Don't get me wrong. I like Mathworks products, specifically MATLAB and the suite of control toolboxes. But for curse of being a super monopoly software is that, in order to make profit to drive software updates (which is now expected to be at least twice a year on most toolboxes), the focus is on the popular user requirements. This is often based on academia and research houses which often doesn't deal with hardware or firmware. In so doing, a large percentage of professional engineers productivity is directly coupled to the level of expertise of the analysis tool rather than the process upon which the product is based. Consequently, the poorer or bloated the tool, the slower can an engineer develop a product at lower cost. Unfortunately, the reliance on more powerful machines is the way to circumvent to problem. Just run the bloated simulation fast enough that's it's on longer noticeable to the designer. But is that engineering design? Is not the whole point to i...

They say that you need to have a vision for yourself. You need to have intrinsic motivation that transcends your current reality and even beyond what makes sense to others around you. I've decided to put together a control system journal paper by using just 20 hours. Wait... what!?! Yep. That's right. Why not? If you try you'll never know! A famous author once said. "It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does." Even if I don't pull if off, or the submission is rejected and thrown into the trash, the experience will stay and boy will it motivate me to try again! Aluta Continua!

Here at  Make:  we see new, ingenious projects from our community every day. Many of these are made possible by the use of development boards. However, if you’re new to the subject, it can be confusing to parse out the differences between boards and the advantages of using one over another. We’ve created this super simple guide to help you get started. Then, when you’re ready check out  Arduino Uno  and  Raspberry Pi  Starter Kits, which come with all the goodies you need for your inaugural projects. Not sure you want all those peripherals yet? Start with the essentials: Grab the board of your choice and bring yourself up to speed with our  Getting Started With  series for  Arduino  and for  Raspberry Pi . Courtesy of  Tech Uni What is the difference between the two? An Arduino is a microcontroller motherboard. A microcontroller is a simple computer that can run one program at a time, over and ov...