Contents

Colophon
Who's who at Elektor magazine.

Elektor Foundation Awards 2010

News & New Products
A monthly roundup of all the latest in electronics land.

Energy from the Internet, Water and ICs
We discovered some unexpected sources of electrical energy you, too, might want to tap into to help save the planet.

OBD2 Mini Simulator
A chicken and egg problem ended: this simulator will tell for sure if your OBD analyser is working properly — with no car around.

Wireless Electricity meets RFID
An end to the myth held up by professionals saying you can't make your own RFID readers, personalized tags, or an RFID system to transfer energy.

High Speed Flash Trigger
Here's how the Elektor ATM18 board takes control of ultra-fast photo flashing for events requiring high time resolution.

DMX512 Control Interface
Based on a Cypress PSoC powerhouse this DMX512 controller has a mass of functionality and a sleek user interface, too.

Two USB scopes and one not so USB
USB oscilloscopes are all the rage.
This month E-LABs examined three instruments, one low cost, one high end, and one with no USB and no PC connected — yes, it's stand alone!

Audio teamwork
E-LABs were called in to provide assistance with distortion measurements on a few high-spec audio amplifiers.
Some quirky results!

Measuring for Free
Why buy expensive test equipment if your PC, a good soundcard and some free software are just fine for many measurements in the audio frequency range?

LiPo AutoBalancer
Here we get to grips with 2s, 3s and 4s Lithium Polymer battery packs and the need to balance their charging process.

Intersceptre opens doors (and ports!) for you
Fast, convenient prototyping of sophisticated microcontroller applications becomes a reality with this multi-platform extension board.

Starry Night
This unique celestial slide show displaysthe major constellations using an MSP430 microcontroller. Fully configurable and expandable it's sure to be a talking point.

Alternative HiFi Power Supplies
Here we examine if those dirt cheap switch-mode power supplies from China etc. are any good for serious audio applications.

My Friend the Accelerometer
Stick an accelerometer device onto a loudspeaker cone, add a suitable preamplifier and you have a tool of the trade for advanced acoustic measurements. Ed Simon explains.

Design Tip: Mini dice
A PIC and a few LEDs make a dice circuit that does really well in terms of randomness.

Hexadoku
Our monthly puzzle with an electronics touch.

Retronics: elekterminal (1978)
Regular feature on electronics "odd & ancient". Series Editor: Jan Buiting

Coming Attractions
Next month in Elektor magazine