A new white paper from Texas Instruments explains how to get the most out of coin-cell batteries in wireless-device designs.

The Wolfram Alpha Web site lets you dig into facts, figures, math, calculus, statistics, and other "computational knowledge" at a level you've never had before.  Give it a try and you're sure to bookmark it in your browser.

Engineers who work with the Controller Area Network bus might not appreciate the importance of protecting an active bus from damage caused by electrostatic discharge (ESD) "events" or over-voltage surges and transients. A CAN transceiver such as the Texas Instruments SN65HVD1050 High-Speed EMC Optimized CAN Transceiver or the Linear Technology LT1796 Overvoltage Fault Protected CAN Transceiver offer some protection, but it might not suffice.

During a conversation about motor controllers, Jonathan Guy, the software and systems manager at Texas Instruments' Stellaris group mentioned an interesting debug technique that links processor code to real-world events. Instead of using software-debug tools to "watch" a variable, Jonathan suggested sending the value to a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) via an SPI or I2C port. That approach makes a lot of sense because those I/O ports require few pins and they can transfer information in near-real-time. And, you can view the output of the DAC along with digital and analog signals from elsewhere in your system on a scope. If you need to watch several variables, you can buy 4-channel SPI or I2C DACs.