Featured Product Archive
The inventions and products featured on these pages were chosen either for their
uniqueness in the RF engineering realm, or are simply awesome (or ridiculous) enough
to warrant an appearance.
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 "If you have been an RF Cafe visitor for a
while, you know that I am fond of vintage electronics magazines and hardware (vintage
electrical engineers and technicians are pretty cool, too). I am a firm believer
that a knowledge of relevant history is essential to a well-rounded experience in
your chosen field. Reading about the trials and tribulations of our forebears is
both instructional and motivational. Fellow engineer
Bob
Davis, himself a restorer of old radios, sent me this link to the
Antique Radio Archive
website. On it you will find many documents scanned to PDF files for manuals, schematics,
and how-to articles. An example is the Meissner "'How to Build' Instruction Manual
for Beginners, Advanced Students, Instructors, Servicemen, Hobbyists & Experimenters."
It contains, "A wealth of information on basic theory, design, constructions on
AM circuits, FM circuits, phono pickups, audio amplifiers, speakers, ... construction
of power supplies, transmitters..., and scores od circuit diagrams covering varied
applications." It's good stuff.1/6/2012
 Some things cannot be improved upon, and this
report on a rear view mirror with an integrated multimedia picture-in-mirror feature
is one of them. Per the Vice website, "The Bluetooth Rearview Mirror Kit includes
a host of potential driver distractions, including a GPS system with built in screen,
hands free speakerphone, front and rear camera displays, video playback and of course
touchscreen games. Best of all, it has a built in DVR that records the picture from
the cameras. That way when you smash into the car ahead while trying reach level
9 on Super Mario as you cruise down the Interstate, the cops will have plenty of
evidence." The kit fits over your existing mirror and includes a wireless rear view
camera SD card, and new mirror surface w/LCD display. Cost is around $200.
GizMag has more detail, but less wit.
12/9/2011
 Generating truly
random numbers from a digital source is no trivial matter. Pseudo random numbers
are simple enough to generate, but even with a fairly sophisticated seed key, today's
powerful computers and extremely smart programmers are able to break all but the
most advanced codes. Analog circuits are capable of producing genuinely random seeds,
but they consume more power than can be spared in general-purpose processors for
personal computers - the largest application base for digital security. One famous
solution to the problem was the use of a lava lamp whose globulation was monitored
by a CCD that generated a new random number on demand. The LavaRnd website was created
to provide random seeds of up to 817 digits to users, but obviously that is not
a blanket solution. An article in the September 2011 edition of IEEE's
Spectrum reported on a new semiconductor process developed
by Intel that is statistically even more random than LavaRnd, and sips only tiny
amounts of current. The explanation is fascinating.
11/11/2011 The
KM5KG RF Network Designer appeared in the New Products feature of the January 2012
QST magazine. Network in this case refers primarily to R, L, C, and transformer
circuits in most of the familiar configurations like diplexers, bridged-Tee combiners,
hybrid-pi combiners, L combiners, audio and RF attenuators, series and shunt power
dividers, and broadband impedance matching. It also has component designers for
coils, transformers, solenoids, transmission lines, and antennas. Extensive parameters
are calculated for network components including complex impedance, power dissipation,
voltage across and current through, including phase. RF Network Designer is a veritable
cornucopia of calculated values. Both Amateur and Pro versions are available. There
is no installation program that makes sure all the necessary system files are present,
so if you download the demo and it gives you a notice about a system file missing,
go to the website's homepage and
download that file from there.
1/13/2012
 Some things are obvious to even the casual
observer, especially if you have seen The Matrix. Clearly, the über smart scientists
and engineers who work at
CRIM Lab, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, in Pisa, Italy must have
had Mr. Smith's bug from
The Matrix in mind when they developed this 12-legged,
wireless human intestine explorer. Then again, it could equally likely have been
inspired from torture implements employed during the
The Inquisition
era, intimately familiar to inhabitants of that geographical region. Imagine being
told you need to swallow this thing so that doctors can wirelessly guide the beast
through your intestines. The pill-sized electromechanical wonder (I'm being nice)
settles naturally to the bottom of the stomach and enters the duodenum - the transition
between the stomach and small intestines - whereupon the attending physician
signals for extension <more>
12/16/2011
  Christmas is coming, so now is a good time
to be thinking about what kind of gift to get your favorite engineer, scientist,
hobbyist, or generic nerd. Fortunately, a catalog from the
3B Scientific company
arrived in my mailbox that provides just the source needed. A lot of these I've
never seen before, like a refrigerator magnet of Schrödinger's Cat and Pavlov's
Dog. How about a
T-Shirt that says, "If you're not part of the solution... you're
part of the precipitate," or maybe shower curtain with the Periodic Table printed
on it? (I'll spare you the trite insinuations about the chemistry
that can happen in a shower). A nice selection of
Sterling Engines are available for your desktop. I like this baby
shirt with "Baby Genius" spelled out in chemical symbols. On the more serious
- but not too serious - side, you can buy
historic experiment sets,
demonstrators
for electricity and magnetism, optics, heat and thermodynamics, or waves and sound.
