This week, I got a Merry Christmas email from one of my most respectful professors, stated that he thinks himself as a technology leader, perhaps he "should send email cards, at least to my technology literate friends, among which I count you". As flattered as I am to be considered as a techonolgy nerd, I replied as:

"I actually still believe in hand-written cards that we can physically hold in our hands, so this year, I will still be mailing my Christmas greetings.

Thanks you so much for the kind wishes and for keeping up with our 'new' or 'innovative' ways to electronically communicate with each other. I believe old fashion value never dies, and should never die. In China, we have a saying that:"You can see through a person by his/her calligraphy." Nowadays, everything emphasizes 'fast', 'speed', 'efficiency'; however, time is actually the most precious gift we can ever give to someone."

In 10 minutes, my professor responded:" In truth, I sent our Christmas letter that way to 15 former students partly because I'm late, partly to save money, and partly to demonstrate paper Christmas cards are NOT going away.  Of 15 I sent out Sunday afternoon, by Monday morning (proving these are NERDS), I received 7 responses, all similar to yours, saying in various ways, 'I'm sticking with paper.'

Mission accomplished :-)"

Phew!! I passed the test again. After 4.5 years out of school, I am till taking his test and learning from him. The only difference is that he is now coaching me about the virtue value of life.

Yes, the point of sending out a card, or offering a gift as small as a box of cookies or even a hand shake, or a hug, is to show appreciation for the past, for the friendship, for the effort received, for all of those who made an impact to our lives. Technology has made us so easy to remember special events: we get reminders on Facebook of friends' birthdays, we use E-calendar to mark anniversary dates, we can send out a Happy Birthday/Anniversary/Holidays in 5 seconds to our friends, we can even generate a sketch art work by computer program instead of having an artist spend days of sweats and emotions injected into the canvas. Everything is about fast. The truth is "When I slow down, I go faster". Slow down to appreciate others' effort, slow down to re-align priorities in life, and slow down to hand write to my dear friends:

Merry Christmas!

. No matter you like it or not, please also send me feedback at psocinchina@cypress.com. As engineers, we all know that the only way to keep a system stable is negative feedback. This line also works well to get what your manager really think of you during your performance review, by the way

Here is a little bit peeks of the webinar tomorrow:

• CapSensePLUS Advantage #1: More integraion, less BOM.
  • See what more can be integrated beyond CapSense
• CapSensePLUS Advantage #2: Higher resolution, less sensor
  • In slider designs, how did we enable higher resolution with less sensors and less I/Os, and how did the diplexing allows us to scanning 2x sensors with the same number of I/Os
• CapSensePLUS Advantage #3: More Robust, Zero coding
  • How did we achive no false trigger in the presence of water films or droplet with zero coding required

My First Five PSoC® 3 Designs by Robert Ashby (Free Ebook)

Own a hard copy from here: B/W Inside Pages; Color Inside Pages

PSoC 1 Related: 

• Introduction to Mixed-Signal Embedded Design by Dr.Alex  Doboli (SUNY) and Dr.  Eddie Currie (Tritium)
• Lab Book to accompany Introduction to Mixed Signal Design by Dave Van Ess
• Microcontrolador PSoC - Uma Nova Tecnologia, Uma Nova Tendencia Autor(es): Robson Clayson Battellocchi dos Santos e Denys Emílio Campion Nicolosi
• PSoC Architecture and Programming, Third-Party Book Author (Chinese)
• Designer's Guide to the Cypress PSoC (Embedded Technology) by Robert Ashby (Paperback - Aug 5, 2005)
• Embedded Systems: Desktop Integration (Wordware Applications Library) (Paperback) by Oliver H.Bailey
• Electrical Engineering 101: Everything You Should Have Learned in School but Probably Didn't (Paperback) by Darren Ashby
• The OmniSoC - A Mixed-Signal Microcontroller Experimentation Kit by Chris Paiano

Here is the lead time by package:
100TQFP package 8~10 weeks
48/68QFN & 48SSOP: 6~8 weeks

6 has been a lucky number in Chinese culture, as it's pronunciation is similar to the word which represents "successful and fortunate." Let us all wish PSOC 3 a succesfful and fortunate future!!

Al

Besides the practical usage, engineers are also proud of the efficiency of their finely tuned antenna that allows them to send/receive good quality morse code with ultra low power,  they can even use old tube based equipment and maintain them in good shape ----- To me, they are sincerely smart heros. Amateur radio is the foudation of tens of advances in radio/communication theories. Without the evolvement of amateur radio, we will not be where we at today, with all the fancy social networks, cell phones, etc.

So, here, cheers to all the Amateur Radio Engineers!!

