MEDICAL WEARABLES

MARCH 2020
circuitcellar.com ISSUE 356
CIRCUIT CELLAR | ISSUE 356 | MARCH 2020

Inspiring the Evolution of Embedded Design

ELECTRONICS EVOLVE FOR

MEDICAL WEARABLES

w Datasheet: Industrial Power Supplies w PCB Assembly Services |

Build a Composite Video Text Terminal | LoRa-Based Tracking System |
circuitcellar.com

Periodic Table Project Uses PIC16 | LPWAN Deep Dive w Kilogram Redefined |
USB Attacks with GreatFET Tool | Taking RPLIDAR Out for a Spin (Part 1) |
Dehumidifier Revamped for the IoT Era w The Future of Data in Robotics
FRESH
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2 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

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INPUT
Voltage
Coronavirus Impacting Electronics Industry
B eyond the obvious human tragedy,
including lives lost and communities
disrupted, it’s clear that the coronavirus
outbreak is going to impact several
industries including the electronics industry. The
impact is expected to be much more severe than the
SARS outbreak in 2003. As reported in an assessment in
early February by IHS Markit entitled “Coronavirus Rolls
Through Global Economy – Impacts on GDP,” at the
time of SARS, China was the sixth largest economy,
accounting for only 4.2% of world GDP. China is now
the world’s second largest economy, accounting for
16.3% of world GDP. That means that any slowdown
in the Chinese economy reverberates across the globe.
At the time of writing this, it’s not certain when
confinement measures will be lifted, and that will
telegraph how severe the effect of factories going idle
will affect 2020 GDP. Assuming they’re not lifted until
March, IHS Markit predicts that the resulting economic
impact will be concentrated in the first half of 2020, with
a reduction of global real GDP of 0.8% in Q1 and 0.5%
in Q2. In this scenario, the coronavirus and resulting
measures will reduce global real GDP by 0.4% in 2020,
says IHS.
We’re already hearing from some of our friends in
the embedded board industry that some companies
are being more cautious when promising ship dates
because of the potential impact of the coronavirus
epidemic on product shipments. For products primarily
built in China, shipping dates in the Spring timeframe
are now in doubt.
An early February New York Times story “SARS
Stung the Global Economy. The Coronavirus Is a Greater
Menace,” by Peter S. Goodman, provides an informative
overview of the many impacts of coronavirus on the
world economy. One interesting area discussed in
the article is the symbiotic relationship between the
China and the US technology industries in this day
and age. The American semiconductor industry is
particularly entrenched in China, which is both a major
manufacturing hub and a market for its products.
Intel’s customers in China accounted for about $20
billion in revenue in 2019, or 28% of its total for the
year,” says Goodman. “Qualcomm, the dominant maker
of chips for mobile phones, is even more dependent on
China, drawing 47% of its annual revenue—or nearly
$12 billion—from sales in the country.”
The article also discusses the supply chain impacts
circuitcellar.com 3
of the crisis. “… the effects of the virus on supply chains,
which have grown notoriously complex, are difficult to
anticipate. A single part of an advanced product like a
smart TV may be made of dozens of smaller components,
with each of these assembled from other pieces.” The
problem is tricky because companies themselves often
do not know the suppliers that are three and four rungs
down the chain. Apple, for instance, assembles most
of its products in China. The company disclosed much
wider volatility in its potential revenues for the current
quarter in the face of uncertainties around factory
production and sales of its products.
As seems to always be the case with the electronics
technology industry, while it’s being shaken by world
events, it is simultaneously offering potential solutions
to the very same crisis. A piece by Frost & Sullivan’s
Dilip Sarangan entitled “The Next Generation of IoT—
Addressing the Coronavirus and Preventing Future
Outbreaks” outlines his view on how IoT could play a
role in preventing future disease outbreaks, especially
in the context of China.
“The first step in infectious disease control is
detection,“ says Sarangan, “While a global network of
sensors is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future,
China does have the ability to implement such a network
in the country. China has a history of implementing
wide-area IoT solutions (video surveillance) on a scale
that has never been seen before. So why not a network
of virus-detection sensors? Couple that with facial
recognition and location, existing surveillance cameras
to identify, trace, and monitor people that may have
contracted the coronavirus. While this may sound like a
police state to many, ultimately, leveraging IoT and AI
may be the most logical way to prevent highly infectious
diseases from spreading rapidly in a world that is
getting smaller every day with air travel.”
Jeff Child
4 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

COLUMNS
DATASHEET

42 Industrial Power Supplies

Factory Functionality
By Jeff Child

46 USB Attacks and Embedded System Essentials

More with GreatFET

Facedancer Fun
By Colin O’Flynn

52 Redefining the Kilogram

PG. 46
The Consummate Engineer

From Metal to Math

By George Novacek

54 Dehumidifier Revamped for

Picking Up Mixed Signals

the IoT Era

Wireless Control
By Brian Millier

66 Taking RPLIDAR Out for a Spin

From the Bench
PG. 54
(Part 1) Command Interface
By Jeff Bachiochi

TECH THE FUTURE

79 Distilling Insights from

The Future of Data in Robotics

Tomorrow’s Digital Exhaust

By Jeff Linnell

74 : PRODUCT NEWS
78 : TEST YOUR EQ

@editor_cc
@circuitcellar circuitcellar
PG. 66
 circuitcellar.com 5

FEATURES

6 Build a Composite Video

Text Terminal
Using TI’s TM4C MCU
By Stuart Ball

12 LoRa-Based Tracking System

SARNet Aids Search and Rescue
By James Lawton,
Callum Munn-Middleton and Cam Stauffer

PG. 6
20 Periodic
Trainer
Table Desktop

Built Using PIC16 MCU

By Devlin Gualtieri

26 A Deep Dive Into LPWAN

IoT Sensor Connectivity
By Wolfgang Thieme

SPECIAL FEATURE

32 Solutions Evolve for

Medical Wearable Designs
MCUs, Analog ICs and Sensors
PG. 12
By Jeff Child

TECHNOLOGY SPOTLIGHT

38 PCB Assembly Services

Parts, Prototypes, Production
By Jeff Child

PG. 20
 6 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

Build a Composite Video

Text Terminal
Using TI’s TM4C MCU
FEATURES

There are many benefits to integrating

a small display into your embedded
system. In this project article, Stuart
takes a 3.5" LCD video monitor and
builds a circuit that provides a text-
based terminal that can plug into
the display. This basically emulates
an old-style alphanumeric computer
terminal, but using modern low-
power LCD technology.

By
Stuart Ball

I picked up a $15 LCD video monitor from

Amazon. It has two standard, composite
video inputs. The screen is only 3.5", so you
would never use it to replace a 12" or 14"
monitor. It is intended for use as a display for
backup cameras in vehicles.
All that said, a display like this has some other
uses. For example, it could be a status display for
an embedded system. Of course, you could always
carry around a tablet, or even display things on
your phone. But what if you want the display self-
contained? Or you don’t want to add Wi-Fi to your
design? What if it’s a piece of equipment that
is located where phones and computers aren’t
allowed?
I thought it would be interesting to build a
circuit to provide a text-based terminal that can
plug into the display. The effect would be similar
to the old alphanumeric computer terminals used
in the 1970s and 1980s, but with a much smaller,
lighter, and less power-hungry screen. To make
this work, I had to generate an output that would
drive the composite video input of the monitor.
WHAT IS COMPOSITE VIDEO?
The composite video waveform dates back
to the days of monochrome televisions, when
they were built with vacuum tubes. Because the
signal was sent over the air, everything needed to
display a complete picture had to be embedded
in the transmitted waveform. The picture on
the screen was painted as a series of lines from
left to right and from top to bottom. There was
no digital communication. It was all done with
voltages and resistor-capacitor timing.
To paint the image on the screen, the waveform
has to include:
• A signal to start painting on the picture tube at
the top left corner of the screen
• When to start each new line
• The brightness (white level) of each dot on each
line
The composite waveform is shown in Figure 1.
Since the video terminal circuit that I built is only
for painting characters—not a television picture—
all the video information is either white or black.
In contrast, on a television broadcast the video
portion would vary between white and black to
reproduce the grayscale image of the transmitted
picture. The composite waveform, when sent
over a cable, is normally a 1V P-P (peak-to-peak)
signal. When broadcast over the air, the amplitude
varies with signal strength. Circuits in a television
receiver normalize it, so the signal can be used.
Each line starts with a horizontal sync pulse
that is about 0.1V, with 4.7µs duration. This tells
the receiver to restart the scan at the next line.
There is a black region on either side of the

horizontal sync pulse to give the circuits in
the receiver time to process the sync input.
These are called “blanking,” and they are
referred to as the “front porch” (the blanking
interval just before the sync) and the “back
porch” (the blanking interval just after the
sync). Between the back porch of one sync
pulse and the front porch of the next is the
live scan video information. This is where one
scan line of the picture is painted.
Once the last horizontal line has been
painted, the scanning beam must be
moved back to the top left corner to start
the next image. This is done with vertical
synchronization pulses, which are the same
voltage as the horizontal sync pulses, but have
a longer time period. Circuits in the television
recognize the difference in the pulse width
between horizontal and vertical sync, and
move the scan back to the top left corner. The
vertical sync on an old television took some
time to retrace the scanning beam, so three
vertical sync pulses were followed by a long
blanking interval. That gave the circuits time
to make the vertical recovery.
The vertical blanking interval is broken up
or serrated by horizontal sync pulses, so the
horizontal synchronization isn’t lost during the
vertical retrace time. The vertical scan rate is
60Hz in the US NTSC system. This is not an
accident. By making the vertical scan rate the
same as the 60Hz power frequency, some visible
artifacts resulting from using vacuum tubes,
unregulated power supplies, tube filaments
operating at 60Hz, etc., can be minimized. The
horizontal sync rate is 15,750Hz, or a 63.5µs
period. The 60Hz vertical rate combined with a
15,750Hz horizontal line frequency gives 262.5
horizontal scan lines per picture.
TOTAL VIDEO TIMES
Because the sync, front porch and back
porch together need about 11µs, the total live
video time on each scan line is about 52µs. So,
the horizontal synchronization process steals
about 20% of the total line time. Similarly, the
vertical retrace takes some time, so a portion
of the 262 horizontal scan lines are blanked
and used for vertical retrace.
In displaying text on a monitor using
composite video, each character needs
multiple lines on the display. In the 1970s
and 1980s, typical characters were either 5×7
or 7×9—that’s 5 dots wide by 7 dots high,
or 7 dots wide by 9 dots high. To display a
complete character, 7 or 9 scan rows would
be needed, with at least one blank row of
dots between each character row to separate
the characters. The monitor would therefore
display around 20 or 24 character rows.
Similarly, with each character being 5 or 7
dots wide, clocking the dots at a reasonable
circuitcellar.com 7
rate to make the characters wide enough to
read, results in a row of typically 70 to 80
characters. Filters in a television to remove
the audio subcarrier mean a television can’t
display that many dots on the screen, but a
monitor with composite video input can.
FEATURES
If the first line of the display contains the
characters ABC, then the first three locations
in the RAM will contain the ASCII codes for
those characters. As the scan moves across
the screen, the first scan line will address the
top line of character A, then B, then C, and
then the rest of the line will be blank. The
second scan line will address the second line
of character A, then B, then C, and so on. Each
character row is displayed, one scan line at a
time, all the way to the bottom of the screen.
Later versions of the composite waveform
inserted information into the vertical blanking
interval for things like channel information and
closed captioning. Although composite video
has been superseded by higher resolution
VGA, DVI and HDMI in computers, the ability
to run a full video signal down a single coaxial
cable still has advantages in some situations.
And, now, of course, the television broadcast
itself is a digital HDTV transmission.
EARLY VIDEO TERMINALS
The composite video standard defines a
standard way of getting a video image to the
262 horizontal lines, separated by horizontal sync
58 microsecond
vertical sync pulses
Horizontal sync
+ blanking
10.9 microseconds White level, 0.8V
Black level,
0.3V
Sync level, 4.7 microseconds
0.1V horizontal
sync pulse
Horizontal sync
period 63.5
63.5 microseconds
(15,750 Hz)
Scanning a character row, line by line
This row of dots is displayed --->
Then this row ---------->
Here the first row of dots for the second character row is displayed
Horizontal blanking
for each scan
row ends here
FIGURE 1
Composite video waveform
 8 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356
monitor, but a signal containing intelligible
information still has to be generated. Early
video terminals were constructed with TTL
(transistor-transistor logic). The logic had to
walk through the display memory, retrieving
stored ASCII characters in sequence.
FEATURES
The output of the display memory would
go to a ROM (read-only memory) that
contained the codes for converting the ASCII
from the RAM into dot patterns for each scan
line of the character. A shift register produced
white/black outputs that produced dots on
the screen. Additional logic was needed to
generate the horizontal and vertical signals
when needed, and still more logic was needed
to handle incoming serial data, and write it
into memory. The Lear-Siegler ADM-3A was
one such terminal. You can find a maintenance
manual for it with schematics on the Internet.
That terminal had over 100 ICs.
Video cards installed in early computers
often used video timing ICs, such as
the Motorola 6845. These devices had
programmable internal counters to address
external RAM and to generate the vertical
and horizontal timing pulses. But they still
required external RAM, an external character
generator ROM and additional hardware to
put the ASCII characters into the RAM.
1980s Terminal display logic
Sync ⁄ blanking logic
Character load logic
Address counters Character RAM
register
Character RAM
Address Data Address
Data
Character
dot-row address
Address
To additional
logic for writing
new characters
to RAM
Dot clock
Arm-based terminal design
CPU
Timer T0 Sync to video mixer
Incoming serial data UART1
RAM DMA SSI0 Dots to video mixer
FIGURE 2
Block diagram of a 1980s-vintage terminal design and of the new Arm-based design.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stuart Ball is a registered professional engineer with a BSEE and an MBA. He
has more than 30 years of experience in electronics design. He is currently
a principal engineer at Seagate Technologies.
NEW DESIGN
The new circuit implements similar
functionality using a modern microcontroller
(MCU). I used a Texas Instruments (TI)
TM4C1233H6PM Arm-based MCU, mainly
because I had a few on hand. The entire
circuit consists of the MCU, an RS232 interface
chip, a single-gate, open-collector buffer and
a voltage regulator. A transistor drives the
video output to the monitor.
The TM4C has enough internal memory to
store the video information and to support
the program. Memory was expensive in the
days of the original terminals, but there is
plenty of memory to store scan rows instead
of characters in the TM4C RAM. So, instead of
storing ASCII characters that are converted to
dots by an external ROM, the TM4C program
converts the incoming ASCII codes to dots in
a lookup table, and stores the dots in the RAM.
Using internal RAM has an additional
advantage—no complicated RAM synchronization
is needed. Early video cards needed a mechanism
to ensure that the computer microprocessor did
not write new characters into memory during the
live scan time. If they did, the display would be
covered with “snow”—white dots that randomly
appear on the screen. If the writing occurs during
the live scan time, it interferes with reading the
memory to display the characters. One way this
was fixed is by writing only during the horizontal
or vertical blanking periods, when the screen is
Sync ⁄ blanked anyway.
blanking
signals In the TM4C design, this isn’t necessary,
because the reading is performed using
Shift
the internal DMA controller. DMA access to
Load
the RAM is synchronized with the MCU CPU.
Dots to
Out video
As a result, there is never a problem with
mixer interference between the two.
Early terminal designs used a shift
register to shift out the dots. The TM4C
design uses one of the synchronous serial
ports to output the dots. Internal timers
generate the synchronization signals, and
the entire process is driven by the horizontal
sync signal. The TM4C provides a nearly self-
contained video terminal with few external
parts needed (not counting, of course, the
electronics in the LCD video terminal, itself).
Due to the tiny size of the monitor, a DIP
switch selects either a 75-character x 20-row
output, or a 35-character × 10-row output.
The 75×20 output is for display on larger
terminals. You can use it on the tiny display,
but it’s impractical.
Figure 2 is a block diagram showing how a
terminal might be implemented in the 1980s,
compared to the new design. The address
counters in the old design (top of Figure 2)
might be discrete counters or part of a video
timing chip, but you can see that there is a lot
of logic required either way, to generate the
 circuitcellar.com 9

video information. This diagram doesn’t even
include the logic that gets new characters
into memory. The lower diagram in Figure 2
is the new approach, where nearly everything
is contained in the MCU. Although the MCU,
itself, is far more complex than the old design,
transmit 7-bit words, since the character
matrix is 7 dots × 9 dots. The SSI shift
register is clocked at 10MHz in 75-character-
per-line mode, and at 5MHz in 35-character-
per-line mode. This is the dot rate, and allows
the 52.5µs live scan time to display 525 dots.

it still replaces dozens of ICs with just one.
THE CIRCUIT
The schematic of the circuit is shown in
Figure 3 and Figure 4. U1, the TM4C1233H6,
is one of many parts in the TI TM4C family.
Internal timer T0 generates the 15,750Hz
horizontal and vertical sync pulses, and the
output of T0 is fed back to input PB6 as an
interrupt.
Synchronous serial interface number 3 is
used to generate video dots and blanking. The
output of SSI3, on PD3, is pulled to ground,
because it needs to be at blanking level when
not active, and the TM4C normally floats the
output when inactive. SSI3 is configured to
FEATURES
Using a 7×9 character format, that’s 75
characters per line. With a 5MHz clock, it’s
37 characters per line. I set it to 35 in the
firmware.
U3 buffers the output of PD3 so it can drive
the output transistor. Serial port 0, on PA0 and
PA1, is used for programming the device. A
jumper, W1, is grounded to put the TM4C into
programming mode. J2 connects an external
RS232 converter to connect to the host serial
port, as described in my article “Debugging
Embedded Systems with Minimal Resources”
(Circuit Cellar 312, July 2016). Figure 5 is a
schematic of the programming adapter.
U5 is a 3.3V to RS232 converter that
connects serial port 1 (UART1), on PB0/PB1, to

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 10 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

the cursor, the blank line under the character


 

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FEATURES

( #
dots (35 characters) per scan line, the vertical
+ - -
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the PWM duty cycle (but not the frequency)
FIGURE 4
to generate the wider vertical sync pulse. The
Schematic, page 2 the host system. UART1 is fixed at 9600 baud value can’t be changed inside the ISR, because
in the firmware, though that can obviously be it will produce a short pulse at the output.
changed. Header J3 is a 10-pin header that Instead, the ISR sets a flag, and the main loop
connects to a D-series connector with a short changes the duty cycle, when the time count
cable. Transistor Q1 mixes the dot and sync is lower than the new duty cycle value. This
signals to produce the composite video output. causes the new duty cycle and pulse width to
To keep the dots crisp, Q1 is biased so that it
'< occur on the next timer period.
never goes fully into saturation or cutoff. The software scrolls the screen when a
%&' ( new character needs; to be inserted and the
SOFTWARE screen is at the end. This is accomplished by
There are some special considerations in moving+*an index
 that indicates where the top
the TM4C firmware to make working video. The row starts. At initialization, location 0 in the
“character generator ROM,” which is actually
  ! "#$%&' () *"+* 

$
display RAM area is the start of the first line.
an array in flash memory, is configured for When the bottom of the screen is reached,
7x9 dots. But the actual display memory is the screen is scrolled up by making location
sized for 10 dots per character, to make a 750 (the start of the second character row)
blank scan line under each character row for the top of the screen, and the row starting at
vertical separation. This extra scan line isn’t location 0—now the last row on the screen—is
included in the character matrix. It’s just an blanked. The circuit board and the monitor,
extra line that is initialized to all zeros (blank). displaying a few lines of test text, are shown
So, the start of the first character row is at in Figure 6. See the sidebar “ Composite Video
location 0 in the display memory array, and Display Calculations” as a guide if you wish to
the next one is at location 750 (75 characters try out alternate clock frequencies or different
per row × 10 scan lines per character). To blink character generator dimensions.

 

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FIGURE 5
Programming adapter
 circuitcellar.com 11

COLOR
When color television was introduced,
the monochrome video waveform was
modified to accommodate the addition of
color. The waveform had to be compatible
with existing monochrome televisions, so

FEATURES
the changes had to be invisible to existing
monochrome receivers. Color was added
by sending a color sync burst during the
horizontal synchronization back porch, which
synchronized the chrominance phase with
that of the transmitter. The color information
is phase-encoded with a 3.58MHz signal on
the video. Circuits inside the television extract
the 3.58MHz color signal to display the color
information with the luminance (white/gray/
black) information. The video circuit here does
not include color. That would take additional
hardware and a significantly faster processor. FIGURE 6
As currently implemented, the terminal CONCLUSION Photo of prototype circuit board and
is fairly simple. Characters are received via This project started out to re-create the 3.5" LCD monitor
the serial port and written to the display at something resembling the terminals that we
the current cursor position. When the end used on in the 1980s. Unless you are
of the display is reached, the screen scrolls interested in that sort of project, the original
up one line, and new characters are inserted intent for this circuit wouldn’t be of use. But
at the bottom. The addition of direct cursor the simplicity of the circuit provides an easy
addressing would allow the host to send way to build a text-based or even graphics-
characters that tell the terminal to place the based monochrome display that will drive
cursor at a specific line and column position. any monitor with a composite video input. It
Another improvement would be to add provides an inexpensive way to produce a
underline or inverse video for the characters. display for diagnostics, monitoring and
The high bit of the incoming byte can be general visual displays, especially given the
used to indicate when a character is to be low cost of the monitor used for the
displayed in this enhanced mode. The original prototype.
ASCII character set needed only 7 bits, so the
highest bit can be used for special features.
Some word processors of that era used these
features. when available. COMPOSITE VIDEO DISPLAY CALCULATIONS
Although this entire project was based The calculations for the composite video display are given here, should
on displaying ASCII characters, there is no you wish to tinker with alternate clock frequencies or different character
reason you can’t display graphics information generator dimensions:
on the screen. The resolution isn’t very
high, and, as mentioned, adding color would Horizontal blanking plus sync time = 10.9µs
require different hardware. But unlike the
character-based terminals of the 1980s, you Horizontal scan rate = 15,750Hz = 63.5µs period
aren’t locked into displaying characters only.
Since there is no hardware character Live scan time = 63.5µs – 10.9µs = 52.6µs
generator between the RAM and the dot output,
you can display low-resolution graphics just by Dots per line = live scan time × dot clock frequency
filling the memory with the graphics image. In = 52.6µs x 10MHz = 525 for 10MHz, 262 for 5MHz
fact, the first test I did on the system when I
connected it to the LCD was to display a line in Characters per line = dots per line/horiz. dots per char
the middle of every other character position in = 525/7 = 75 for 10MHz, 37 for 5MHz (limited to 35 in FW)
each character row. The result was a display
that had just a series of horizontal dashed lines.
I did this because it was easy to do and didn’t
require any of the character processing routines
For detailed article references and additional resources go to:
to be functional. If you look at the source code,
www.circuitcellar.com/article-materials
you will see that the simple code to do this is
still there, just commented out. The source code
for this project can be downloaded from Circuit RESOURCES
Cellar’s article code and files webpage. Texas Instruments | www.ti.com
 12 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

LoRa-Based Tracking System

SARNet Aids
Search and Rescue
FEATURES

Because every minute counts during

search and rescue operations, technologies
that narrow the search area are always
welcome. Learn how these three Camosun
College students built a LoRa-based
tracking system designed to aid search-
and-rescue teams in locating lost or missing
individuals. Called SARNet, the system can FIGURE 1
narrow down the initial search area and The Bat handheld tracker unit (left), and the
Cricket beacon unit (right)
give technicians a larger searching radius.

By
James Lawton, Callum Munn-Middleton
and Cam Stauffer

G etting lost in the woods while

camping or hiking can be
dangerous, unless you have a
rescue device such as Recco or
Spot. However, the Recco and Spot devices
are expensive and require GPS or specialized
tags. Our SARNet (Search and Rescue
Network) is a tracking system that will be
more affordable, accurate and independent
of GPS. Implementing LoRa (Long Range)
wireless technology in a new and unique way,
we made a system that can be used to narrow
down a search area for persons requiring
emergency assistance. Once a rescue team
arrives, our system enables a technician to
reduce the time it takes to find someone who
is lost or in distress.
Our project is split into three main parts:
The Cricket, the Bat and the Colony. The Cricket
is the active transmitter device that a user
carries while going into the woods or other
remote area. The Bat is a handheld tracking
device used to locate a Cricket. The Colony is
a network of devices similar to the Bat that
are mounted along a trail in a checkpoint
fashion, and give the last known location of
a Cricket. We designed, built and tested the
first two parts of our system, the Bat and the
Cricket (Figure 1). We did not manufacture a
Colony setup as part of our project. However,
a Bat module can be easily implemented as a
Colony configuration in the future.
LORa
LoRa is short for “Long Range” and is
an emerging wireless technology that uses
extremely low-powered transmitters and
receivers. The radios operate in the Industrial,
Scientific and Medical frequency bands (ISM).
Depending on the country of operation, the
assigned frequency is either 430, 433, 868 or
915MHz [1].
LoRa radio uses a Chirp Spread Spectrum
(CSS) radio modulation technique that is
similar to FM modulation [2]. LoRa has a
resilience to noise and low bit error rates,
 circuitcellar.com 13

which is critical in today’s world of busy using LoRa communication technology than
airways. Semtech is a large stakeholder in with other methods.
LoRa technology, and it produced the SX1276
radio IC that is integrated into our project. THE CRICKET
Reliability and the ease of implementation The Cricket is a transmitter module that a
with the Internet of Things (IoT) sets LoRa user would purchase or rent before going on a

apart from other radio technologies. LoRa
setups often involve remote temperature
monitoring or situations where brief digital
messages are sent. Typically, a LoRa user will
connect a device to an IoT service, such as
The Things Network, to log on and read data
via the Internet. This setup is called LoRaWAN.
Essentially, a LoRa device can send its data to
any public LoRa gateway, which then uploads
the data to the Internet for viewing.
We decided to experiment with LoRa radio
as the means of communication between our
devices. After all, using LoRa radio hardware
and protocol is possible, and is a simple two-
way link that doesn’t require the Wide Area
Network (WAN) aspect of public gateways.
That being said, our system implements a
similar private WAN for the future Colony
portion of SARNet.
We ended up using LoRa because it was
an inexpensive option that allowed us to get a
long-range signal with good penetration, and
also because it requires very little power to
transmit. Also, we chose it for the ability to
sacrifice data rate for added range. Because
we send very little data between the Bat and
the Cricket, we get a longer maximum distance
FEATURES
hike or similar outing. We designed the Cricket
to be as small and light as possible, so the user
can carry it while on the move, without adding
much space or weight. Our design closely
resembles a carabiner in its overall style
and the shape of its enclosure. To be as size-
and shape-efficient as possible, we carefully
designed the PCB and all its components to fit
within the shape of the enclosure.
We printed our 3D enclosure with PLA
(polylactic acid) filament on a Ultimaker
Cura printer. The enclosure is a two-part
design that snap fits together and has a
removable battery cover. Inside the case is
a custom-printed PCB that is pressure fit in
to four standoffs, a battery holder for two
AAA batteries and a channel for a whip-style
antenna.
We designed our PCB to have a Murata
CMWX1ZZA Type ABZ chip, two LEDs (green
and red), two input buttons, a reset switch,
power switch, programming header and
an RF output port. The LEDs indicate to the
user if the Cricket is actively transmitting,
and double as an indicator for what state the
Cricket is in—either Normal, Distress or Alarm
mode. Refer to Figure 2 for the Cricket's

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FIGURE 2
Cricket schematic, featuring Murata
Type ABZ CMWX1ZZABZ chip

  (;

 14 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

schematic and to Figure 3 for the Cricket PCB.
We selected a 915MHz, whip-style antenna
for its light and flexible characteristics.
To power the Cricket, AAA batteries were
chosen, based on cost, size and capacity.
With disposable lithium cells, the Cricket
FEATURES
batteries are accessed by removing the rear
battery cover (Figure 4).
CRIKET SOFTWARE
The best way to describe the Cricket’s
functionality is to examine the software

lasts for 16 days in Normal mode, 12 days in that runs on it. We wrote all the Cricket
Distress mode and 4 days in Alarm mode. The programming in the Arduino IDE, using a
LoRa library and board support package that
FIGURE 3
recognizes the Murata chip we used [3].
Cricket PCB, featuring Murata chip,
We programmed three modes of operation:
LEDs and input buttons
Normal, Distress and Alarm. Normal mode
will run by default when the Cricket is
powered on. The device will transmit a check-
in message and blink the green LED every
5 minutes. Distress mode will transmit a
distress message and blink the red LED every
minute. Alarm mode blinks both LEDs three
times for good visibility, and transmits an
alarm message every 10s. Alarm mode is
activated when a Bat is close enough to detect
a Cricket’s chirp. More transmissions help the
Bat narrow in on the Cricket, and having both
LEDs light up indicates to the lost person(s)
that a rescuer with a Bat is nearby, and that
they should make noise or try to alert the
rescuer in some way.
In our application, we didn’t need fast data
rates or high data volume, but we did need long
range. This meant we could change various
settings to sacrifice the data rate and volume to
gain longer range. The LoRa Calculator software
by Semtech was a helpful tool while changing
the LoRa settings. The calculator indicated
that for maximum range, we needed high
spreading factor and low bandwidth [4]. We
set the spreading factor to 12, the bandwidth
to 125kHz and the coding rate to 4. Also, we
set the Murata chips to transmit at the highest
supported power level of 20dBm (100mW).
The actual data we transmit over the LoRa
protocol comprises 5 full bytes in series.
The first byte is an asterisk (*) character,
which serves as a start sequence. The
asterisk prevents the Bat from listening to
LoRa signals that are not transmitted from
SARNet devices. The second and third bytes
are used as a unique ID number to identify
a Cricket device. The fourth and fifth bytes
are used to indicate whether the Cricket is
in Normal, Distress or Alarm mode. LoRa
protocol supports a maximum payload size
of 256 bytes to be transmitted at one time.
Since we are using only 5 bits, we had room
for expansion if a large amount of Cricket IDs
were needed for the system.

