Finally got a drone!
Stephane Boucher finally bought a DJI Phantom 4 and found it does more than boost his video production value, it’s also hugely fun to fly. He used the drone for an aerial shot at SEGGER’s anniversary and for a beach project where kids drew a turtle while a separate camera captured a side timelapse. The post highlights creative shot combinations and a reminder to fly where it is legal.
Feedback Controllers - Making Hardware with Firmware. Part 2. Ideal Model Examples
An engineer's guide to building ideal continuous-time models for hardware emulation, using TINA Spice, MATLAB and Simulink to validate controller and circuit behavior. The article shows how a passive R-C network can be emulated by an amplifier, a current measurement and a summer, with Spice, MATLAB and Simulink producing coincident Bode responses. Small phase differences between MATLAB and Simulink are noted, and sampled-data issues are slated for the next installment.
Feedback Controllers - Making Hardware with Firmware. Part I. Introduction
This first post kicks off a series on using DSP and feedback control with mixed-signal electronics and FPGAs to emulate two-terminal circuits and create low latency controllers. It frames circuit emulation as a feedback problem, highlights latency as the key practical constraint, and outlines the planned evaluation hardware, target devices, and software tools that will be used in later MATLAB/Simulink and FPGA work.
SEGGER's 25th Anniversary Video
Stephane Boucher spent a week at SEGGER's headquarters and distilled that visit into a tight, two-minute 25th anniversary video. The post highlights rising production value, thanks to softbox lighting and a two-camera setup that allows seamless wide-to-tight cuts and emotional close-ups. Stephane invites readers to watch full screen, leave feedback and thumbs-up on YouTube, and suggests future coverage like product launches or companies with happy engineers.
Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated, Part II: libgf2 and Primitive Polynomials
Jason Sachs digs into practical finite-field arithmetic for LFSRs, using his libgf2 Python library as the hands-on guide. He shows how to test whether a polynomial is primitive, why that matters for maximal-length sequences, and how the library implements addition, multiplication, exponentiation, and shifts over GF(2). The post is both a math refresher and a code walkthrough for engineers who want to compute with LFSRs instead of just talk about them.
Went 280km/h (174mph) in a Porsche Panamera in Germany!
A week at SEGGER’s headquarters in Germany turned into more than a video shoot, it became a look inside a company that clearly runs on passion, trust, and a lot of teamwork. Stephane Boucher also gets an unforgettable autobahn ride in a Porsche Panamera, hitting 280 km/h along the way. Between interviews, B-roll, and a 25th anniversary celebration, he comes away impressed by both the people and the pace.
Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated, Part I: Ex-Pralite Monks and Finite Fields
Jason Sachs demystifies linear feedback shift registers with a practical, bitwise view and the algebra that explains why they work. Readable examples compare Fibonacci and Galois implementations, show a simple software implementation, and reveal the correspondence between N-bit Galois LFSRs and GF(2^N) so you can pick taps and reason about maximal-length pseudorandom sequences.
Going back to Germany!
A conference conversation turned into a return trip to Germany for Stephane Boucher, this time to visit SEGGER’s headquarters in Dusseldorf and produce videos. The post shares how a chance introduction at ESC Boston led to the invitation, and it teases coverage from SEGGER’s 25th anniversary celebration. He also invites local tips and customer questions before the trip.
ESC Boston's Videos are Now Up
Stephane Boucher shares the videos he produced from ESC Boston, including a short highlight montage, a booth video for DLOGIC, and full talk clips from the conference. He also reflects on what he learned shooting on the show floor, especially the challenge of getting engineers on camera. It’s a quick behind-the-scenes look at technical event videography, with a preview of his next stop in Germany.
Back from ESC Boston
Stephane nearly skipped ESC Boston, but going turned into a productive mix of networking, informal meetups, and on-the-floor filming. He captures candid encounters with speakers and vendors, learns how small shows differ from larger expos, and outlines practical follow-ups like booth highlight videos and speaker hospitality suggestions. The post is an encouraging read for engineers weighing the value of regional conferences and DIY event coverage.
