One of My High Technology Contributions to Microchip Design

Doesn't it bug you, the avenues open to making a living these days?

When you think of all the things that really need doing; and then even
serious work gets diverted. For example ...

A biomedical laser (portable in-office cataract surgery) ends up
being used as a high tech paint-ball on a tank.

A blood analyser ends up being used mainly for sports drugs or other
'personnel' employee security clearance work.

It doesn't matter how high tech it is, if the chimpanzee you give it
to only uses it to make noises by banging it against rocks or the bars
to it's cage.

RL

 

Right -- I forgot. One of my raining on the OT parades.

Oh well.

 

I've got to ask, how in the world did you remember that JT killfiled me?

 

I think I have a pretty good guess. In my view, its just about certian
that the client bought the thing lock, stock and barrel. It would make
little sense for them to do otherwise. There are plenty of independent
consultancies/companies that will do this, i.e. pretty much all of them.
The golden rule, he who has the gold, makes the rules.

Kevin Aylward

http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

 

Oops, I meant to add "and lasts a month on 2 D cells".

Oh well, it seems not to be on sale in the UK, so it's not quite so easy
to get to play with.
Thanks.

 

The most typical example that heard of, around 10 years ago. Sorry but I
have no references :
A brilliant research study that could result in reliable tools to
measure pain of premature babies or autists was made. Cum Laude, et coetera.
The only problem is that no research lab, great hospital, or
pharmaceutical company hired that researcher. The only employer that
he/she found was a food-industrial, who got the technique applied to the
slaughtering of cows: using the pain indicators it was possible to strip
and streamline the slaughter procedure until the point where pain was
detected.

 

Yeah, sure....

Not surprising. Such a claim is completely vacuous.

Who just want to appease the antivivisectionists, sure we can tell when
the cow doesn't feel pain. Like, shit they can.

Cold comfort indeed for the cows. No chance in hell that this system
does as claimed.

Since there is no definition of consciousness, nor anyway to determine
if something has consciousness, it is simply impossible to construct a
"pain detector". There simply is no way of numerically knowing when a
foetus has enough neurons to constitute a feeling of pain within the
current understanding of the brain. One can only "reasonable" say that,
say prior to 3 months from conception, there are essentially no relevant
neural connections, so no pain. However, where a "reasonable" line may
be drawn after his point, is completely arbitrary guesswork.

Related stuff at http://www.anasoft.co.uk/replicators/index.html

Kevin Aylward

http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

 

Yup. The "killer ap" for technology is now distributing music, so the
world's youth can keep themselves numbed 24 hours a day. Long-haul
bandwidth, once so valuable, now transports terabytes/second of porn.
And the primary use for compute power on Earth is to play mega-violent
video games. I'd guess that one good AGP card has more compute power
than existed on the entire planet in 1965.

John

 

It was a fixed fee contract, and Kevin is right, the clients owns all
;-)

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

The big money has always been in consumer products.

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

At Target last week, 8-digit-LCD-4-bangers were selling for $0.49. They'd
been reduced from $0.99.

Tim.

 

Wow, what a lovely piece of engineering - always suspected you were a
smart bastard! The big question - how can the rest of us hack it into
something useful that wasnt remotely envisioned(SP) in the design
brief and subsequent product?
73 de VK3BFA Andrew

 

The hardest part is probably the LCD driver. The $0.49 calculator I
mentioned has about 40 wires running to the LCD which I figure means
that it's half-multiplexed (4 digits at a time). A PIC16C923 could probably
be made to fit, although it'd be tight. You'd need more than a single
1.5V cell to run it, I'm pretty sure.

Tim.

 

I'd use a MSP430 flash micro with LCD controller and boost the single
cell to 3V with an external converter or use two cells. Battery life
probably won't be as good, even so.

eg. http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/msp430f436.pdf

Only $9.40 each in stock at Digikey in 100 LQFP. ;-)

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

Actually that device is one of my most trivial designs.

What is unusual is that a design of mine got publicity in such a way
that I can even acknowledge I did it.

Most of my work is quite more complex, yet immersed in things I can
say nothing about.

I didn't do the board design so I have no idea of how it ended up
being laid out. A friend of mine at Fitch sent me the URL or I
wouldn't even yet be aware that the product had been released.

(Consumer products of this sort are usually released to just a single
test market until they are sure that the product will sell in large
quantities.)

Buy lots of them ;-)

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

Electronics is, admittedly, a rather round-about way of doing anything
of signifigance.

I keep forgeting

RL

 

But there's hardly anything of significance these days that doesn't
involve electronics. You can hardly imagine a scientific experiment
any more that doesn't use electronics and computers to manage the
experiment and gather the data.

John

 

Yeah, and electronic design is only a skill set - a tool. Without some
other kind of qualifications, you're not likely to end up being the
boffin determining how it's to be used.

At least I didn't wake up this morning with the urge to preach
hell-fire, damnation and paranoia. Tomorrow, who knows. There, but for
news2020, go us all.

RL

 

Thats the fascinating part - to be able to think laterally enough to
do something like this, and come up with a design cheap enough to mass
produce for the domestic consumer market. The weird thing is, you will
probably be remembered for this consumer toy rather than the more
interesting and useful esoteric stuff - BTW, had no idea you designed
the 1488/1489 - thank you for a useful chipset.
73 de VK3BFA Andrew

 

Kevin,

you are biased and you currently assume (i.e. you are biased by an currently source) that this research had stg to do with electronics or systems. This was a Phd study for the title of doctor in medicine.
I used the word "detector" loosely. I was talking about a clinical procedure to look for non-obvious and non-expressed signs of pain, rather than actual sensor equipment (as in thermocouple, Hall probe ...).
When you know a way to look for a set metabolic manifestations that have been empirically related to pain, you can do that with conventional equipment and you do not need to undertand how the brain or neural nets function.
It would be rather annoying if a physician refused to serve your prescription of penicillin under the pretext that he doesn t understand fully an down to molecular/quantum level the interactions between host and germs.

If you (please) restrict the discussion to those premature foetuses that are 7 month and older. Do you or don t you find that this research had better been used to rationalise the prescription of pain drugs in hospitals rather than efficiency of slaughterhouses ?