FIGURE 4
THE BAT
The back of Cricket, with the battery
The Bat is designed to be taken into the
door open. A power button, reset field once the approximate area of a Cricket
switch and SWD programmer header device has been determined. We liked the idea
are accessible. of a rescue technician using a touchscreen,
 circuitcellar.com 15

tablet-style device to close in on a distressed

person. The method of search is not unlike
recreational “fox hunts” by radio amateurs,
in which someone hides a radio transmitting
device and then others attempt to find it in
a hide-and-seek fashion. Special direction-

FEATURES
finding (DF) antennas are implemented to
help the radio amateurs in their search.
Like the radio amateurs, we based our idea
on a direction-finding principle. We combined
an electronic compass module with a scan
of the received Cricket signal amplitude.
With compass and signal-strength data, our
tracking device can plot a signal’s amplitude
and the direction of its location on the screen.
Because the Bat must receive signals
from the Cricket, we tuned the design for
the antenna to 915MHz. An online antenna
calculator tool helped us determine the
antenna’s dimensions [5]. We chose the
moxon-style antenna because of its direction-
finding capability and its wide, cone-like
reception pattern (Figure 5). In our trials, we
tested a front-to-back ratio of about a 10dBm.
Our trial results were useful in our design
FIGURE 5
because the Bat relies on directional-radio 915MHz moxon-style antenna. The coaxial cable is connected to the top copper wire, which is the driven
signal detection. The Bat’s software requires element. Although the antenna appears to be one piece of wire, the bottom portion is the reflector, which is
the user to turn in a circle (360 degrees) while a separate wire. #14 AWG solid core wire is used.
scanning for a Cricket’s signal. The software
indicates the likely direction of the Cricket

Verilog HDL
With the right tools
such as this book,
designing a microprocessor
can be easy.
Okay, maybe not easy, but certainly less
complicated. Monte Dalrymple has taken his
years of experience designing embedded
architecture and microprocessors and compiled
his knowledge into one comprehensive guide to
processor design in the real world.

Monte demonstrates
how Verilog hardware
description language
(HDL) enables you
to depict, simulate,
and synthesize an
electronic design so
you can reduce your
workload and increase
productivity.
www. EarthLCD.com/cc1

cc-webshop.com 949.248.2333

25 Years Embedded Display Experience

 16 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

by displaying the direction that returned the

highest signal amplitude.
The Bat handheld tracking device combines
several assemblies into one. Like the Cricket,
the Bat houses its components in a 3D-printed
case. Our team used Fusion 360 to create all
FEATURES

the enclosure components. The dimensions

were based on the Raspberry Pi foundation
7” touchscreen, while including enough depth
for the rest of the components.
We wanted the Bat enclosure to be
comfortable to hold, so we modelled it to
have ergonomic, controller-like grips. Fitting
all our components inside and keeping our
wiring neat proved to be a challenge. Inside
the case is a Raspberry Pi 3, a Raspberry Pi
foundation touchscreen, a custom Bat PCB,
Arduino Nano, Adafruit LSM303DLHC compass
module and a Ravpower 26,800mA-hour
power bank (Figure 6). The moxon directional
antenna is mounted on the exterior of the
case. After some careful wiring and strategic
component placement, we were able to fit the
Bat together with all the components inside.
We needed the main processing power to
come from Raspberry Pi, so we picked the
FIGURE 6 Raspberry Pi 3 for its lower power consumption
The Bat shown with the screen removed. The back of the screen holds the Raspberry Pi with Bat PCB HAT and cost, compared to the Raspberry Pi 4.
and the Arduino Nano. In the bottom half of the enclosure is the Ravpower bank, power switch and Adafruit The touchscreen was ideal, because it had full
LSM303DLHC compass module.
software driver support in Raspbian, and the
touch functionality works out of the box. Also,
we used the several mounting holes on the
ABOUT THE AUTHORS screen to attach the Raspberry Pi and keep
Cameron Stauffer everything in the case secure.
accumulated various To receive radio signals from the Cricket,
we designed a custom PCB in a HAT (Hardware
employment experience
Attached on Top) form for mounting on the
in the retail, funeral and
Raspberry Pi (Figure 7). With this design,
oil and gas industries,
our Bat circuit board is powered directly by
before choosing to
the Raspberry Pi’s 3.3V and ground pins. The
pursue a diploma in Bat’s PCB has the same Murata chip for radio
Electronics and Computer Team SARNet : James Lawton (left), Cam Stauffer (center), reception as does the Cricket, and a coaxial
Engineering Technology Callum Munn-Middleton (right) cable connects the U.FL connector to the
at Camosun College. His moxon antenna. Figure 8 shows the Bat's PCB
curiosity for physics and schematic.
mathematics, and passion for electronics influenced his decision to return Finally, we power all these devices using
to school after 5 years in the workforce. Cameron plans on completing the a Ravpower 26,800mA-hour power bank. The
Electronics and Computer Engineering Bridge program, and pursuing a power bank is capable of running the Bat
bachelor's degree in engineering at the University of Victoria in Canada. for at least 8 hours. We chose the Ravpower
for its high capacity and ability to deliver up
to 2.4A of continuous current at 5V. The 7"
Callum Munn-Middleton has always had a passion for electronics, which
touchscreen draws up to 500mA, the Arduino
drove him to enroll and now graduate from the Electronics and Computer Nano consumes a miniscule 20mA and the
Engineering Technology program at Camosun College. He plans to do the Pi 3 draws a maximum of about 1,500mA. The
Bridge program at Camosun this year, which will then allow him to continue power bank can be conveniently charged via
his engineering studies at the University of Victoria. a micro USB port, accessed on the side of the
enclosure. Refer to Figure 9 for a functional
James Lawton worked in the electrical trade for 8 years before returning block diagram of the Bat and Cricket.
to school to study electronics. He has graduated from the Electronics and
Computer Engineering Technology program at Camosun, and he plans to
BAT SOFTWARE
We controlled many different components
pursue a career in marine electronics systems.
from the one Raspberry Pi. Because of
 circuitcellar.com 17

the variety of hardware, we had multiple

programs made to run the functions for each
of the components. We wrote a program for
receiving packets and RSSI from the Crickets,
calculating a heading for the compass
module, and a main GUI program for the

Bat’s user. We developed the Bat’s Type ABZ
chip software using the Arduino IDE, just like
the Cricket. The chip’s software includes the
board support packages and LoRa libraries we
used for the Cricket, since both devices have
the Murata chip.
The purpose of the Bat chip’s program is
to listen continually for any LoRa messages
transmitted by the Cricket. Once it detects a
message, the messages are parsed and the
information inside each message is recorded.
The messages contain the Cricket ID number
and operating mode, and the received signal
strength indicator (RSSI) value. The ABZ chip
sends these values to the Raspberry Pi via the
I 2C bus. If the message received is from the
Cricket being tracked, the Bat’s chip will send
a signal back to the Cricket to trigger it to
go into Alarm mode. To orient the Bat’s user
toward the source of the Cricket’s signal, we
implemented an Adafruit LSM303 compass
module. To interface with the compass, we
use an Arduino Nano connected to it over the
I 2C bus.
An example program written by Adafruit
polls the compass module continually,
retrieving acceleration X Y Z and magnetometer
X Y Z values, which gives us a heading from
0 to 360 degrees. Using both accelerometer
and magnetometer readings means that the
compass direction is tilt compensated, so
the user does not have to hold the Bat unit
FEATURES
FIGURE 7
Bat PCB with LSM303 compass module. The compass module was originally mounted on this PCB before the
final design utilizing Arduino.
level to get an accurate heading. The compass
heading is then transferred from the Arduino
to the Pi over a USB serial connection.
We programmed our own GUI to clearly
display all the information collected from the
Bat PCB and the compass module. The main
screen has basic instructions on how to use
the Bat, and navigation buttons to access
other screens with different features. Our
GUI program reads files that have continually
updated compass, Cricket ID and RSSI
information in them. By reading the data files,
current data are always available for access
by any of the graphical features of the Bat.
We wrote all the code that runs on the
Raspberry Pi in Python and mostly use
tkinter and PyQT modules. We adapted
and modified a handy graphical compass
program from an existing Python widget [6].

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#
with the compass module, as
originally planned.
 18 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

THE COLONY
BAT Bat The Colony aspect of the project was
PCB designed, but not implemented, because
915MHz LoRa 3.3V
CRICKET
TX ⁄ RX
we did not have the time to increase the
AAA cell Cricket 915MHz LoRa
scope of our project. However, the Bat and
Murata
×2 PCB TX ⁄ RX type Cricket working successfully is enough to
FEATURES

+3V +5V +3.3V ABZ demonstrate that a Colony setup is feasible,

Murata Raspberry
type
+5V
Pi 3
ABZ I2C-0 USB 5V ⁄ serial data
Bus
RavPower
+5V
26800mAh Raspberry Pi
USB Foundation 7"
Power touchscreen
Button 1 Red LED bank
Button 2 Green LED
LSM303DLHC
Compass ⁄
FIGURE 9
Final block diagram for Cricket and Bat
The compass graphic is updated continually
with heading data received from the Arduino.
We implemented a sweep feature that
live updates and plots the strength of the
signal received as the user turns slowly in a
360-degree circle. The pointer in the graphic
will grow or shrink corresponding to an
increase or decrease in signal strength. The
direction that resulted in the pointer having
the highest amplitude indicates the general
direction toward the source of the Cricket’s
signal (Figure 10).
Finally, we do not want the user to have
to launch all these complicated programs
individually when the Raspberry Pi starts up.
To avoid this problem, we took advantage of
Linux’s bash script functionality, letting us
have all scripts launch together as soon as the
Raspberry Pi boots up. Because of the bash
script, the Bat is ready for use when the user
turns on the power.
For detailed article references and additional resources go to:
www.circuitcellar.com/article-materials
References [1] through [6] as marked in the article can be found there.
RESOURCES
Adafruit | www.adafruit.com
Heltec | www.heltec.org
Murata | www.murata.com
Raspberry Pi Foundation | www.raspberrypi.org
Ravpower | www.ravpower.com
Semtech | www.semtech.com
Ultimaker | www.ultimaker.com
I2C-1 since a Colony is essentially a set of mounted
Bus Bat-like devices. We developed the Cricket
code to be able to communicate with a Colony
Arduino setup if it were implemented. Alternately,
Nano
we could program the Cricket devices to
3.3V⁄ I2C communicate with commercial, off-the-shelf
Adafruit LoRa gateways.
The Colony would be mounted along trails
or in parks in a checkpoint configuration. In
Accel a checkpoint configuration, when a Cricket
sends out its chirp, it can be picked up by
any section of the Colony, at which time the
Cricket’s location is recorded and saved.
Moving forward, the rescue team will look up
the last known location of the Cricket, based
on the last section of the Colony that picked
up the device’s signal. The Colony’s data
identify a focused initial search area, to which
a rescue team with a Bat can be deployed.
TRIALS
We conducted several trials to ensure that
LoRa was a feasible technology to use in our
application. At the start of the project, we
used Heltec LoRa 32 (V1) boards with included
monopole antennas, to test maximum signal
ranges. Both the Heltec devices and the
Murata chips we selected use the Semtech
SX1276 radio ICs. Therefore, we concluded
the Heltec board would accurately reflect the
performance we could expect with the devices
we planned to develop.
We started our testing at Camosun College,
and found that the units could communicate
easily at 250 meters. Building on this success,
we tested again in Mount Doug, a densely
forested park, and found we still had reception
up to 600 meters away with minimal packet
loss.
After we had fully developed the Bat and
Cricket, we conducted more testing to observe
the results of our calibrated hardware. In
a wide-open area with no obstructions, we
successfully detected the Cricket up to 1,800
meters away from the Bat. In a more densely
forested area, we were able to achieve up
to 800 meters detection range. With more
resources and better equipment, we could
further expand on the performance of our
technology.
Our group had to confirm that a person
out of sight with a Cricket device could be
located with the Bat. We did this in the most
reasonable way possible—with a game of
hide and seek. A group member hid outdoors,
 circuitcellar.com 19

with a Cricket device transmitting in distress

mode, and another team member with the Bat
attempted track the person down. Every hide-
and-seek test was successful, and proved that
the Bat can effectively track down Crickets in
a wilderness setting.

FEATURES
CONCLUSION
Our goal was to use LoRa radio technology
in a new and exciting way. The SARNet rescue
system is a departure from the typical IoT
usage for LoRa. We hope using LoRa in this
way will help to pioneer future LoRa-based
professional safety systems. In the end, we
produced a working proof of concept for
SARNet. We successfully use LoRa as a radio
location technology, by combining the power
of Raspberry Pi, Arduino and the Murata chips
on our self-made PCBs. FIGURE 10
The Cricket works as a compact design, Bat handheld GUI. The left area is for selecting functions and settings, the top right is the compass indicator,
and the bottom right gives amplitude and direction of detected Crickets. The length of the red line represents
while retaining long battery life, and the Bat
amplitude.
functions as planned, despite the complexity
and number of components involved. Our
team was surprised that the range exceeded printing. Above all, SARNet showcases much
1.8km in clear conditions, and we are proud of of what we have learned over the past 3 years,
how well the Cricket and Bat devices worked along with our group’s creativity and
together. teamwork skills. We completed all the
Our project is an excellent engineering objectives we set out at the beginning of the
exercise for embedded and GUI programming, term, and collectively agree that our capstone
Linux systems, PCB design, RF design and 3D project was a complete success.

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 20 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356
Periodic Table Desktop Trainer
Built Using PIC16 MCU
FEATURES
The year 2019 marked the 150th anniversary of the periodic
table. As a tribute, Dev built a desktop accessory that helps
students learn the chemical symbols and the order of the
chemical elements in the periodic table. The circuit is based on
a Microchip PIC16 MCU, and it continually runs when powered
by a commonly available 5V charger, or intermittently with a
long-lived battery supply.
By
Devlin Gualtieri
T he United Nations proclaimed 2019
to be the International Year of the
Periodic Table of Chemical Elements
(IYPT2019). In 1869, Russian
chemist, Dmitri Mendeleev (1834-1907), first
organized all the chemical elements known
at that time into a table based on atomic
weight. In this effort, he built on the earlier
work of many other chemists, notably Antoine
Lavoisier (1743-1794), Humphry Davy (1778-
1829), John Dalton (1766-1844) and Jacob
Berzelius (1779-1848). The table revealed
regularity in the properties of the elements,
so it’s now known as the Periodic Table.
Some of the elements of small atomic
number—such as iron, copper and zinc—
have been known since antiquity. Some other
elements are bound together in minerals,
and they were only isolated after chemistry
was sufficiently developed. The gaseous
elements, invisible as they are, were likewise
difficult to identify. Other naturally occurring
elements were first known only after their
synthesis in nuclear reactions. These are
11 19 26 47 50 51 74 79 80 82
Na K Fe Ag Sn Sb W Au Hg Pb
FIGURE 1
These are the “oddball elements” of the periodic table, at least for English speakers. Their symbols derive
from their names in Latin and German.
promethium, polonium, astatine, francium,
actinium, protactinium, neptunium and
plutonium. There are other elements—those
of atomic number 95 and greater—that have
such a short lifetime that they are not found
in nature and are only obtained through
synthesis.
Each chemical element is represented by
a one- or two-letter symbol in the Periodic
table. When you scan these symbols, most
of them make sense, like “O” for oxygen,
“Al” for aluminum and “Ne” for neon. Mixed
among these are some “oddball” chemical
elements whose symbols don’t match their
English names. That’s because their symbols
derive from their names in other languages
(Figure 1).
The symbol Na for sodium derives from
the Latin word for salt which is natrium. Latin
provides other symbols, such as potassium
(K, kalium, from the word for potash), iron
(Fe, ferrum), silver (Ag, argentum), tin (Sn,
stannum), antimony (Sb, from the name of its
mineral, stibium), gold (Au, aurum), mercury
(Hg, hydrargyrum, for silver water) and lead
(Pb, plumbum). The symbol for tungsten, W,
comes from the German name of its mineral:
wolframite.
Presently, 118 chemical elements are
known. The 118th element, oganesson, was
first synthesized in 2002 at a nuclear research
facility near Moscow, and it’s named after
 circuitcellar.com 21

Russian nuclear physicist, Yuri Oganessian. FIGURE 2

The Periodic Table Desktop Trainer,
Oganesson is in Group 18 of the periodic
showing the symbol for bismuth, the
table, and it completes the 7th period. A
element with atomic number 83. The
consequence of this is that the next element, push button at the top allows display
119, with the temporary name “ununennium,” of one element at a time, when
Latin for a hundred and nineteen, will be battery powered.

FEATURES
difficult to synthesize. As a consequence, we’ll
have 118 chemical elements for quite a while.

DEVICE OVERVIEW
My desktop circuit (Figure 2) operates in
several modes. It will display the symbols for
all 118 chemical elements, either sequentially
or in random order. In the sequential mode,
it displays the symbols in order of atomic
number, from hydrogen (H) to oganesson
(Og). In the random mode, it first displays
the atomic number, and then the symbol.
This latter mode is useful for learning the
association of the atomic number and symbol.
It could also serve as the basis for a periodic
table memory game.
The device can be powered from a 5V
charger. The current demand is surprisingly
low—10 to 12mA—because the matrix display
LEDs are very efficient. As a consequence,
nearly any 5V charger can be used as a power
supply. There’s provision for intermittent
operation in either sequential or random
mode by pushing a button, and this is a useful
mode when using battery power.
In my device, I incorporated a battery
holder for three AA batteries. These have
enough voltage to power the PIC and display.
Since alkaline AA batteries have a capacity
of about 2,000mA-hours, this means that
theoretically, the battery supply should
operate the device continually for 200 hours,
or about 100,000 push-button cycles.
CIRCUITRY
The characters are displayed on two 8×8
LED matrix displays that have a total of 128
LEDs. The LED matrix displays used were
Luckylight KWM-R30881CPGB, which are
available from a variety of sources. These
have the LED cathodes connected to the rows.
In each display, the LEDs are wired in a
matrix of eight columns and eight rows, with
the LED cathodes connected to the row lines.
If you happen to have displays in which the
anodes are connected to the row lines, you can
use the hardware without change and invert
some values in the microcontroller (MCU)
source code. The LEDs are multiplexed for
display by supplying the proper 16 data bits
for each row to the column lines, and cycling
through the rows. Since there are 16 columns
and 8 rows, we need 24 I/O pins to drive the
display. Additionally, we need two data lines
as an interface for an I 2C serial EEPROM that
contains the character set (that I’ll described
shortly) and a mode switch.
I used a 40-pin MCU, the Microchip

$


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1
!
  ./ # %
;
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0
#,+ %
3 




1)
./ . .

1

21
1 6 73. &:3:


 ;
39>? 3--2 &3:!

39>? 3-
-2
-2
3: 1) 1)
./ 1  

39>? 3--2 -2

3:1 . -
!  
39>?! 3- -2 & 3: > -

! !
3-184, -23: +7 -
 1 1
39>? 3- -21 -2
3:
+- .++

1) 39>? 3=3-2 ,283:
; 
 11 !
39>?1 3=
>3-2! + 3 97?

 ;

39>?
3=+-2 + !3! 97?



9+
74,2 + 3 97?



1 

9+749 8 + 131 97?!


!

97?; 38
9+9 3<3 97?1


! 

 97?
1 3
8
9+, 8<3! 97?
!
97?




3
+93
1

97?
FIGURE 3


 

97?



;
3 +4 +,31


97? Microcontroller circuitry for the
97?
 3 +  + 3 97?
97?



 
3
 +
+ 3



97? Periodic Table Desktop Trainer. To
.++ .++ enable a low current sleep mode for


,
!'-
battery longevity, the serial EEPROM is
powered by one of the PIC I/O pins.
The current drain in sleep mode is just
200nA.
 22 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

Technology PIC16F877A [1], to accommodateexternal 4.7kΩ resistor and 22pF capacitor.

This gives a clock frequency of about 4MHz,
all this I/O. The PIC also has pins available for
in-circuit serial programming, which madewhich is the upper limit for the internal
oscillator. The actual operating frequency can
for easier development. The circuitry around
the PIC MCU is shown in Figure 3, and thebe checked at pin 14, which outputs a signal
at one-quarter the clock frequency. The 100Ω
connections for the LED matrix displays are
FEATURES

given in Figure 4. current-limiting resistors at the pins that drive

the LED columns provide a bright display, and
Since precision timekeeping isn’t required,
the actual brightness is set by a pulse-width
the clock for the PIC is provided by its internal
modulation (PWM) in the source code.
RC oscillator, with the frequency set by an
The character set is contained in a Microchip
24C256 serial EEPROM, whose data are accessed
using I2C SDA and SCL signal lines. The required
1/0

1/

1/

1/!

1/

1/

1/ 

1/0

1/

1/

1/!

1/

1/

1/ 
1/

1/
storage for the character set is slightly less
than 2KB. The 256KB capacity of this EEPROM

)
 !



!
)
 !



!
/
 ) !  0 /





)

! is certainly overkill in this application, but it’s
hard to source less dense serial EEPROMs. Since
1/
 
23/

we want to minimize battery drain in the MCU’s
sleep mode, this serial EEPROM is powered by
23/
)
1/0
)
one of the PIC I/O pins. The pull-up resistors
1/ 0
23/ 0
for the mode pins are powered by the same
I/O pin.
1/

23/)

There are quite a few connections from the
PIC pins to the LED matrix displays, and many
23/
1/


of the signal line conductors need to cross
1/ 
23/!  each other. Figure 5 shows the component
side view of the main circuit board. While
1/ 
23/ 
this is easily done in a multi-layer PCB, I use
boards with a single copper plane that I etch
23/0
1/)
for my own circuits. To simplify construction,
 
 
I mounted the LED matrix displays on a
daughter board that plugs into the MCU
FIGURE 4 board. The daughter board still requires a
Connections for the LED matrix displays. The displays used are Luckylight KWM-R30881CPGB, which are
few jumper wires to route the display signals.
available from a variety of sources. Other LED matrix displays can be used, but the pin-outs may differ from
Figure 6 shows the front and bottom views
those shown here. These displays have the LED cathodes connected to the row lines.
of the final assembly, showing the daughter
board placement before insertion into the
plastic case.
The Periodic Table Trainer operates in
several modes that are selected by the logic
 (.
signals present on the connections to PIC pin-
37 (RB4) and pin-38 (RB5). These are set at
&'() -
a logical “1” by the two 100kΩ resistors, and
they are set ,+
to a logical “0” by connection
to ground by switches. When B4 is at zero,
the device operates in a single-shot mode, in
  !" #$%&'()* +#,+

% which one element is shown after each reset.
When B4 is a one, the device continually
shows elements. If B5 is at zero, a random
element is displayed each time, and when B5
is a one, the elements are displayed in the
order of their atomic number. In that case,
the displayed element is stored in the PIC
non-volatile memory so that the order is
preserved between button presses in single-
shot mode.

CHARACTER SET
I originally wanted to use 16-segment
FIGURE 5
alphanumeric displays, but these weren’t
Component-side view of the main circuit board for the Periodic Table Trainer. The header for in-circuit serial
programming is at the top left with the mode connections nearby. Also seen are the three, eight-position
available in the desired large size. The 8×8 LED
single inline sockets that connect to the daughter board that hosts the LED matrix displays. matrix displays were a good second choice.
 circuitcellar.com 23

The next problem was that I needed

character set data for the chemical element
symbols and the atomic numbers from
1-118. I designed my own, based on a 5×7
character set, but I included some aesthetic
enhancements. One was to have the five

FEATURES
lowercase “dangler” characters—g, j, p, q
and y—drop below the baseline of the leading
uppercase characters. While no chemical
elements have symbols that require either
uppercase or lowercase j or q, I included
these for completeness.
The symbols for the chemical elements are
one or two characters, and these are easily
displayed on two, side-by-side 8×8 matrix
displays. However, the atomic numbers can
be as large as 118. While you might initially
think that we need three matrix displays
to accommodate the atomic numbers, the
leftmost digit is the slender character one.
I was therefore able to squeeze all the
necessary numbers into two matrix displays
in my character set. The row data are stored
as sequential bytes in the serial EEPROM.
Figure 7 shows how.