Someday We’ll Find It, The Kelvin Connection
Low-ohm measurements will fool your multimeter unless you use Kelvin connections. Jason Sachs walks through four-wire sensing using a current-limited supply and two DMMs, explains thermoelectric and connector-related errors, and shows why schematics and PCB layout must reflect Kelvin sense pads to avoid subtle measurement and circuit problems.
Lost Secrets of the H-Bridge, Part III: Practical Issues of Inductor and Capacitor Ripple Current
Jason Sachs cuts through the math to show what ripple current actually does to H-bridge hardware. He explains why peak current is the limiting factor for inductors, why capacitor ESR usually dominates DC-link voltage ripple, and how center-aligned PWM and duty selection reduce harmonics and ripple. Read this if you want practical rules of thumb and calculation templates for real power-electronics designs.
The DSP Online Conference - Right Around the Corner!
Three months after a forum post, Stephane Boucher and Jacob Beningo pulled together the DSP Online Conference, a two-day virtual event featuring 14 talks from leading DSP experts. Most sessions are 30 to 60 minutes with a 30-minute Zoom Q&A, while extended deep dives from speakers like fred harris are included. Registered attendees get one-year on-demand access, and free or reduced passes are available.
Recruiting New Bloggers!
EmbeddedRelated is expanding its blogging team, and Stephane Boucher is inviting engineers, students, hobbyists, and researchers to contribute. He points to the success of earlier contributors and says the community has already read their articles more than 1,250,000 times. If you have knowledge to share, this post explains how to pitch a topic and get started.
Going back to Germany!
A conference conversation turned into a return trip to Germany for Stephane Boucher, this time to visit SEGGER’s headquarters in Dusseldorf and produce videos. The post shares how a chance introduction at ESC Boston led to the invitation, and it teases coverage from SEGGER’s 25th anniversary celebration. He also invites local tips and customer questions before the trip.
Feedback Controllers - Making Hardware with Firmware. Part 7. Turbo-charged DSP Oscillators
You can extract high-quality, high-sample-rate sine waves from FPGAs even when floating-point units are constrained by latency. This article compares Intel's NCO IP (multiplier option) with floating-point recursive biquads on Cyclone V and Cyclone 10 GX, and explains a boosted-sample-rate technique that pushes performance toward a 48Msps DAC target. Practical measurement results, spectral data, and resource/cost trade-offs are highlighted.
Isolated Sigma-Delta Modulators, Rah Rah Rah!
Analog isolation can blow up DAQ budgets, but isolated sigma-delta modulators let you send a single 1-bit stream and a clock across the barrier, keeping costs down. Jason walks through Avago, TI, and Analog Devices parts, explains sigma-delta noise shaping in plain terms, and calls out the real engineering work: converting a 10–20 MHz bitstream into usable samples with sinc/CIC decimators or FPGA filtering.
Optimizing Optoisolators, and Other Stories of Making Do With Less
Jason Sachs digs into how to squeeze speed and reliability from low-cost optoisolators, showing practical tweaks that often outperform default datasheet usage. He mixes hands-on circuits — using 4N35 base-emitter resistors, Schottky clamps, input speedup caps, and output buffering — with transistor-switching theory and a cautionary production story to show when to optimize and when to splurge on pricier isolators.
Back from ESC Boston
Stephane nearly skipped ESC Boston, but going turned into a productive mix of networking, informal meetups, and on-the-floor filming. He captures candid encounters with speakers and vendors, learns how small shows differ from larger expos, and outlines practical follow-ups like booth highlight videos and speaker hospitality suggestions. The post is an encouraging read for engineers weighing the value of regional conferences and DIY event coverage.
Sensors Expo - Trip Report & My Best Video Yet!
Stephane Boucher turns a first-time Sensors Expo visit into a fun travelogue and a polished conference highlights video. He mixes candid trip anecdotes from Moncton to San Jose, electric-scooter discoveries, Santa Cruz detours, Airbnb tips, and on-the-floor expo footage. The post culminates in what he calls his best highlights reel yet, plus a follow-up video focused on embedded and IoT.
