Tag: systems

New Systems Engineering book : )

Posted by lazlo – June 12, 2013

9781463777357-Modern_Methods_of_Systems_EngineeringReceived a copy of the “Modern Methods of Systems Engineering” book, published in 2011.

This is what the abstract has to say:

“Modern Methods of System Engineering reviews the fundamentals of systems engineering and show how these fundamentals can be integrated with model and pattern based methods to achieve reuse of systems engineering as well as reuse of hardware and software designs. This both shortens the time required for the systems engineering work and increases the quality of the systems engineering necessary for design and development of modern complex systems. The methods and tools presented are complementary to the DoD Systems Engineering Fundamentals, the NASA System Engineering Handbook and the ICOSE System Engineering Handbook.

Exercises are includes so that the book is a guide to self-training for engineers new to systems engineering and to experienced systems engineers wanting to learn new and better methods.”

Hope it will help me find my ways into the systems engineering field.

Processing LHC Data

Posted by lazlo – April 23, 2013

Read “Stop Writing So Much Firmware”

Posted by lazlo – April 17, 2013

Just read an very nice article by James Grenning titled “Engineers and Programmers, Stop Writing So Much Firmware” on software design with regards to embedded system and this piece of software embedded folks call firmware.

He makes the point that business logic must be decoupled from technological implementation dependencies very nicely. This wisdom is nothing new but still you don’t see it used very often in the real world (sadly).

My conclusions from this reading are basically:

  • firmware should be designed with a systems software aspect in mind (not application software)
  • decouple any business logic from implementation technology (okay, this is an obvious one)

I think especially the first point is one I’ll be able to apply to my  prototype scope firmware.

lzoDSO – DIY oscilloscopes a waste of time?

Posted by lazlo – April 15, 2013

After watching the rant from Dave Jones (from the EEVblog) in his car expressing his opinion on DIY micro controller-based oscilloscopes one might think there is no merit to building such a device. Well, in my opinion there is! Okay, Dave also made this point clear: it is okay to build one for getting your feet wet in the electronics and embedded systems domain. Which is exactly what I am doing.

To further address the criticism of Dave by saying that those DIY scopes usually do not have any thought put into the analog front-end (AFE) or the trigger section. In general I’d approve his observations.

So why is the lzoDSO not going to be a simple DIY scope? Because we actually want to delve down into the dirty details of constructing an AFE and a trigger section that act just like the ones an electrical engineer would expect from a typical digital storage oscilloscope.

Even though these are two of the paramount parts of an oscilloscope, first we will bring our prototype to a state where it can be helpful in evaluation the design of an AFE and a trigger section.

UPDATE: As Dave suggested I started asking around for someone who might pass me his old oscilloscope. If you have one you want to pass on to someone who will gain from even an old analog or digital device: please contact me (see contact) and maybe I can compensate you in one way or the other. Anyways, don’t think this will stop me from continuing to work on the lzoDSO.