EEPROM PROGRAMMING
Integrated circuit (IC) technology has
advanced considerably since the late 1970s,
when I built my first home computers. At
that time, erasable read-only memory chips
had just a few kilobytes of data space,
and they were erased only by exposure to
intense ultraviolet light. The IC packages had
windows that allowed the ultraviolet light to
penetrate the silicon chips and erase them by
FIGURE 6
recombining the electrons and holes in the
Front (above) and bottom (below) views of the final assembly, showing the daughter board placement before
memory capacitors (Figure 8). Today, read-
insertion into the plastic case. A few of the jumper wires on the daughter board that translate the interface
only memory chips have memory space that pins to the proper matrix display pins can be seen. Some of these jumpers are hidden beneath the displays.
is orders of magnitude greater, they’re erased The symbol for silver, Ag, is shown on the top-view photo. The bottom-view photo shows how the daughter
by a quantum tunneling effect and they’re board plugs into the microcontroller board, and how the LED matrix displays plug into the daughter board.
called “electrically erasable programmable Single-row inline sockets are used for the connections.
read-only memories” (EEPROM).
Several years ago, the 24C08 was a
popular EEPROM for MCU circuits because
it was serially alterable by an I 2C interface.
This device contained 8KB of memory, which
was usually sufficient for most applications.
Today, this device has been superseded by the
24C256, a plug-compatible device with 256KB
of memory. Not surprisingly, the 24C256
chips are available at a lower price than that
of the 24C08, so I could hardly complain when
I used this chip to store my 2KB character set.
The character set initially needs to be
loaded into the serial EEPROM. There are
many choices for purchase of a device
programmer, but, if you just need to program
a device for the Periodic Table Trainer, that’s
an unnecessary expense. One of my many FIGURE 7
Raspberry Pi computer boards solved that Character set coding to hexadecimal numbers in the serial EEPROM. The character set is a modified 5x7
problem, because these boards have an character set in which the lower-case “dangler” characters rise from the lowest row.
 24 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

integrated I 2C interface. The circuit shown

in Figure 9 allows connection of the serial
EEPROM to the Raspberry Pi I/O header. It’s
so simple that I built mine using point-to-
point wiring on a prototyping circuit board,
but I’ve included a circuit board layout in the
FEATURES

online repository.
The I 2C is not activated by default on the
Raspberry Pi, but it’s a simple procedure
to do that using the raspi-config program
in the Raspbian operating system. Run the
configuration program by typing the following
in a command line:

sudo raspi-config

Then, at Interfacing Options, enable I 2C,

FIGURE 8
select <Finish> and then reboot. After reboot,
Evolution of read-only memory. The earlier packages had a window that allowed memory erasure by an
you can verify that the I 2C system is active by
ultraviolet light. Left to right, two examples of 2k×8 parallel interface chips from 1979 and the 256k×8 I2C
this command:
serial EEPROM used in the circuit.

ls /dev/*i2c*
FIGURE 9
Using a Raspberry Pi to program an
The Raspberry Pi will respond by indicating
EEPROM memory chip. Fortunately,
the 24CX chips will operate from a 3.3V (  
that the user I 2C system, i2c-1, is active.
supply, so we can steal voltage from
the Raspberry Pi I/O header pins. The 4  5
/dev/i2c-1
Raspberry Pi has I2C interface pins
67 

that make programming possible by One command-line utility you should

-

software (see main text). 
1
2
0
0

 install for debugging is i2c-tools. This is
installed with the following command:

+3 0
 ,
+0 1++

,- ,
,) ,)
sudo apt-get install -y i2c-tools

In particular, i2c-tools will probe the

entire I 2C address space to report what
devices are connected. When the serial
EEPROM is connected, you will see the display
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
shown in Figure 10, which indicates that
Dev Gualtieri received his Ph.D. in Solid State Science there is a device at hex address 0x50, after
and Technology from Syracuse University in 1974. entering the following command:
He had a 30-year career in research and technology
at a major aerospace company, and is now retired. i2cdetect -y 1
Dr. Gualtieri writes a science and technology blog at
www.tikalon.com/blog/blog.php. He is the author of The 0x50 address is a consequence of the
three science fiction novels, and books about science upper 4 bits of this EEPROM being logically set
and math. See www.tikalonpress.com for details. at 0101 inside the integrated circuit. When
combined
    with the three lower address bits set
'/
at a logical “0” by grounding the address pins,
For detailed article references and additional resources go to:
%
we get an &'
address (
of 0101000, which .
is 0x50.
Although the user I 2C interface of the
www.circuitcellar.com/article-materials +* 
Raspberry Pi is accessible from several
References [1] through [3] as marked in the article can be found there.
available programming languages, I’ve found
       !  "#$% &' () *"+* 

$that the easiest of these is Python. However,
some things are more easily done using one
RESOURCES of my favorite languages, PHP, so I’ve written
Luckylight | www.luckylight.cn a program in PHP that writes the character
set data into a text file, which is read by a
ME Labs | www.melabs.com
Python program that programs the serial
Microchip Technology | www.microchip.com EEPROM through the I 2C interface. Source
code for these programs is included on Circuit
Raspberry Pi Foundation | www.raspberrypi.org Cellar’s article code & files webpage, and the
 circuitcellar.com 25

text file of the character set is included so

that it isn’t necessary to run the PHP program
if the character set is unmodified. From the
same directory that includes the file named
elements_hexfile.txt, run the following to
program the serial EEPROM:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f
00 : – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
10 : – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
20 : – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
30 : – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

python i2c_programmer.py
CIRCUIT VARIANTS
As with all my PIC projects, I wrote the
firmware using the PICBasic Professional
compiler from ME Labs [2]. Because I use
Linux exclusively, I run an older version of this
compiler and its associated programmer on a
FEATURES
40 : – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
50 : 50 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
60 : – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
70 : – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
FIGURE 10
When the serial EEPROM is connected, you will see this display, which indicates that there is a device at hex
address 0x50, after entering the command: i2cdetect -y 1

very old Windows operating system installed

as a virtual machine. The folder on Circuit
Cellar’s article code and files webpage for this
article include a compiled hex file, to program
a PIC without needing a compiler. It would
be easy enough to rewrite the source code in
C so other compilers can be used, including
the free MPLAB C compiler [3] from Microchip
Technology, manufacturer of the PIC MCUs.
At the time of writing this article, it’s
possible to buy 8×8 LED matrix display
subsystems with an I 2C bus interface. I avoid
publishing circuits that utilize a particular
component that might be hard to source in
the future, so I didn’t use these in my design.
If you are able to buy these, you can still use
the character set in the serial EEPROM, and
there would be a considerable simplification
of the circuit. A smaller PIC can be used, since
much of the complexity is off-loaded to these
I 2C display subsystems, and I’m sure that
Arduino fans would have no trouble building
and programming a device using these
displays.

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 26 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

A Deep Dive Into LPWAN

IoT Sensor Connectivity
FEATURES

There are several technology options for connecting

widely distributed IoT sensors. But system developers
face challenges with the range and power of many of
today’s wireless networking options. In this article,
BehrTech’s Wolfgang Thieme does a deep dive on Low
Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN), explaining how
the technology solves many of those design dilemmas.

By Wolfgang Thieme,
Chief Product Officer, BehrTech

A s the global IoT connections

exponentially grow to 22 billion
in 2025 (IoT Analytics), Low
Power Wide Area Networks
(LPWAN) [1] are expected to be a prominent
facilitator. The central value of IoT is the
unprecedented visibility into physical assets,
processes and people to enable informed
decision making. Often times, this visibility
comes from granular, battery-powered IoT
sensors distributed over large, structurally
dense campuses like factories, mine sites, oil
fields or commercial buildings.
Legacy wireless technologies can’t keep up
with the range, power and cost requirements
in smart sensor networks. Traditional
cellular connectivity (for example 3G, LTE…)
and wireless local area networks (such as
Wi-Fi) are too expensive and power hungry
for transmitting small amounts of data from
a large number of sensor devices. Other
solutions such as Bluetooth, Zigbee, Z-Wave
have highly constrained physical range. And
even though many of them employ a mesh
topology to extend their coverage, the multi-
hop relaying nature is power-consuming
while entailing complex network planning
and management. As such, mesh networks
are suitable for medium-range applications
at best.
LPWANs are unique in that they overcome
these pitfalls to deliver an efficient, affordable
and easy-to-deploy solution for massive-
scale IoT networks. They are ideal for low-
bandwidth applications with small payloads,
such as environmental monitoring, asset
and facility management, worker safety and
smart metering.
KEY QUALITIES OF LPWAN
LPWANs employ a star topology in which
a base station collects data from numerous
remote, distributed end nodes. With the
exception of cellular LPWAN (such as NB-
IoT), the connection between end nodes and
the base station is non-TCP/IP to avoid hefty
packet headers (Figure 1). After receiving
and demodulating messages, the base station
then relays them to the backend server
through a standard TCP/IP backhaul link
(for example Ethernet, cellular…). For public
LPWAN services, data must be routed through
the network operators’ server before reaching
the end user’s applications, while in privately
managed LPWANs, data can be directly
transferred to the user’s preferred backend
for complete data privacy and control.
The appeal of LPWANs exist within their
two signature features that used to come
as a trade-off in traditional technologies:

long range and low power consumption
(Figure 2). While Wi-Fi and Bluetooth can only
communicate over tens or a hundred meters
at best, LPWANs are able to transmit signals
up to 15km in rural areas and up to 5km in
urban, structurally dense areas. This wireless
family also provides deep penetration
capability to connect devices at hard-to-reach
indoor and underground locations. On top of
that, it comes with a simple, small-footprint
transceiver designed to minimize cost and
power consumption on the end node side.
The idea is to leave all the heavy-lifting to the
base station and keep the data frame as short
as possible.
Long Range: Range is often measured
in terms of receiver sensitivity—the lowest
signal power for a message to be detected
and demodulated. In LPWANs, receiver
sensitivity can reach -130dBm, as compared
to a moderate -70dBm sensitivity in Bluetooth.
This high receiver sensitivity is typically
achieved by reducing the signal bandwidth
and thus experienced noise levels (such as
(Ultra-)Narrow Band) or adding processing
gain (like Spread Spectrum)—both come at
the cost of lower data rates.
Besides these special modulation
techniques, the use of sub-GHz frequency
bands in most LPWAN solutions, instead of the
popular 2.4GHz band, further improves range
and penetration capability. As the wavelength
is inversely proportional to free space path
loss, the long radio waves in sub-GHz systems
can travel over kilometers in open areas.
Compared to 2.4GHz signals, they can also
better penetrate through walls, trees and
other structures along the propagation path,
while bending farther around solid obstacles.
Low Power: LPWAN systems adopt multiple
approaches to optimize power efficiency,
securing many years of battery life on end
nodes. First, outside the transmission time,
the transceivers are put into deep “sleep”
mode whereby very minimal power is
consumed. In bi-directional communications,
a listening schedule is defined so that the
device is “awake” only at predefined times or
shortly after an uplink is sent to receive the
circuitcellar.com 27
FIGURE 1
LPWAN architecture
FEATURES
downlink message.
Second, though not all, many LPWAN
technologies employ a lightweight
asynchronous protocol at the Medium Access
Control layer to minimize data overhead.
Pure ALOHA—a very simple random-access
protocol—is a common choice. In pure ALOHA,
a node accesses the channel and transmits
a message whenever data is available.
There is no time-slotted coordination or
carrier sensing, and even acknowledgment
of received messages is often bypassed to
further reduce the power footprint.
Finally, the one-hop star topology
introduces great power benefits. While
certain mesh solutions (for example, Zigbee
or WirelessHART) have been previously
implemented for battery-operated, industrial
sensor networks, they consume more
power than an LPWAN solution by orders of
magnitude. This is because, in a multi-hop
mesh topology, a device must spend extra
energy on listening for and relaying messages
from other devices. On the other hand, a star
network allows devices to “turn off” and stay
most of the time in sleep mode (Figure 3).
All that said, power efficiency can drastically
vary among LPWAN technologies. This is
FIGURE 2
Wireless IoT landscape
 28 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356
FEATURES
FIGURE 3
Mesh vs Star topology
because transmission time or on-air radio
time of each message is very different across
systems, and transmission is technically the
most energy-consuming activity. Short on-air
time means that the transceiver can turn off
faster to further reduce power consumption.
CURRENT LPWAN LANDSCAPE
The LPWAN landscape can be confusing
at first sight, given the plethora of available
solutions on the market. Nevertheless, if we
take a look at the underlying technology,
LPWAN solutions can be broadly grouped
into four major types: cellular LPWAN, Ultra-
Narrowband (UNB), Spread Spectrum and
Telegram Splitting. Among these four, cellular
LPWAN is the only category that operates in
the licensed spectrum, while the latter three
mostly leverage the license-free Industrial,
Scientific and Medical (ISM) frequency bands.
While introducing low cost and quick
deployment benefits, the use of the license-
free spectrum raises considerable Quality-
of-Service (QoS) and scalability challenges.
In most solutions, there exists a persistent
trade-off between QoS and power efficiency.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wo l f g a n g T h i e m e i s t h e C h i e f P ro d u c t
Officer at BehrTech, an enabler of next-
gen wireless connectivity for Industrial IoT.
He has more than 12 years of experience
in academic research and development;
successfully innovating and implementing new
technologies with commercial partners and
managing development and product teams.
He worked for over 10 years at Fraunhofer
Institute for Integrated Circuits where he led
the advancement of early stage technology
development and technology transfer processes
with a specific focus on integrated circuits, Internet of Things (IoT) and
communication and sensor technologies.
As mentioned earlier, the lightweight
asynchronous protocol at the MAC layer is
widely used in LPWAN for its power advantage.
Nevertheless, when multiple radio systems co-
exist and share the same spectrum resource,
uncoordinated transmissions in asynchronous
networks significantly increase the risks of
packet collisions and data loss.
Mitigation mechanisms like Listen-before-
Talk, handshaking and acknowledgment
to ensure QoS inevitably come with heavy
overheads or frequent signaling, which means
more power consumption. As wireless IoT
deployments and radio traffic exponentially
grow, warranting network reliability and
scalability while optimizing battery life will
be a major undertaking in many LPWAN
technologies.
Standardization is another important
consideration, given its critical role in enabling
a robust and vibrant IoT ecosystem. A
standardized technology provides a rigorous
and transparent technical framework to fuel
both vertical and horizontal interoperability. So
far, there have been only two camps of LPWAN
technologies that succeeded in standardization
efforts and are endorsed by formal standard
organizations. One is cellular LPWAN that
implements 3GPP standards, and the other is
the Telegram Splitting [2] technology based
on the newly released ETSI standard on Low
Throughput Networks—TS 103 357. A link [3] to
this specification is available on Circuit Cellar’s
article materials webpage.
Some industrial alliances have also been
established around certain proprietary
LPWAN technologies to promote standard
development. However, these efforts do not
ratify the viability of the technology and
might not cover the whole network stack.
It’s common that only the MAC layer is
made open, while the physical layer remains
entirely proprietary, like in the case of
the LoRa Alliance. Having part of technical
specifications publicly available on a royalty-
basis doesn’t necessarily make the technology
a truly open standard. Also, these industrial
activities do not incorporate a stringent
technology evaluation and quality testing
process, as in an SDOs’ (standards developing
organization's) formal procedure.
FOUR MAJOR LPWAN GROUPS
After a quick glimpse into the existing
LPWAN landscape, we’ll now dive into each
type of LPWAN technologies and review their
major technical features (Figure 4).
1. Cellular LPWAN (Licensed Spectrum):
LTE-M and NB-IoT are the two major
variants of cellular LPWAN. Both employ a
narrowband approach, wherein the received
 circuitcellar.com 29

signal bandwidth and data rates are reduced

to improve range and building penetration
ability. Compared to LTE, their transmission
power and technical design complexity are
also drastically reduced to achieve low-cost,
low-power qualities. NB-IoT, however, uses

FEATURES
a much smaller system bandwidth (200kHz)
than LTE-M (1.4MHz) and is thus a better choice
for underground and indoor applications.
Thanks to their operations in the licensed
spectrum, cellular LPWAN solutions introduce
great Quality-of-Service advantages.
That’s because there is no co-channel
interference from external systems. They
additionally employ time and frequency
synchronization alongside handshaking for
very high transmission reliability and network
scalability. That being said, these mechanisms
come at the cost of power efficiency due
to the required data overhead [4]. Besides
FIGURE 4
consuming extra energy, handshaking makes
LPWAN technologies positioning
the battery life of a node unpredictable,
since it’s difficult to decide how many times
the process needs to be repeated for each Telensa are representatives of UNB-based
transmission. LPWAN technologies.
Compared to the unlicensed counterparts, UNB signals, however, introduce very low
cellular LPWAN provides relatively higher peak data rates which translate into long on-air
data rates (greater than 1Mb/s for LTE-M and radio time. For example, systems like Sigfox
250Kb/s for NB-IoT), which further increases feature a 100Hz signal bandwidth and a data
power budget requirements. Available as rate of 100bps (EU mode), which means a
managed connectivity services from telecom 12 byte transmission could last for as long as
providers, their coverage at remote locations 2 seconds. This presents several challenges.
might not be guaranteed, and network First, long on-air time inevitably comes with
longevity is at stake due to the unforeseeable more power usage as the transceiver needs to
technology sunsetting. If your IoT end nodes be active for a longer period of time. Second,
are mobile, NB-IoT won’t be in your best under EU duty cycle regulations (1%) imposed
interest as it’s mostly designed for stationary by ETSI, a device operating in the 868MHz
devices. band can “speak” for only 36 seconds per
Given their pros and cons, cellular LPWAN hour. As such, the longer each transmission
options are best suited for higher data rate IoT takes place, the fewer total messages are
use cases and in smart city scenarios where allowed to be sent. In the US, FCC regulations
telecom infrastructure is mature. On the other limit the frequency occupation time of each
hand, they aren’t optimal for applications message to 0.4 seconds, requiring a different
where ultra-low power is at a high priority. network design with a higher data rate and
The same goes for industrial deployments shorter overall network range.
which often take place at remote locations Another issue with long on-air time is
and require the supported communications impaired Quality-of-Service (Figure 5).
network to sustain over several decades. Coupled with asynchronous communications,
longer time in the air interface exposes a
2. Ultra-Narrowband – UNB (License-free message to a higher chance of data collision,
Spectrum): To minimize the subjected noise especially in a crowded license-free spectrum
level and optimize receiver sensitivity, Ultra-
Narrowband solutions contract the signal
bandwidth to as small as 100Hz. Besides
extensive range and excellent penetration,
UNB approach allows for high spectral
efficiency as each signal occupies very minimal
channel bandwidth. High spectral efficiency
means that more messages can fit into an
assigned frequency band without overlapping
with each other, thereby improving overall FIGURE 5
system capacity and scalability. Sigfox and Long on-air time makes UNB signals highly susceptible to interference
 30 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356
FEATURES
FIGURE 6
Short on-air time of sub-packets in Telegram Splitting minimizes packet collision and data loss.
with heavy radio traffic from multiple co-
existing systems. Certain solutions apply
redundancy in which the same data is sent
several times in an attempt to improve message
reception. However, this measure proves to be
counter-productive, as it increases total on-air
time and energy usage per unique payload,
while further limiting effective data amounts
that can be sent per hour.
Another drawback of UNB networks is
its sensitivity to multipath fading caused
by Doppler effects in mobile end devices or
those situated close to fast-moving objects
(near a highway, for instance) [5]. To avoid
packet errors due to Doppler shifts, UNB
nodes should be stationary or moving only at
minimal speeds.
3. Spread Spectrum (License-free Spectrum):
As a common LPWAN modulation technique,
Spread Spectrum overcomes the very slow data
rate and Doppler fading issues experienced by
UNB solutions to a certain extent. In Spread
Spectrum, a narrowband signal continuously
FIGURE 7
LPWAN technologies comparison in different network criteria
For detailed article references and additional resources go to:
www.circuitcellar.com/article-materials
References [1] through [8] as marked in the article can be found there.
RESOURCES
Behr Technologies | www.behrtech.com
changes frequency, resulting in a frequency
ramp that occupies a much wider channel
bandwidth. More bandwidth use essentially
comes with a higher experienced noise level.
As such, processing gain is added to improve
the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and overall
system range. Spreading Factors (SF) signify
the level of processing gain with higher SF
enabling longer range at a lower data rate.
Compared to UNB signals, Spread
Spectrum signals are more robust against
interception and eavesdropping attempts.
Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS) implemented in
LoRa technology is a representative variant of
this modulation scheme. A recent study shows
that CSS systems can effectively support
mobile nodes at a speed of up to 40km/h [6].
On the other hand, the major limitation of
Spread Spectrum solutions is their inefficient
use of the spectrum resource, since more
bandwidth is required to transmit only a small
data amount. This induces bad co-existing
behavior and serious scalability problems.
In the limited sub-GHz radio spectrum,
high wideband data traffic combined with
uncoordinated transmissions in pure ALOHA
can cause message overlays and eventually
packet errors. This challenge further
intensifies in long-range applications using a
high spreading factor, due to the low data rate
and thus, longer on air-time of messages [7].
The uses of different spreading factor
and bandwidth combinations (such as
orthogonality) and a higher number of base
stations are common approaches to partly
remedy this issue. However, tuning each base
station to different frequency entails complex
network management and requires radio
system expertise.
4. Telegram Splitting (License-free):
Telegram Splitting is the latest and so far, the
only standardized LPWAN technology in the
licensed-free spectrum. Introducing a new
radio transmission approach for UNB signals,
the technology aims to surpass the trade-off
between Quality-of-Service and power efficiency
commonly faced in previous LPWAN solutions.
MYTHINGS by BehrTech is the only solution
that implements Telegram Splitting and fully
complies with the ETSI TS 103 357 standard.
Telegram Splitting systems feature a data
rate of 512bit/s. At the physical layer, the
technology divides a UNB telegram into multiple
equal-sized sub-packets, each of which is
randomly sent at a different time and carrier
frequency. As each sub-packet has a much
smaller size than the original telegram, its on-
air time is drastically reduced to only 16ms.
The accumulated on-air time of a 10-byte as
an example is only 390ms. Short on-air time
combined with the virtually random distribution

of sub-packets over time and frequency
significantly mitigate their risk of being hit by
interferers (Figure 6). On top of that, even if
up to 50% of sub-packets are affected, Forward
Error Correction ensures that the full message
can be retrieved at the base station.
As such, although asynchronous
communication is used for ultra-low power
benefits, Telegram Splitting delivers very high
interference immunity and system capacity.
Specifically, a single base station is able to
handle more than one million messages a day
as specified in the ETSI TS 103 357 standard
[3]. Also, in an Industrial IoT-equivalent
scenario, Telegram Splitting has been proved
to drastically outperform Chirp Spread
Spectrum in LoRa in terms of message
deliverability and network reliability [8].
In addition to Quality-of-Service, the
characteristics of Telegram Splitting, at the
same time, offer great power benefits. After
the transmission of each sub-packet, there
is a significantly longer transmission-free
period in which the node goes into “sleep
mode”. Short on-air time and longer off-
air time minimize power consumption while
giving the battery time to recover, which in
turn significantly extends battery life.
Short time in the air interface of sub-
packets combined with coherent demodulation
l(_t
University of
CINCINNATI I ONLINE
circuitcellar.com 31
additionally diminish Doppler fading effects.
And, even if some sub-packets suffer from
deep fades, FEC ensures that message
detection and retrieval is minimally affected.
With this, Telegram Splitting systems can
connect end nodes moving at up 120km/h
FEATURES
[2]—a feature not available in previous LPWAN
technologies. Figure 7 quickly recaps how the
four major LPWAN technology types compare
in different network criteria.
CONCLUSION
Providing a unique combination of long-
range, low-power and low-cost advantages,
LPWANs are poised to become the backbone
of battery-operated IoT sensor networks
across verticals. Nevertheless, not all LPWAN
technologies are created equal, and there
exists a persistent trade-off between Quality-
of-Service and battery life among most
solutions. At the same time, the lack of
standardization and limited mobility support
are other challenges not to be overlooked.
Recognized for its versatile technical design,
Telegram Splitting represents a new LPWAN
generation to surpass these limitations and
provide a robust, scalable and power-efficient
architecture for massive-scale IoT
deployments in the industrial and commercial
marketplaces.
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 32 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

Solutions Evolve for

Medical Wearable Designs

MCUs, Analog ICs

and Sensors
SPECIAL FEATURE

By Jeff Child,
Editor-in-Chief

With extreme low-power and wireless connectivity as leading design needs,

mobile and wearable medical devices continue to evolve. Solutions for designers
have taken shape in the form of microcontrollers, analog ICs and sensors.