-.-- --- ..-   .-. --- -.-. -.-

.--. ... --- -.-.   .-. --- -.-. -.- ...

The PSoC 3 is in full production NOW.

You can order or sample the following 11 marketing part numbers on www.cypress.com/go/psoc. The rest of the part numbers will be open in the next few month by stages.

11 x parts for a new year of 2011!!

PSoC Designer On-Demand Training Series

PSoC Designer 101: Intro to PSoC Designer
Description: This is a web-based course that provides an overview of the PSoC Mixed-Signal Array and its Design Tools. It is the first of a multi-part series of modules designed to provide you with the necessary training to enable you to quickly take advantage of PSoC Technology, develop your embedded applications and get to market fast. It also introduces you to PSoC Designer using three basic example projects and the PSoC FirstTouch Starter Kit.

PSoC Designer 210: Chip-Level Designs
Description: This is part of a series of web based courses designed to provide the necessary training to enable you to quickly take advantage of PSoC technology, to develop your embedded application, and get to market faster. This module will take you deep into various types of PSoC Designer datasheets, show you how to optimize designs with flexible routing resources and show you various PSoC design considerations in PSoC Designer’s chip-level view using an example project and the CY3210-PSoCEval1 Kit.

PSoC Designer Module 3: Debugging with PSoC
This module introduces the powerful PSoC Designer debugging tools that can save you hours in the troubleshooting process. This module goes over features such as trace buffers, watch variables, and breakpoints. The last part of the module also walks you through debugging of a real project. PSoC Designer and the PSoC In-Circuit Emulator or ICE is required for the project.

PSoC Designer Module 4: Dynamic Reconfiguration
This module first looks in detail at the register map and configuration files used with PSoC User Modules. Then, the course  walks through how to implement dynamic reconfiguration which allows you to reuse resources in PSoC by reconfiguring PSoC on-the-fly to perform a new function.

Component Development Training For PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 using PSoC Creator

PSoC Creator 110: Schematic Components
PSoC Creator 111: Component Parameters
PSoC Creator 112: Intro to Component API Generation
PSoC Creator 113: PLD Based Verilog Components
PSoC Creator: Custom Components

My colleague Patrick Kane (link to blog) sent me this website link and I was blown away. The information carried in this site is tremendous. There are blogs, communites, news, ebooks, supplier list, forums, etc. The topics ranges from semiconductor technology to the latest trend in end equipments. Cypress just annouced the result of PSoC Community Innovation Design Compeititon Program: link. There have been hundreds of designs submitted. The reward for winners is our CY8CKIT-003 PSoC® 3 FirstTouch™ Starter Kit ($49). Enjoy!

And, the website is in Chinese, which is easier on the eyes for our Chinese engineers :-)

• On Demand Modules
• Application Notes
• Product Brochures
• Technical Reference Manuals
• Datasheets
• Developer Kits
• Software Download

The latest, fresh out-of-oven PSoC 5 product collaterals are available to dowload as well. Enjoy!!

http://www.eet-china.com/resource/index.do?sponsorId=1000002900
 

So, in Chinese character, the word "devotion and love for parents" is composed with word "Old" connecting to "young": we have all been young, and will be old someday, it is the devotion and love chaining generations and generations together, and therefore the cycle of life...

In order to introduct the new CapSensePlus technology enabled by PSoC, I partnered with my college product manager in China, Arden Li, to deliver two webinars: one in English, and one in Chinese. You can register the English webinar through this link.

Welcome to join the discussion and discover the fun of CapSensePlus!

With no external driver required, the “Segment LCD Driver” is the first user module that truly enables the easy-to-use and command-and-control development tool for low cost LCD segment direct drive with PSoC 1 with no external components required. This user module (SLCD) applies to all the PSoC 1 families.

Features include:

• Multiplexed -1/2 bias supported
• 2, 3, and 4 common LCD drive
• 30-150 Hz refresh rate
• LCD Drive technique using analog MUX bus
• Option of 1/2 bias to be generated externally or internally
• Supports Type A waveform only
• Contrast Control
  

Yes, it is simple

A wizard is available in PSoC Designer to shoot for "skill barrier."After the wizard is complete and the project is built, constants for all displays with corresponding IDs are available in the SLCD.inc and SLCD.h files. There are three main sections (shown with additional color coding in the figure) of the SLCD Wizard:

1. LCD Specification: Specify the number of common lines and segment lines, add or remove numeric or alphanumeric displays, and add or remove digits to or from a display.
   