If you are simply averse to fun, 3B Scientific will also sell you practical stuff
as well.
11/19/2011 The apparently indefatigable Gary Breed, former
editor of RF Design and current founder/editor of High Frequency Electronics,
has just launched a new publication: RF Technology International. Subscribers to HFE received
the premier edition within the last week or so. Is there really a need for a new
publication that caters to the RF/microwave world? Gary believes there is. Per his
opening editorial, "The mission of this new multi-media publication is simple -
Collect, sort, select and present information that is valuable to engineers who
work in RF, microwave and high speed technology." Chief amongst the goals is to
provide a historical perspective to new developments; that is, "We Build the Future
on a Foundation Established by Earlier Generations." With as rapidly as technology
progresses and the pressure to invent and produce increases, there is precious little
time to reflect on how we got to where we are today. Some people don't think that
is important as long as innovations keep flowing. I do. Some of the most intriguing
articles I read - and I read lot - contain references to the people and events that
led to the breakthrough technology being reported. The historical, indeed the personal,
perspective turns an otherwise dry presentation of words and numbers into a enjoyable
story. I look forward to seeing how Gary and his staff deliver on this promise.
12/20/2011
 I can imagine that by next Christmas, some
incarnation of this prototype "Eye Ball" will be available at Toys R Us. If so,
lots of parents and wives of soldiers will also probably be mailing them to their
deployed loved ones for field use while on patrols in far-off lands. Per the Technology
Review website review: "If you toss this foam-covered ball skyward, an accelerometer
inside determines when it has reached its maximum height. At that moment, 36 cameras
are triggered simultaneously, creating a mosaic that can be downloaded and viewed
on a computer as one spherical panoramic image. The ball was created by researchers
at the Technische Universität Berlin after one of them, Jonas Pfeil, labored to
create panoramas while on vacation in Tonga." The interface is USB now, but a wireless
version is likely.
12/23/2011
 This one will require a bit of work on your
part or on the part of a friend with knitting skills. Laptop Compubody Sock is the
brainchild of geek product designer Becky Stern. It serves a dual purpose by providing
shelter from the cold while also affording privacy from wandering eyes while working
on your laptop computer in public places. The might be a bit of a safety issue due
to limited visibility of the situation surrounding you while "under the hood," but
maybe the knitting is done loosely enough to permit to allow the wearer to see out
while blocking the view in. Complete, illustrated instructions are provided. She
also has a knitted keyboard glove that fits over your hands and keyboard to keep
warm; of course, you will need to be a good typist (that
leaves me out). For ready-made
 gifts, Becky offers
emission
spectrum scarves, an ASCII text art heart pendant (made
from <3 characters), and even a necktie with resistor color codes
(coming soon). Evidently, she makes all the stuff
herself - truly Made in America.
11/25/2011 Here is an accessory to add to your James
Bond collection. These silver cufflinks double - no triple- as a 2 GB flash drive
and as a Wi-Fi hot spot. USB flash drive cufflinks have been around for awhile and
are plentiful on
Amazon, but the Wi-Fi feature of this product is unique. I could
not find any performance specifications for them, but there is a funny review on
the website link (click the picture and scroll down). If you have a $250 to spare,
you can buy a set and let me know how they work.
1/27/2012
 The maker of this wireless urinal game console
probably would have named it the "Wee" (ref wii) if
not for certain lawsuit from a major corporation. It is wireless only in the sense
that infrared (really high frequency electromagnetic waves)
sensors detect the "joystick" position. No, this article was not posted on April
1st. Debuting in London bars, the unquenchable need to present potential customers
with an endless barrage of advertisements has led to the development of a ridiculous
venue for occupying otherwise idle time - 55 minutes on average according some taxpayer-funded
study. The console sports a 12" LCD display and is driven by Windows 7 on an Intel
Atom processor. Now, rather than just whistling or reading hastily scribbled bits
of prose on the wall, the patron can skillfully guide penguin skiers through a slalom
course. I have an idea for an ad on the console: waterproof goulashes to slip over
your shoes prior to entering the bathroom... to guard against aggressive gamers.
12/30/2011
 Brent Locher, of the
fourier-series.com website,
has produced quite a few nice Flash-driven RF and electronics tutorials over the
last couple years. Interactive controls allow the user to change system parameters
and see how the output responds. The newest tutorials deal with
thermal noise and
noise
figure.
Thermal Noise on a Transistor, for instance, demonstrates how
bandwidth and termination resistance affects noise power.
Adding Correlated and Uncorrelated Noise shows visually and numerically
how to calculate the quantity and how to tell whether noise is correlated or not.
Are you not quite sure how noise power affects noise figure in a cascaded system?
Check this tutorial on
noise factor and noise figure calculations. Oh, did I mention
that audio tracks are included to narrate about each process?
12/2/2011
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