T he mobile and wearable segments

rank among today’s most dynamic
areas of medical electronics
design. Such devices put extreme
demands on the embedded electronics
that make them work—and power is front
and center among those demands. Devices
spanning across fitness and medical markets
all need highly-integrated processing and
advanced power management technologies to
perform as expected.
To keep pace with those demands, makers
of microcontrollers (MCUs), analog ICs and
sensors have rolled out a new crop of solutions
over the past 12 months, each designed for
the needs of mobile and wearable medical
systems.
BLOOD-PRESSURE MONITORING
Exemplifying these trends, in November
Maxim Integrated introduced a solid-state
blood-pressure monitoring solution to
more conveniently track this critical health
indicator. Until now, accurate blood-pressure
monitoring could only be achieved with
bulky and mechanical cuff-based medical
devices. Design engineers can develop blood-
pressure trending solutions with Maxim's
MAXREFDES220# reference design.
Comprised of a complete integrated
optical sensor module, an MCU sensor hub
and a sensing algorithm, the MAXREFDES220#
optical blood-pressure trending solution can
be embedded into smartphones or wearables
(Figure 1). It enables users to place their
finger on a device for 30-45 seconds while
resting to measure blood pressure anywhere
and anytime. The reference design includes
the MAX30101 or MAX30102 high-sensitivity
optical sensor, as well as the MAX32664D
sensor hub IC with built-in algorithms.
The MAX30101 (using three LEDs) and
MAX30102 (using two LEDs) pulse-oximeter
and heart-rate optical sensor modules
combine photodetectors, LEDs and analog
front-end (AFE) electronics with an integrated
cover glass. This integrated optical design
and lenses-on-top approach enables optimal
 circuitcellar.com 33

signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for a small, lower

cost and power-efficient module. It comes in
a tiny 5.6mm × 3.3mm 14-pin optical package
with an I 2C interface to the sensor hub IC.
The MAX32664D sensor hub IC includes
firmware, which controls the sensor and
executes the algorithms that measure cuffless
blood pressure, heart rate and blood-oxygen
levels. Its ultra-small size (1.6mm × 1.6mm)
can easily fit into small devices to seamlessly
and effortlessly connect to a device’s host
microcontroller.
The MAXREFDES220# provides industry-

SPECIAL FEATURE
best accuracy that meets Class-II regulatory
limits. For example, under resting-only
measurement conditions, the solution
provides the following accuracies: Systolic
Error: Mean = 1.7mmHg, Std Dev = 7.4mmHg;
FIGURE 1
Diastolic Error: Mean = 0.1mmHg, Std Dev = Including a complete integrated optical sensor module, an MCU sensor hub and a sensing algorithm, the
7.6mmHg. For reference, Class-II regulatory MAXREFDES220# optical blood-pressure trending solution can be embedded into smartphones or wearables.
limits are |Mean Error| ≤ 5mmHg, and Std Dev
≤ 8mmHg. This solution requires calibration
every four weeks to maintain the above According to the company, The STHV64SW
accuracies. This is based on independent has already been designed into innovative
testing and a limited number of subjects at high-tech equipment such as ultrasonic flaw
resting condition. detectors for industrial non-destructive
testing (NDT), as well as into affordable
SWITCH IC FOR ULTRASOUNDS and portable handheld medical echography
Ultrasound systems require high levels of devices that are raising standards of pre-
resolution and high-integration to facilitated natal care available to remote and rural
portable design requirements. Meeting communities.
these needs, in October, STMicroelectronics The highly integrated 64-channel analog-
(ST) released the STHV64SW, a 64-channel switch IC comes in a small FCBGA (flip chip
high-voltage analog-switch IC offering high ball grid array) package as does the recently
integration for advanced ultrasound systems,
probes and other applications.
The IC comprises a shift register for
logic control signals, self-biased high-
voltage MOSFET gate drivers and N-channel
MOSFET switches capable of providing up
to ±3A peak output current (Figure 2). The
switches respond quickly, with 1.5µs turn-on
time, and low quiescent current saves power
when turned off. Low on-resistance with low
distortion and crosstalk ensure high signal
integrity. Thermal shutdown and under-
voltage lockout (UVLO) are built-in to ensure
safe operation.
ST says it created this advanced device
leveraging proprietary BCD6s-SOI (silicon
on insulator) and BCD8s SOI process
technologies to combine precise analog
circuitry (Bipolar), low-voltage CMOS logic,
and robust DMOS power stages on the same FIGURE 2
chip. The STHV64SW can operate with various The STHV64SW, a 64-channel high-voltage analog-switch IC, comprises a shift register for logic control
combinations of high-voltage supplies up to signals, self-biased high-voltage MOSFET gate drivers and N-channel MOSFET switches capable of providing
-100V/+100V, 0V/200V, or -200V/0V. up to ±3A peak output current.
 34 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #365
SPECIAL FEATURE
FIGURE 3
The MAX30208 is a clinical-grade digital temperature sensor that enables new wearable health and fitness
use cases at half the power. And the MAXM86161 is an in-ear heart-rate monitor that boasts best-in-class
SNR at lowest power and 40% less space.
announced companion 16-pulser STHV1600
IC, enabling system manufacturers to increase
channel density for superior ultrasound image
resolution, using minimal board space. The
STHV64SW is packaged as a BGA-196 device.
HEALTHCARE SENSORS
Last summer, Maxim rolled out a pair
of sensors aimed specifically at medical
wearables. The MAX30208 is a clinical-grade
digital temperature sensor that enables
new wearable health and fitness use cases
at half the power. And the MAXM86161 is
an in-ear heart-rate monitor provides best-
in-class SNR at lowest power and 40%
less space for continuous heart-rate and
SpO2 measurements, according to Maxim
(Figure 3).
To provide value, wearable health and
fitness monitors require greater accuracy
in measuring human biometrics such as
body temperature and heart rate, but device
designers have been limited by sensor
accuracy for small, battery-powered, body-
worn devices. Maxim’s two new continuous-
monitoring body sensors provide higher
degrees of accuracy in measuring vital signs
such as temperature, heart rate and blood-
oxygen saturation (SpO2).
The MAXM86161 in-ear heart-rate
monitor and pulse oximeter is the market’s
smallest fully integrated solution that
delivers highly accurate heart-rate and
SpO2 measurements from hearables and
other wearable applications, says Maxim. It
is optimized for in-ear applications with its
small package size and best-in-class SNR—
3dB improvement with a band limiting signal
for PPG (photoplethysmography) use cases
compared to closest competitor, according
to the company. This enables development
of devices that cover a wider range of use
cases. MAXM86161 delivers approximately
35% lower power to extend battery life of
wearables. In addition, an integrated analog
front-end (AFE) eliminates the additional AFE
typically needed to procure a separate chip
and connect to the optical module.
CLINICAL GRADE MEASUREMENT
The MAX30208 digital temperature
sensor delivers clinical-grade temperature
measurement accuracy (±0.1°C) with fast
response time to changes in temperature.
It also meets the power and size demands
of small, battery-powered applications such
as smartwatches and medical patches. It
simplifies the design of battery-powered,
temperature-sensing wearable healthcare
applications. Easier to use than competitive
offerings, it measures temperature at the top
of the device and does not suffer from thermal
self-heating like competitive solutions.
MAX30208 is compatible with up to four I 2C
addresses to enable multiple sensors on the
same IC bus. The MAX30208 can be attached
to either a PCB or a flex printed circuit (FPC).
MAX30208 delivers ±0.1°C accuracy in
the range of 30°C to 50°C and eliminates
thermal self-heating, a factor that affects
measurement accuracy in competitive
devices. MAXM86161 cancels ambient light
for greater accuracy and provides highest
SNR (Nyquist SNR is 89 dB; 100 dB SNR with
averaging). In addition, Maxim provides
algorithms for motion compensation to
increase measurement accuracy.
To extend battery life of wearables, the
MAXM86161 consumes approximately 35%
lower power versus the closest competitor,
with less than 10μA operating power and
1.6μA in shutdown mode. Compared to the
closest competitive solution, the MAX30208
consumes only half the power (67μA operating
current during active conversion vs. 135 μA)
under a representative use case. MAXM86161
is available in an OLGA package (2.9mm ×
4.3mm × 1.4mm), which is 40% smaller
than the closest competitor. MAXM86161
includes three LEDs—red and infrared for
SpO2 measurement and green for heart rate.
 circuitcellar.com 35

MAX30208 is available in a 10-pin thin LGA

package (2mm × 2mm × 0.75mm).

DUAL-FUNCTION SENSORS
High integration is an ongoing theme
for mobile and wearable medical system
designs. Part of the game is getting multiple
functions on one chip. Along such lines,
Infineon Technologies offers its XENSIV TM
DPS368, a miniaturized digital barometric
pressure sensor that is capable of measuring
both pressure and temperature (Figure 4). It
offers an ultra-high precision of ±2 meters

SPECIAL FEATURE
and a low current consumption for precise
measurement of altitude, air flow and body FIGURE 4
The XENSIV TM DPS368 is a miniaturized digital barometric pressure sensor that is capable of measuring
movements. This makes the DPS368 ideal
both pressure and temperature. It offers an ultra-high precision of ±2 m and a low current consumption for
for mobile applications and wearable devices precise measurement of altitude, air flow and body movements.
offering, for example, activity tracking and
navigation. Additionally, the sensor can be
used in home appliances for airflow control,
in drones for flight stability and in medical
devices such as smart inhalers.
Due to its robust package, it can withstand
operation 50 meters under water for one hour
(IPx8) and protects the sensing cells against
dust and humidity. As a result, the board
handling in an assembly line is also facilitated.
The 8-pin LGA package with its small dimensions
of 2.0mm x 2.5mm x 1.1mm saves up to 80%
space compared to other waterproof sensors,
says Infineon.
The pressure sensor element is based on
a capacitive sensing principle that guarantees
high precision even during temperature
changes. The internal signal processor
converts the output from the pressure and
temperature sensor elements to 24-bit
results. Calibration coefficients stored in the
sensor are used in the application to convert
the measurement results to high accuracy
pressure and temperature values. DPS368
provides quick feedback due to a measurement
rate of up to 200Hz and fast read-out speed.
The integrated FIFO memory can save up to
32 measurement results, allowing for power-
savings on system level.
The XENSIV DPS368 sensor features an
average low power consumption of 1.7μA for
pressure measurements at 1Hz sampling rate.
In standby mode, this is reduced to 0.5μA.
The sensor operates at pressure ranges
from 300 to 1200hPa (hectopascals) and
temperature ranges from -40°C to +85°C with
a temperature accuracy of ±0.5°C. Sensor FIGURE 5
measurements and calibration coefficients The QN9090 and QN9030 devices are powered by an Arm Cortex-M4 running at 48MHz and include up
are available through the serial I²C or SPI to 640KB onboard flash and 152KB SRAM. The QN Series devices target diverse IoT applications such as
interface. personal healthcare devices, sports and fitness trackers and connected appliances.
 36 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #365
SPECIAL FEATURE
FIGURE 6
The RX23W is a 32-bit MCU featuring Bluetooth 5.0 for IoT endpoint devices such as home appliances and
healthcare equipment. It combines Bluetooth 5.0 Low Energy (BLE) with Renesas’ Trusted Secure IP.
BLE SOC WITH NFC
Low-power SoCs with wireless connectivity
have become a key ingredient in many new
wearable medical device designs. In January,
NXP Semiconductors fed such demands by
announcing the availability of its QN9090
and QN9030 Bluetooth 5 SoC with hardware
compatible options for 802.15.4, Multiprotocol
RF and optional NFC technology.
The QN9090 and QN9030 devices are
powered by an Arm Cortex-M4 running
at 48MHz and include up to 640KB
onboard flash and 152KB SRAM, providing
storage space and flexibility for complex
applications and safe over-the-air (OTA)
updates (Figure 5). The QN Series
devices help accelerate development and
For detailed article references and additional resources go to:
www.circuitcellar.com/article-materials
RESOURCES
Infineon Technologies | www.infineon.com
Maxim Integrated | www.maximintegrated.com
NXP Semiconductors | www.nxp.com
ON Semiconductor | www.onsemi.com
Renesas Electronics | www.renesas.com
STMicroelectronics | www.st.com
time-to-market for developers creating
products with rich features for diverse IoT
applications such as personal healthcare
devices, sports and fitness trackers and
connected appliances.
As NXP’s BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) SoC
with NFC integrated on chip, the QN9090T
and QN9030T variants support out-of-band
wireless communications to enable numerous
use cases. By tapping an IoT device based on
the QN9090T to a smartphone, tablet or other
NFC reader device, a BLE connection can
be quickly established, greatly simplifying
the pairing process. The built-in NFC NTAG
eliminates the need for the tag to be powered
and creates additional opportunities for
diagnostics or device commissioning in
stages of the device life cycle.
The devices are well suited to wearable
Bluetooth, battery-operated applications,
thanks to their 4.3mA Rx current and 7.3mA
Tx current at +0dBm. The SoC has a 48MHz
Arm Cortext-M4 core, 640KB of embedded
flash and 152KB of SRAM. The embedded
NFC NTAG reduces system board footprint
and cost of manufacturing with digital and
analog integration. The devices’ rich set of
MCU capabilities includes various low power
modes, digital MIC interface with wake up on
audio event and Quad SPI NOR flash memory
controller for high-density data or code
storage.
The 2.4GHz BLE 5.0 transceiver supports
2Mbps and up to 8 concurrent Bluetooth
connections with antenna diversity
support. Integrated power amplifiers with
exceptionally high transmit power (up to
+11dBm) to make long-distance transmission
possible. A wide temperature range if -40°C
to +125°C makes the devices applicable in
various environments.
MCU EMBEDDED SECURITY
Embedded security is a critical feature
for many healthcare wearable devices. The
more such functionality can be integrated
on the device’s MCU the better. Along such
lines, Renesas Electronics has introduced the
RX23W, a 32-bit MCU featuring Bluetooth
5.0 for IoT endpoint devices such as home
appliances and healthcare equipment
(Figure 6).
By combining BLE  5.0 with Renesas’
Trusted Secure IP on its popular high-
performance RX MCU family, Renesas offers
embedded system designers an optimized
single-chip solution for system control and

wireless communication, while also providing
a more secure way to answer the Bluetooth
security risks such as eavesdropping,
tampering and viruses.
The RX23W is based on Renesas’ RXv2
core, which provides high computational
performance with improved FPU and DSP
functions and operates at a maximum clock
frequency of 54MHz. The RX23W provides
full BLE support including long-range and
mesh networking functions and achieves
the industry’s lowest level reception mode
peak power consumption at 3.0mA, says
Renesas.
Furthermore, it integrates a rich set of
peripheral functions that are indispensable
for IoT equipment, including security, touch
key, USB, and CAN functions. These functions
allow the RX23W to implement both system
control and Bluetooth wireless functions
for IoT endpoint equipment such as home
appliances, health care equipment, and
sports and fitness equipment on a single
chip. In addition, the RX23W’s Bluetooth
mesh functions make it optimal for industrial
IoT equipment collecting sensor data within
a factory or a building.
The RX23W supports long distance
communication (long range: 400m), 2Mbps
data throughput, and Bluetooth mesh
networking, supporting the full functionality
of BLE 5.0 Low Energy. Furthermore, the
RX23W achieves a 3.0mA reception mode
peak current—the industry’s lowest level,
according to Renesas—and a reception
sensitivity level of -105dBm at 125Kbps.
In addition to a Bluetooth 5.0 basic
protocol stack package, Renesas provides
API functions that conform to all standard
profiles, including a Health Thermometer
Profile (HTP), an Environment Sensing
Profile (ESP), and an Automation I/O profile
(AIOP). These allow users to start prototype
development and evaluation quickly and can
speed up the user’s development process.
The RX23W integrates Renesas’ Trusted
Secure IP (TSIP) as part of its built-in
hardware security engine. The TSIP driver
uses strong encryption key management
with hardware accelerators to securely boot
customers’ IoT devices and protect them from
security threats. Cryptographic Algorithm
Validation Program (CVAP) certification is
expected. The RX23W is available now in
both 7mm × 7mm 56-pin QFN and 5.5mm ×
5.5mm 85-pin BGA packages with 512KB of
on-chip flash memory.
circuitcellar.com 37
FIGURE 7
The RSL10 is a family of tiny
Bluetooth 5 certified radio SoCs in a
ready-to-use 6mm x 8mm x 1.46mm
System-in-Package (SiP) module.
RSL10 devices can be easily designed
into any “connected” application
including sports/fitness or healthcare
wearables, smart locks and appliances.
SPECIAL FEATURE
TINY BLUETOOTH RADIO
For wearable healthcare devices that need
to partition the Bluetooth radio separately,
ON Semiconductor offers its RSL10 family of
Bluetooth 5 certified radio SoCs with a ready-
to-use 6mm × 8mm × 1.46 mm System-in-
Package (SiP) module. Supporting BLE wireless
profiles, RSL10 devices can be easily designed
into any “connected” application including
sports/fitness or healthcare wearables, smart
locks and appliances (Figure 7).
The RSL10 SIP features a built-in antenna,
RSL10 radio, and all required passive
components in one complete, miniature
solution. Certified with the Bluetooth
Special Interest Group (SIG), the RSL10 SIP
significantly reduces time-to-market and
development costs by removing the need for
any additional RF design considerations.
With the 2Mbps speeds possible with
Bluetooth 5 alongside low power consumption,
the RSL10 family provides advanced wireless
functionality without compromising battery
application life. RSL10 consumes just 62.5nW
while in Deep Sleep mode, and 7mW peak
receive power. RSL10’s energy efficiency was
validated in 2018 by the EEMBC’s ULPMark
where it became the first device in the
benchmark’s history to break 1,000 ULP
Marks and produced Core Profile scores more
than twice as high as the previous industry
leader. The RSL10 SIP is offered in a 51-pin
6mm ×8mm ×1.46mm package.
Mobile and wearable medical device
designers are hungry for highly integrated,
low-power, wirelessly connected solutions to
meet their high demands. Makers of MCUs,
analog ICs and sensors will continue to
address those demands with new innovative
products.
 38 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356
PCB Assembly Services
Parts, Prototypes, Production
By Jeff Child,
Editor-in-Chief
TECH SPOTLIGHT
Example from EzPCB of a complex PCB assembly job involving multiples types and sizes of components
The assembly phase is a critical step in the production of a board-level product. Fortunately,
there’s a rich set of companies offer all types of PCB assembly services—ranging from
quick turnaround prototypes to large volume runs. This roundup summarizes the PCB
assembly service capabilities available today and whose providing them.
ADVANCED ASSEMBLY
www.aapcb.com
Location: Aurora, CO
Advanced Assembly launched in 2004 with a
new way to assemble just a few boards in 3 days
or less: Quick turn PCB assembly. The company
has assembled over 40,000 unique designs in
the last decade for some of the largest and
most innovative tech companies in the world,
including many Fortune 500 organizations.
Services Summary: Quick turn PCB
assembly, DFA verification, first article service,
turnkey assembly, PCB fabrication: smallest
0.25" × 0.25", largest 20" × 24"
PCB Assembly Services: SMT and thru-
hole; Press fits; Parts in any format; ISO
9001:2015; Passives down to 01005; BGAs and
VFBGA; Box build; Leadless chip carriers / CSP;
Double-sided SMT assembly; Fine pitch to 08
Mils, BGA repair and reball; Part removal and
replacement; RoHS and leaded; Flying probe,
3D BGA X-ray and functional testing
BETA LAYOUT
uk.beta-layout.com
Location: Shannon, Ireland
Beta Layout’s PCB-POOL operation is Europe’s
largest manufacturer of PCB prototypes, with
over 36,000 customers worldwide. You can
calculate the prices instantly online using the
PCB-POOL’s Online price calculation. PCBs using
special technologies and materials can also
be sourced directly from the company, from
prototype to series production quantities.
Services Summary: Prototype PCBs or
small series PCBs in 1-6 working days; Laser-
cut SMD-Stencils in 1-3 working days; Fully
populated SMD and THT prototype boards
in 2 working days; Support for PCBs with
embedded UHF RFID modules
PCB Assembly Services: Can perform
assembly on PCB prototypes and “small
series” (up to 50 pieces) with SMT and THT
components starting with just one component
and from one piece. SMT and THT from size
0402 SOIC, PLCC, TSOP, QFP, BGA Diverse SM-
exotic and SM - connectors.

EASYOEM
www.easyoem.com
Location: Beijing, China
EasyOEM is a one-stop electronics
manufacturing service that offers total
solutions for electronics manufacturing tasks.
Services Summary: PCB manufacturing,
PCB assembly, BOM kitting, testing, Design
checking, PCB coating, MCU/CPLD/FLASH/
EEPROM programming, wiring harness
assembly, injection molding, printing,
labeling, packaging, certification, stocking,
distribution, shipping, customs declaration
PCB Assembly Services: Supervises entire
manufacturing process from engineering
files to final products. BOM kitting, including
sourcing various materials / components.
EasyOEM manufacturing tasks and dispatch
then to various factories. Those tasks include
PCB soldering, wire harness assembling,
mechanical assembling, chip programming
and more.
EZPCB
www.ezpcb.com
Location: Shenzhen, China
EzPCB is an online provider of PCB
manufacturing and PCB assembly products
and services. EzPCB has supplied high quality
PCBs—and related products and services—
for over 2,000 customers from more than 40
countries. Its customers include amateurs,
small businesses, universities and many
world-class companies and organizations
including Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Micron,
Siemens, STMicroelectronics and Rohm.
Services Summary: PCB manufacturing,
PCB assembly, cabling, enclosures, keypads,
stencils and components, one-stop turnkey
services and design consultation
PCB Assembly Services: For prototype
assembly, the lead time is about 2 weeks for
PCB+ order component+ assembly. For mass
production assembly, the lead time is about
3-4 weeks for all process.
FCT
www.flexiblecircuit.com
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Flexible Circuit Technologies (FCT) has
an internationally recognized flex circuit
Application Engineering and Design Team
offering over 250 years of combined industry
expertise.
Services Summary: Supports multiple
types of flexible PCBs; value added assembly,
Testing Services to complete box builds;
circuitcellar.com 39
Design consultation, optimization, DFM, to
final flex design; Supply chain management
for components and materials; Prototypes
through production; Low mix-high volume
and high mix-low volume program support;
Assembly services; Testing Services.
PCB Assembly Services: FCT Shenzhen
is FCT’s main hub for coordinating all of our
China based operations including: support in
DFM, production scheduling for prototypes
and production of bare flex, support in
sourcing and receiving of components for
sub-assembly, assembly services, testing,
packaging and shipping.
IMAGINEERING
www.pcbnet.com
Location: Elk Grove Village, IL
TECH SPOTLIGHT
Imagineering acts as a reliable source for
high quality and on time PCBs. Its quick turn
prototypes not just intended for testing and
verification of designs. Every one of its boards
meet IPC-A-600 F (Class2) standard, be it
prototype or production. Specializes in quick
turn prototypes and rapid turn production.
Services Summary: PCB capabilities
include: 22-layer fabrication, hole sizes down
to 8 mil plated and 5 mil laser drilled, 3 mil
line width and spacing, 6 oz. copper and a
maximum PCB thickness up to .300". Supports
Multi-Layer, Rigid and Flex PCBs.
PCB Assembly Services: Same day and
24-hr turnaround; Prototype to production
volumes; SMT; Flip chip; Thru hole; Flex
circuit assembly; Cable assemblies; PB-free
assembly; Wire harness assembly; AOI –
Automated Optical Inspection; BGA X-Ray
Inspection; Functionality testing
Imagineering says that is aerospace-quality PCB assembly is only possible with industry-leading equipment
in its facilities, like this Mydata MY200 Series pick-and-place machine.
 40 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356
OURPCB
www.ourpcb.com
Location: Shijiazhuang Hebei, China
OurPCB is a multi-national PCB manufacturing and PCB
assembly company that provides global service and support while
using its own Chinese manufacturing capabilities. Company has
provided professional PCB production and assembly services for
more than 2,500 customers around the globe.
Services Summary: Assembly capabilities include BGA, LGA,
QFN, QFP, DIP and SIP. The smallest SMT footprint it can mount is
0201. Factory can also provide programming and wiring as well as
injecting and conformal coating services.
PCB Assembly Services: ISO 9001:2015 certified; RoHS &
lead-free assembly; Consigned components or turnkey; Single
or double-sided mixed technology PCB assembly; All kinds of IC
package BGAs, CGAs, QFNs, DFNs, CSPs; AOI inspection, X-Ray
inspection
TECH SPOTLIGHT
PCBCART
www.pcbcart.com
Location: Hangzhou, China
PCBCart is a professional PCB production service provider with
more than 10 years of experience in the electronics manufacturing
industry. It has manufactured printed circuit boards for more
than 10,000 companies and over 80 countries around the world.
Fast, affordable prototype assembly they take your unique PCB
designs, prepare them for the assembly process and perform
comprehensive testing to ensure they meet your precise
performance requirements. Can provide a complete turnkey PCB
prototype assembly featuring a one-stop shop approach.
Services Summary: Development, manufacturing, assembly
and testing of custom PBCs; Rapid PCB prototyping; Circuit boards
manufacturing: PCB assembly; Components sourcing services
PCB Assembly Services: Turnkey and consigned PCBA
services; Supports SMT, THT, Mixed Assembly, Package on
SMT assembly requires screen printing frames and frames (framed and unframed stencils)
which present excellent stability over time and high wear resistance. Shown here is an
example from PCBWay of a stencil PCB, ready to be used during the assembly phase with
surface mount devices (SMDs).
Package (POP), Rigid PCBs, Flex PCBs; Flexible volume
alternatives: prototypes, low volume, high volume; Parts
sourcing; Comprehensive Quality Assurance including
visual inspection to AOI and X-ray inspection
PCB UNLIMITED
www.pcbunlimited.com
Location: Tualatin, OR
In 2003, PCB Unlimited’s sister company Stencils
Unlimited pioneered the internet SMT stencil quote and
order process. In 2008, PCB Unlimited took it one step
further by providing a one-stop-shop where engineers
can quote and order online US and offshore PCB services
and everything else they need for their PCB projects.
Services Summary: US PCB fabrication including
Rigid, Flex and Rigid-Flex PCBs; Offshore PCB
Fabrication; US Quick-Turn Prototype PCB Assembly
and Low Volume Production followed by our offshore
operation to service your high-volume production needs
PCB Assembly Services: Specializes in building
short-run, one-off and prototype PCB assembly,
with rapid turn times and instant online quoting and
ordering. Supports SMT, Through Hole and Mixed
Assembly; Passive Down to 01005 Sizes; Packaging
support: BGA, uBGA, QFN, QFP, PLCC 6, PoP; Small Chip
Packages (Pitch of 0.2mm)
PCBWAY
www.pcbway.com
Location: Shenzhen, China
PCBWay is a China Shenzhen-based PCB manufacturer
and PCB assembler. Its online pricing software gets
you an instant your PCB Assembly service. PCBWay
has accumulated lots of reliable and competitive parts
suppliers in the world to ensure the quality and cost
of parts sourcing. All jobs can be done under one roof,
either SMT, thru-hole or Hybrid
Services Summary: Quick turn PCB prototyping,
PCB Assembly and low-volume production. Small volume
quick turn PCBs, custom spec quick turn PCBs, full spec
PCBs, highly specialized precision PCBs and largescale
production PCBs.
PCB Assembly Services: PCBA services also specialize
in prototyping and small-volume production. PCBA
capabilities: SMT Assembly, BGA Assembly, Through-
Hole Assembly, Mixed Assembly, Rigid Flex PCB Assembly
Services. Compliant with a wide range of standards
including IPC 610 Class 2 and Class 3.
SAN FRANCISCO CIRCUITS
www.sfcircuits.com
Location: San Mateo, CA
Specializes in the complex, advanced technology of
PCB fabrication and assembly, producing high quality
multi-layered PCBs from elaborate layouts. Expertise in
circuit boards is not limited to PCB manufacturing, but

