Engineering 101

Aaronia Spectrum Analyzers Price Increase 170%!

Aaronia has established new reseller guidelines and new territory requirements, which will cause an approximately 170% increase in the cost of their goods in 2012. Current pricing is valid only until December 20, 2011.

December Newsletter Bargains

Saelig Co. Inc.

The December newsletter is out, featuring a 100 MHz Rigol DS1102E oscilloscope for $399 (formerly $795!!)

http://www.saelig.com/news/newsletters/saelig1112.htm

Water for India

I just returned from a two-week trip to rural India to see some water projects funded by my church. It was amazing to see what a difference in the tribal villages that fresh water made – increasing their health, prosperity and self-sufficiency as crops could now regularly be farmed. Even the young women in the village were now able to marry since water came! Puts a new perspective on the luxuries we take for granted in USA....

Beat this!

Robot solves Rubik's Cube in under 6 seconds! How does that make you feel?!!

Saelig product featured in Designfax!

http://www.designfax.net/enews/20110927/index.php

Our nw USB microscope was featured as a "Mike Likes" item!

"Raising the debt limit to solve the national debt is like raising the blood alcohol limit to solve drunk driving."

Just my (and many others') thought ...

XYZs of Oscilloscopes Primer

Tektronix (whose products we don't sell) is offering a nice ebook describing Oscilloscope basics: here. Helpful to users of any make of scope .... thanks, Tek!

New USBscope50 video

Is here! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1DfiEW6RV8

Kudos

I love it when customers send us nice comments like this received today:

"I just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate the service I have received from Saelig. I am a student who was looking for an affordable scope to use for my hobby, work, and school projects. I appreciate the friendly sales staff who was very helpful, and even called to tell me that the bag I ordered would not fit the scope I had purchased and offered advice on some additional bags that might. Needless to say I am very appreciative to have found such a nice company to order from. I appreciate the multi-tool that shipped, that was a nice surprise as well. Also my scope came in handy at work just the other day. The Owon PDS8012T is just the right bandwidth for my applications, and has a nice variety of features and is unmatched for price. In fact, I am the intern holding down the lab during some testing procedures at work while our two engineers are off site working on projects, and just the other day, I connected the scope to my notebook and was able to screen share it over Skype to China. We could diagnose and see the results in real time for a testing board we are using for some QA procedures. Within 20 minutes we both found the problem on our testing board here in Colorado. Normally it would have taken an entire day to share pictures, and gather enough data to make a diagnosis going back and forth over e-mail. I was able to collect some initial measurements, send them to the engineers, they were able to look them over, and call on Skype and get an in-depth analysis using the Owon data collection tool in real time. The scope made it possible to get the board back online which would have otherwise had to wait. It was great and everyone was very happy to go to back to bed quickly. Thank you for excellent products and great support. I just had to pass along how helpful you all have been. "

Thanks, "Z"!!!

Owon PDS5022S on sale!

Save an extra $20 on our already low-priced 25MHz PDS5022S oscilloscope! Only $267.00 for a limited time! http://www.saelig.com/product/PSSA002.htm

Owon PDS5022S on sale!

Save an extra $20 on our already low-priced 25MHz PDS5022S oscilloscope! Only $267.00 for a limited time! http://www.saelig.com/product/PSSA002.htm

You could be replaced by an iPad!

At Worldwide Developers Conference this morning, you may have seen Taptic Toys' remotely-controlled robot that rolls like a Segway with an iPad for a head. Home workers could "walk around" a real office or plant without really being there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BXM9PYaXY0&feature=player_embedded

Mr Reliability Just Married Hotness

Here's a short promo video for the iMSO-104 Apple device scope we just released: http://youtu.be/s3Uwjliz6bk

Mr Reliability Just Married Hotness

www.youtube.com

and here's a quick review by a tech magazine editor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_pUXn8GoQE

How to Use an Oscilloscope and Signal Generator as a Component Tester & Curve Tracer

Here's video explaining how to make your own component tester. B&K ought to know that a "20 mega hurt generator" might be painful ...........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtpiJ6OfIBU

Too much 'violins' in the world?

