Author Archives: michael
LTSpice Secrets
I am a fan of Linear‘s LTSpice for casual circuit simulation. It is intuitive, simple, and free! Unfortunately, SPICE is not so simple, and documentation tends to be scattered and out of date. Here is a link with some poorly-documented parameters useful … Continue reading
VHDL type conversions
I have been learning VHDL for simulation and synthesis lately. Coming from a Verilog background, one of the biggest differences between Verilog and VHDL is the latter’s type system. VHDL is strongly typed, even compared to C or C++. Every … Continue reading
No Disassembly Allowed
This WSJ article mentions Apple’s withdrawal from the EPEAT standard for “green” consumer electronics products, which includes ease of disassembly for the purpose of recycling components. Apparently, the tradeoffs necessary for complying with the standard conflict with Apple’s priority on … Continue reading
Computer vision with OpenCV
I recently began working on a project that requires a computer to recognize objects from a video feed. Computers can do many things more efficiently than humans, but currently, seeing things is not one of them. Discriminating arbitrary objects from … Continue reading
Problems vs. products (via the Segway)
Fun page about a DIY Segway here. I will remember the Segway as one of the most overhyped gadgets in an age of hype. The technology behind the Segway’s self-balancing trick was not innovative, but rather a straightforward application of … Continue reading
Matlab Bode and Nyquist plots
Matlab includes classical control theory analysis functions such as for Bode plots. Bode plots are useful for determining the behavior of linear time-invariant systems in filters and controls. Again, we are working with Matlab’s tf objects. Let’s define a third-order … Continue reading
More Matlab filtering
Previously, I covered discrete-time filters. Matlab has functions for continuous-time filters as well. The transform of interest is the Laplace transform. As before, we obtain a transfer function, this time in the s-domain. We have the numerator B(s) and denominator … Continue reading
DSP blog
dspLog is a communications-oriented DSP blog that goes into gory mathematical details, like bit error rates for various protocols. Recommended.