extends to PCB layout & PCB assembly.
Services Summary: PCB fabrication, PBC assembly
and PCB layout services. Supports Mil-SPEC PCBs, Flex
PCBs, Metal Core PCBs and many others.
PCB Assembly Services: Quick-turn prototype
assembly; Turn-key assembly; Partial turn-key
assembly; Consignment assembly; RoHS compliant lead-
free assembly; Non-RoHS assembly; Conformal coating;
Packaging support: BGA, Micro BGA, uBGA, QFN, QFP,
PoP; Flip Chip and more; X-Ray testing, AOI testing, ICT
testing and more
SCREAMING CIRCUITS
www.screamingcircuits.com
Location: Canby, OR
Unlike old-fashioned manufacturing models that
focused on mass volumes and cost-control through
rigidity, Screaming Circuits specializes in fast and flexible
prototype and short-run assemblies. It offers short-run
production for higher volumes without forecasts, NRE
charges or volume commitments. If you need to go a step
further with scheduled production, its parent company
Milwaukee Electronics provides a full range of electronics
manufacturing services, from original design to volume
production and life-cycle management.
Services Summary: PCB fabrication, PCB assembly,
parts sourcing, layout engineering, prototype to volume
production transitioning
PCB Assembly Services: Turn times as short as 24
hours; 1 to 5,000 units; Class II Inspection standard
and Class III Inspection available; Lead-free RoHS
Certification and ITAR compliance screen available; Lead
Free (RoHS) options; Supports 2-Sided SMT; SMT sizes:
0201 or larger; Fine pitch: 16 mil (.4 mm) or greater; BGA
pitch: 16mil (0.4mm) or greater; BGA Ball count: Up to
1932Call for larger parts
SEEED STUDIO
www.seeedstudio.com
Location: Shenzhen, China
Seeed is a hardware innovation platform tailored
for makers to help grow inspirations into differentiating
products, by providing accessible technologies
with quality and delivery guaranteed. Seeed Fusion
Service offers one-stop prototyping services for PCB
manufacturing, PCB assembly and other electronic and
mechanical customized services such as CNC Milling, 3D
printing and PCB layout services.
Services Summary: Seeed Studio offers four kinds of
Fusion electronic service which includes Prototype PCBs,
PCB assembly, stencil, 3D printing, PCB layout.
PCB Assembly Services: Quick-turn PCBA service:
get the entire PCBA produced in 20 working days from
order confirmation to dispatch, including sourcing of parts.
Prototype, small or large batch: Seeed can cater for as little
as a single piece 1 to 8000 pieces. Assembly types: SMT
assembly, BGA assembly, through-hole assembly, mixed
assembly, kit assembly
circuitcellar.com 41
SIERRA CIRCUITS
www.protoexpress.com
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Sierra Circuits is an ISO 9001:2015, ISO 13485:2016 and
MIL-spec MIL-PRF-55110 certified, Silicon Valley-based, high-
technology PCB manufacturer and assembler. It specializes in quick
turn PCBs and medium production. By owning its manufacturing
and assembly facilities, the company controls every aspect of the
production schedule and quality.
Services Summary: Micro/fine line PCBs, PCB assembly,
flexible PCBs, lead-free PCBs, high-reliability PCBs, no-touch PCBs,
burn-in PCBs, R&D PCBs, MIL-spec PCBs, PCB design
PCB Assembly Services: NPI; SMT single & double-sided;
Plated through-hole: Selective soldering; Mixed technologies: SMT,
through-hole, electro-mechanical assembly; Packaging support:
BGA, Micro BGA, QFN, CSP and any leadless devices up to 0.35mm
pitch assembly
TECH SPOTLIGHT
SLINGSHOT ASSEMBLY
www.slingshotassembly.com
Location: Denver, CO
SlingShot Assembly’s state-of- the-art production facility
handles prototype and low-volume production orders. From
a single board and up, they use the latest software, processes
and equipment to produce high-quality assemblies fast and at a
reasonable price. Customers use the company’s assembly services
for early prototype runs when they need high-quality assemblies
completed in a matter of a few days. Typically, the quantities for
early prototypes range from a single board to about 50. Once
initial testing of early prototypes is completed, many customers
move to late-stage prototyping or pre-production assemblies.
Services Summary: Specialist in PCB assembly
PCB Assembly Services: Quick turn PCB assembly, standard
assembly turn time: 2 – 3 days (turn times as fast as 24 hours
available), prototype and low-volume production (single orders
welcome, 100% turn-key components, turn-key board fabrication
encouraged, test, conformal coating, limited box build services,
web-based BOM sourcing and more.
WELLPCB
www.wellpcb.com
Location: Australia
WellPCB, registered in Australia, is a daughter company of
Uniwell Circuits. It’s focused on PCB fabrication and PCB assembly
turnkey services and is capable of delivering over 10,000 varieties
monthly. WellPCB can produce quick turns to meet 24-hour
delivery for double-sided PCBs, 48-hour for 4 to 8-layer and 120-
hour for 10-layer or higher PCBs.
Services Summary: PCB fabrication, PCB assembly turnkey
services
PCB Assembly Services: SMT, thru-hole assembly, SMT/Thru-
hole mixed, single or double sided placement; consigned
components or partially components procurement; BGA and Micro
BGA installation and rework with 100% x-ray inspection,
automated optical inspection, aqueous cleaning and PCB testing
services; Capability to handle virtually any device including all
types of BGAs, CGAs, QFNs, DFNs, CSPs and Sons.
 42 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

Datasheet:
Industrial Power Supplies
Factory Functionality
DATASHEET

FIGURE 1
By Jeff Child, Power supplies require special cooling and high levels of ruggedness in order
to operate in industrial system environments.
Editor-in-Chief

Over the past couple years, there’s been an increasing trend toward new power
supply products that have some sort of application or industry focus. That means
supplies that include special performance specs or tailored packaging intended
for a specific application area such as industrial control and factory automation.

O ften the unsung heroes of any

embedded system design,
power supplies are critical
enablers for meeting today’s
needs. As embedded systems pack ever
more intelligence into smaller spaces, power
has direct implications on the size, cooling
and mobility of any system. To keep pace,
power supply vendors continue to roll out
more efficient products, new partitioning
strategies and more compact solutions. In
tandem to those trends, there’s a growing
demand to reduce size, weight and power of
system electronics. Driving those demands is
a desire to fit more functionality in the same
space or into a smaller footprint.
If you look at the power supply products
released over the last 12 months, there’s
been a definite uptick in new products that
have some sort of application or industry
focus. While this hasn’t diminished the role
of general-purpose power supplies, the trend
has been toward supplies that include either
certifications, special performance specs or
tailored packaging intended for a specific
application area such as industrial control
and factory automation (Figure 1).
An example of special power supply
features for industrial systems is XP Power’s
CMP250 series of high peak-power AC-DC
power supply units. The supplies provide
a highly flexible combination of electrical
and thermal characteristics. These power
supplies deliver up to 500W of peak power
for up to 60 seconds, as well as providing
up to 250W of continuous convection-cooled
power. This flexibility makes the series well
suited for motor applications and other
electromechanical loads without the need
for fan cooling, removing unwanted audible
noise, across a range of applications.
TDK’s TPS4000-24 is industrial power
supply is likewise well suited for use in many
industrial settings. Its high voltage, three-
phase input avoids the requirement for costly
step-down transformers and assists phase
load current balancing. Meanwhile, the
PQU650 series from Murata boast cooling
options suited to factory automation
applications, with forced air- and convection-
cooled ambient ratings. No system fans are
required up to 450W up to 50°C temperatures,
and only 300 LFM forced air-cooling is needed
for 650W at 50°C.
 circuitcellar.com 43

DATASHEET
5W AC-DC Converter Boasts AC-DC Supplies Meet 650W AC-DC Supplies Offer
Wide Input Voltage Range Green Power Demands Cooling Options

Aimtec’s AMEL5-277NZ is an
encapsulated 5W AC-DC converter that
has been designed to offer greater
economies of scale due to greater
production automation, leading to
improved reliability and performance.
Offering a wide industrial input voltage
range of 85-305VAC and an output
voltage range from 3.3-24V, this series
offers a temperature range of -40°C to
+70°C.
• Universal Input: 85-305VAC/
100-430VDC
• Operating temperature range:
-40°C to +70°C
• High isolation voltage: 4,000VAC
• Regulated output; Low ripple and
noise: 100mVp-p, max.
• Output short circuit, over-current,
over-voltage protection
• Input voltage: 85-305VAC
• Output voltage: 3.3V, 5V, 9V, 12V,
15V, 24V
Aimtec
www.aimtec.com
CUI’s VOF open frame AC-DC power
supply series delivers higher efficiency
and improved no-load performance to
meet the growing demand for green
power technology. Featuring industry
standard footprints, the VOF’s efficient
design, compact size and high reliability
make these power supplies well suited
for a range of consumer, industrial and
ITE applications.
• 6W to 550W
• Industry standard footprints
• Efficiency up to 94%
• ITE safety certifications
• Power densities up to 30 W/in. 3
• Low no-load power consumption
• Operating temperatures, from
-40°C to 70°C
• Isolation of 4,000 VA
CUI
www.cui.com
The PQU650 series from Murata are
open-frame, 650 W-rated AC-DC power
supplies. Murata says the PQU650
series offers the highest power-density
product on the market, with forced air-
and convection-cooled ambient ratings.
The power supplies offer a multitude
of standard features including wide
output voltage adjustment range,
auxiliary power rails and a high
transient capability.
• Input voltage range of 90-264 VAC
• Efficiency up to 95%
• No system fan requirements up to
450W up to 50°C
• 300 LFM forced air-cooling for 650W
at 50°C
• Certified to EN 60960 and IEC 60601
3rd Edition medical standards
• Safety approval to UL/cUL/IEC/
EN 62368-1 (60950-1), TUV IEC/EN
60335-1 & CE Marking
Murata Power Solutions
www.murata-ps.com

DATASHEET URLS:
Aimtec www.aimtec.com/site/Aimtec/files/Datasheet/HighResolution/amel5-277nz.pdf
CUI www.cui.com/open-frame-ac-dc-power-supplies
Murata Power Solutions www.murata-ps.com/datasheet?/data/acdcsupplies/pqu650.pdf
 44 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356
Industrial Power Supplies
High Isolation AC-DC Modules
DATASHEET
for Industrial Automation
The RAC04-K/277 series from
RECOM delivers 4W of continuous
output power (6W peak) in harsh
industrial and household environments.
These modules deliver full load output
power from -40°C to 75°C across the
entire input range of 80VAC to 305VAC
and are certified for operation with
power derating up to 90°C air ambient.
They have international safety and EMC
certifications for industrial, domestic,
ITE and household applications
• 80-305VAC input voltage range
• 150% peak power capability
• Wide temperature range:
-40°C to +90°C
• No load power consumption
<150mW
• Household and ITE certified
• 4kVAC insulation
• Operating altitude up to 5,000
meters
RECOM
www.recom-power.com
DATASHEET URLS:
RECOM www.recom-power.com/pdf/Powerline_AC-DC/RAC04-K_277.pdf
TDK-Lambda www.us.tdk-lambda.com/ftp/Specs/tps4000.pdf
XP Power www.xppower.com/product/CMP250-Series
4,080W Supply Operates from
Delta and Wye Inputs
The TDK-Lambda brand TPS4000-24
power supply extends the TDK’s existing
3000W rated TPS series. Delivering up
to 4080W output power (24V at 170A)
in a 2U high package, the TPS series
operates from a wide range Delta or
Wye 350-528VAC 3-phase phase input.
This industrial power supply is well
suited for use in many applications
including test and measurement
equipment, semiconductor fabrication,
additive manufacturing, printers,
lasers and RF power amplifiers. The
high voltage, three-phase input avoids
the requirement for costly step-down
transformers and assists phase load
current balancing.
• 400/440/480VAC (nominal) 3-phase
Delta or Wye
• Voltage and current programming
• -40°C (start up) to +70°C operation
• PMBus communication
• 92% typical efficiency
• Built in ORing FETs and Active I
share for parallel operation
TDK-Lambda Americas
www.us.tdk-lambda.com
3 Phase 5kW AC-DC Supply is
Software Configurable
XP Power’s CMP250 is a series of
high peak-power AC-DC power supply
units developed to support a wide
range of healthcare, industrial and
IT applications. With a highly flexible
combination of electrical and thermal
characteristics, these power supplies
deliver up to 500W of peak power for
up to 60 seconds, as well as providing
up to 250W of continuous convection-
cooled power.
• 250W convection-cooled rating
• 500W peak power
• IT and medical safety (BF) approvals
• U Channel 4"×7.5" package
• 80-300VAC input voltage
• 5V/1.5A Standby and 12 V/0.6A
auxiliary
• AC OK signal, inhibit
• Current share
XP Power
www.xppower.com
 M a k e y o u r c o d e e v e n f a s t e r, s m a l l e r, a n d s m a r t e r
w h i l e e n s u r i n g ro b u s t n e s s a n d h i g h q u a l i t y.

for RISC-V

Are you ready

for the next
level?
A s t h e o n l y c o m m e r c i a l t o o l s v e n d o r, I A R S y s t e m s i s a b l e t o p r o v i d e
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 46 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

Embedded System Essentials

USB Attacks and More with

GreatFET
Facedancer Fun

By
FIGURE 1
Colin O’Flynn Photo of the GreatFET One main board
COLUMNS

A new open-source hardware tool has been released, called the

GreatFET. It can be used for a variety of purposes, including
performing all sorts of low-level work on the USB protocol. Beyond
just raw USB, it also works as an interface for SPI, UART, I2C and
other protocols. In this article, Colin discusses how you can get
started using the tool.

I/O Header Pins

Cortex
M0
Cortex
M4
T his month I’m looking at a new(ish) open-source
tool useful for embedded security research. This
particular tool is called GreatFET One, and is made
by Great Scott Gadgets. The main board is shown
in Figure 1. You might be more familiar with this company—or
its founder Michael Ossman—because it produces the popular
HackRF Software Defined Radio (SDR).
GreatFET is an extension of a tool started by Travis
USB1 USB 264 KB USB USB0 Goodspeed, called the GoodFET. The original tool was an open-
SRAM source JTAG programmer for Texas Instruments (TI) MSP430
microcontrollers (MCUs). Later iterations become something
LPC4330 called Facedancer, which is used for working with USB devices.
Facedancer enabled interesting research into what happens if
a USB device misbehaves. For example, what if the USB drive
plugged into a public photo printing kiosk could exploit flaws
SPI Flash
2 MB
in the USB stack of that kiosk to take control of it?
GreatFET extends the hardware that made Facedancer
possible by having a platform that provides two USB ports
that can serve as host or device and then lots of I/O. The
general architecture of the platform is shown in Figure 2. For
FIGURE 2
The base GreatFET board has a simple architecture that allows access to many features
a general-purpose “hacking tool” you might notice there is no
of the NXP LPC4330 MCU. specific connectors in this platform such as an IR interface,
 circuitcellar.com 47

a CAN interface or a SPI flash connector. The

idea of GreatFET is that “neighbors” can be self.ep_to_host = USBEndpoint(
added on top, giving this tool an ability to 3, # endpoint number
interface with almost anything out there. USBEndpoint.direction_in,
But just telling you the tool can do
USBEndpoint.transfer_type_bulk,
“anything” sounds more like a bullet-point on
USBEndpoint.sync_type_none,
a marketing slide than useful content. So, I’m
going to walk you through a few examples of USBEndpoint.usage_type_data,
specific interesting work you could accomplish 64, # max packet size
with this tool, and what to look forward to in 0, # polling interval
later firmware and software releases None # handler function
The first examples I’ll discuss are actually )
part of the Facedancer project. Facedancer
refers to the project on GitHub [1] that uses dclass = USBMassStorageClass()
the GreatFET as a backend. Much of the USB
functionality actually applies across multiple USBInterface.__init__(
devices (not just the GreatFET), but the
self,
GreatFET is one of the easier options to get if
0, # interface number
you want Facedancer functionality. Although
you can build your own GreatFET One from 0, # alternate setting
scratch—being fully open-source hardware)— dclass, # interface class: Mass Storage
it’s also available in stock worldwide if you 6, # subclass: SCSI transparent
are lazy (like me) and don’t want to build your 0x50, # protocol: bulk-only (BBB)
own. 0, # string index
verbose,

COLUMNS
USB DEVICE EMULATOR [ self.ep_from_host, self.ep_to_host ],
The GreatFET can serve as a USB emulator. descriptors
If you’ve done USB development you know )
that getting a simple USB device up—such as
a serial port, USB mass storage or similar—
often requires diving into the specific USB stack LISTING 1
on the MCU you are using. With Facedancer, All the USB configuration is done via Python, giving total flexibility into even the endpoint configuration, for
example.
this is all done through Python instead. You
can easily change the functionality of the USB
device you are emulating using just simple
high-level Python changes. Check USB
An example of a snippet of the Drive Image
mass storage configuration is shown in
Listing 1. You’ll notice things like the size of
USB endpoints and what happens on reads
or writes is all configured over Python.
Having such a flexible USB device has many
uses. You’ll find it useful for embedded No
Abort Validation OK?
research (what if we request too much
data?) Meanwhile, as a developer, you’ll
find it useful for validating whether you’ve
properly handled invalid conditions. Yes
You can also use the USB emulator to
serve as a “magic device type” to give new
functionality to old equipment. For example, Copy Image to
some test equipment added USB support for FLASH
saving data files to USB drives. The first problem
is sometimes old devices only work with smaller
drives, which can be hard to find now. Luckily
you can emulate those old drives with GreatFET
and not worry about such problems. The second
Boot New Image
issue is you might want to be logging that
data onto a network instead, and maybe the
device has no network interface. With GreatFET
you can now emulate a mass storage device, FIGURE 3
while, in reality, the data is getting saved to a A device receiving a new firmware file by a USB flash drive can be attacked. This is done by emulating the
network-accessible location. flash drive to swap the firmware file to a malicious version after the original version passes validation checks.
 48 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

USB emulation can serve all kinds of other

useful tasks too. You can emulate a USB
keyboard to send boot sequence commands
to a headless computer, or emulate a USB
mouse to prevent a device from going to
sleep.
Just telling you how you can use USB
emulation to keep your old test equipment
working wouldn’t fit the scope of this article.
Don’t worry, there is lots of security-focused
uses as well. A great overview of them was
given in a presentation by Dominic Spill &
Kate Temkin called “Opening Black Box
Systems with GreatFET + Facedancer” [2].
One cool example from this is a device that
did a firmware update over USB. The logic
for the host device (the target of the attack)
is shown in Figure 3. You can see the logic
reads the file, validates a signature and then
if the signature passes, flashes that firmware
FIGURE 4
USB Wallet attached to the GreatFET One, where the GreatFET One is working as a USB host.
into the device. But in the process, it re-reads
the firmware from the USB drive!
Because we’re emulating the USB drive,
it’s trivial for us to swap out the legitimate
firmware for something nefarious. Now
COLUMNS

from facedancer import FacedancerUSBHostApp

# Enumerate and configure the attached device.

u = FacedancerUSBHostApp(verbose=3)
u.initialize_device(assign_address=1, apply_configuration=1)

# At this point, we can perform whatever communications we need to to use the target device.
# Usually, this is accomplsihed using the send_on_endpoint and read_from_endpoint functions
# for non-control requests, and the control_request_in and control_request out functions
# for control requests.

# Print the device state.

print(“Device initialized: “)
print(“\tDevice is: {}”.format(“Connected” if u.device_is_connected() else “Disconnected”))
print(“\tDevice speed: {}”.format(u.current_device_speed(as_string=True)))

# Print information about the attached device...

print(“Attached device: {}”.format(u.get_device_descriptor()))

# .. and its configuration.

configuration = u.get_configuration_descriptor()
print(“Using first configuration: {}”.format(configuration))

for interface in configuration.interfaces:

print(“\t - {}”.format(interface))

for endpoint in interface.endpoints:

print(“\t\t - {}”.format(endpoint))

LISTING 2
A simple example of configuring GreatFET as a USB host device using the Facedancer project
 circuitcellar.com 49

the device thinks the firmware will be OK,
and flashes it onto the system. If no more
verification is done on boot, the device will
boot the incorrect firmware.
USB INTERPOSER AND HOST
Another unique feature of GreatFET is its
ability to serve as a USB interposer. Remember
PhyWhisperer-USB that I described in my
column in Circuit Cellar 352 (November 2019)
that could sniff USB traffic? Rather than just
doing that, you can use GreatFET as both a
USB device connected to a target computer
and as a USB host stack driving a target
device.
Because the GreatFET is a complete USB
stack, you can do more than just modify
specific packets in-flight. You can interject
completely new requests to either the device
or host, or block certain requests. When
evaluating security tokens, this can be useful
since you can modify requests in-flight, or
even forward requests from one device to
another device.

Using GreatDancer Host backend.

Device initialized:
Device is: Connected
Device speed: Full speed

Attached device: <USBDevice object; vid=0x1209, pid=0x53c0>

Using first configuration: <USBConfiguration index=1 num_interfaces=1 attributes=0x80 max_power=100mA>
- <USBInterface number=0 alternate=0 class=class 255 subclass=0 protocol=0 string_index=0 endpoints=[1, 1]>
- <USBEndpoint number=1 direction=IN transfer_type=3 sync_type=0 usage_type=0 max_packet_size=64 interval=1ms>

COLUMNS
- <USBEndpoint number=1 direction=OUT transfer_type=3 sync_type=0 usage_type=0 max_packet_size=64 interval=1ms>

LISTING 3
The output of running Listing 2 with a Trezor USB wallet attached in bootloader mode is shown here.
 50 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

In the previous example of attacking the

$ gf shell firmware from Figure 3, the interposer mode
In [1]: gf.spi.transmit([0x9F, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF]) would let us confirm that the USB firmware is
read twice in a row. We could then potentially
LISTING 4 even interject our own malicious firmware for
A few lines of Python are sufficient to read the device ID of an attached SPI flash memory. the second read.
Of course, we can also use the GreatFET
USB host to send specific commands to the
target device. This requires a micro USB
OTG cable adapter to change the micro USB
connector on the GreatFET into the more
common “Female A” connector. With that,
you can plug any standard USB device into
the GreatFET. In Figure 4, I’m working on the
Trezor Wallet that I featured in my column in
Circuit Cellar 346 (May 2019). I’m using it as a
basic sanity check for the built-in host script
shown running in Listing 2, which prints
the expected VID/PID pair and additional
information. The output of this script is given
in Listing 3. Using the GreatFET is a perfect
way to trigger the type of fault injection
attacks I talked about in my May 2019 column,
because it provides you total control of what
is sent to the device.
COLUMNS

CLASSES AND VERBS

If you check out the GreatFET
documentation, you’ll find out it has the idea
of classes and verbs. Different functionality is
encapsulated in a class, and within the class it
has various capabilities (verbs). The previous
examples would fall into a few different USB
classes such as greatdancer or usbhost.
Sometimes those classes are easier to use
with some higher-level support, such as the
Facedancer control logic I used, but many of
the classes can be easily used directly.
There is a lot you can do here from
working with a SPI flash device (spi_
flash), toggling some GPIO pins (gpio),
working as a quick logic analyzer (logic_
analyzer) and talking to some peripheral
devices (spi and i2c). There’s a lot of other
features like working as a serial UART cable,
analog measurements and programming
MSP430 MCUs with JTAG, for example. Again,
the entire project is fully open source, so it
FIGURE 5
Attaching to a SPI flash chip on-board an IoT device
can be extended to support new devices and
protocols relatively easily.
A simple example of talking to an SPI
peripheral is shown in Listing 4. In this
example, I’m using the greatfet shell
command to give me an interactive Python
console, and reading the ID of an attached
Additional materials from the author are available at:
SPI flash by sending the 0x9F command,
www.circuitcellar.com/article-materials
using the hardware setup shown in Figure 5.
RESOURCES Note here I’m connected to an in-circuit SPI
Great Scott Gadgets | www.greatscottgadgets.com flash device, which requires me to hold the
NXP Semiconductors | www.nxp.com MCU on the target board in reset. Otherwise
Texas Instruments | www.ti.com the MCU on the target board might also try
to exercise some of the I/O lines!
 circuitcellar.com 51

FPGA Boards from JAPAN

SAVING COST=TIME with readily available FPGA boards
One trick up the GreatFET sleeve is provided by the
LPC4330 parallel data capture feature. This feature allows Basic and simple features, single power supply operation
NXP Semiconductors’ LPC4330 MCU to capture parallel data Free download technical documents before purchasing

L ACM-031
INTEMAX
on a bus interface and write it directly into internal memory—
and thus download over USB as well. This feature is used to
provide a simple logic analyzer that can run alongside other
commands. 10 U169 FPGA board
This means that, with a single GreatFET device, I could
sniff the SPI traffic on a logic analyzer along with performing 5V I/O support
the actual SPI data transactions. This requires wiring the
SPI data lines to the SGPIOn pins, which I can then use the
logic_analyzer backend to record data with.
The parallel data capture feature allows a lot of interesting
future use cases. For example, an extremely low-cost USB
sniffer is possible since you could actually record low/full-speed
USB 2.0 traffic! This would be similar to the architecture of
the PhyWhisperer-USB I presented in November 2019, except
without the FPGA—which is the most expensive component.
Kate Temkin already has a beta of a neighbor (add-on board)
called Rhododendron that provides this feature to GreatFET.
Keep an eye out for its full release.

FIRST HOUSE ON THE BLOCK

GreatFET is still a relatively new project, so you might find SIZE : 3.386" x 2.126" (86 x 54 mm)
many features aren’t yet well documented. You’ll also notice
ACM-031 is an FPGA board with

COLUMNS
there are many planned neighbors (add-on boards), with only
a few in active release currently. Keep an eye out for the Intel high-performance FPGA MAX 10.
rest of 2020 as this project continues to evolve. But if the It's compact and very simple.
examples I’ve talked about in this article sound interesting,
5V single power supply operation.
I suggest trying to dive into it now and see how you can use

INX XCM-026
XILSpartan-7
GreatFET. The hardware itself has been finalized for some
time, so being the first house on the block might just mean
waiting for updated firmware and documentation to perform
the task you need—or even adding the feature yourself. And FGGA484 FPGA board
as new neighbors move in, you’ll just continue to get more
functionality! 5V I/O support
While I don’t discuss a lot of generic tools in this column,
GreatFET has some unique features. It even allows you to
more directly explore USB commands. This type of tool is
useful for both development and usage of USB stacks (both
host and device side), along with security testing of your
USB products. You can also see the link back to a few of my
previous articles, and how the GreatFET functionality would
have simplified the projects I presented.
Hopefully you found some of these examples useful, and it
gave you some ideas for what you might be able to do with
this new open-source tool. Happy hacking!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR SIZE : 3.386" x 2.126" (86 x 54 mm)

Colin O’Flynn (colin@oflynn.
com) has been building and
breaking electronic devices
for many years. He is an
assistant professor at Dalhousie
University, and also CTO of
NewAE Technology both based in
Halifax, NS, Canada. Some of his
work is posted on his website at
www.colinoflynn.com.
XCM-026 is an FPGA board with
Xilinx high-performance FPGA Spartan-7.
It's compact and very simple.
5V single power supply operation.
See all our products, A/D D/A conversion board,
boards with USB chip from FTDI and accessories at :
www2.hdl.co.jp/CC20C
 52 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

The Consummate Engineer

Redefining the Kilogram

From Metal to Math
It may surprise you to learn that
within the past couple years it was
discovered that the kilogram isn’t
quite what it used to be. When the
International Bureau of Weights and
Measures in Paris measured the
reference unit for the kilogram, they
discovered it lost approximately 50
millionths of a gram. In this article,
George discusses the background of
this story, and reports on efforts last
year by scientific teams—in more
than a dozen countries—to redefine
COLUMNS

the kilogram.

