Bench Talk

Throughout human history failure has been a bittersweet fact of life, and engineering is not exempt from this truth. Despite our best efforts (and sometimes, because of the lack thereof), engineering failures occur. The aforementioned examples are just some of the most highly publicized engineering disasters of the last 75 years. Sometimes, as we push the envelope in pursuit of success, things go horribly wrong. However, engineers should never use the reasons of those failures as an excuse. Instead, a failure should be viewed as a call to action, which brings with it the necessity to keep pursuing the root cause(s) of the failure. By doing this, we expand our knowledge and can reduce the likelihood of another disaster occurring in our future endeavors.

As members of the RF and microwave industry make their annual pilgrimage to IMS 2014 (this year in Tampa), I offer my opinion on the industry’s overall health at mid-year. Fortunately, it appears that it’s going to be hot in Tampa in more ways than one. Just how hot depends on many factors, many of them company-specific, so there’s no single answer to “How’s business?” Nevertheless, a realistic approach with this blog is to look at key markets in the wireless industry.

When I think of encounters with extraterrestrials I imagine them coming in their big space-traversing ships and with far more knowledge than we have. This is of course assuming that they find us. Not only do they find us, they decide to visit us.

Open Source Hardware (OSHW) has truly changed my life. It allowed me to launch my own business. How so you might ask? Well let’s take a little stroll down memory lane, shall we?

For most of us, it’s what we have to do to pay our bills so that we can live the lifestyle we want. We have to wake up and go to work.

The Smart Factory is driving efficient, automated, flexible, scalable and decentralized manufacturing, whereby large amounts of data have to be transported and communicated reliably in a minimum of time. The industrial network is thereby becoming very important: everything will be connected with inceasing speeds to the lowest level of the factory floor.

Consider a conference that is simultaneously transmitted to audiences in three cities. When a presenter asks the audience a survey question, they can respond by simply raising their hands. The total vote is tallied across all three cities and displayed to the presenter and the audience in real time.

Last week I had a prime tell us they preferred to buy a part through an independent rather than directly from Mouser, an authorized distributor. I’ve been told this is for the convenience of the prime. They want to keep their suppler base low and they don’t have an account with Mouser. So they add an extra link to the chain by having the independent buy it from us and then the independent turns around and brokers it to the prime.

For those who don’t know, “24 Hours at Le Mans” is the oldest active sports car race in endurance racing. Think of it as the ultimate test lab for advanced technology. And there’s no trick to that name, this year’s race starts June 14th, 15:00 CEST (9:00am EST / 8:00am CST) and ends 15:00 CEST on June 15th. Driver, Crew and vehicle need to be at the top of their game to compete in this grueling test of racing and engineering.

Elon Musk and Tesla Motors made a HUGE announcement today, stating in a blog post that they "will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology."