are the main features of the transceiver microcircuit?

Reading time8 min
Views2.7K

When building a network for communication between a large number of devices, one may think: what interface to choose? Each interface has its own pros and cons that determine its application: CAN — Automotive, RS485 / RS232 — Industrial, Ethernet — Consumer Electronics / Server. What features of the transceiver microcircuit help to protect against many problems during installation and operation? How is the process of measuring and researching of transceiver microcircuits going on? New RS485 microcircuit is ready to get to market!
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Telegram bot provides time-based currency

Reading time2 min
Views8K

Many of us spend time in specialized telegram groups. The power over communication here belongs to random people with their own shortcomings. Conflict and abuse occurs regularly. Is there another way to keep order so that scam spam doesn't flourish and no one has total control over group members?

In my case, these thoughts led to the development and testing of a system that can be connected to your Telegram today.

How it works?

Gyrators

Reading time13 min
Views4K


Gyrators are impedance converters usually used to simulate inductance in circuits. Though they are rarely used in discrete electronics, they are interesting circuits looking like pole dancers in pictures. There are studies on gyrators, but still something is missing, so it is interesting to do another one.
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Meet Hamstand: a smart mobile testing hub

Reading time5 min
Views1.4K
The ITMO Accelerator continues to empower entrepreneurs. We’ve already covered some of its most successful graduates — the Laeneco staethoscope and the GoROBO robotics club. Today we’ll be discussing Hamstand — a modular hub that simplifies the process of mobile app testing. Let’s talk about how it came to be, why it’s a welcome addition to many developers’ toolkits, and what awaits the project in the near future.

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Weekend picks: A closer look at ITMO University

Reading time4 min
Views1.5K
ITMO University occupies several prominent buildings in the centre of St. Petersburg. But residents and guests alike rarely get a chance to take a look at what’s happening inside them. Articles featured in this digest will take you on a virtual tour of our labs, as well as shed some light on the work underway within our walls.

New lunar landers to be created with the help of additive manufacturing

Reading time2 min
Views1.1K
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The USA's National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has chosen three private companies to participate in the development of landing modules for the new Artemis lunar program. Among them are two enterprises that widely use 3D printing technologies in the production of rocket engines — Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX. NASA seems to approach the matter carefully and generously, financing the development of lunar manned vehicles in three competing directions at once.

Juggling work and study at ITMO University: CS edition

Reading time3 min
Views1.3K
We talked to the graduates of the Speech Information Systems MA program at ITMO about the ways our university helped jumpstart their careers. [More stories from our startups]:


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Legacy Languages still Pretty Hard to Beat

Reading time3 min
Views2K
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Evolution and development have always been the integral parts of every sector you come across. Same is the case with programming languages. Numerous up gradations and invention of entirely new languages have divided the world of programming into legacy and modern. But no matter what, legacy programming still makes the foundation of many software, web applications and AI based techniques.
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How 3D printing is used to fight the coronavirus

Reading time2 min
Views1.6K
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The Chinese company WinSun is helping in the fight against the epidemic of the coronavirus by constructing isolation wards. The company is printing modular mobile isolation wards on its self-developed 3D printers.
3D printing has proven to be a unique technology that has a plethora of various applications, such as space engineering, car industry, medicine, and construction.

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Free API Moscow Stock Exchange (MOEX) in Google Sheets

Reading time2 min
Views11K
Last year the number of private investors at Moscow Stock Exchange (MOEX) has doubled and reached 3.86 million: about 1.9 million people have opened accounts at MOEX in 2019. The Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange which specializes in trading of foreign company shares has seen its accounts increase three times from 910,000 to 3,06 million over the past year.



This means that almost 2 million newbies without any actual trading experience and lacking any specialized software for trading/position analysis have entered the market.
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Post-cyberpunk: what you need to know about the latest trends in speculative fiction

Reading time5 min
Views2.9K
Cyberpunk has become an integral part of our pop culture. Everyone is familiar with at least some works in the genre and their particular flavour of dystopian technologically advanced universes. But science fiction is always evolving. In this piece, we’ll be taking a look at cyberpunk’s successors and the futures they envision — from pan-African empires to shopping culture gone amok.

Smart house with Xiaomi on the example of a sauna

Reading time12 min
Views3.1K
There are quite a few reviews and videos on the Internet about building smart houses. There is an opinion that all this is quite expensive and troublesome in the organization, that is, in general, the fate of geeks. But progress is not standing still. Devices are becoming cheaper and more functional, and design and installation are quite simple. However, the reviews mainly focus on 1-2 examples of use, practically not covering nuances and not creating a complete picture. Therefore, in this article I want to make an overview of the finished project, demonstrate the use cases and pitfalls encountered in building a smart home with Xiaomi devices on the example of a sauna. The described ideas with small variations can also be applied to the automation of the apartment.

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Background or why all of this is necessary


For starters, a little background so that the context can be understood. In the early autumn of 2018, the sauna was finished and put into operation. The sauna is an autonomous capital structure with year-round heating and water supply.

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How to cook RTSP on your website in 2020, or why the boars will not have a chance to run away

Reading time8 min
Views45K


RTSP is a simple signaling protocol which they cannot replace with anything for many years already, and it has to be admitted that they don't try really hard.


For example, we have an IP camera that supports RTSP. Anyone who has ever tested the traffic with a Sharkwire cable will tell you that first there comes DESCRIBE, then PLAY, and then the traffic begins to pour directly via RTP or wrapped in the TCP channel for instance.

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Why 3D Printing Will Change the World?

Reading time5 min
Views1.4K
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1984, Orwell’s prophetic year of Big Brother, saw the release of the Mac which broke the idea that centralised control could ever be what it was before. That year also saw the first workable prototype for a 3D printer. Built by Charles Hull, the technology was then known as stereolithography. We know it as 3D printing, and that’s a term that covers a variety of different processes which may revolutionise all stages of the global manufacturing and distributing process. In that very science-fictional year, Hull set off a revolution that is only now seeing fruition. 3D printing continues to threaten the social and economic structures which preceded it. When we speak about 3D printing, we’re speaking of a general technique of successive printing layers to form a three-dimensional object at the end. From powder to paper to human tissue, these thin membranes are laid down like the construction of a plaster mask. From that simple concept, the 3D printer offers the reverse of Ford’s mass production revolution. Printing one item is now as cost-effective in some cases as manufacturing a thousand items in the traditional way.

The computer powers 3d printing with printable files known as STLs, guiding the printers themselves as they construct, from the ground up, plastic homunculi that would awe medieval alchemists. It’s not quite the replicator from Star Trek, but it’s in the same Galaxy Class Starship.

Our 3D printing future, however, isn’t liable to look like the utopian ideals Gene Roddenberry envisioned. Instead, we will see both positive and negative outcomes from these machines as the world finds ways to employ the emergent technology.

Guerillas in the Powdery Mist

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