By
George Novacek

FIGURE 1
Kibble Scale by Jennifer Lauren Lee, for the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

T he International System of Units (SI) also known

as the metric system relies on precise definitions
of several physical measurements, such as
the mass. I have addressed some aspects and
the relationship of mass and weight in detail in my article
Measuring Acceleration in Circuit Cellar 332, March 2018).
As the reference, the International Prototype of the
Kilogram, IPK, also known as “le Grand K,” was created in
1889 from a block of Platinum and since then has been kept
in Paris under three glass bell jars [2]. Exact replicas have
been constructed and located around the world to be used in
defining mass of everything. Including countries, such as the
United States, where an imperial and customary systems of
units are in commercial use.
In 2018—at the International Bureau of Weights and
Measures in Paris—when le Grand K was checked by the
alpha metrologists and the results compared with the
measurements of some of its sister replicas it was, to great
surprise, discovered that it lost approximately 50 millionths
of a gram. In fact, all the replicas drifted, microscopically, in
one direction or another.
This may not be a big deal in commercial use, but such
discrepancies add up quickly to unacceptable errors when
used in nano or astronomical measurements. Consequently,
the International Committee for Weights and Measures came
to the conclusion that the kilogram—just as well as all the
other International System Units—should be defined on
immutable natural constants rather than a physical object—a
chunk of Platinum in our case.
But here came a challenge. The mass, one kilogram in
our case, can be defied in nature by Planck’s constant (h),
which is a proportional value describing the ratio between
the energy in one quantum of electromagnetic radiation—in
other words, a photon—and the frequency of its associated
electromagnetic wave. However, for the Planck’s constant “h”
to be useful for the definition of the mass of one kilogram, the
International Committee for Weights and Measures stipulated
that three separate test measurements of the mass must be
performed and the results agree within an infinitesimal level
of uncertainty. That was a very tall order.
KIBBLE BALANCE
A British inventor named Bryan Kibble proposed a design
known today as the Kibble balance—also known as the Kibble
Scale or Watt balance (Figure 1). However, the principle is not
new. As early as the 1920s, scientists measured mass (weight)

using the so-called ampere balance—the
precursor of the Kibble balance. The principle
of the operation lies in suspending the mass
to be measured in a magnetic field created
by an electric coil. Knowing the voltage
across the coil and the precisely measured
current, the mass became proportional to
the power consumed by coil in Watts. For
the better accuracy required, power would
be integrated over some time, making the
mass proportional to the consumed energy.
As a result, the determined mass could be
expressed in purely electrical terms—that
is, by purely mathematically determined SI
units.
While the theory is enticing, the scale’s
accuracy depends on its ability to define the
Planck’s constant with sufficient precision.
That drove the decision to define the constant
in terms of power multiplied by time.
Nevertheless, until recently, the best results
provided the uncertainty of about 70 parts
per billion (ppb). This was not acceptable to
the International Committee for Weights and
Measures as accurate enough, so the search
continued.
Scientific teams in more than a dozen
countries set off to refine the measurement
results. Among them, proudly, a small team of
Canadian scientists at the National Research
Council (NRC) in Ottawa. With the constant
improvement of the Kibble scale hardware as
well as factoring in error causing influences,
such as the fluctuating gravitational pull
caused by the motion of the moon, the
presence of a few molecules of water on the
surface as well as some minor earthquake
tremors on the other side of the world, the
NRC team succeeded in bringing the mass
precision down to nine parts per billion.
In cooperation with the U.S. National
Institute of Standards and the German
National Metrology Institute, the International
Committee for Weights and Measures voted
to accept the new definition of the kilogram
with the official adoption scheduled for May
20, 2019. So, what does it mean for regular
folks like you and I? The good news is that the
new standard is expected to last us for a long
time. But, more than that, those of us
watching our weight can sleep better knowing
that as of May 20, 2019 we’ll weigh a little bit
less. Infinitesimally less, to be correct, but
every little bit counts.
Editor’s Note: This article was written
by George before he passed away, over a year
ago. As a wrap-up to this story we’ve included
a sidebar with a news item “Science Says
Goodbye to the Original Kilogram,” posted
on Laboratory News on May 20, 2019. A link
to the original story is available on Circuit
Cellar’s article materials webpage [4].
circuitcellar.com 53
This is a news item posted on Laboratory News on May 20, 2019:
Science Says Goodbye to the Original Kilogram
As of World Metrology Day [today] (Monday, May 20), redefined standards
of the International System of Measurement (SI) means a kilogram is now
expressed in terms of fundamental constants that can be observed in the
natural world, rather than a physical object.
The changes, voted on by global representatives last November (2018),
will ensure the kilogram remains stable and will enable more accurate mass
measurements in the future.
Dr Ian Robinson at the National Physical Laboratory, said: “There will be
no change to the mass scale currently used in trade and industry, but by
using a universal constant of nature to ensure the long term stability of the
kilogram, we are both reunifying the SI and setting the stage for robust,
reliable science that could pave the way for new ideas and inventions.”
The definition of kilogram will now be based on the Planck constant,
a constant observed in the natural world that is inherently stable. It uses
the Kibble Balance, a physical instrument that measures mass using
electromagnetic and quantum techniques.
Since 1889, the kilogram has been defined by the International Prototype
of the Kilogram (IPK), a metal block made of an alloy of 90% platinum and
10% iridium, contained within glass bells in a vault in Saint-Cloud, France.
Different countries have used their own prototype kilograms that were
calibrated back to the IPK, to ensure mass measurements were consistent
COLUMNS
around the world.
However, the IPK can gain mass over time due to adsorption of
atmospheric contamination onto its surface. Changes in the IPK’s mass over
time can be deduced by comparing it to official copies, but this process is
rarely undertaken and does not have the accuracy of the new standard.
Dr Richard Brown, Head of Metrology at the National Physical Laboratory,
said: “The revised SI future proofs our measurement system so that we are
ready for all future technological and scientific advances such as 5G networks,
quantum technologies and other innovations that we are yet to imagine.”
As well as the kilogram, the Ampere will now be defined using the
elementary charge (e), a fixed value; the Kelvin will be defined using the
Boltzmann constant (kB); while the mole will be based on the Avogadro
constant (NA).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
George Novacek was a retired president
o f a n a e ro s p a c e c o m p a ny. H e w a s a
professional engineer with degrees in
Automation and Cybernetics. George’s
dissertation project was a design of a
portable ECG (electrocardiograph) with
wireless interface. George contributed
articles to Circuit Cellar since 1999, penning
more than 120 articles over the years.
George passed away in January 2019, but
we’ve been grateful to be able to share with
you several articles he left with us to be
published, including this final piece.
For detailed article references and additional resources go to:
www.circuitcellar.com/article-materials
References [1] through [4] as marked in the article can be
found there.
 54 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

Picking Up Mixed Signals

Dehumidifier
Revamped for
the IoT Era
Wireless Control

When his dehumidifier stopped

working, Brian decided to take a
crack at repairing it. In this article,
he explains how dehumidifiers
function, and shares his journey as he
replaces the old control system with
a modern electronic controller. The
COLUMNS

new controller enables several IoT-era

features like Web-based control via
smartphone, efficiency monitoring FIGURE 1A
The side of the dehumidifier, showing the evaporator and
and time-of-day scheduling. condenser coils

By
Brian Millier

I ’ve been using a dehumidifier in the

finished basement of my home for more
than 25 years. Modern units are probably
more efficient than this old one, though
I haven’t investigated this. However, some
friends owning modern units have mentioned
that their units died after only a few years.
The modern units have an electronic control
PCB, and the average consumer is hard-
pressed to get these units serviced.
My dehumidifier stopped working late last
summer. Given its age, I initially just rolled it
into a storage closet and let it “rest in peace.”
Later, when I had some spare time, I took a
closer look at it to see what had gone wrong.
Even after it had stopped dehumidifying, I
could hear the compressor start up when I
plugged it in, and the fan was still working.
I have some refrigeration repair
experience from early in my career, and the
above symptoms often mean that the CFC
refrigerant (Freon 12) has leaked out. This
generally involves an expensive repair. Also,
in our Canadian province, you can’t simply
throw out a refrigerator—or anything else
using a CFC refrigerant. You must pay an
HVAC repairman to have the Freon removed
before it will be accepted for curb-side waste
pickup. In this case, even if the Freon had
already leaked out, I would still need to pay
an HVAC repairman to put a sticker on the
unit, stating it had been drained of any CFCs.
One more reason to try to repair it.
After removing the covers and examining
the unit while it was running, I determined
that the evaporator coil was cooling down and
frosting up properly. So, the Freon refrigerant
had not leaked out, after all. However, the
compressor should have stopped running
after a good layer of frost had formed on
the evaporator coil, to allow the frost to melt
and flow into the holding tank, and allow
the condenser coil to cool down. This wasn’t
happening—the compressor was running
continuously, and the unit wasn’t working
properly this way.
What component had failed will be
revealed later in this article. I’ll explain how

a dehumidifier works. Then I’ll describe how
I replaced the old control system with a
modern electronic controller.
The new controller has several features that
weren’t present in the original dehumidifier.
Indeed, even modern units don’t have most of
these features:
1) A time-of-day scheduling function
2) An efficiency check to ensure that the
unit isn’t running when humidity and
temperature conditions are such that it is
not efficient
3) A Web-based interface that allows control/
monitor operation from a cell phone or
tablet
4) A “tank-full” alarm that beeps and
generates an email message that is sent
to a phone or computer
5) A humidity display—not just an adjustment
knob coupled to an uncalibrated mechanical
humidistat
I’ll expand upon these features later in
the article, but I’d like to mention here that
my electricity provider uses time-of-day
metering. I get electricity for half-price all
night and on weekends. Since a dehumidifier
uses a fair bit of electricity, it’s best to run
the unit only when the electricity is at this low
rate. Even before I built this new controller, I
had used an external timer (a DIY unit with
an Espressif Systems’ ESP8266) on the unit,
to limit its run time to nights and weekends.
REFRIGERATION-MODE
DEHUMIDIFIERS
First, let’s look at how a dehumidifier
works. The most common dehumidifiers
used in homes are based on the refrigeration
principle. I also see dehumidifiers based on
desiccants on Google, but I’ve never run across
any of these, personally. For the refrigeration
dehumidifier, the basic principle is that the
colder the air is, the less moisture it can hold.
At the left of Figure 1a is a coiled aluminum
evaporator. To the right is a copper condenser
coil with many fins—like a car radiator. To the
right of that is a motor, which turns a big fan.
It isn’t visible in Figure 1a, but can be seen
in Figure 1b, along with the compressor that
powers the refrigeration process.
Room air is drawn into the dehumidifier by
the fan, passing first through the evaporator
coil, and then through the condenser coil.
The evaporator coil gets cooled down to
around 0°C. Water vapor will condense out
of the air when it flows past the evaporator
coil, and will either condense on the coil and
drip down into the storage tank below, or it
will produce frost. This cooler, drier air will
now pass through the warm condenser coil,
circuitcellar.com 55
FIGURE 1B
The compressor and circulation fan.
My new controller is in the foreground.
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where it will be heated up beyond ambient
room temperature. This warmer air will then
be exhausted from the dehumidifier cabinet.
Once back in the room again, this warmer,
drier air will mix with room air and pick up
some of the water vapor present in the room
air itself. Then it gets pulled back into the
inlet port of the dehumidifier, and the cycle
repeats.
This process will continue efficiently for
a while, but not indefinitely. Within a few
minutes, the evaporator coil will frost up,
which is OK. However, as time passes, the
evaporator coil would ice up completely, at
which time the water-removing capacity
would diminish greatly. But before this could
happen, there is another thing to consider.
The condenser coil is located close to
the evaporator coil. Since the refrigeration
process is not 100% efficient, in practice,
the condenser coil will always produce more
heat than the evaporator coil can remove.
Therefore, the heat from the condenser
coil will eventually work its way over to the
evaporator coil, thus cancelling out any
cooling effect that it originally had. This will
happen even though the fan is pulling the
hot condenser air away from the evaporator
coil. You would see the effect if you tried to
operate a window air conditioner indoors,
without it being mounted in a window—which
places the condenser coil outside where it can
dissipate its heat.
In my old dehumidifier—with its simple
control system—a thermostat is mounted on
the evaporator coil. After the unit has been
 56 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356
FIGURE 2
Screen capture of the controller’s
webpage. The time-slot matrix is in
the center, and the other parameters
are displayed below and above it.
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running for a while, the evaporator coil gets
cold enough to trip the thermostat off. Any
frost present on the coil melts and drips into
the storage tank. In the time it takes for the
evaporator coil to warm up enough for the
thermostat to close again, the condenser
coil will cool back down to around ambient
temperature. When the thermostat closes
again, the cycle will repeat.
It turned out that the thermostat in my old
dehumidifier was stuck in the closed position.
Therefore, the compressor ran indefinitely,
but the dehumidification process stopped
working after the first 5 minutes or so.
While I likely could have found a replacement
thermostat, I decided to design an electronic
controller that would not only control the
compressor/fan, but also implement the
added features mentioned in the first section
of this article. This was an attractive option
for me, as I have done several IoT projects
lately, and this seemed a good fit for IoT.
THE CONTROL ELECTRONICS
I wanted the dehumidifier to be controlled
wirelessly, and I figured that the control
program, itself, wouldn’t be too involved.
I considered using Bluetooth LE, but the
control app for my phone or iPad would have
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brian Millier runs Computer Interface Consultants. He was an instrumentation
engineer in the Department of Chemistry at Dalhousie University
(Halifax, NS, Canada) for 29 years.
involved a lot of programming. In contrast,
I had already written a Web-based control/
monitoring program for my home’s air
exchanger (Heat Recovery Ventilator) that ran
on Espressif Systems’ ESP32 microcontroller
(MCU). This program was written and
programmed into the MCU using the Arduino
IDE. Being Web-based, it didn’t require a
custom app on the iPhone/iPad, just a Web
browser. Both projects called for a Web-based
interface that displayed 24-hour time slots
configured by the user, along with several
other similar control parameters. Figure 2
is a screen capture of the unit’s Web page,
showing the time-slot matrix in the middle.
The hardware requirements for this
project were such that the less-expensive
ESP8266 would work just as well as an ESP32.
Adapting my ESP32-based air exchanger
control program to this project wasn’t overly
difficult. Programming for either Espressif
device is very similar, though you must
include different libraries in some cases.
The sensors that I needed for the project
are itemized as follow:
1) Humidity sensor. I am using a Silicon Labs
Si7021 humidity/temperature sensor. It’s
inexpensive, uses the I2C interface, and
there is an Arduino library for it.
2) Evaporator temperature sensor. This is
what replaces the mechanical thermostat
found in the original dehumidifier. I chose
a simple 10kΩ thermistor, which can be
measured using the single ADC input on
the ESP8266. You can see it attached to
the evaporator in Figure 1a.
 circuitcellar.com 57

3) “Tank-full” sensor. This condition in the fan shut off when the tank is full—even if the
dehumidifier was handled by a float ESP8266 happened to get “hung.”
coupled to a SPDT microswitch. I stuck The N.C. contacts of the switch contacts are
with this design and monitored the switch monitored by ESP8266’s GPIO12, allowing the
state with a GPIO pin on the ESP8266. processor to know when the tank is full (when
GPIO12 is LOW). It responds to this condition
For control, I used the following: by removing drive to the two relays—double
redundancy, since it’s also handled by the
1) To switch the compressor on/off I used float switch, itself, as mentioned earlier. It
a small but high-current capacity TE also sends out a packet to the IFTTT website,
Connectivity (P&B) RZF1-1A4-L005 relay. which responds to that packet by sending me
This is rated for 16A continuous duty. an email message stating that the tank is full.
2) I chose an Omron G5SB-1A4 relay for the More on this later.
fan. In the original design, the compressor When the tank is full, the program sits in
and fan were connected in parallel and a loop that produces a beep from the piezo
turned on/off simultaneously, but I every few seconds. The program no longer
did things differently here for reasons responds to incoming Wi-Fi messages trying
discussed later. to access its built-in Web server, since I
assume that either the beeping or the email
For the “tank-full” alarm condition, I message is enough to get me to go down to
added a few features. First, I added a piezo the basement to empty the tank and cycle the
buzzer, which beeps on/off every few seconds dehumidifier power off/on to restore normal
when the tank is full. The tank float switch is operation.
“activated” when the tank is not full—that is, I made the piezo alarm loud enough to be
when the float is hanging in mid-air. Therefore, noticed only in the basement or on the first

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the N.O. contacts of the SPDT float switch are floor of the house, but not from the bedroom
used to provide a ground return for the two on the second floor. Because the dehumidifier
2N3904 transistors (T1 and T2), which power is programmed to run at night and all-day
the fan and compressor relays, respectively. on weekends, the chances were high that
This ensures that both the compressor and the alarm would start beeping sometime at

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FIGURE 3
Schematic of the controller. The ESP8266 MCU on the Huzzah module does all the control/monitoring/Wi-Fi functions.
    &;

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 58 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356
night, when we didn’t want to be awakened. I
check my emails first thing in the morning, so
I know if the tank is full as soon as I get up.
Given the Web-based user interface, I
could have gotten away without any display
on the dehumidifier, itself. However, things
don’t always work as expected. The possibility
exists that the ESP8266 might not connect
successfully to my Wi-Fi router, or it might
not be able to resolve the address of the NTP
server that I use to set the system’s Real-time
Clock. Possibly, the ESP8266 won’t receive
the time packet returned by the NTP server.
Maybe the humidity sensor isn’t responding
to I 2C commands.
If any of these error conditions occur, they
are displayed on a 4-digit LED display that I
have included in the design. Other than the
possible error indication, the display normally
shows the relative humidity in the room.
The LED display is sold by Adafruit, and it’s
interfaced to the MCU via the I 2C bus (as is
the Si7021 humidity/temperature sensor).
The ESP8266 doesn’t contain many GPIO
pins, so it’s important to use I 2C peripherals
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whenever possible.
MODULAR SOLUTION
The components mention so far, together
with other required circuitry, are shown in
Figure 3. The ESP8266 device that I used is
contained on an Adafruit Huzzah ESP8266
breakout module. It’s a bit more expensive
FIGURE 4
Close-up of the controller. The Huzzah ESP8266 module is mounted in a socket. The black item to the right is
the AM2320 Humidity/temperature sensor.
than a bare ESP8266 module, but it contains a
3.3V LDO regulator, two switches to put it into
programming mode and a few other necessary
“glue” components. More importantly, it uses
a 0.1” pin footprint, allowing me to mount it
easily on a Vector board, rather than designing
a custom PCB.
Unlike the Adafruit ESP32 modules
that I have also used, the ESP8266 Huzzah
doesn’t contain a USB-Serial bridge chip
(for programming/debugging purposes).
Therefore, you must use a USB-Serial cable,
such as the FTDI Serial TTL-232 USB cable
(also sold by Adafruit) for programming/
debugging.
Figure 4 is a photo of the finished control
board. I chose a Hi-Link 5V 600 mA power
module, due to its small size and low price.
It is a switching power supply, so I added a
2,200µF reservoir capacitor to keep the 5V
from dropping too much when the compressor
starts up. The 5V powers the relays and piezo
buzzer directly. The ESP8266 Huzzah module
is powered by 5V via its V+ pin. It contains its
own 3.3V regulator, which powers the ESP8266
chip, itself. The LDO regulator can handle
about 250mA of external load. I power both
I 2C peripherals: the Si7021 and LED display
from the Huzzah’s 3V pin (actually 3.3V). I
intentionally program the LED display at a
low-intensity setting (still perfectly readable),
to keep the current draw low enough for the
Huzzah’s regulator to handle easily.
I recall that my dehumidifier once had a
sticker on the tank with a graph showing the
temperature/humidity range under which
the unit would work efficiently. However, that
peeled off years ago. That graph was just a
guideline. For it to be useful, you had to know
the humidity somehow and turn the unit on/off
manually.
After doing some research, I found some
data on the Internet on extraction rate
vs. temperature/humidity for a modern,
14 liter/ day dehumidifier. I’ve plotted
these data in Figure 5. While one could set
any arbitrary lower threshold for liter/day
efficiency, I decided that 5 liter per day—out
of a unit rated for 14 liter/day—would be the
lowest reasonable value. From the graph, you
can see that at 10˚C, the humidity would need
to be greater than 80% for the unit to run
efficiently. At 20°C, this drops to about 38%.
In my basement, it never exceeds 25°C, so I
don’t consider this situation.
In the ESP8266 program, whenever
the time-of-day time slot indicates that
half-price electricity is available, and the
humidity is above the user-entered setpoint,
the unit will run—but only if room conditions
are in a range where the graph indicates that
running it is worthwhile.
 circuitcellar.com 59

ESP8266 FIRMWARE Adafruit_Si7021. This class library handles

To be honest, programming the Web- the reading of the humidity/temperature
based control software for my earlier Heat data from the Si7021 sensor.
Exchanger controller project was a lot of work. WiFiServer. This class handles the
I started out designing that controller around controller’s Web-server tasks.
an Arduino Uno (Atmel (Microchip) Mega328- WiFiClient. Same as above.
based) and a Wi-Fi shield. Before I got the WiFiClientSecure. This is a secure Wi-Fi
whole Web-server stack running, I ran out
of SRAM memory space in the Mega328, and
had to start over with an Arduino Mega2560 Dehumidifier extraction rate vs. Room temperature
board. Later, I replaced that design with one 16
based on an Espressif ESP32. Having this Web- 14
server firmware already written, it meant less RH 80%
of a programming effort was needed to get 12
this project operational. 10
In order to run, the Si7021 humidity/ Extraction-
Liters ⁄ Day 8 RH 40%
temperature sensor needs Adafruit libraries
to be included in the program. A link to this 6
procedure is provided on Circuit Cellar’s
article materials webpage. 4
Here’s an overview of how the program 2
works. First, there are several classes that
must be instantiated: 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Temperature °C
WiFiUDP. This class handles the UDP

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messaging to/from the NTP server. FIGURE 5
Adafruit_7segment. This class library This graph shows the extraction rate of a 14 liter/day dehumidifier at 40% and 80% humidity. The dotted red
handles the 4-character I2C LED display. line is a 5 liter/day lower threshold of efficiency that I chose to use in the controller algorithm.
 60 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356
client needed to interact with the IFTTT
cloud server.
Next, the setup() routine runs. The
LED display is initialized and tested using an
“8888” display for a few seconds. All the GPIO
lines are configured, and then the EEPROM
subsystem is initialized. Connection is then
made with the Wi-Fi access point. The Wi-Fi
SSID and passphrase must be defined in lines
48,49 of the code. Next, I start up the ESP8266
mDNS server, which allows me to access
the controller from my iPad using the URL
“esp8266.local.” Without this, I would have to
know the actual IP address of the controller.
I can set up my Wi-Fi router to assign a fixed
IP number to any device that uses DHCP, but
it’s easier all around to just use the mDNS
service and access the controller by name.
You don’t have to use the name “esp8266.
local.” You can assign a different name on line
53 of the program. Note that the “.local” part
is not used here—it’s implied.
Next, we must contact an NTP server
(Network Time Protocol) to initialize the
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Real-time Clock (RTC). I’ve been stung in the
past by designating the fixed IP number of a
common NTP server in my program. Oddly,
the IP numbers of these large NTP servers
seem to change frequently. In this program,
I designate the NTP server as “time.nist.gov”
on Line 58, and use this function to get its
current IP number:
WiFi.hostByName(timeServer,
timeServerIP);
The last things done in the setup()
routine are to start up the Web server, and
access the EEPROM to load in the user-set
humidity setpoint.
After setup, the program enters the
loop() structure, where it iterates
For detailed article references and additional resources go to:
www.circuitcellar.com/article-materials
RESOURCES
Adafruit | www.adafruit.com
Espressif Systems | www.espressif.com
FTDI | www.ftdichip.com
Hi-Link | www.hlktech.net
Microchip Technology | www.microchip.com
Omron Electronic Components | www.components.omron.com
Silicon Labs | www.silabs.com
TE Connectivity | www.te.com
repeatedly until the unit is powered down.
The loop() function contains the following
basic functions:
1) Checks the water-level switch for a “tank-
full” condition. If full, sounds the beeper
and sends an IFTTT message saying that
the tank is full. More on IFTTT later.
2) Once per minute, executes the
ControlLoop() function, which I’ll
describe in more detail later.
3) Prints out all relevant parameters/conditions
via the serial port, for debug purposes.
4) Checks the Wi-Fi connection, and if it has
been disrupted, shuts off the compressor/
fan and tries to re-establish it.
5) Once per hour, checks the time-slot array
and determines whether the unit should
be active or not for the next hour. Every
hour, runs the DetermineEfficiency()
routine to monitor the temperature and
humidity, and decides whether conditions
are such that the unit can operate
efficiently (Figure 5).
6) Once per day, at 1400 hours, re-connects
to the NTP server and re-synchronizes the
ESP8266’s RTC.
7) Checks for incoming messages from a Web
client (initiated by the user accessing the
ESP8266.local URL in a Web-browser). If
found, serves up the webpage shown in
Figure 2 (filled in with current parameters).
Then checks for the presence of parameters
that the user may have entered into the
three windows or five buttons on the page,
and sets the appropriate SRAM variables.
8) Toggles a panel LED on and off- to act as a
“heartbeat” indicating that the software is
running properly.
THE CONTROL LOOP
This routine takes the humidity/
temperature sensor readings and decides
whether to activate the compressor and
fan. The humidity reading is compared to
the humidity setpoint, and if the humidity is
above setpoint, it activates the compressor.
However, this only happens if the current
time falls into a time slot that is user-
programmed as being an active one. In my
case, electricity is half-price between 11 PM
and 7 AM every day, so those eight time slots
are set to “active.” Alternately, if it is during
the weekend (also half-price) the unit is active
24 hours a day, for both days. Overriding the
above decision process, if the temperature
and humidity fall outside the efficient range
(from Figure 5), the unit will not run.
For test purposes more than anything
else, I include an OVERRIDE button on the
webpage. This allows me to set the unit’s
“active” status to the true state, regardless of

