You might have heard about Schmartboard, a company that produces circuit boards that facilitate prototyping with surface-mount technology (SMT) components, particularly integrated circuits. According to Neal Greenberg, Schmartboard’s vice president of sales and marketing, some people have cut small-outline IC (SOIC) prototype boards in half to use with SMT connectors and LCDs.

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.

You might have missed seeing the family of Anybus-IC devices from HMS Industrial Networks. The company's modules give designers a simple way to connect equipment to several industrial-level communication networks or buses that include DeviceNet, Profibus, EtherNet/IP, Modbus-TCP, and Profinet. The company's latest module provides CANopen communications. The CANopen protocol runs on top of the basic Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol and helps ensure compatibility between industrial equipment from many manufacturers.

In late January 2010, Analog Devices introduced two interesting chips, the ADuC7023 and the ADuC7122. The press announcement noted the suitability of these devices for digital diagnostics in optical transceivers and modules based on both fixed and tunable frequency lasers.

Years ago, true in-circuit emulator (ICE) pods provided bonded-out processor chips that gave designers access to internal chip signals. Most microcontrollers now support on-chip debug, background debug mode, or JTAG-like interface that simplifies program development and debugging, and usually accommodates programming flash memory from a host computer.