Wow! eBook – Blog

Book Description

Create your own electronic devices with the popular IOIO (“yoyo”) board, and control them with your Android phone or tablet. With this concise guide, you’ll get started by building four example projects—after that, the possibilities for making your own fun and creative accessories with Android and IOIO are endless.

To build Android/IOIO devices, you write the program on your computer, transfer it to your Android, and then communicate with the IOIO via a USB or Bluetooth connection. The IOIO board translates the program into action. This book provides the source code and step-by-step instructions you need to build the example projects. All you have to supply is the hardware.

• Learn your way around the IOIO and discover how it interacts with your Android
• Build an intruder alarm that sends a text message when it detects movement
• Make a temperature sensing device that logs readings on your Android
• Create a multicolor LED matrix that displays a Space Invader animation
• Build an IOIO-powered surveillance rover that you control with your Android
• Get the software and hardware requirements for creating your own Android/IOIO accessories

Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Getting Started with IOIO
Chapter 2. Intruder Alarm Download Now »

Book Description

Start building electronics projects with Netduino, the popular open source hardware platform that’s captured the imagination of makers and hobbyists worldwide. This easy-to-follow book provides the step-by-step guidance you need to experiment with Netduino and the .NET Micro Framework.

Through a set of simple projects, you’ll learn how to create electronic gadgets—including networked devices that communicate over TCP/IP. Along the way, hobbyists will pick up the basics of .NET programming, and programmers will discover how to work with electronics and microcontrollers. Follow the projects in sequence and learn techniques for building your own Netduino-based devices.

• Get an overview of the Netduino microcontroller family
• Install the free Visual Studio Express, .NET Micro Framework, and Netduino SDK
• Write code that lets you turn Netduino’s LED on and off
• Learn how to increase Netduino’s capabilities with various expansion shields
• Measure digital and analog inputs with MakerShield
• Make a light appear dimmer or brighter with Pulse Width Modulation
• Use electrical pulses to play a song and control the position of a servo motor
• Create an app to control your Netduino over the Web

Table of Contents Download Now »

Book Description

Beginning Kinect Programming with the Microsoft Kinect SDK gets you up and running developing Kinect applications for your PC using Microsoft tools and the official SDK. You will have a working Kinect program by the end of the first chapter! The following chapters will open up the secrets of three-dimensional vision, skeleton tracking, audio through the Kinect, and more. Examples illustrate the concepts in the form of simple games that react to your body movements. The result is a fun read that helps you learn one of the hottest technologies out there today.

Beginning Kinect Programming with the Microsoft Kinect SDKalso provides building blocks and ideas for mashing up the Kinect with other technologies to create art, interactive games, 3D models and enhanced office automation. You’ll learn the fundamental code basic to almost all Kinect applications. You’ll learn to integrate that code with other tools and manipulate data to create amazing Kinect applications. Beginning Kinect Programming with the Microsoft Kinect SDK is your gateway into the exciting world of three-dimensional, real-time computer interaction.

• Helps you create a proper development environment for Kinect applications.
• Covers the basics of three-dimensional vision, skeleton tracking, gesture recognition, and audio
• Provides fun examples that keep you engaged and learning

What you’ll learn

• Create a proper development environment Download Now »

Book Description

Meet the Kinect introduces the exciting world of volumetric computing using the Microsoft Kinect. You’ll learn to write scripts and software enabling the use of the Kinect as an input device. Interact directly with your computer through physical motion. The Kinect will read and track body movements, and is the bridge between the physical reality in which you exist and the virtual world created by your software.

Microsoft’s Kinect was released in fall 2010 to become the fastest-selling electronic device ever. For the first time, we have an inexpensive, three-dimensional sensor enabling direct interaction between human and computer, between the physical world and the virtual. The Kinect has been enthusiastically adopted by a growing culture of enthusiasts, who put it to work in creating technology-based art projects, three-dimensional scanners, adaptive devices for sight-impaired individuals, new ways of interacting with PCs, and even profitable business opportunities.

Meet the Kinect is the resource to get you started in mastering the Kinect and the exciting possibilities it brings. You’ll learn about the Kinect hardware and what it can do. You’ll install drivers and learn to download and run the growing amount of Kinect software freely available on the Internet. From there, you’ll move into writing code using some of the more popular frameworks and APIs, including the official Microsoft API and the language known as Processing that is popular in the art and creative world.

Along the way, you’ll learn principles and terminology. Volumetric computing didn’t begin with the Kinect. The field is decades old—if you’ve ever had an MRI, for example Download Now »

Book Description

Techniques for Optimizing Multiprocessor Implementations of Signal Processing Applications

An indispensable component of the information age, signal processing is embedded in a variety of consumer devices, including cell phones and digital television, as well as in communication infrastructure, such as media servers and cellular base stations. Multiple programmable processors, along with custom hardware running in parallel, are needed to achieve the computation throughput required of such applications.

Reviews important research in key areas related to the multiprocessor implementation of multimedia systems
Embedded Multiprocessors: Scheduling and Synchronization, Second Edition presents architectures and design methodologies for parallel systems in embedded digital signal processing (DSP) applications. It discusses application modeling techniques for multimedia systems, the incorporation of interprocessor communication costs into multiprocessor scheduling decisions, and a modeling methodology (the synchronization graph) for multiprocessor system performance analysis. The book also applies the synchronization graph model to develop hardware and software optimizations that can significantly reduce the interprocessor communication overhead of a given schedule.

Chronicles recent activity dealing with single-chip multiprocessors and dataflow models
This edition updates the background material on existing embedded multiprocessors Download Now »

Book Description

CMOS Processors and Memories addresses the-state-of-the-art in integrated circuit design in the context of emerging computing systems. New design opportunities in memories and processor are discussed. Emerging materials that can take system performance beyond standard CMOS, like carbon nanotubes, graphene, ferroelectrics and tunnel junctions are explored.

CMOS Processors and Memories is divided into two parts: processors and memories. In the first part we start with high performance, low power processor design, followed by a chapter on multi-core processing. They both represent state-of-the-art concepts in current computing industry. The third chapter deals with asynchronous design that still carries lots of promise for future computing needs. At the end we present a “hardware design space exploration” methodology for implementing and analyzing the hardware for the Bayesian inference framework. This particular methodology involves: analyzing the computational cost and exploring candidate hardware components, proposing various custom architectures using both traditional CMOS and hybrid nanotechnology CMOL. The first part concludes with hybrid CMOS-Nano architectures.

The second, memory part covers state-of-the-art SRAM, DRAM, and flash memories as well as emerging device concepts. Semiconductor memory is a good example of the full custom design that applies various analog and logic circuits to utilize the memory cell’s device physics. Critical physical effects that include tunneling, hot electron injection, charge trapping (Flash memory) are discussed in detail. Emerging memories like FRAM, PRAM and ReRAM that depend on magnetization, electron spin alignment, ferroelectric effect Download Now »