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.
Launch of Youtube Channel: My First Videos - Embedded World 2017
Stephane Boucher turned his Embedded World 2017 trip into a debut YouTube series of short booth highlight videos. He walks through the steep learning curve of trade-show filming, the specific gear he bought and rented to cope with low light and noise, and the practical mistakes he plans to fix. The post lists filmed vendors and asks readers for feedback to improve future episodes.
New Comments System (please help me test it)
DSPRelated just got a practical upgrade, Stephane Boucher has released a new comments system built from his earlier forum work. It supports drag-and-drop or Insert Image uploads, MathML, TeX and ASCIImath rendered by MathJax, syntax-highlighted code via highlight.js, and in-place editing and deletion of comments. Improved email notifications alert authors and commenters to replies, and readers are invited to post test comments and report problems.
Use DPLL to Lock Digital Oscillator to 1PPS Signal
Michael Morris demonstrates a practical DPLL that locks a Direct Digital Synthesizer to a GPS 1PPS signal, achieving sub-microsecond alignment and removing reference-oscillator frequency error. The design uses a Phase-Frequency Detector for 0 degree phase lock, a multiplier-free α-filter, and a limiter to prevent saturation, and includes coast and re-lock logic plus a synthesizable Verilog reference core.
Summer of gateware is coming (again)
Wondering what gateware will come out of this summer? Christopher Felton announces MyHDL is back in Google Summer of Code and has been awarded six student slots. Projects span GEMAC, a Leros tiny processor, JPEG encoder front/backends, RISC-V tooling and HDMI+RISC-V work. Follow along for short project updates and a final summer summary.
Data Types for Control & DSP
Control engineers often default to double precision, but Tim Wescott shows that choice can waste CPU cycles on embedded targets. He separates numeric representation into floating point, integer, and fixed-point, then walks through the tradeoffs, including quantization, overflow, and performance. A concrete PID example highlights why integrator precision and ADC scaling should drive your choice of data type rather than habit.
3 Good News
Stephane Boucher reports three quick wins for the EmbeddedRelated community: two sponsors have seeded a $1,000 rewards pool, the site now serves all pages over HTTPS, and the new forums have their first active discussions. If you want a share of the sponsor-funded rewards, jump into the forums and check the Vendors Directory for opportunities. Stay tuned for more updates.
The New Forum is LIVE!
After months of hard word, I am very excited to introduce to you the new forum interface.
Here are the key features:
1- Easily add images to a post by drag & dropping the images in the editor
2- Easily attach files to a post by drag & dropping the files in the editor
3- Add latex equations to a post and they will be rendered with Mathjax (tutorial)
4- Add a code snippet and surround the code with
Running Average
This post shows a lightweight running average variant that cleans up noisy wheel-encoder timing using a shift-based divide-by-8 and a small rounding constant. The filter updates as M1 = M0 + (t0 - A0), where A0 is estimated from the previous average, so each new measurement nudges the estimate rather than immediately replacing it. It trades exact oldest-sample subtraction for low resource cost and strong noise suppression.
Ancient History
The other day I was downloading an IDE for a new (to me) OS. When I went to compile some sample code, it failed. I went onto a forum, where I was told "if you read the release notes you'd know that the peripheral libraries are in a legacy download". Well damn! Looking back at my previous versions I realized I must have done that and forgotten about it. Everything changes, and keeping up with it takes time and effort.
When I first started with microprocessors we...
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.
The Spartans
Christopher Felton walks through the Spartan6 FPGA basics, explaining CLBs, slices, and the new 6-input LUTs while comparing them to Spartan3. He ran timing-driven mappings of real gateware to show practical LUT utilization differences. The post gives a pragmatic estimate of expected LUT savings and points out where mapping results can vary depending on the design.
Feedback Controllers - Making Hardware with Firmware. Part 6. Self-Calibration Related.
This article will consider the engineering of a self-calibration & self-test capability to enable the project hardware to be configured and its basic performance evaluated and verified, ready for the development of the low-latency controller DSP firmware and closed-loop applications. Performance specifications will be documented in due course, on the project website here.
- Part 6: Self-Calibration, Measurements and Signalling (this part)
- Part 5:
Embedded World 2018 - The Interviews
Stephane Boucher brought video gear to Embedded World 2018 and teamed up with Jacob Beningo to capture concise vendor interviews that focus on real product news. The videos showcase Percepio's new Tracealyzer with a drone demo, Intrinsic ID's method for creating device-unique IDs from manufacturing variations, and SEGGER's broader toolset including embOS now certified by TÜV SÜD. Watch for short demos and expert explanations.