the time of day or day of the week. I set this
override interval as 5 hours, but this can be
changed in line 45 of the program.
There is one important consideration that
complicates the operation of the control-loop
routine. The refrigeration function of the
dehumidifier is performed by a compressor,
evaporator coil, compressor coil and a
pressure-reducing device. The pressure-
reducing device is merely a capillary tube.
The compressor takes the incoming Freon
gas, pressurizes it and pumps it through
the condenser coil. The gas condenses in the
condenser coil. At the end of the condenser
coil is the capillary tube, which takes the
liquid Freon at high pressure, and reduces this
pressure. This pressure reduction causes the
liquid Freon to evaporate in the evaporator
coil, thereby cooling the evaporator coil. The
gas exiting from the evaporator coil returns
to the inlet port of the compressor.
SIDE EFFECT
A side effect of this process occurs when
the compressor is switched off. For several
minutes, the high pressure developed by
the compressor will remain in the condenser
coil, until it can slowly bleed off through
the capillary tube. The compressors used
in refrigerators, A/Cs and dehumidifiers
are not designed to start up with this high
“head pressure.” They will just stall out if
you try to re-start them soon after they are
shut off. This stall condition will result in the
compressor drawing 4 to 10 times its normal
run current. If this were allowed to persist,
either a circuit-breaker would trip in your
electrical entrance panel, or the compressor
windings themselves would fail if it occurred
too frequently.
For domestic appliances, a small,
cylindrical device is mounted on the side of the
compressor, next to the power inlet terminals.
These protection devices (called Klixons)
interrupt the power to the compressor when
either an over-current condition persists for
more than a fraction of a second—the normal
motor start time—or the compressor case
itself over-heats. They are simple devices
containing a small bimetallic strip/heater,
which opens a switch contact when the
bimetallic strip deforms due to heat—from
either over-current or a hot compressor case.
Even though the compressor is protected by
a Klixon, we want to avoid a situation where
this protection is needed, since we don’t
want high stall current flowing through the
compressor relay contacts.
The controller software must therefore
keep track of the time when the compressor
is turned off, and must wait awhile to let the
gas pressure bleed off. I chose an off time
circuitcellar.com 61
of 4 minutes before re-start, which is quite
conservative. This 4-minute interval also
applies when the controller is first powered
up, even though the compressor was not likely
running in this case. However, this particular
timeout exists in case the user turns the unit
off and back on quickly. It would also protect
the compressor in the event of a short power
interruption.
As mentioned earlier, I don’t switch the
compressor and fan simultaneously, for a
couple of reasons. First, I was a bit concerned
that the starting current of the compressor
might be more than the P&B relay could
handle. I measured the compressor run
current to be 7A, and I know from experience
that compressors like this draw about 4
times this current for a fraction of a second,
while starting. The P&B relay can handle 16A
continuously, but the datasheet didn’t actually
specify its rated surge current. Since I didn’t
want to push the compressor relay too hard, I
decided to switch the fan separately. It draws
an amp or so.
Second, I believe that switching the fan
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and compressor separately allowed me to
improve efficiency. I didn’t see any reason for
the fan to be running for the first minute after
the compressor started, since it would take at
least this much time for the evaporator coil
to cool down. Similarly, after the compressor
shuts off, the coils remain cool for a few
minutes, so I leave the fan running for a
few extra minutes. I can’t prove this is more
efficient, but the compressor relay rating
issue mentioned earlier enough reason to
implement this split-switching arrangement.
The error codes displayed on the LED
display are as follows:
Err1. Can’t find Wi-Fi access point.
Err2. Can’t set up mDNS service.
Err3. Can’t find NTP URL via DNS server.
Err4. Haven’t gotten time packet back from
NTP server.
Err5. Can’t find Si7021 Sensor after second
I 2C scan.
IFTTT (IF THIS, THEN THAT)
This project uses the IFTTT cloud server to
send an email message when the water tank is
full. The ESP8266 is already connected to the
Wi-Fi access point, and it sends out a TCP/IP
packet to a specific URL. This URL is assigned
uniquely when the user registers with IFTTT.
The IFTTT cloud server will respond to this
“trigger” by:
1) Sending a TCP/IP packet back to the
Huzzah Wi-Fi module, to acknowledge
receipt of the original packet sent out
 62 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356
by the ESP8266 Huzzah module. This is
useful during the debugging phase of the
program development.
2) Sending an email message indicating that
the dehumidifier tank is full.
Let’s look more closely into the IFTTT
cloud service available on the Internet. It’s
a free service, which is nice. Its primary use,
from looking over the available applets, is to
allow people to associate the occurrence of
some Internet-based event (the “trigger”)
with the generation of one or more Internet-
based actions (“services”). The combination
of a trigger and one or more services is called
an “applet.” You can either write your own
applet, or merely use one of hundreds of
applets that others have written and posted
on the IFTTT website.
When you visit the IFTTT website it’s
immediately obvious that most of the applets
are centered around social media such as
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Social
media are very popular these days, and the
IFTTT cloud service is also very popular.
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The fact IFTTT is centered on social media
activities is why it can be a free service: the
users are not really the customers, they are
the product. In other words, IFTTT can make
money selling the “big data” generated by
all the social media events that are captured
when they are used in the many IFTTT
applets.
I don’t use any social media sites, so
whether the big social media companies are
FIGURE 6
This shows a sample of the IFTTT Webhooks settings. The long alphanumeric ID string (partially redacted
because it’s my ID) must be placed in the controller firmware, as detailed in the article.
profiting from all the information that its
users are freely providing it, doesn’t concern
me. For this project, the small amount of
“non-interesting” data that they’d get from
my dehumidifier is of no interest to me, apart
from appreciating that I am getting a very
useful service for free.
To use IFTTT, you must visit the ifttt.
com website and register. Registration is
simple. You can register using your Google
or Facebook account ID. I have a Google
account, so I used that. The IFTTT registration
procedure has security features to ensure
that random people can’t set up IFTTT apps
in your name—assuming they knew your
Google credentials. During registration, they
will send you an email message which you
must respond to properly, to verify that you
are actually the person that is attempting to
set up the account. Like most websites these
days, the IFTTT website uses cookies, so when
you visit the website later, it will recognize
you and you’ll be automatically logged in.
SET-UP PROCEDURE
I am going to briefly cover the procedure
needed to set up your IFTTT applet for this
project. However, I did not “invent this
wheel” myself. I found an online tutorial that
explained how to use IFTTT in detail. A link
to the tutorial is available on Circuit Cellar’s
article materials webpage. This tutorial
describes how to send SMS messages, but
sending an email is similar. I had used this
feature about 6 months earlier in a Wi-Fi
water-leak detector, and my IFTTT applet for
that project was still working. In fact, it saved
me a bundle of money when it alerted me to
a small leak that had developed in a pipe in
my basement.
Once registered with IFTTT, search for
the email applet. You will have to enter your
email address. Here again, there is security
to ensure that some rogue individual doesn’t
write an applet that floods you with email
messages. After you enter your email address,
IFTTT will send you an email message with an
ID number that you must re-enter into the
webpage that you have just used to register
your email account.
After you have set up the action that you
want performed, you must then set up the
“trigger” that initiates it. To do this, you use
the “Webhooks” applet, so search for that.
Then press the Connect button and you will
see a screen like the one shown in Figure 6.
Notice the long URL that is displayed. (I have
hidden the last few digits of the personal ID
part at the end of this URL.) It is a template
of your personal URL at IFTTT that must
be accessed by the ESP8266. Note that in
my program, the first section of the URL

(https://maker.ifttt.com ) is assigned to
the const char* host, which is used by the
sclie nt.co n n e ct(h ost,httpsPor t)
routine (Line 784). The rest of the line from /
use/ onwards must be customized for your
applet, as described later.
Also, note that if you hit the “Edit
Connection” button, it will generate a new
URL. If you have already embedded the
existing one in your program code, don’t hit
this button! It will generate a new URL, and
you can’t revert to the old one!
You have now created a custom “service”
applet and a custom “trigger” applet. You
must link or “sync” the trigger and services
together in your own custom applet. To do
this, navigate to My Applets -> New Applet.
You will see a screen as shown in Figure 7a.
Here it is a bit confusing. To choose the trigger
event, click on the blue “+” icon, search for
the Webhooks applet and choose “receive
a web request.” You then must name this
trigger with an event name—something that
is meaningful to you (and will be used later).
Next, you must add the service that you
want to have performed. You will see the
screen shown in Figure 7b, and this time click
on the blue “+” icon next to “that”. Search for
circuitcellar.com 63
FIGURE 7
New Applet (a) To define the “trigger” for your
IFTTT applet, you press the blue
“+” icon shown here. This isn’t
if + this then that
immediately obvious to the first-
time user. (b) To define the “action”
or service for your IFTTT applet, you
press the blue “+” icon.
a) Want to build your own service? Build on the platform
then + that
if
b)
the email icon, and fill out the “message box”
as you would like the email message to read,
then click “Create Action.”
At this point, you are basically finished
setting up the IFTTT service. You will see a
block describing your applet. Make sure that
you have toggled the applet ON.
The only thing remaining is to determine
the format of the message that the ESP8266
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must send to your personal IFTTT URL (as
mentioned earlier). When you are on the
Webhooks page, you will see a button marked
 64 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356
“Documentation.” When you click on it, you
will see the format of the message that the
ESP8266 must send. In the URL, where the
{event} appears, replace this with the event
name that you chose earlier—when you were
configuring the Webhooks applet. You can test
the triggering of your applet at this point by
clicking on “Test it,” after you have done the
{event} replacement.
That line of code that you have just seen/
edited must be inserted into the ESP8266
program code for the project. If you look at
the “sendITFFFmessage() routine in my
program , you will find the line:
String url = “/trigger/humidifier
tank full/with/key/
That’s followed by the long personal ID
string described earlier. You will have to fill in
the rest of the URL as I described above in the
Document section of the Webhooks service.
When the ESP8266 program code has been
customized with your own URL, if you were to
perform a call to the “sendIFTTTmessage()
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FIGURE 8
The unit with the finished controller mounted on the front panel. The red LED to the right is the “heartbeat”
LED, described in the main article text.
routine, at the end of the setup() function,
it should send IFTTT the proper packet at the
custom URL, and you should receive an email
message shortly thereafter. You can also test
just the IFTTT applet alone by selecting your
applet from “My Applets” and clicking the
“Check now” button.
CONCLUSIONS
Where I’m located on the East coast of
Canada, I don’t need to run a dehumidifier
until mid-summer through fall, when the hot,
humid outdoor air gets into the cool basement.
At that time, I’ll likely get mildew or mold
developing if I don’t lower the humidity.
It was early summer when I developed the
project and wrote this article. Even though
this dehumidifier is more than 25 years old,
the compressor and associated refrigeration
components—called the “sealed system” in
the trade—are still in good working condition,
so I hope that I will get many more years of
service out of it.
Figure 8 shows the unit with my new
controller tacked onto the front panel. While
it’s not pretty, I wanted the controller on the
outside, so that its temperature/humidity
sensors would get a better sense of the
ambient air. The red LED on the right is the
“heartbeat” LED, which flashes every second,
as long as the program is executing properly.
When I started using the unit in mid-
summer, I ran into an issue with the humidity
sensing. The humidity value that was displayed
when the unit was first powered up correlated
well with two other humidity sensors in my
house. However, after the fan had been running
for 15 minutes or so, the humidity reading
would drop by about 20%. This made it useless
as a setpoint control sensor.
At first, I blamed it on the low-cost AM2320
sensor that I had originally mounted. However,
replacing that with a better Si7021 sensor
didn’t improve matters. It seems that the
strong airflow from the fan disrupts the
sensor’s ability to read properly. I am not
sure how commercial dehumidifiers handle
this issue. Possibly they just add 20% to the
readings, and control the compressor based
upon that. I decided to add 6’ of cable to the
Si7021 sensor, and placed it at that distance
from the unit. That cured the reading
discrepancy. I suspect that the AM2320
sensor would have worked fine under those
circumstances as well.
———————————————
RESCHEDULED 7-9 July 2020
 66 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

From the Bench

Taking RPLIDAR Out for a Spin

(Part 1) Command Interface

RPLIDAR-A1 is 360-degree laser range scanner that uses a laser triangulation

ranging principle to calculate distance. In this article, Jeff examines this device
and its development package. He steps you through his project using RPLIDAR,
detailing his creation of a simple command interface for the device.
By

I
Jeff Bachiochi
’ve discussed LIDAR in the past, most limited—it will power up without a separate
recently in Circuit Cellar 300 (July 2015) supply. Start-up current is around 600mA, but
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and Circuit Cellar 301 (August 2015). If
you were with me back then, the $100
LIDAR-Lite from PulsedLight (now Garmin)
used time-of-flight to calculate distance from
a reflected laser beam. This was a single
collimated point system that could be aimed
using servos. Today I want to discuss the
RPLIDAR-A1 from Slamtec, which has been
taking the market by storm thanks to its $100
price tag. This is a 360-degree laser range
scanner that uses a laser triangulation ranging
principle to calculate distance. Its spinning
head allows it to make distance calculations
for all angles in a complete 2D plane.
The RPLIDAR-A1’s development package
contains the laser head, a TTL-to-USB dongle
and connecting cables. You can plug it into your
PC and—as long as your USB port isn’t current
it scans at around 400mA, so most powered
USB ports can handle it. Physically, the unit is
about the size of your fist.
SAFETY AND SCOPE
The RPLIDAR A1 system use a low-power
(less than 5mW) modulated-pulse infrared
laser as its light source. The laser’s short
emission time frame assures Class I laser
safety standards, making it safe for both
humans and pets. Although you won’t need to
wear special glasses to use it, you should treat
it as you would any potentially dangerous
piece of equipment.
Figure 1 gives you a good look at how this
laser system is set up. Note that the motor
is driving the laser head with a drive belt—
similar to many old turntables or disk drives.

FIGURE 1
The RPLIDAR measures the angle
of reflection of a pulsed laser beam.
Computations of distance are made
based on the angle measured at the
receiver [1].
 circuitcellar.com 67

RPLIDAR emits a modulated infrared laser the need for any brushes.
signal, which is then reflected by the object to After I gained some confidence in the
be detected. The returning signal is sampled communications, I started by running the
by a Vision Acquisition System (VSC). The serial terminal application RealTerm on my
VSC comprises an embedded DSP to process PC to invoke some of the API commands. I
the sample data and output distance and decided to talk TTL directly to my Arduino
angle values. The ranging scanner system is Mega, and set aside the dongle. The RPLIDAR
mounted on a spinning rotor with a built-in uses 115200 baud, 8N1 serial protocol, so it
angular encoding system. was easy to set up “Serial1” on the Mega for
Multiple distance scans are performed this purpose. This still leaves “Serial” console
during each rotation. The motor defaults for programming and debugging. Let’s look at
to 5.5rps, but can operate from 1-10rps.
Scans begin when requested with a single
point sample based on angle of return,
processing and communications timing. A new
sample begins only after the previous one is
completed (or times out) up to a maximum
of approximately 8,000Hz. It has accuracies
of less than 1% of the distance and greater
than 1 degree of angle. RPLIDAR-A1 (Rev5) can
measure distances up to 12m (40') and down
to 150mm (6").

COMMUNICATIONS
I mentioned earlier that the development

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kit included a TTL-to-USB dongle. I’ll want
to communicate via TTL, so I won’t be using
that. The designers used a 7-pin Molex
connector (#0022035075) for the TTL output
of the interface board. This is a 2.54mm (0.1")
pitch Mini-SPOX system. The interface board
just translates the separate electronics and
FIGURE 2
motor connectors into a single connector. If
I removed the cover of the spinning turret so you could see the physical parts reflected in Figure 1. The DC
you want to connect directly to those, you’ll
motor drives the turret via a rubber (O-ring) belt. There are separate connectors from the motor and the
need to use a Molex (#538-53048-0450) & turret that are combined on the interface PCB.
(#538- 53048-0310), which is a 1.25mm
(0.05") pitch PicoBlade system.
You can use the included dongle if you
wish to connect with your PC and talk to it—
using the API via a Windows application—or
simply a serial terminal program. The software
development kit that comes with it has a few
examples that will give you a head start on
using RPLIDAR, but I’m not going to use those.
I will use the API document “Interface Protocol
and Application Notes” for this discussion.
Note that in Figure 2 the protective
cap was removed from the rotating turret.
You can see the laser on the right, receiver
on the top center and the vertical circuit
board that does all of the control and
computations. The turret spins via the
belted DC motor on the left. Getting power
and communication to and from a spinning
turret is an engineering feat. You can see
evidence of the two coils that wirelessly
pass power from the stationary base to the
rotating turret in Figure 3. With the turret
circuit board removed, note the SMT (surface FIGURE 3
mount technology) devices in the center of When the Laser PCB is removed from the turret, you can see that power is transferred wirelessly, using
the hollow shaft. Communications are sent a coil on the base and a coil on the turret. A hollow shaft allows communication via a suspected infrared
via LED transmitter/receiver pair, eliminating transmitter/receiver pair.
 68 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356
TABLE 1
Requests take the form of a packet of
Start Flag Command Value Payload Size
data. 1 byte (0xA5) 1 byte
TABLE 2
Responses have their own packet
Start Flag1 Start Flag2 Data Response Length
format. 1 byte (0xA5) 1 byte (0x5A)
the API offered by RPLIDAR.
Requests take the form of a packet of data,
as shown in Table 1. The simplest is a 2-byte
packet, which contains the Start byte (used
in all request packets) and a Command value.
Without a payload count and payload data,
the checksum is not required. Let’s look at a
simple command like STOP. To send a STOP
packet, just send the 2 bytes 0xA5 and 0x25.
If not already idle, the laser diode and the
measurement system will be disabled, and
the idle state will be entered.
There is no response by the RPLIDAR to this
request, so it doesn’t give us any feedback. So,
let’s look at the RESET command. While this
command also states that it has no response,
it actually does. It’s a sign-on power-up
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message (which was acknowledged by a
communication with Slamtec). This command
is the 2-byte sequence 0xA5 and 0x40. When
sent, RPLIDAR will respond with some ASCII
text similar to this:
RP LIDAR System.
Firmware Ver 1.27 - rc8, HW Ver 5
Model: 18
This readable text is not the norm and
does not follow the response format of any
of the commands that support a response.
Responses have their own packet format of
data, shown in Table 2.
THE SCAN COMMAND
I found the 4-byte Data Response Length
and Send Mode really confusing. Let’s take a
look at the SCAN command to dissect this. The
complete response packet is as follows: 0xA5,
0x5A, 0x05, 0x00, 0x00, 0x40, 0x81. The
4-byte Data Response Length and Send Mode
for this command is 0x05, 0x00, 0x00, 0x40.
First the 4-byte value is sent little-endian.
That means the value is actually 0x40000005
or in binary 01000000 00000000 00000000
00000101. The Data Response Length is
the last 30 bits of this—000000 00000000
0000000 00000101—or just 101 = 5. The most
significant (MS) 2 bits of the 32-bit value is
TABLE 3 Quality Angle Distance
Data packet format for the SCAN
command
1 byte 2 bytes 2 bytes
Payload Data Checksum
1 byte 0-255 bytes 1 byte
Send Mode Data Type
30 bits 2 bits 1 byte
01 or 1. According to the datasheet, presently
there are only two possible Send Modes, 0 and
1, where 0=a single packet, and 1=multiple
packets. In this case, the response will not
stop at this response packet.
The last byte is a Data Type and can be
used to identify the format you will be looking
for in the next packet (remember 1=multiple
packets). We know that, in this case, the
following packet will have 5 bytes. While every
command uses the response packet format,
additional packets will have a unique format
(DataType) used only for this command. For
the SCAN command, a data packet will be sent
after every completed scan. This will continue
until it receives a STOP command. The format
for this packet is shown in Table 3.
The quality byte is a combination of the
MS 6-bit value, based on the strength of
the reflected sample and the lower 2 bits,
which indicate if the sample is the first after
the 0-degree rotor position. A binary value
of “01” indicates this is the start of a new
rotation, and “10” identifies all other samples.
The angle is bits 15:1 value, with bit 0 always
set to “1.” The angle value is a fixed-point
combination of bits 15:8 (integer) and bits 7:1
(fraction) in degrees (0-359.x). The distance is
a 16-bit fixed-point combination of bits 15:2
(integer) and bits 1:0 (fraction) in millimeters.
Note that a distance of “0” indicates an
invalid measurement—probably less than the
minimum distance of around 150mm.
I’ll be tossing out any fractional values
reported and dealing with the just integers. It can
be noted that samples are not taken at exactly
the same position on each rotation. Presently,
there is no command to take a sample at some
arbitrary angle. The system merely continues
to sample and report its present position and
distance calculated. A STOP command is the
only way to halt SCAN activity.
All packets are sent at 115200 baud
without any communication handshaking.
This means your system must be fast enough
to accept all the data being sent, or there will
be a loss of sync. There seems to be no way to
resync the data, since scan data has no sync
byte, as with a request and response packet.
API COMMANDS
Table 4 is a complete list of the functions
available. You’ll mainly be interested in the
first three commands. The last four commands
 circuitcellar.com 69

Request Name Value Payload Response Mode RPLIDAR Operation

STOP 0x25 N/A No response Exit the current state and enter the idle state
RESET 0x40 N/A No response Reset (reboot) the RPLIDAR core
SCAN 0x20 N/A Multiple response Enter the scanning state
EXPRESS_SCAN 0x82 YES Multiple response Enter the scanning state and working at the highest speed
Enter the scanning state and force data output without
FORCE_SCAN 0x21 N/A Multiple response
checking rotation speed
GET_INFO 0x50 N/A Single response Send out the device info (for example, serial number)
GET_HEALTH 0x52 N/A Single response Send out the device health info
GET_SAMPLERATE 0x59 N/A Single response Send out single sampling time
GET_LIDAR_CONF 0x84 YES Single response Get LIDAR configuration

TABLE 4
Each of these commands uses the same request and response formats. The format for the data packet that follows the response (if any) will be specific to each command.

will give you some feedback on the operation FIGURE 4

of the system. The express scan is a way to The interconnections from the 7-pin
send data more quickly by compressing it and RPLIDAR connector can be separated
back into their individual controls,
communicating using larger chunks. Each of
motor and serial. I’m using Serial1
these commands uses the same request and
on the Arduino Mega, so the console
response formats. The format for the data

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port serial can still be used. The motor
packet that follows the response (if any) will control comes from a digital I/O pin
be specific to each command. (3), which can turn ON/OFF the motor.
An Arduino library for the RPLIDAR [2]
contains several example programs, and I will
not be using that here. Instead, I want the
communication to be more visible to you, so
that you can customize it to your individual
requirements. The 7-wire connection to my
Arduino Mega is shown in Figure 4. It is a
straightforward 5V TTL interface with Serial1 of
the Mega. The motor control line is connected
to a digital pin to turn the motor ON or OFF.
My primary interest is to give the user a
way of exploring all the API commands. This
is accomplished via a serial terminal program
connected to the Arduino via the standard
USB Serial port. The first order of business
was to decide on using a two-letter command
format. It’s always a good idea to give the user
help on what commands are supported. This
is done through a menu that will be displayed RP Lidar 2-Letter Menu
by sending a “?.” Most commands begin with SCan
INfo
the first two letters of the command, but due
DAta
to limitations of using only two letters, the Clear Path
menu shows all the commands, and capitalizes Object Path
those used for the command. Sub Menu
The SCAN command is therefore displayed 2-Letter plus ‘=’ and a value
as “SCan” meaning for a user to type in “S” and Angle Left of center=? (0-180), presently aaa
“C” followed by a <CR> (carriage return). I’ll use Angle Right of center=? (0-180), presently aaa
that convention from here forward in the article Distance miN (mm)=? (100-150), presently ddddd
when I mention commands. The last command Distance maX (m)=? (0-15), presently dddddd
in Table 4 is “GET_LIDAR_CONF” and it has ? this menu
configuration values that can be requested. One
is the maximum distance of the scanning mode. LISTING 1
The menu item displayed for that command is Because the menu is displayed as a list, I wanted to give priority to those commands that are more useful
“maX Distance” which indicates the two-letter by splitting this into a main menu and a sub menu.
command is “XD.” Should a command require The main menu is shown here, with the sub menu shown in Listing 2.
 70 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

a value, its menu item is displayed with an being restricted in any way. I’ll be using this
appended “=?” which suggests the command function for both the console (Serial) and
format will be two letters followed by the equal the RPLIDAR (Serial1). Note that an UNO
sign, a decimal value and <CR>. could be used, but since communication with
the RPLIDAR is the highest priority, it should
SERIAL EVENT be connected to Serial and a software serial
A special function, SerialEvent can routine could be implemented for console I/O.
be used with receiving serial data. It is Initial testing was accomplished by hand
not actually an interrupt, but will be called assembling the API-required data packet
once every time through the loop function, for each of the API’s commands I sent using
so it is dependent on the loop timing not Real Term. Constructing a more friendly
user interface seemed appropriate, because
I wanted to off load as much of the work as
RP Lidar 2-Letter Sub Menu possible. Because the menu is displayed as a
REset list, I wanted to give priority to those commands
STop that are more useful by splitting this into a main
HEalth menu (Listing 1) and a sub menu (Listing 2).
Sample Rate You’ll notice that most of the informational
Mode Count commands are on the sub menu, which is
maX Distance
available with the “SM” command. Meanwhile,
Answer Type
Time per Sample commands that may be used frequently are
Mode Typical on the main menu and are available with the
Mode Name “?” command. You also may have noticed
2-Letter plus ‘=’ and a value some other commands that don’t seem to be
ID=? (0-2), presently # part of the RPLIDAR’s API. We’ll get to them
COLUMNS

RPm=? (0-255 later. But first let’s see what happens when a
? main menu command is entered.
User input commands are expected to end
LISTING 2 with a <CR>, so serialEvent() gathers
Sub menu of commands user input into the userInput[] array. The
first character is saved as userCommand
and the second character is saved as
void loop()
{ userSubCommand. These variables are
if(userCommand) initially set to “0” so the main loop() has
{ nothing to do unless a command has been
switch (userCommand) received, which alters those variables. Should
{ a third character in the userInput[] array
... be the equal character “=”, an integer value
case ‘S’: is expected before the <CR>. I wanted a way
switch (userSubCommand) to set some parameters, even though the
{ RPLIDAR APIs don’t require data input (for
case ‘C’: // SCan
the most part). Anyway, this integer value is
rplidarScan();
flushCommand(); saved as the commandValue.
break; So, let us assume the “SC” command was
... entered, therefore userCommand = S and
default: userSubCommand = C. In the main loop(),
flushCommand(); there are only two things to do—execute some
break; code when the userCommand <> 0 (user has
} input a command), and responseCommand
… <> 0 (RPLIDAR has responded to a request).
default: We have not yet discussed gathering
flushCommand();
RPLIDAR’s responses via serial1Event(),
break;
} so let’s continue with the SC command.
} Using the Arduino’s switch/case
if(responseCommand) function, we can zero in on the SC command
{ (Listing 3). Here switch is based on
userCommand, and so execution will look for
} the case “S.” Execution branches to the code at
} case S and this has a secondary switch/case
function based on the userSubCommand.
LISTING 3 Again, execution branches to the code at
Code for the “SCan” command case C. We now execute any code for the
 circuitcellar.com 71

scan command requested by the user.
The rplidarScan() routine will begin a
scan. This action can only be interrupted by a
STop command as it continuously repeats its
scan routine. The scan routine sends out laser
pulses and looks for a return of the reflected
pulses up to its maximum flight time. If the
pulses are returned, then a distance is calculated
and the present rotation angle and distance are
sent out as a 5-byte packet. This repeats ad
nauseam and is the subject of a gotcha.
There is no flow control and the 5-byte
packet has no absolute unique byte that can
be used to sync the data. That means that
if you can’t take the data as fast as they
are sent, you will lose data and become un-
synced. You might continue to interpret data
incorrectly, because there is no indication that
this has happened. This means that you must
be absolutely sure to handle everything that
is sent. Using an Arduino has its limitations.
Once started, I want to be sure I spend all my
time handling this function, so as not to cause
any delay in this process. The rplidarScan()
function has two components: start the scan
and turn on the motor.
Serial1.write(0xA5);
Serial1.write(0x20);
digitalWrite(RPLIDAR_MOTOR, true);
The userCommand is then set to ‘0’ using
the flushCommand() routine. And we can
begin to look for an RPLIDAR response.

