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 Alan Stummer
 Research Lab Technologist |
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| I am curious who uses what. Are these webpages a waste of time, or are they any help to others? Are the circuits, software and utilities appearing in other labs? Please send your comments or suggestions or what you have used (or not) or schematics of your version or pictures or anything! Email me, or be creative and send a postcard!I want to hear from the vacuum! | ||
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All that said, if the webpages say it works (which is the vast majority of projects) then for me it worked. To make the project work may have involved undocumented additions, changes, deletions, tweaks, tunings, alterations, modifications, adjustments, waving of a wand while wearing a pointy black hat, appeals to electron deities and just plain doing whatever it takes to make the project work. |
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- Collaborative projects have restricted access. Contact me for access to them.
- 2012: LuM, Laser Microwave Modulator Started Oct 2012 for Ramon Ramos in Aephraim's labs. Puts sidetones on a laser at 6.818GHz, about 20% AM.
- 2012: ALPS3 Laser Power Control Started in March 2012 for Joseph's lab. Output from a laser is controlled with an AOM.
- 2011: PhotonFinish2 - Octal Coincidence Timer For Xingxing Xing in Aephraim's lab. New and improved version of the Coincidence Timer - PhotoFinish , withseveral channels for measuring timing between channels (photodiodes). Stay tuned for the next version, slightly delayed!
Engineering Programs
 My
Schematic/CAD program is...
Eagle, from CadSoft, a schematic capture and CAD program. The freeware version is fully functional, with restrictions on writing and editing only. It is ideal for small departments such as UofT's Quantum Optics, plus only a fraction of the price of large CAD programs for 95% of their functionality. Some people have complained that it is hard to learn but I and others have not had problems - if you can find a CAD program that you can learn to use fast, please tell me about it! Parts are easy to add: I can add schematic symbol and footprint for a 200++ pin FPGA from scratch in a couple of hours, faster if copying and modifying an existing part. Our Quantum Optics library is available and kept up to date. |
 My Standard Fast Processor is... NIOS II from Altera, a family of embedded RISC soft processors. It comes in a few flavours which trade off size versus complexity and features. The customized Eclipse based IDE for C has a steep learning curve with a slippery plateau if not used often. It does, however, work well. Altera is very generous with university programs for both licensing and samples. Talk to them. Also ARM's "A" flavours. |
 My
Standard Slow Processor is...
from Rabbit Semiconductor. Their RabbitCore Modules are versatile and reasonably priced 8-bit grunt assemblies. For example, the RCM4200 has ethernet (with full IP stack and functions), serial and parallel I/Os, ADCs, Flash and SRAM. Best of all, I don't spend time making yet another a standard Harvard architecture processor circuit. The Dynamic C IDE (free) is as good as any other C IDE. Yes, it has its quirks and undocumented features but what doesn't? Here are some notes about how to use Dynamic C. |
 My Standard FPGA is... the Cyclone series from Altera. Specifically, I prefer QFP and similar packages. These can be soldered by hand and not have to send it out for BGA soldering. I always use 2-layer boards and it works just fine at 100MHz+, thank you. Just bypass it well. The standard HDL IDE is Quartus. If necessary, system integration is with Qsys. Free (IP is extra), huge download, steep learning curve and quirky as any other engineering program but effective. Volatile JTAG programming is free, Flash programming may require licencing, depending on the FPGA. I always use System Verilog HDL Altera is very generous with university programs for both Quartus licensing and samples. Talk to them. |
Alberta Printed Circuits (APC). They have a great simple, fast and cheap prototype service. Send in the gerber files, get a few prototype boards back in a couple of days for a couple $100. I always use 2-layer 1.5mm (0.062") FR4 with 1oz Cu using 0.18mm (7mil) track and space, no silk screen or solder mask or glue layers. For the record, I have done 7GHz on such a board - just bypass well, keep microwave traces <2mm long, differential signals, do not dwell on impedance controlled traces. |
 & TI-TINAMy Standard Spice are... 5Spice, Spice (electronics circuit simulation) program, free version is restricted. Generally easy to use and add Spice models. Adding models to the library is simple because there are only standard symbols (if you want pretty, go to PSpice). 5Spice cannot do FFT, nor can the free version do Monte Carlo simulations. Texas Instruments' TINA is just as good...and quirky. The UI is a bit clunky but fortunately it isn't there to look at. Tina can now import third party models. |
Utilities
 File
Clerk
looks at any file a just plain data. Examine it in hex and
ASCII,
graph the byte distribution spacially and as a histogram. A unique
feature is to listen to the file as if it is a sound file, to listen
for patterns in large data. Download the zip install
file
or just the executable. |
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 Broken
Links crawls
through your web pages and checks every
possible link. Bad - AKA
broken - links are listed for you to check and fix. Download the zip install
file
or just the executable. |
| Thanks for the fish, Adam Bowman. | |
| Please direct questions, queries, broken links, problems, flak, slings, arrows, kudos, criticism, comments, brickbats, corrections and suggestions to me. | Stat Counter says:
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