Spline interpolation
Markus Nentwig provides a cookbook for segmented cubic spline interpolation that turns scattered or noisy data into efficient fixed-point functions. The article shows how to build third-order polynomial segments with explicit value and slope control via basis functions, solve scaling factors by least-squares in Octave/Matlab, and export coefficients for Verilog RTL evaluation using the Horner scheme and practical fixed-point tips.
Elliptic Curve Cryptography - Security Considerations
The security of elliptic curve cryptography is determined by the elliptic curve discrete log problem. This article explains what that means. A comparison with real number logarithm and modular arithmetic gives context for why it is called a log problem.
Homebrew CPUs: Messing around with a J1
Victor Yurkovsky takes James Bowman's compact J1 stack CPU and starts hacking: he trims the ALU, replaces the barrel shifter with simpler shifts, and experiments with dual stacks and memory/IO feeding directly into the ALU. The article walks through small, practical changes that cut logic, add instructions, and boost timing on Spartan-6. It's a hands-on tour that shows how approachable homebrew CPUs can be.
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 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.
Crowdfunding Articles?
Many of you have the knowledge and talent to write technical articles that would benefit the EE community. What is missing for most of you though, and very understandably so, is the time and motivation to do it.
But what if you could make some money to compensate for your time spent on writing the article(s)? Would some of you find the motivation and make the time?
I am thinking of implementing a system/mechanism that would allow the EE community to...
Welcoming MANY New Bloggers!
A big influx of new voices just joined DSPRelated, and Stephane Boucher introduces the growing roster of contributors and their backgrounds. The post lists dozens of newly approved bloggers, highlights the range of DSP and embedded expertise they bring, and asks readers to leave constructive feedback on posts. It also explains why some applicants may not have been accepted yet and how to apply properly.
New Comments System (please help me test it)
DSPRelated just got a practical upgrade, Stephane Boucher has released a new comments system built from his earlier forum work. It supports drag-and-drop or Insert Image uploads, MathML, TeX and ASCIImath rendered by MathJax, syntax-highlighted code via highlight.js, and in-place editing and deletion of comments. Improved email notifications alert authors and commenters to replies, and readers are invited to post test comments and report problems.
How precise is my measurement?
Precision is quantifiable, not guesswork. This post walks through practical, measurement-oriented statistics you can apply to static or dynamic signals to answer the question, "How precise is my measurement?" It focuses on using multiple samples, checking distribution assumptions, and constructing confidence intervals and levels so you can trade measurement time for a desired precision.
Part 11. Using -ve Latency DSP to Cancel Unwanted Delays in Sampled-Data Filters/Controllers
Negative-latency DSP can cancel ADC, FPGA/DSP, DAC and propagation delays to deliver near-zero unwanted latency filtering. Steve Maslen explains how to split a digital filter into a simple feed gain b0 and an advanced DF3 block that produces samples one sample early, then recombine them so sampled-data delays cancel. MATLAB c2d examples, a PID case study and FPGA test-bed results show the technique is practical and proven, with active IP noted.
Half-band filter on Xilinx FPGA
Lyons Zhang shows a practical, high-throughput implementation of a symmetric systolic half-band FIR on Xilinx FPGAs using DSP48 slices. The post includes a two-channel interleaved downsample-by-2 Verilog module, pipeline mapping to DSP48, and a symmetric rounding trick to reduce the DC shift from truncation. It highlights performance-and-latency tradeoffs and gives working code you can drop into a Spartan-6 style flow.
Little to no benefit from C based HLS
Christopher shows why C-based HLS delivers little practical benefit compared with a MyHDL RTL approach, using a Vivado HLS median-filter example. He walks through the sort-network median, compares C and MyHDL implementations, and argues MyHDL is as concise while providing clearer microarchitecture control. The post emphasizes that choosing the right algorithm is the hard part, and HLS won’t replace hardware understanding.
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.
Launch of Youtube Channel: My First Videos - Embedded World 2017
Stephane Boucher turned his Embedded World 2017 trip into a debut YouTube series of short booth highlight videos. He walks through the steep learning curve of trade-show filming, the specific gear he bought and rented to cope with low light and noise, and the practical mistakes he plans to fix. The post lists filmed vendors and asks readers for feedback to improve future episodes.
Learning VHDL - Basics
Enrico Garante walks through a compact, hands-on introduction to VHDL and Xilinx ISE, using the affordable Basys2 board. The tutorial explains entity versus architecture, the IEEE.STD_LOGIC_1164 types, and how to write a process with a sensitivity list to implement a simple AND gate. A short ISim video demo shows project creation and simulation so you can verify designs before programming the board.
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.