As a violinist myself, I really appreciated seeing this YouTube video, but it reminded me that one of our Saelig (www.saelig.com) suppliers is building an electronic filter box that will make electric violins sound like expensive Italian masters. Can you guess which one? I'll let you know when it's ready later this year.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU2zlW9fF-Y&NR=1

Restaurant Menu Tricks

Yahoo! FInance recently had some useful info for foodies (http://financiallyfit.yahoo.com/finance/article-112574-9381-3-7-ways-restaurant-menus-make-you-spend?ywaad=ad0035&nc):

Before you order your next Lasagna Classico at Olive Garden, Crunchy Rabbit at Jean Georges in Manhattan or Egg McMuffin at You-Know-Where, you might want to be aware of these seven common menu ploys.

1. First in show. Many restaurants group their offerings under the obvious headings: pasta, beef, seafood, entrees, appetizers and so on. Testing has shown that if you decide on chicken, you are more likely to order the first item on the chicken list. That's where a savvy restaurant will place its most profitable chicken dish. A really sharp chef might put a puzzler like sweetbreads first in a grouping. "They only cost about $3, so the margin is huge," says Ez. Of course, you've got to hope that enough people like sweetbreads.

2. Menu Siberia. Unprofitable dishes, like a seafood combo plate that require expensive ingredients, and lots of work, are usually banished to a corner that's less noticeable or in a multi-page menu stashed on page five.

3. Visual aids. If you draw a line around it, people will order. That's why many menus box off something they want to promote. Chicken wings are a prime example. They're "garbage," says my son of one of my favorite noshes. "They cost pennies so they're huge profit items." Photos also sell dishes. An album of what look like ten-inch-high pies set on each table at Bakers Square make it hard to resist ordering a slice. Fancy-schmancy restaurants, however, like this one in Westport, Conn., consider photos déclassé; from them the most you'll get is a sketch or two.

4. Package deals. So you stop by McDonald's for a mid-afternoon burger. When you get to the counter, however, what's really in your face are photos of Extra Value Meals. You figure, says Ez, "Hey, I could eat two patties, I could use some fries, and now I'll get a soft drink too." The single burger you intended to buy is off in menu Siberia, on the board far to the right, but you've already spent more than you intended. A small percentage of the chain's 47 million customers dropping a few extra bucks each day translates to millions in additional revenue. Another example: Olive Garden's Bottomless Pasta Bowl ($8.95). "It's very unlikely you're going to eat more than two bowls," says Ez. And, as one whiny diner noted, you're like to scarf so many free breadsticks first that you won't have room for all those noodles.

5. Dollar-sign avoidance. Focus groups who've been asked to opine on menus display an acute discomfort with dollar signs and decimals. Keeping money as abstract as possible makes spending less threatening. Many high-tone foodie establishments that charge an arm and a leg for, say, a bowl of lentils and groats now omit such crass symbols from their menus -- like Spoonriver, a place I like in Minneapolis. I almost don't notice that I've paid $12.50 for a rather small chicken quesadilla. Once upon a time, menus used leader dots (... .) to connect the entree with the price. You won't find them much anymore either.

6. The small plate-large plate conundrum. A restaurant may offer two chicken Caesar salads, one for $9 and one for $12. You may think that you're getting a break ordering the small one, but, says Ez, that's really the size they want to sell. And if a diner decides, hmmm, I may as well get the larger one because I'll never get rich saving three bucks, the restaurant will throw on some extra lettuce, making the price differential almost pure profit.

7. Ingredient embroidery. Foodie-centric restaurants practically list the recipe for each dish making each ingredient sound ultra-special. (An item is more likely to sell if it dwells on the fact that, say, the cheese came from cows at the Brunschwagergrunt Farm in western Wisconsin or that the organic mushrooms were raised by a former duchess with an advanced degree in microbiology.) Even at a humble eatery, however, a dish labeled Mom's Special Mac and Cheese or "The BeeBop Bar's Mac and Four Cheese casserole" sells better than just plain old mac and cheese. "It may not be any more special than what you get somewhere else, but you'll start to think you can only get it there," says Ez. And that will keep you coming back again and again.

