White Papers
On the Brightness of Candles A
measurement of the illuminance of three candles, over a period of time, to
see if a candle can be used as an illuminance standard. (It can't.).
Debugging the Serial Port A six page
article with some hints on getting the serial port to talk to external
hardware.
Oscilloscope Development, 1943-57
A historical survey of oscilloscope designs, with schematics and
images.
Unix Hints A three page article with
some useful tips on making it easier to use Unix.
xfig-howto.pdf A 21 page manual on using XFig
for drawings, electronic schematics and printed circuit board layouts.
Schematic Symbols for Xfig An XFig diagram file
containing electronic schematic symbols. It's not very readable. Download it
(click right mouse button) and then load it into XFig to see the symbols.
Relay-counter.pdf A description of a 4-bit
binary counter and 1:16 decoder using electo-mechanical relays. (It's full
of images, so download takes a while: 8Megs).
Electronic Construction A description of
various methods for constructing the hardware of an electronic circuit
prototype. Big file, full of pictures, 12MByte.
NiCad Battery Notes A brief
description of NiCad batteries and charging methods.
The Voltage Distribution Diagram
A graphical method of designing operational amplifier circuits, both
linear amplifiers and schmitt triggers.
Random Thoughts on Project Management
and Debugging General overview on managing an electronic project, very
preliminary draft.
An Optical Detector for Mobile
Robotics Applications Review of optical object detectors and a modulated
beam circuit.
Using ispell Using
spell-checking and correction tools under Linux. .
Using Seyon A brief guide to
the installation of the Seyon terminal emulator. .
Installing CHDK on the
SX120IS Camera A guide to installing the Canon Hacker's Development Kit
on a Canon point-and-shoot camera. This open-source software equips a
low-cost camera with many advanced features, such as producing RAW format
files.
A GPS Display Program A
paper describing a program written in the TCL language to display the output
of a small, inexpensive GPS receiver.
GPS Program, TCL Code.
A Display for a Sky Quality
Meter A paper describing a program written in the TCL language to
display and log the output of a Unihedron Sky Quality Meter (SQM).
SQM Program, TCL Code.
Dumont 248 Oscilloscope Manual
, circa 1945.
All material ©Peter D. Hiscocks