Highlights this week: 🛻 Cybertruck LV board design review 🤓 Dk/Df tables in PCB mfg ✨ Debugging in interstellar space
📝 Featured Article: From BLT, a primer on FPGA cross-triggering. A powerful debug technique that asserts multiple ILA’s at a specific breakpoint.
🎤 Featured Interview: Yacine Mahdid, COO and cofounder of Axya.
🔗 Last week’s most-clicked link: Original Tesla Roadster schematics.
Interesting Links 🔗:
- Sandy Munro does an over-the-shoulder design review of a Cybertruck 48V control board with Head of Low Voltage Pete Bannon. One fascinating insight: to avoid purchasing connectors they use individual thru-hole pins in a matrix pattern. The pins gain structure once mated into the housing.
- Alex Huckstepp wrote an interesting piece on why so many 3D printing companies are dying. Long story short, over-funding by private investors without validating product market fit for a manufacturing use case. Over 1,000 businesses are making and selling 3D printers, compared with the CNC Machining market which is 10x the size with 10x less OEMs.
- This guide from ParlezVousTech has high-quality animated graphics that do a great job of explaining these chip-to-chip communication standards. I2C is generally the most intuitive solution, SPI is good for high data rates, and UART is an acceptable universal option for when neither I2C or SPI can be used.
- A deep-dive from Scott McMorrow on PCB material manufacturing and its impact on high-speed design. The talk starts with the origins of fiberglass manufacturing and then continues through advanced concepts such as weave wander and spread. Isola, manufacturer of the popular FR408HR laminate material, has a great reference for PCB material selection for RF, Microwave, and mm-wave designs.
- Since November, a glitch with Voyager 1 has prevented the spacecraft from transmitting engineering data. Voyager 1 is so far away at 15B miles from Earth that it takes 22.5 hours for commands sent from Earth to reach the spacecraft. You can see Voyager’s location in real-time online.
- PowerStage Designer from TI helps speed up power supply designs for 21 different circuit topologies. This quick reference guide provides topologies, key equations, and waveforms for most of the supported circuits. Qorvo has also released a free new SPICE simulator.
- A comprehensive overview of oscilloscope probing techniques. Some key concepts include probe tuning (impedance matching RF front end of the probe), current measurement (using a voltage to measure a current), and differential measurements (measuring a signal relative to a non-ground potential).
Startup News 🚀💰:
- Helicity Space has raised a $5M Seed round to develop in-space nuclear fusion-based propulsion. Airbus Ventures, TRE Ventures, Voyager Space Holdings, E2MC Space, Urania Ventures and Gaingels invested. Whitepaper is here.
- Armada left stealth mode this week with a $55M Series A fundraising round for its portable data center product which leverages space-based internet. Founders Fund, Lux Capital, Shield Capital, and 8090 Ventures invested.
- Doroni raised $2.36M via regulation crowdfunding on StartEngine for a personal commuter eVTOL. Regulatory filings including annual reports, etc with the SEC.
- NorthStar has closed a $20M Series D round following a $47M Series C in Jan of this year. The company is currently deploying a small satellite constellation to monitor the risk of space collisions from a Montréal-based data center.
- Arc Boats raised a $70M Series B from Eclipse earlier in the Fall. Combined with a new factory in LA they now have a new model of boats launching next year.
One Interesting Picture 📸: A Russian missile guidance system from a late-Soviet designed BM-30 Smerch.