void serialEvent1()
{
while (Serial1.available())
{
switch (mode)
{
…

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case 3
while(Serial1.available() > 4)
{
Serial1.readBytes(responseDescriptor, 5);
quality = responseDescriptor[0];
if (quality & 1)
{
scanCount++;
}
angle = ((responseDescriptor[2] * 256) +
responseDescriptor[1]) / 128;
if (angle < 0)
{
angle = angle + 512;
}
distance[angle] = ((responseDescriptor[4] * 256) +
responseDescriptor[3]) >> 2;
}
if (scanCount > 2)
{
newData = true;
rplidarStop();
dataCount = 0;
for(int c=0; c<360; c++)
{
if(distance[c]>0)dataCount++;
}
Serial.println(“Data Count = “ + String(dataCount));
mode = 0;
}
break;
…
default:
Serial.println(“Unknown Mode:0x” +String(mode,HEX));
mode = 0;
responseCommand = 0x00;
break;
}
}
} LISTING 4
Code for the serial1Event() function
 72 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

responseCommand = the first byte, which will be 0x71, 0x72,

SERIAL1 EVENT
Enter the serial1Event() function (Listing 4). Once we
have received any characters from the Serial1 port (RPLIDAR),
we want to stay in this routine until we have completed the
task. The switch/case function is used here based on the
switch variable mode. As we begin the mode=0, we look
for start byte 1 (0xA5). Receiving this byte sets the mode=1.
While mode=1, we look for start byte 2 (0x5A). Receiving this
byte sets the mode=2. This is where things begin to get tricky.
When in mode=2 we are expecting an additional 5 bytes.
If the last byte = 0x20, we have a response from the special
request 0x84, GET_LIDAR_CONF, which will have one of six
responses. We need to read an additional packet to determine
the specifics for this request. From that packet, we can set
0x74, 0x75, 0x7C or 0x7F. Set the mode=0. And we’re done here.
Otherwise, we can use the first byte to determine what should
be done next. Because these responses all have additional packets
that are custom to the request, I assign each a unique mode# and
handle those packets in separate routines. Each of these collect
additional packet data and assign a unique responseCommand
value, before setting the mode=0 and exiting.
All this is pretty ordinary, ending up with the
responseDescriptor[] array holding RPLIDAR’s data packet
info, each with a unique responseCommand value used back
in loop(), except for responseCommand=5. This is the SCan
command’s response. It has been reassigned a mode=3.
Since RPLIDAR will be sending 5 bytes for every scan, I wait
for the buffer to have more than 4 bytes before the next 5 bytes

[plotData]
‘radius=200 pixels
‘zoom=1 maxdistance=12000
‘1 pixel=12000/200=60
print #main.graphicbox, “cls” ‘ clear the plot area
print #main.graphicbox, “color red” ‘ change the pen color
print #main.graphicbox, “goto 10 10” ‘ goto x,y coordinate
print #main.graphicbox, “down” ‘ drop pen to draw
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print #main.graphicbox, “\150mm” ‘ print text

print #main.graphicbox, “up” ‘ lift pen to not draw
print #main.graphicbox, “home” ‘ move to center of graphic area
print #main.graphicbox, “down”
print #main.graphicbox, “circle “;(150*zoom)/60’ plot a circle with a radius of (150*zoom)/60
print #main.graphicbox, “up”
print #main.graphicbox, “color green”
print #main.graphicbox, “goto 370 10”
print #main.graphicbox, “down”
print #main.graphicbox, “\1m”
print #main.graphicbox, “up”
print #main.graphicbox, “home”
print #main.graphicbox, “down”
print #main.graphicbox, “circle “;(1000*zoom)/60
print #main.graphicbox, “up”
print #main.graphicbox, “color blue”
print #main.graphicbox, “goto 170 10”
print #main.graphicbox, “down”
print #main.graphicbox, “\zoom=”;zoom
print #main.graphicbox, “up”
print #main.graphicbox, “home”
print #main.graphicbox, “color black”
print #main.graphicbox, “down”
print #main.graphicbox, “circle “;(70*zoom)/60
print #main.graphicbox, “up”
for a=0 to 359 ‘ do this 360times, once for each distance
print #main.graphicbox, “turn 1” ‘ rotate direction of travel CW 1 degree
print #main.graphicbox, “go “;(distance(a)*zoom)/60
print #main.graphicbox, “down”
print #main.graphicbox, “circlefilled 1”’ plot a filled circle with a radius of 1 (small dot)
print #main.graphicbox, “up”
print #main.graphicbox, “turn 180”
print #main.graphicbox, “go “;(distance(a)*zoom)/60
print #main.graphicbox, “turn 180”
next a
return

LISTING 5
Because I wanted to see the points plotted, I wrote a simple program in Liberty Basic to do this on my PC.

are read into the responseDescriptor[]
array. The first byte holds the quality value
and the start bit (bit0). If bit0=1, scanCount
is incremented. Remember, this bit indicates
the first scan completed after the rotation has
reached 0 degrees. I use this to keep track of
complete rotations. I want to stop the scan
when I have fulfilled my requested number of
complete rotations. This is presently set to 1.
The second and third bytes contain the angle
in degrees and fraction (which I throw away).
The angle is used to index into the distance[]
array. Each entry in this array will hold the
latest distance from bytes four and five. Once
scanCount=2, I end the scan by sending the
STop command. Distances reported as “0” are
illegal. These couldn’t be calculated, because
they were either less than the minimum
distance (less than 150mm) or further than the
maximum distance (greater than 12m). I do
a quick check to determine how many entries
in the distance[] array have legal entries,
and this is saved in the variable dataCount.
The mode is set to 0, and no response code is
necessary, except the array is flagged using
newData = true, and we’re done here.
LET’S SEE WHAT WE GOT
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t want to get all the
data back, unless I were trying to do some
mapping. The DAta command will dump 360
degrees of data, saved in the distance[]
array. This command can be used to verify
that the data returned from RPLIDAR are
correct (or at least look good). You may have
noticed that I am not doing anything with
the quality value. You might want to use this
value for qualifying each computation. For
example, only accept the angle and distance
if it has a quality value greater than some
predetermined value. For this version, I’ll be
taking all angles and distances.
What’s dumped is the list of distances
computed for angles 0-359. The table is
initialized to all “0“s, so any angle that wasn’t
measured will be “0.“ You can choose to view
these as a minimum distance, a maximum
distance, or no plot point. I wanted to see
these points plotted, so I wrote a simple
program in Liberty Basic to do this on my PC.
This program is only about 150 lines of code.
The application consists of a graphic window
centered on the screen.
A pop-up box asks which comm port
the Arduino/RPLIDAR is connected to. Next,
it sends out a SCan command and a DAta
command, which returns a 360-item list of
distances. Once the list is received, the plot
routine displays the data as plotted points, as
seen from the RPLIDAR. This request and plot
action continue repeatedly. Liberty Basic has
some easy-to-use plotting commands that
circuitcellar.com 73
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Bachiochi (pronounced BAH-key-AH-key)
has been writing for Circuit Cellar since 1988.
His background includes product design and
manufacturing. You can reach him at:
jeff.bachiochi@imaginethatnow.com or at:
www.imaginethatnow.com.
make this simple to execute, with minimum
math required. In fact, the only math is for
the zoom function I added to allow you to plot
from 12m down to 1m, full scale (Listing 5).
If you think like a XY plotter, you can see
how these commands are used to rotate the
direction of travel, move out some distance,
plot a mark and then move back. This is done
once for each of the 360 array entries. The
TUrn command internally calculates the X
and Y steps necessary to move in a vectored
COLUMNS
direction, so no math is required!
WHY AN INTERMEDIATE
INTERFACE?
Certainly, I could have coded my Liberty
Basic application to request data using just
the API commands directly interfacing with
RPLIDAR. Although the API commands may be
simple, you would need to interpret the 5 bytes
of data being returned for every scan point.
While you are doing this and storing the data,
you need to keep track of where you are, and
STop the scan when you have sufficient data.
It’s not really a big deal at this point, but I
believe the best way to interface with this is
to be totally insulated from the data collection
process. This allows a user to retrieve only
pertinent information, and is absolutely critical
for equipment with limited processing power.
Next month, we’ll look at the plot made
using the Liberty Basic application, and
determine exactly what data we need. We want
to be sure that any processor interfacing with
this project doesn’t get bogged down with an
abundance of data. As always, it seems there’s
too much to do and too little time.
Additional materials from the author are available at:
www.circuitcellar.com/article-materials
References [1] through [2] as marked in the article can be found there.
RESOURCES
Molex | www.molex.com
Slamtec | www.slamtec.com
 74 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

PRODUCT NEWS

Jacinto 7 Processors Serve ADAS and Auto Gateway Needs

Texas Instruments (TI) has introduced the new Jacinto 7 processor platform. Built on the foundation of TI’s decades
of automotive systems and functional safety expertise, the new Jacinto processor platform brings enhanced deep learning
capabilities and advanced networking to solve design challenges in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and automotive
gateway applications.
The first two automotive devices in the platform, TDA4VM processors for ADAS and DRA829V processors for gateway
systems, include specialized on-chip accelerators to segment
and expedite data-intensive tasks, like computer vision and
deep learning. TDA4VM and DRA829V processors incorporate a
functional safety microcontroller, making it possible for original
equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and Tier-1 suppliers to support
both ASIL-D safety-critical tasks and convenience features with
one chip.
Developers can get started immediately with Jacinto 7
processors development kits, and buy the new TDA4VMXEVM and
DRA829VXEVM evaluation modules on TI.com for US$1,900 each.
Preproduction TDA4VM and DRA8329V processors are available
now, only from TI, at US$97 in 1,000-unit quantities. Volume
production is expected to be available in the second half of 2020.

Texas Instruments | www.ti.com

30W DC-DC Power Module Targets High-Voltage Applications

XP Power has announced a 30W DC-DC power module that can generate up to 6kVDC from a single 24VDC input. The HRL30
series provides an accurate high voltage output for a wide variety of applications, including scientific and semiconductor uses,
says the company. With 22 voltage models in the series, a wide range of fully controllable outputs from 0-200VDC to 0-6kVDC are
available in both positive and negative polarities. The wide input
PRODUCT NEWS

range of 22 to 30V allows the module to be powered by the 24V

rail commonly available in industrial equipment, while an inbuilt
precision +5VDC reference provides a stable supply to control the
high voltage output. Excellent line/load regulation (0.01%) and
low ripple/noise (<0.05%) ensure a stable output voltage.
Modules in the HRL30 series operate across the temperature
range -40°C to +70°C. The baseplate cooled package, along with
unique design and manufacturing techniques and a typical 85%
efficiency ensure superior thermal performance in even the most
demanding applications, says XP Power.

XP Power | www.xppower.com

Carrier Boards and Mini-PCs Boost the Jetsons

Diamond Systems announced a Stevie carrier board for
Nvidia’s high-end Jetson AGX Xavier module. In the Stevie
announcement, Diamond also
promoted some other Jetson carriers
and embedded systems, some of
which appear to be relatively new. All
the products ship with Linux BSPs.
The Stevie board measures
105mm × 92mm, just slightly larger
than the 100mm × 87mm Jetson AGX
Xavier module. Nvidia’s top-of-the-
line Xavier has greater than 10x the
energy efficiency and more than 20x
the performance of the Jetson TX2. It
features 8x ARMv8.2 cores and a 512-
core Nvidia Volta GPU with 64 tensor
cores and 2x Nvidia Deep Learning Accelerator (DLA) engines.
There’s also a 7-way VLIW vision chip, as well as 16GB 256-bit
LPDDR4 RAM and 32GB eMMC 5.1.
Unlike the slightly smaller, more
rugged, and more expandable Elton
carrier for the Xavier Stevie has a
variety of real-world ports for easier
connectivity. Coastline ports include
an HDMI port, 2x Gigabit Ethernet,
and 2x USB 3.1 ports. The block
diagram suggests there’s a second
HDMI port, which might be an input
interface.
Diamond Systems
www.diamondsystems.com
 circuitcellar.com 75

PRODUCT NEWS

STM32 SoC Speeds LoRa IoT Smart

Device Designs
STMicroelectronics has released what it claims is the first
LoRa system-on-chip (SoC) for connecting smart devices to
the IoT using long-distance wireless connections. The SoC
combines the ultra-low-power STM32 MCU design with a LoRa-
compliant radio in one single-die and easy-to-use device.
With multiple ST patents pending, namely for radio Power
Management Architecture, the STM32WLE5 will ensure unique
performance. ST’s LoRaWAN software for wireless network
communications has passed all regional certifications for use Users also benefit from the built-in cyber-security features
worldwide. of STM32L4 MCUs, including hardware public key accelerator
STM32WLE5 is available in a 5mm x 5mm UFBGA73 (PKA), True Random Number Generator (TRNG), sector
package. It is fully integrated into the market-proven STM32 protection against read/write operation (PCROP), and support
ecosystem, including STM32Cube software support, as well for state-of-the-art cryptographic algorithms including RSA.
as a LoRaWAN stack certified for all regions and available in
source-code format. STMicroelectronics | www.st.com

PMIC Simplifies Car Camera Power Supply Designs

Renesas Electronics has announced the ISL78083, a highly integrated power management IC (PMIC) that simplifies power
supply design for use in multiple HD camera modules, reducing development cycles, bill of materials (BOM) cost and supply
chain risks. The automotive camera PMIC accepts direct-from-battery (36-42V) or power-over-coax (15-18V) supply sources
and supports output currents up to 750mA per output. This power level offers ample headroom for existing image sensors
up to 7-megapixel and future sensors with even higher
resolution.
The feature-rich 4-channel ISL78083 automotive
camera PMIC includes a primary high-voltage synchronous

PRODUCT NEWS
buck regulator, two secondary low-voltage synchronous
buck regulators, and a low-dropout (LDO) voltage regulator.
With integrated feedback and integrated compensation, all
that is left to complete the high efficiency power supply is
the output inductor and capacitors.
Mass production quantities of the ISL78083 automotive
camera PMIC are available now in a 4mm × 4mm, 24-lead
SCQFN wettable flank package.

Renesas Electronics | www.renesas.com

Mini-PCIe IoT Radio Targets Industrial Applications

Gateworks has released the second generation of the GW16122 IoT Radio for
rugged and industrial applications. This next generation card features greatly
improved output power through a 20dBm power amplifier, more storage space
and a simplified design, says Gateworks. Software from Texas Instruments (TI)
includes a TI 802.15.4 Stack, 6LoWPAN, Wi-SUN and KNX RF support. The GW16122
additionally features a 2.4GHz RF output for Bluetooth 5 LE, Thread and Zigbee. This
Mini-PCIe radio card provides low-power and long-range radio communications.
Second Generation GW16122 Mini-PCIe IoT Radio Features: Updated TI CC1352P
Dual-Band Wireless Radio Transmitter/Receiver; Sub-1 GHz Radio (868MHz EU,
915MHz US); Improved +20dBm output power using high-power amplifier for
longer distances; Increased flash storage from 128KB to 352KB; Increased SRAM
from 20KB to 80KB; Simplified design with removal of large TI Tiva MCU.
In contrast to many other IoT technologies such as SigFox and Lora, this
technology requires no monthly fees or consortium memberships, says
Gateworks. All the software is Open Source and the entire network is completely
private with zero dependency on the coverage of third-party networks.

Gateworks | www.gateworks.com
 76 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356
PRODUCT NEWS
PMIC Shrinks and Simplifies Automotive Display Designs
Maxim Integrated Products has announced the MAX16923 4-output display power IC with watchdog timer. By replacing four
or five discrete ICs with a single power management solution, the MAX16923 significantly shrinks solution size and makes it
easier for automotive designers to increase the number of displays from two to five per vehicle or even more.
DC-DC Converters Target Energy System Applications
MINMAX Technology has announced its new MIE10-HI
PRODUCT NEWS
series of 10W DC-DC converters with ultra-high isolation
power solutions. The MIE10-HI Series consists of 24 models
GaN Desktop AC-DC Power Supplies Deliver 200W
CUI has announced the addition of two GaN desktop AC-DC
power supply series to its SDI product family. The SDI200G-U
and SDI200G-UD offer 200W of continuous power from a
compact desktop package. These AC-DC supplies have been
designed for a wide range of portable industrial and consumer
products, where efficient power is
needed in a lighter, smaller adapter
package.
The SDI200G-U and SDI200G-
UD comply with UL/EN/IEC 62368-
1 and 60950-1 requirements. The
adapters also meet the current
average efficiency and no-load
power specifications mandated by
the US Department of Energy (DoE)
under the Level VI standard and the
The MAX16923 offers high integration
with four power rails, featuring both a high-
voltage and low-voltage buck converter, a
high-voltage and low-voltage low-dropout
(LDO) regulator, electromagnetic interference
(EMI) mitigation and a watchdog timer in a
single IC. Its high level of integration can
reduce an automotive power solution from
four or five ICs down to one chip, without
making the temperature rise significantly.
The MAX16923 is available at Maxim’s
website. Pricing available upon request. The
MAX16923EVKIT# evaluation kit is available
for $50.
Maxim Integrated
www.maximintegrated.com
offering 9-18, 18-36 or 36-75VDC input ranges with single
output models ranging 3.3-24VDC and dual output models
±12V, ±15V delivering 10W of output power.
Further features include I/O Isolation of 5000VAC, high
average efficiency up to 88%, operating ambient temperature
range of -40°C to +90°C, no minimum load requirement,
built-in EMC filter for EMI emission EN55032 Class A without
additional components required, and under-voltage/overload/
voltage/short-circuit protection. All models have been qualified
per the CB scheme with safety approvals to UL/cUL/IEC/EN
62368-1 standards.
MINMAX Technology | www.minmax.com.tw
European Union’s (EU) CoC Tier 2 directive for universal input
voltage ranges; with up to a 250% increase in power density,
no-load power consumption as low as 210mW and universal
input voltage ranges of 90 to 264VAC.
The SDI200G-U series offers a three prong (C14) inlet, while
the SDI200G-UD features a two prong
(C8) inlet. Measuring 5.91" × 2.13"
× 1.3" (150mm × 54mm × 33mm.),
the compact new models are 32%
smaller than the non GaN models.
The SDI200G-U and SDI200G-UD are
available immediately with prices
starting at $188.50 per unit at 5
pieces through distribution.
CUI | www.cui.com
 circuitcellar.com 77

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 78 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356

TEST YOUR EQ Contributed by David Tweed

Problem 1— The venerable 555 timer IC,
originally developed by Hans R. Camenzind
at Signetics (now part of NXP), despite
being quite old (1971—almost 50 years!),
is still widely used. Let’s see how well you
understand it. Start by describing the
internal functional blocks.
Problem 2— In addition to its basic
timing functions (monostable and astable
multivibrators), the 555 can be used to
create:
• Set-reset flip-flop
• Schmitt trigger

Problem 3— Where do the constants 0.693 Problem 4— What are the characteristics of
and 1.1 come from in the timing equations the 555 reset input?
for the multivibrators?

Circuit Cellar
2019 Archive
TESTS YOUR EQ

cc-webshop.com
Order yours today
 circuitcellar.com 79

The Future of Data in Robotics

Distilling Insights from

Tomorrow’s Digital Exhaust

T he robotics industry is
at a turning point. We’re
leaving the industry’s
open, exploratory infancy,
and entering the more rigid realm of
maturity. During this period, we will
see some hard lines start to form—
exploration will yield to well-worn paths,
and experimentation will take a back
seat to best practices. And while there
will always be space for innovation, this
landscape will be the terrain on which
our industry’s titans take root.
As someone on the “front lines” of
this industry, I can feel this sea change
coming. And the companies poised to
“come out on top” after this seismic
shift aren’t the types of companies most
imagine. In the near future, the titans of
robotics will be those who deal in data,
not devices.
Until recently, robots were largely
confined to the safe, predictable confines
of the factory floor—bolted down to fixed
positions along assembly lines. However,
for today’s generation of robotics, one
of its most recognizable characteristics
is mobility. In addition to its literal
SENSORS, SENSORS,
SENSORS
When we talk about robots occupying
novel spaces, it’s important that we
understand “how” they’ve made this
shift. The short answer is: by ingesting,
processing and transmitting lots of
complicated data. The transformative
nature of modern robotics data isn’t
merely a question of total data volume.
Nor is it simply the rate at which data
Jeff Linnell,
must be ingested and processed. It is CEO, Formant
also a matter of the types and variety of
data a single machine must work with in
order to reliably perform its role.
To help illustrate this idea, let’s
look at a real-world use-case. Amazon
(among others) has recently started
using robots in their distribution centers
to perform “pick & pack” labor. These
robots are given product codes and
tasked with locating items, retrieving
them and delivering them to packaging
station.

TECH THE FUTURE

interpretation, “mobility” also speaks to
robots moving into entirely new sectors of
our economy. Increasingly sophisticated
technologies are enabling robots to
perform increasingly complex tasks,
in increasingly complex environments.
And, as a result, managing these robots
is growing increasingly complicated.
Meanwhile, as they begin to work
with and around humans, the need
to monitor, analyze and observe their
actions grows. Whereas metrics like
up-time and down-time were once
substantial parts of monitoring robots,
today’s applications demand much more.
Today, we must monitor processes, not
variables. And as applications grow even FIGURE 1
more sophisticated and diverse, the need Imagine data streaming out of smartphones like exhaust. The average robot (right) transmits 10 times as
for (and the complexity of) observability much data as a smartphone (left). Left alone, that digital exhaust is simply lost—left to vanish into thin air.
skyrockets. When collected, processed and stored effectively, it becomes insight.
 80 CIRCUIT CELLAR • MARCH 2020 #356
In order to perform even such a small number of discrete tasks, a
robot must be equipped with a litany of sensors, and be able to rapidly
process countless data types. In this case, we can assume that the robot
will require a variety of motion sensors—such as an accelerometer
and odometer—plus various geometric sensors to determine physical
orientation.
Already, we’ve identified over 4 sensors. And yet they address only
a single aspect of the robot’s functionality—movement. It isn’t at all
uncommon for robots to employ twice as many sensor types, monitoring
variables such as temperature, location, video monitoring and 3D data—
for example lidar and depth cameras.
GOOGLE AND DATA
When we look at the history of digital data, there is one organization
whose import is so massive that its shadow often blots out every other
actor in the field—namely, Google. In 1998, Google was born as a small-
scale search engine company. However, it wasn’t long before it became
the most popular search engine in the world. 21 years later, Google retains
its position as the #1 search engine in the world. But that status is no
longer its greatest claim to fame. Today, Google is also the world’s most
powerful advertising company. Currently, advertisements account for
roughly 90% of Google’s total annual revenue, which amounts to roughly
one third of the world’s digital ad revenue.
TECH THE FUTURE
The nature of Google’s transformational ascent is better left for another
time. However, the question of how Google managed to achieve such market
supremacy has never been much of a secret. In fact, Google indirectly
identifies it in its public mission statement: “Google’s mission is to organize
the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
While the “universally accessible” clause is debatable, the mission
statement is remarkably direct. It can also be used to cast light on
robotics’ current data problem. First, one must ask:” Why would a search
engine startup remake itself into an advertising megalith?” Well, in their
efforts to “organize information and make it accessible and useful,” they
realized something extremely important: information has the potential to
be priceless. The operative word there, however, is “potential.”
For detailed article references and additional resources
go to: www.circuitcellar.com/article-materials Formant CEO Jeff Linnell brings an unorthodox approach to robotics. Part
Cinematographer, part Creative Director and part self-taught Engineer,
Jeff is a serial robotics entrepreneur and a thought leader.
RESOURCES
Formant | www.formant.io
The true value of Google’s analytics operations
doesn’t lie in the data itself. It lies in its processing.
It resides in their efforts towards “organizing”
that data and making it “accessible” and “useful”
to its customers.
DATA, DETAIL, VALUE
The next time you’re on a bus or a train,
take a moment to look around you. Take into
consideration that nearly 96% of the people
around you have cellphones in their pockets (or
in their hands), and about 79% of those phones
are smartphones. If you happen to be in New York
and riding on a busy metro line, that’s roughly 50
smartphones in just your train car alone—all of
them churning through untold amounts of data.
Now, try to visualize all that data streaming
out of those phones like exhaust. The sheer
volume would choke the car with an impenetrable
fog of zeros and ones. Now, consider the fact that
the average robot transmits 10 times as much
data as a smartphone (Figure 1). There’s more of
it, more metrics are involved, more complex data
types are used (for example, streaming video) and
the robot operates continuously.
If each smartphone is a single tailpipe, then,
each robot is like a billowing smokestack. Left alone,
that digital exhaust is simply lost—left to vanish into
the ether. But, if we’ve learned anything from recent
history, it’s that such “exhaust” should not be left on
the table. And despite being practically ubiquitous,
this exhaust has the potential to be more precious
than gold. Like crude oil or iron ore, digital exhaust
is a raw material. When collected, processed, and
stored effectively, it becomes something else
entirely. It becomes insight.
Although Google is a useful analogue for our
discussion, robotics needn’t reinvent itself as an
advertising mechanism. The insights gained from
robotic data could be used to answer countless
questions; including everything from customer
attitudes to optimal speed in low pressure
environments.
In the future, robotics will play a role in
virtually every industry imaginable. For each of
those industries, there is an immeasurable
amount of value to gain from the distillation of
insight from digital exhaust. And as the role of
robotics matures, both the stakes and the
challenges are bound to rise. The time to start
tackling this problem is already upon us. Any
company considering employing robotics in their
operations should already have a plan in place
regarding how best to make use of their robotic
data. Because, those who don’t will invariably be
left behind.
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TO OUTER SPACE

Extreme Remote Deployed Assets.

Technologic Systems computers are engineered
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The TS-7800-V2 was designed to provide extreme
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Packed with interfaces such as USB 3.0, SATA
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