Here’s a selection of articles from electronic design magazine that I think will be of interest to ham radio operators:
How to get big sounds from small speakers. In recent years, a new generation of “smart amplifiers,” incorporating new driver topologies and digital-signal-processing (DSP) technology allow designers to make big improvements in both the quality and volume of sound from speakers, particularly from the very small and cheap units used in many portable devices. Perhaps hams could do something with this technology to improve the audio in our radios….Dan
PIC a way to online development.Microchip’s MPLAB Xpress brings cloud-based PIC microcontroller development tools to developers.
The future of AM radio. Lou Frenzel writes, “AM is worth saving; it is a valuable local community resource. AM radio serves a public safety purpose for emergency conditions. It provides valuable services to ethnic and religious populations, as well as high school sports coverage. And still does a great job of news, weather, and traffic coverage. Talk shows are also popular. In short, analog still lives.” What do you think?
Dave New, N8SBE says
Yep. The radio station I listen to the most is WWJ, 950 AM, which does the weather and traffic “on the 8’s”.
Since I spend a significant amount of time in my vehicle daily, the traffic reports are much appreciated and frequently more accurate than the MDOT’s sensors, which show up on my GPS real time traffic update, but only the major highways and interstates are monitored by the MDOT.
I suppose that if I wanted to use a crowdsourced navigation system, I could use Waze on my cellphone, but I much prefer to use the 8.4″ touch and voice-activated GPS that is built-in to my RAM truck, then messing with my cellphone while driving.