2. Segment-Common Mapping Table: Maps segments and symbols to commons according to the LCD specification.
   
3. Pin Assignment: Assigns the bias pin, and common and segment lines to PSoC pins and sets group size for displays.
   

Try it in the latest PSoC Designer release: http://www.cypress.com/?rID=41083
Here are all the tranings available for PSoC Designers: http://www.cypress.com/?rID=40543

"It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the rest of musical perception."

Music is one of the most magical creations, even to Einstein. Both math and music deal with vibration and harmonics. The tone of music is decided by frequency, and the sound of music is based upon the richness of the harmonic contents. What about the color?

I can be persistently annoying when there is a goal in my mind, and this behavior showed itself well when I went after Dennis Seguine, one of the most respected engineers at Cypress, for a cool demo for our new PSoC 1 CY8C28xxx device. Actually, I bribed him with 20 CY8C28xxx samples :-) Engineers cannot turn down offers of cool gadgets.

Two weeks later, Dennis successfully combined his passion for music, banjo and PSoC into his invention “The Amazing Banjomatic”. It is a board equipped with 272 LEDs in four colors, and can be installed behind the drum head. The colors of the LEDs respond to the frequency of the tone, while the expansion of the LEDs reflects the volumes.

This design utilized the simultaneous 4 Delta Sigma ADCs with dedicated decimators in CY8C28xxx, which is also Dave’s favorite PSoC 1. This display for each section is a stacked row of LEDs, 4 columns, 10 rows one each side for a grand total of 272 LEDs. The linear output of each channel is converted to a logarithmic (3 dB per step) display with a look up table. The colors are scanned sequentially, evaluating the level in each channel. The row and column selections for each color are made by turning on port 1 and 2 outputs according to another table. Each channel is updated at a 50 Hz rate. Each LED is driven at the same peak current. Some LED colors are more efficient than others, so the duty cycle is varied by color to maintain constant "apparent" brightness. The physical nature of a vibrating string is to maintain resonance longer for lower notes. Thus the high frequency channel has an increased duty cycle to balance brightness and compensate for the relative inefficiency of green LEDs. The LEDs are driven by P-channel FETs for each column (or color) and N-channel FETs for each row.

Einstein got his share of attention as scientist, engineer, and musician, and I am sure Dennis has been getting his share too :-)

Unlike Mr. Pearson’s mom who told him: “don't play ball in the house”, my mom always tried to advise me on what to say and what not to say.  After I grew up to be an engineer, my thesis advisor would guide me on what to write and what not to write, what to code and what not to code.

When I was reviewing my growth algorithm code with him, instead of sharing the joy of the improved model with better accuracy, he leaned back in the chair, and said something that I had never expected from a professor in a computer science department:” You should consider taking a Shakespeare literature class.” I’ve kept this guideline in heart since that day. William Shakespeare has been regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. And what is common between literature writing and embedded coding? In the literature world, it is about not a word less, or not a word more to resonate with the audience.  In the embedded system world, it is about not a byte more, or not a byte less to achieve the optimal usage of both memory and timing.

Any repeated function block in the code should be regulated as reusable functions, which is equivalent to the concept of APIs, user modules and components in the development software.  Since PSoC devices comprise embedded microprocessors (M8C, 8051 and ARM Cortex M3) along with a programmable digital and analog arrays, we need tools (PSoC Designer and PSoC Creator) that can combine hardware blocks, or components, with software APIs to simplify and optimize the development.

I went back and re-wrote my program that day after the review, and achieved another level of understanding Shakespeare’s literature, as an engineer.

Similarly, in the embedded system world, it takes a lot more than just the pricing on the naked silicon to satisfy designers. Engineers care about development software that allows them to “design the way they think”, like PSoC Creator. They would also love an eco system where the design IPs, components, programs can be created and shared, like the reusable components in PSoC Creator (Apple wowed the world not just with cool gadgets, but with social and savvy applications). Electronic enthusiasts would also endorse the freedom of changing designs (digital communication interfaces, capacitive sensing tuning parameters, converter resolution, etc.) in the last minute, which is enabled by the programmable nature of PSoC.

There are examples of vendors announcing segmentations with micro-controllers, and the lowest end MCU is priced at 25 cents, featuring 512B flash, 128B RAM, 1x 16 bit Timer, 1 WDT. It reminds me the experience of $5.99 entrées. Can I fulfill the requirements of my design at this low price? What can I really do with the 25 cent part? Cypress reacted to the low end MCU market by rolling out a promotion program for the lowest end PSoC 1 family starting at 35 cents last year: CY8C21x23 family, featuring 4K flash, 256B RAM, 4 digital blocks, and 4 analog blocks. So by 10 cents delta in pricing, users get 8x as much flash and 2x SRAM, and the configurable hardware full duplex UART, SPI and I2C, PWMs, comparators, and ADCs ----- a system on chip. Restaurants like Chevys, Macaroni Grill do not panic over Subway’s $5 foot long campaign, because they are not really in the same market, just like CY’s programmable system-on-chip is not in the 25 cents low end MCU line.