First-Order Systems: The Happy Family
Jason Sachs takes the modest topic of first-order systems and makes it useful, showing how RC filters behave in both time and frequency domains and why they all share the same shape. He steps through step, ramp, and sinusoidal responses, explains poles, zeros, and Bode behavior, and uses Python plots to make tracking error and the role of tau easy to visualize.
Went 280km/h (174mph) in a Porsche Panamera in Germany!
A week at SEGGER’s headquarters in Germany turned into more than a video shoot, it became a look inside a company that clearly runs on passion, trust, and a lot of teamwork. Stephane Boucher also gets an unforgettable autobahn ride in a Porsche Panamera, hitting 280 km/h along the way. Between interviews, B-roll, and a 25th anniversary celebration, he comes away impressed by both the people and the pace.
Real-time clocks: Does anybody really know what time it is?
Most RTC chips still expose calendar fields rather than seconds-since-epoch, forcing embedded engineers to write ugly conversion code. Jason Sachs makes the case for offset encoding, subseconds, and an explicit snapshot feature to simplify interval math, raise precision, and avoid rare timing bugs. Read this practical take on RTC trade-offs and a short wishlist for chip makers.
Spread the Word and Run a Chance to Win a Bundle of Goodies from Embedded World
EmbeddedRelated is turning Embedded World into a live-streaming experiment, and the more engineers help spread the word, the better the coverage could get. Stephane Boucher is asking readers to follow updates on Twitter and LinkedIn, where every like, share, or repost adds another chance to win a box of vendor goodies. The prize mix includes t-shirts, dev kits, gadgets, and plenty of pens.
The DSP Online Conference - Right Around the Corner!
Three months after a forum post, Stephane Boucher and Jacob Beningo pulled together the DSP Online Conference, a two-day virtual event featuring 14 talks from leading DSP experts. Most sessions are 30 to 60 minutes with a 30-minute Zoom Q&A, while extended deep dives from speakers like fred harris are included. Registered attendees get one-year on-demand access, and free or reduced passes are available.
10 More (Obscure) Circuit Components You Should Know
Jason Sachs follows up his earlier primer with ten more underused but practical parts that can simplify embedded hardware designs. From MOSFET-based ideal diode controllers that eliminate diode drops to TAOS light-to-frequency sensors that expand dynamic range, the post explains what each component does, when to choose it, and real-world tradeoffs learned from field use. Ideal for engineers looking to broaden their parts toolbox.
Two jobs
Stephane Boucher explains why EmbeddedRelated went quiet for a few months after a volunteer project demanded more of his time. He and his wife organized a clown-gymnastics show with 15 kids, sold more than 700 of 800 tickets, and raised $2,700 for the Tree of Hope. Now the shows are done and he plans to resume regular posting with new site features.
Lost Secrets of the H-Bridge, Part II: Ripple Current in the DC Link Capacitor
DC link capacitor ripple often determines capacitor life, yet the H-bridge waveform has a lot more structure than you might expect. Jason Sachs separates capacitor current into ramp and pulse components, derives closed-form peak and RMS expressions for edge and center PWM, and shows harmonic amplitudes. The post includes Python simulation so you can visualize the waveforms and apply the formulas to capacitor selection and EMI analysis.
10 Items of Test Equipment You Should Know
Jason Sachs walks through ten often-overlooked pieces of test gear that make debugging embedded hardware faster, safer, and more precise. From clamp-on and Rogowski current probes to spring-tip probes, IC test clips, and compact DAQ systems, each tool targets a common bench frustration. Practical buying notes and use cases help you choose tools that save time and reduce guesswork.
Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated, Part II: libgf2 and Primitive Polynomials
Jason Sachs digs into practical finite-field arithmetic for LFSRs, using his libgf2 Python library as the hands-on guide. He shows how to test whether a polynomial is primitive, why that matters for maximal-length sequences, and how the library implements addition, multiplication, exponentiation, and shifts over GF(2). The post is both a math refresher and a code walkthrough for engineers who want to compute with LFSRs instead of just talk about them.
