Bench Talk

Back in May 2015, Tesla released the Tesla Power Wall a 7kWh home battery. The idea being that it can be connected to the DC bus in a home and charge from renewables, mainly solar panels and wind turbines, when the production is high but the use is low. Later, they can be discharged during the evening peak times when load demand exceeds supply.

Wireless charging has been less than a spectacular success. Competing (that is, incompatible) standards, a slow reception by smartphone manufacturers, and RF-inhibiting aluminum phone housings and protective cases have resulted in a slow adoption rate by consumers. However, while the prime players have been battling each other, two companies have come up with solutions that eliminate the need for the inductive coils, magnetic resonance, charging pads, and mats that are required by other techniques. Intrigued?

The "technological singularity" is almost here. No, really. Well, maybe not. The technological singularity is the event where true artificial intelligence comes into being, self-aware, and begins recursive self-improvement by creating entities better than itself. That's one way to put it.

I dread the beep my phone makes when it’s at the end of its charge. Not because I’m uncomfortable without my phone being on at all times, but because, of course, it always seems to die right when I need it most. I’m using my phone’s navigation to drive through some unfamiliar part of town when it’s dark and rainy and I’m almost out of gas and – beep – my phone is about to die.

The story of medical wearables is no different than the story of technology in general. Exponential growth in capability commensurate with the shrinking of size and cost of products is simply converging to a point that the costs of fielding preventative measures like wearables is a solid alternative to just waiting until something inside of us breaks and we are rushed to the emergency room. While medical wearables do offer great promise in helping us become more proactive in our healthcare, they are primarily data collection devices that may perform some rather simple data analysis. They will have to tie into a larger medical ecosystem that has yet to fully materialize.

Since processors are following Moore’s Law and batteries are not, people have to look at the other side of the equation, the load, to increase battery runtime. It can be the user’s choice, like ultra low power modes available on new smartphones. Or it can be an old process that is optimized, like migrating from Bluetooth to BLE. Optimizing old processes is possible because of power management options made available by powerful and efficient processors.

As High Intensity Discharge (HID, xenon) and LED technologies are the only truly modern vehicle light sources, unless you own a luxury vehicle chances are you (like me) are missing out actually being able to see well into the night. The difference between what these two technologies and 50-year-old quartz-halogen bulbs deliver is like night and day. Fortunately, thanks to the dramatic advances and reduced cost of high-brightness LEDs, high-performance forward lighting is now about to be available to the rest of us.

In today’s markets, Ethernet technology is drastically changing the dynamics of how we efficiently transfer data. Ethernet PHYs are integrated into everything from automotive diagnostics to robotic assembly lines to set-top boxes. Ethernet PHYs are evolving to meet market demand due to three main factors: Real-time communication, Robustness and reliability against external factors, Economical solution.

There is little debate that LED lighting has hit the mainstream with the technology projected to achieve a market share of 84% in the general illumination market by 2030 (saving the equivalent of the total energy consumed by nearly 24 million U.S. homes compared to today’s inefficient lighting, according to the U.S. Department of Energy). But like many emerging technologies, LED lighting has taken a long time to actually emerge – much longer than you might think.

As I’ve progressed from a writer interested in technology to a hobbyist working with technology, I’ve found that my eyes are frequently larger than my workbench. That is, I keep buying and collecting microcontroller boards, inexpensive parts collections, tools, and one-off gadgets, even though I haven’t turned on a soldering iron or looked at the Arduino IDE in months. I think I’m suffering from DIY overload.