United Kingdom
Engineer | WGM Consulting
Engineer, PhD, lecturer, freelance technical writer, blogger & tweeter interested in robots, AI, planetary explorers and all things electronic. STEM ambassador. Designed, built and programmed my first microcomputer in 1976. Still learning, still building, still coding today.
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89
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Earned 03/01/2018
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Earned 11/11/2019
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Earned 03/01/2018
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Earned 21/02/2018
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Published Content
13 hours ago
Covid-19: Biosensors, BioFETs and Labs-on-a-Chip
Crucial to monitoring and forecasting the spread of a virus during a pandemic is the acquisition of accurate infection data. Traditional manual laboratory techniques have proved to be inadequate during Covid-19. Can new technology help?
2 weeks ago
Catching a Bus: Prototyping a wireless robot with MikroElektronika Click Boards
The penultimate part of my series on serial communication: Catching a Bus. The subject is a practical project which uses UART, I2C and SPI serial busses to link various OTS modules together, forming the ‘brains’ of a wireless/autonomous mobile robot.
1 month ago
Catching a Bus: Basic Serial Communication Part 4, I2C
Most modern peripheral device chips, such as sensors and motor drivers, communicate with a controller via a serial data bus. Microcontrollers usually support one or more of four basic types: UART, SPI and I2C. How do they work and which to choose?
2 months ago
Covid-19: Testing, Testing
In the middle of a pandemic and no one has any idea how many people are infected and how fast it’s spread. Modern epidemic forecasting seems to be about as accurate as nineteenth century weather forecasting, but why?
2 months ago
Catching a Bus: Prototyping a wireless robot control box with MikroElektronika Click Boards
After the first two articles on serial communication, here is a practical project using UART and SPI busses to link MikroElektronika Click modules together, forming a battery-powered wireless mobile robot controller.
3 months ago
Catching a Bus: Basic Serial Communication Part 2, SPI
Most modern peripheral device chips, such as sensors and motor drivers, communicate with a controller via a serial data bus. Microcontrollers usually support one or more of three basic types: UART, SPI and I2C. How do they work and which to choose?
4 months ago
Catching a Bus: Basic Serial Communication Part 1, the UART
Most modern peripheral device chips, such as sensors and motor drivers, communicate with a controller via a serial data bus. Microcontrollers usually support one or more of three basic types: UART, SPI and I2C. How do they work and which to choose?
4 months ago
On Whiskers and Dendrites
Many early electronic components had a short lifetime. The cause was identified and fixed, but then the ‘fix’ was banned for health and safety reasons. What happened to the forecast electronic apocalypse?
5 months ago
Getting into Digital Signal Processing Part 4: The DSP
The first three parts of this series on digital signal processing examined the processes involved in converting analogue signals to digital and back again. Now let’s look at the digital hardware in the middle.
6 months ago
Build a ‘real’ Mars rover
Most ‘hobby’ mobile robots on the market are usually of the 2-, 4-, or 6-wheeled variety with no suspension or steering systems. Changes in direction are achieved by varying wheel-speeds – so-called skid or tank steering. Not this one.
7 months ago
How big is your Electronic Tech’s Carbon Footprint?
Everyone knows that gaseous emissions from fossil-fuel burning to bovine flatulence are the cause of global warming, right? Indeed they are, but less obvious causes of a high carbon footprint are becoming apparent. And your ‘Tech’ may be involved.
8 months ago
Clicker 2, FORTHdsPIC and more Bare-Metal
The porting of my FORTHdsPIC code to the fast version of the Microchip dsPIC33 digital signal controller has demonstrated – once again – that bare-metal coding is not for the easily frustrated!