Customers define their satisfaction and our value, and happy customers make for successful businesses. We just want to make sure that every penny spent by a customer is well earned :-)

As simple as the shape of a harmonic circle could be, it’s key ratio number continues to be infinite and random till present ---- “reeks of mystery”.

To celebrate the beloved and mysterious number that captivated imaginations for thousands of year, March 14^th has been established by math enthusiasts around the world as Pi Day, and it also happens to be Albert Einstein’s birthday. In my geek’s haven, we baked a chocolate cake with vanilla icing as a way to celebrate of God’s mathematical creation of π :-)

Designing any structure with cylindrical components involves π; for electrical engineers, it is about designing harmonic systems with harmonic signal chains. The invention of Laplace-domain enables us to view the continuous time-invariant system to the moments of harmonic vibration, and the key ingredient here is s = σ + 2 π f j. Derivatives and integrals in time domain (t) equate to multiply and divide in frequency domain (s); therefore analyzing the stability of system gets a lot easier by identifying the locations of zeros and poles in the s domain. For example, in the frequency domain, a four-pole band pass filter has the following frequency response, and the response for High and Low filter parts can be calculated by the formula below: 

Depending on whether Lower or Higher filter parts are calculated, L or H indexes can be used in all formulas instead of X. Thanks to the PSoC switched capacitor block structure, the center frequency and Q (ratio of center frequency to bandwidth) are functions of the clock frequency and the ratios of the capacitor values chosen, and the center frequency can be set very accurately or adjusted by controlling the sample rate clock. And the maximum number of poles enabled by PSoC 1 family analog filtering is 8.  

 May the joys and wonders of π be with us forever :-)

Chinese characters have been well known for their comprehensive meanings to the soul, graceful pronunciations to the ears, and enjoyable stroke structures on the eyes. Now, let us, the residents of Globe Village, take a second to get the first touch of the wonders of this exotic language by learning two characters:忙 and 忘.

In Chinese, the word 忙 (meaning “busy”, and pronounced as máng) is composed of symbols of "soul (心) sitting left of the word "death (亡)"; while the word 忘 (meaning “forget”, and pronounced as wàng) has the word “death (亡)” resting on top of the word “soul (心)”.
 
Both of these words were well engineered to be simple and to the core. In this fast paced society, rushing is a style and habit, life is difficult to be free to wait and see the sunset at dusk, listening to waves padding and enjoy the eloquent aroma of a cup of tea. Our souls can be easily misled to numbness by the city's impetuous leap in science and technology – Being busy can lead to the unconsciousness of the soul, and death of the soul introduced the forgetfulness (忙则心亡，心亡亦忘). We might forget the warm and cheerful greetings from each other, forget the beauty of nature embedded in seconds of life, forget the pureness of laughter from a child.

There is a rich history and story behind each Chinese character. The combinations of “death (亡)” and “soul (心)” deliver wisdom derived from centuries of being. Chinese is one of the world's oldest civilizations, and the Chinese language is the treasure chest of wisdom.

Every generation has their unique interpretations of Chinese characters. We, the residents of this global village, are part of that too, starting from learning 忙 and 忘.

“Hi, my first name is ‘Mung’, but it’s spelled as M E N G; and my last name is ‘Hu’, but it’s spelled as H E” ------This has been the typically the first line of my self introduction while studying and working in the U.S.  Regardless, all the English names available on babysname.com, I have been managing persistently on using my original Chinese name 何萌. Not just because it is the 2nd most precious gift next to life my parents ever gave me, it is also because my belief in: The first step of understanding another culture should start with their language. Giving how much meaning a Chinese character can carry, I even convinced the owner of babysname.com to adopt Chinese names on their website for Americans (more on that one later). 

I love engineering, and love even more about how engineering makes me know how much I do not know.  Engineering is an intriguing, high-velocity ride enabled by our most treasured mental acts, and PSoC makes this ride more inviting and adventurous. I will tell stories about this PSoC ride here with who, what, when, where and why. Example topics include: what does flexibility and programmability mean in embedded system design? Is 4 is a bad number in Chinese？Why? How can Chinese Engineers change from building stuff others designed to designing stuff that others build (thank you for the ideas, Dave).

“If you can find your footing between two cultures, some times you can have the best of both worlds” ---- Randy Pausch. So, here we are, in this cozy corner “PSoC in China”, let us share what we know, what we do not know, with footings in both China and America :-)