Publications and FAQs

This page is a simple list of [some] of the articles and books I've had published since my writing career really began to take off. If you're looking for someone to write the application notes or reviews for your Next Great Thing, feel free to contact me.

BOOK: So, You Want To Be An Embedded Engineer

This book is now released and ready for you to order! More information can be seen on amazon.com's website... I've also put up a landing page for my online advertising, which describes the book's contents in a little more detail.

ARTICLE SERIES: FPGA-Based Test Equipment

This article series (for IBM again) walks through building a simple signal generator and spectrum analyzer out of a Xilinx ML403 (Virtex-4) PowerPC-cored FPGA.

Coming soon!

ARTICLE SERIES: Mad Mac mini Multimedia Machine

For hacking purposes, I just bought a Mac mini (available from Amazon at this link). I've installed Yellow Dog Linux (equivalent to Fedora Core) and I'm documenting the process of turning the Mac mini into a Linux-based embedded appliance. The end goal is to build a standalone, open-source multimedia appliance with network connectivity. This series of articles has been commissioned by IBM.

The first article is now up on developerWorks: click here to read it.
The second article is now up on developerWorks: click here to read it.
The third article is now up on developerWorks: click here to read it.
The fourth article is now up on developerWorks: click here to read it.
The fifth article is now up on developerWorks: click here to read it.
The sixth article has been delayed by some administrative issues; please stand by.

ARTICLE SERIES: Migrating Embedded Linux Applications from x86 to PowerPC

This series of articles has been commissioned by IBM. I will post links to the articles as they are made available to the general public.

The first article is now up on developerWorks: click here to read it.
The second article is now up on developerWorks: click here to read it.
The third article is now up on developerWorks: click here to read it.
The fourth article is now up on developerWorks: click here to read it.
The fifth article is now up on developerWorks: click here to read it.
The sixth article is now up on developerWorks: click here to read it.
The seventh article is now up on developerWorks: click here to read it.
The eighth article is now up on developerWorks: click here to read it.
The ninth article is now up on developerWorks: click here to read it.

To summarize the general thrust of these articles: I will be taking the projects mentioned in my second book, and using them as examples to illustrate the steps and difficulty level of migrating these kinds of deeply embedded applications from an x86-based system to a PowerPC single-board computer. The hardware platform I have chosen for this is the Kuro Box, a repurposed NAS device available from Revolution.

BOOK: A Cookbook for Open-Source Robotics and Process Control

This book has been available since late 2004. You can order it right now from Amazon, if you wish. Please view the introduction, which I have placed online for your enjoyment. I'm not very happy with Amazon's description of the book; it's not 100% accurate. The reason for this is that it's based on a preliminary outline I gave to the publisher more than a year before the book was finished. Over the course of writing, the emphasis changed, some sections were removed, and others added. The "in-a-nutshell" summary is: This book is a collection of techniques and example code for people who are trying to prototype quite complex systems - robots would be one good example - but who don't yet have all their system specs nailed down. It introduces the idea that the most efficient way of implementing such projects is to use a PC-compatible single-board computer (Advantech PCM-5820, specifically), and a nest of external micros to do the hard realtime tasks. Topics covered include schematics and sourcecode for several example "external" projects, building a custom Linux distribution and putting it on a CompactFlash card, simple machine vision, and more.

BOOK: Embedded Systems Development on a Shoestring

Please view the separate page describing this book. Here, you can also download the sample sourcecode from the book's CD-ROM.

ARTICLE: Developing Electronic Toys

In January 2001, an article of mine (1.35Mb PDF) was the cover feature of Embedded Systems Programming magazine. This article was a very brief introduction to the programming techniques used with, and idiosyncrasies of, chips for electronic toys. It begat a series of frequently asked questions, which I have been answering with more or less canned responses.

An enormous number of people have asked "How do I get a custom toy prototyped?".
Additionally, a large number of people who responded to this article were either students or engineers bored with their current jobs, asking "How do I get into toy development?".
The last big group of people have asked me "How do I get toy chips for hobby projects?".

ARTICLE: Component Distributors

In September 2000, I appeared on the cover (2.02Mb PDF) of Information Week magazine, as part of a feature on electronic component procurement. The article didn't exactly say what I wanted to say (I didn't write it), so for the record, here is what I actually think: The best distributors are the ones you never, ever have to deal with. Almost always, when I call a chip manufacturer, I am calling about one specific device or at worst a family of devices. I already know what I want, and I already have supply chains set up for the other parts I think I'm going to need. So, if I want to place an order for ten sample pieces, that's the entire extent of the relationship I want to have. I don't want to be pestered for the next six months by some starving salesperson who wants to come over and wave line-cards at me. I especially don't want to go through my entire BOM with this guy. I already know where I want to buy this stuff. Many items in my BOM are commodities (hard drives, consumer flash memory cards, SDRAM DIMMS, USB flash-card-readers, IDE CD-ROM drives). There is no conceivable way one of these general-purpose distributors can come close to spot-market pricing. I'm sick of hearing the phrase "Maybe we can sell you [overpriced part I don't want] to go with that [part I actually inquired about]".

I would like chip manufacturers to hide the distributor from me. I would like to place all sample orders on the chip manufacturer's site, and have them drop-shipped from my local distributor, if necessary. Furthermore I would like to see those reps and distributors absolutely prohibited from trying to sell me other things. If I want a new source for SDRAM, I'll ask for it. My time is valuable. If I call and ask general questions like "Do you have parts that do XYZ", that's a different story. But when I call asking for five pieces of part 123ABC, and a quotation and leadtime for 5,000 pieces, that is all I want to know. Give me the information I want, and leave me alone.

One of the great things about buying parts online is that these people never want to come to the office and show me linecards. They don't even call me; they just ship me whatever I ordered and email me quotations. That's exactly the level of service I want. Please note that I no longer include PartMiner (freetradezone) in this category. In mid-2006 they announced that they were selling their email address lists to anyone who would buy them, and that it would be impossible to opt out of junk email globally; you would have to opt out of each spam campaign individually. As they are now self-confessed promoters of spam, I encourage you to boycott freetradezone - and tell them why.

zws.com and all original content herein is © Copyright 2003 by Lewin A.R.W. Edwards. "zws.com" is a trademark protected under U.S. and international law. Infringement or attempted dilution of the intellectual property rights held by Lewin A.R.W. Edwards will be prosecuted to the fullest possible extent.