You won't find these gambits at every eatery. Not all restaurant owners plan their menus as carefully as they should. If they did, contends my kid, maybe they would stop placing entrées in the middle of the right hand page, prime menu real estate, because "most people who go to a restaurant are going to order an entrée anyway." he says. "That's where I'd put desserts."

Food for thought!

Spectrum analyzer catches exam cheats in Taiwan

Police in Taiwan recently used handheld spectrum analyzers to catch at least three people suspected of cheating on an exam by monitoring for mobile phone signals. Officers monitored an exam in south Taiwan for prospective government workers, said senior company engineer Lai Cheng-heng. The devices checked for signals from pagers or mobile phones near the test site. Those sitting for the exam are supposed to shut off their mobile phones to stop test answers from reaching them via calls, text messages or vibrations.

Spectrum analyzers cannot conclusively identify specific phone users, he said, but they can narrow down the area from which a call was made. Such data is useful in conjunction with other evidence of cheating. An officer who followed up the exam for a range of government jobs said he was unsure how many people would be formally accused of cheating. But he said the "effectiveness" of the analyzers was "very high."

http://www.techworld.com.au/article/373172/spectrum_analyzer_catches_exam_cheats_taiwan/?fp=2&fpid=1&rid=1

Paper Airplanes Rule!

Some of the Saelig staff like paper airplanes. Here are some originals with downloadable pdfs to print on your own color printer! We found them at:

http://www.amazingpaperairplanes.com/Favorites.html

Try http://www.amazingpaperairplanes.com/Falcon_Pattern_09.pdf

Thought for the day ...

W.S. Churchill ―We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.

Nice viral advertising by T-mobile

Just seen a preview of the upcoming British Royal Wedding. Check it out!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kav0FEhtLug&feature=player_embedded

Should we sponsor something like this for Saelig????!!!

April Fools?

I personally dislike pranks that trick people (see Proverbs 26.18-19) but I thought this one was fun!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blOrY-nEGaE

Eat That Frog

(Courtesy of http://www.actioncoach.com/Eat-That-Frog?pressid=1081)

Okay. So, you've started your day, and there's so much to do. Ever ask yourself, "Where do I start?" Many business owners I talk to do. They've got so much on their plate: sales, marketing, finances, hiring, cleaning the bathroom (just checking to see if you are still awake), and let's not forget actually providing your product or service. Many people, faced with so many balls to juggle shut down. Or, how about "let me start with email."

Have you ever found yourself doing that? And then the phone rings. And then an employee comes in asking for guidance. And then a customer calls. And before you know it, it is 5 p.m. and everyone is leaving the office except you, and you're thinking "Jeez, I haven't gotten anything done that I needed to get done today."

There's a way to stop the madness, and it's called "Eat That Frog!" If you haven't read this book by Brian Tracy, I suggest you get it and give it a good read.

The key to stop procrastinating, (and yes, I realize you thought all of that other stuff you did was important), is to start each day identifying the number one goal you have for the day. And then "Eat That Frog!" It means continually asking yourself "Which one project or activity, if I did it in an excellent and timely fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my life?"

And then, as Nike would tell us, "just do it". Give yourself time at the beginning of each day to focus (and I mean really focus) and get the biggest, ugliest thing on your plate done. You'll be surprised how the rest of the day turns out.

RAK Time!

information from the non-profit organization Random Acts of Kindness Foundation.

The Extreme Kindness Challenge—RAK challenges everyone to inspire themselves and others by committing to do one kind act every day during Random Acts of Kindness Week.

Who:
The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation (RAK)—a nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring people to practice kindness and pass it on to others.

When:
Random Acts of Kindness Week, Feb. 14-20

What:
The Extreme Kindness Challenge—Our Ticket to a Kinder World—includes:
• Daily kindness prompts at Random Acts of Kindness on Facebook and Twitter (@RAKFoundation).

