An LED light glowing bright blue next to a window.

Vetting a Germicidal Lamp

With the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 in full spate, many concerned people are turning to ultraviolet (UV) light sources to destroy the...
Three RF attennuators marked 3 dB, 10 dB, and 20 dB

Converting and Interpreting Decibels

Decibels (dB) are an important unit for dealing with electronic signals.  And even though their scaling properties and endless variants such as...
Image of 3 people in a job interview

Economic Recession Tips for Students and Grads

You can change your degree plan, but you can’t change the economy.  That’s one of the lessons you learn as a graduate...
A picture of a SARS-CoV-2 virion with "scams and cybercrime" printed in front.

Outbreak-Related Phishing Scams on the Rise

In March of 2020, the United States Secret Service issued an alert regarding COVID-19 (Coronavirus) phishing scams.  The respiratory disease—which was officially...
A decorative screenshot of the Airspy application

Rejecting Images in Software Defined Radio

Software-defined radios (SDRs) are able to capture virtually any form of radio emission.  Popular SDR chipsets such as the very low-cost RTL-SDR...

RISC-V Development for Linux Users

So far, I’ve unboxed a couple of low-cost development kits featuring a relatively new Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) called the RISC-V.  The...

Unboxing the Sparkfun RED-V Thing Plus Board

Unboxing the RED-V Thing Plus Not too long ago, a relatively new instruction set architecture (ISA) hit the embedded programming...
Fireworks Celebration in Singapore (Source: Wikimedia Commons, Author: chensiyuan, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Embedded Technology Watchlist: 2020-2030

Embedded systems are constantly changing the way we live and work. Now that the year 2020 is here, we've decided to...

Review: The C Programming Language

The C Programming Language is a bit of an anomaly among software programming books.  It has maintained relevance over the course of more than...

Review: The Hobbyist’s Guide to the RTL-SDR

Wireless electronics are becoming more and more flexible thanks to a relatively new class of radio called the software-defined radio (SDR).  Older,...