• Participants can log their kind acts at the main website, on Facebook and Twitter (#dokindness).

• RAK will tally how many people are touched by the movement and share highlights online every day.

Where: Everywhere—with results shared at www.randomactsofkindness.orgon Facebook and Twitter (@RAKFoundation).

Ethernet for Cars?

Ethernet to gain ground in automotive applications, Bosch predicts

Christoph Hammerschmidt

2/5/2011 6:22 PM EST

Having already secured a toehold in diagnostics applications, Ethernet will continue to gain territory in cars. During an industry meeting in Munich, Bosch Automotive Electronics VP Rainer Kallenbach laid out its vision of future in-vehicle networking.

In today's vehicles – or at least in the vehicles currently under design – the electronics landscape is structured in "domains" – for instance, for body electronics, infotainment, vehicle motion management, occupant and pedestrian safety, and energy management. Each domain is controlled by a specific ECU which assumes the role of a central computer for this domain. Domains can in turn be structured into sub-domains. At the top level, they exchange data across a number of different networks, with a Central Gateway controlling the data flow.

Typically, the network technologies used for inter-domain communications are domain specific: The body electronics domain, for instance is connected to the Central Gateway by means of a CAN or High-speed CAN link, whereas in the energy management and in particular in the vehicle motion management domain, FlexRay might be the technology of choice.

In the infotainment domain prevails the MOST bus. Its latest version MOST150 offers ample space for growing bandwidth requirements. Which will be necessary, given the applications currently in the offing which will enter the cars over the next couple of years: In-vehicle infotainment with separate audio and video program for rear seat passengers, personal connectivity, vehicle internet integration or car-to-x connectivity.

In this environment of increasing bandwidth demand and the necessity to dovetail software functions of the car and the outside world, Ethernet as the predominant networking technology in commercial IT will gain ground also in cars. At the same time, communication processes will increasingly use the Internet protocol stack (IP). Currently, the Diagnosis over IP (DoIP) standard is being worked, driven mainly by Audi, BMW and Daimler; a pre-version is implemented in the current BMW 7 series.

On the long run, Ethernet will likely spread to other segments of in-car network, predicted Rainer Kallenbach, Automotive Electronics VP of supplier Bosch, at the Euroforum Automotive Electronics meeting in Munich. "We see Ethernet also as infotainment bus system", Kallenbach said. "In connection with internet connectivity, also IP will enter the cars". Applications are many, Kallenbach mentioned in this context remote diagnosis and location based services enhancing the navigation system functionality.

Examples for applications which drive the bandwidth demand are video systems in the infotainment context where data rates up to 100 Mbit/s accrue. In the vehicle motion and safety domain, video cameras increasingly are deployed. Again, the video streams generate data rates of up to 100 Mbit/s, Kallenbach explained.

In Bosch's scenario, Ethernet will start to offer an alternative to MOST150 beginning around the year 2015. by 2020, it likely will replace MOST. The same holds true for in-vehicle camera applications where first MOST150 will displace the LVDS data transfer technology; later Ethernet could displace MOST150. And in a future architecture characterized by the deployment of domain control units (DCUs) and a backbone connecting these domains, Ethernet will be without alternative from the start which Bosch expects around 2020.

But what about FlexRay – the networking technology designed to replace CAN and High-speed CAN in particular time-critical applications? Will it also be replaced by Ethernet before it really came out of the starting blocks? No, Kallenbach said, FlexRay likely will be able to defend its terrain. But it will be application will be confined to powertrain and vehicle motion management.

This article originally appeared on EE TImes Europe.

Video Press Release for Byte Paradigm's GP Series DPGs

Byte Paradigm (Belgium) has just introduced faster Digital Pattern Generators with more built-in memory (at customer request). They are finding increased use in fabless chip companies to test ICs coming off the line (e.g. charactrizing RF or video chips through set-up sent via SPI). Since I didn't have the new model here yet, I'm holding the previous model, which looks identical apart from the product legend. They'll be shown at DesignCon (Feb) and ESC (May) in San Jose soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASySn-seED0