Monday, November 12, 2007

PIC Development Studio

It is a program for development and simulation of software for the PIC16F84 microcontroller made by Microchip. With this program you can write the code, build it and test if it works in a few seconds. While debugging, you see the internal content of all registers.

PIC Development Studio is not just only a PIC16F84 simulator. You can simulate entire digital projects provided that the needed components are available. You connect the components together just as they would be in reality and start the simulation. There are included keyboards, simple displays, basic logic circuits, a tone generator and an oscilloscope probe. If these don't fulfil your needs, writing own components isn't difficult.


What's new
As of 2007 when Richard Keed decided to join the project has version 1.1 of the simulator been relased. This include a set of new components, including HD44780 compatible LCD. The PIC 16F84 component has also been updated with some bug fixes and the missing computed gotos feature has be implemented.

Getting PIC Development Studio
You can download the program free of charge. Java 5.0 or later, available at www.java.com, is required for PIC Development Studio. The program is released under the GPL license and can be freely distribute to others. Source code is available through the SVN repository at Sourceforge.net.

History
PIC Development Studio was started as hobby project by Andreas Doktar during his university studies. After one year's spare time effort was 1.0 release in spring 2002. Afterwards was development ceased until Richard Keed in 2007 decided to continue development the simulator


Source : http://picdev.sourceforge.net/webpage/

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Ansoft Softwares - Student Version

Ansoft offers student versions of three of their electromagnetic modeling codes that can be downloaded free of charge:

Ansoft Designer SV provides students and early-career professionals with an easy-to-use tool for applying basic circuit theories and techniques while developing their high-frequency engineering skills.

As a functional subset of Ansoft Designer, the commercially distributed design-management environment and circuit simulator for radio frequency (RF) and microwave hardware development, Ansoft Designer SV exposes engineers to the same design environment widely used in the high-performance electronic design industry.

Ansoft Designer SV contains a complete high-frequency linear circuit simulator, schematic and layout design entry, planar electromagnetic solver, design utilities, and post-processing, all integrated in a common environment. Users are able to create and simulate hierarchical circuit designs for RF and microwave applications, such as filters, small-signal amplifiers, matching networks, power splitters and combiners, couplers, and more. All Ansoft Designer SV projects are upward compatible to work with the commercial version of Ansoft Designer.

Successful high-frequency electronic design is tightly related to physical design and component parasitic behavior. With the addition of a subset of the planar EM capability available in the commercial version of Ansoft Designer, this student version provides a sample of Ansoft's industry-leading electromagnetic solver technology. The planar EM solver lets users generate S-, Y-, and Z-parameters for 2D structures with unlimited stack-up layers (Ansoft Designer SV restricted to under 300 triangles/unknowns).

Ansoft Designer SV allows the simulation of S-, Y-, and Z-parameters, group delay, noise figure, and stability circles of RF and microwave circuits. Utilities include real-time tuning, filter and TRL synthesis, and Smith Tool matching. Post-processing includes rectangular plots, Smith Charts, polar plots, and data tables. Additionally, Ansoft Designer SV comes with a set of real-world examples.

Ansoft offers the Maxwell SV to help engineering students visualize electromagnetic fields and broaden their understanding of electromagnetic physics. The Maxwell SV is a subset of Ansoft's commercially distributed Maxwell 2D. Students can perform AC/DC electromagnetic and electrostatic-field simulation without limitation.

This freely distributed software is intended for electrical engineering students studying topics relating to the design of electromagnetic components, such as sensors, actuators, motors, and transformers.

Simplorer v7 SV is a full-featured version of Ansoft's commercially distributed Simplorer with a limit only on the size of problems that can be solved. Simplorer is sophisticated multi-technology system simulation software widely used by automotive, aerospace, and power electronics systems designers. Simplorer SV is ideal for engineering students studying topics in power electronics, drive technology, electromagnetic actuators and electric machine design, controls, transportation technology, micro machining, mechatronics, and sensor systems. Ansoft offers Simplorer SV to foster and encourage the development of engineering skills throughout the multi-technology systems design community.

Simplorer SV supports the IEEE industry standard VHDL-AMS, a powerful multi-domain, analog, digital, and mixed-signal modeling language for the design of various complex technical systems. Simplorer SV also includes examples specifically designed for topics commonly studied at the junior, senior, and graduate levels.

PExprt™ SV provides students and early-career professionals with an easy-to-use tool for magnetic component design and modeling. PExprt SV allows students to learn important design techniques and skills that are relevant to the power electronics industry.

PExprt SV is a limited version of PExprt, the commercially distributed software for the design and modeling of magnetic components such as inductors, planar transformers and integrated magnetics used in power-electronics applications.

(source: http://www.ansoft.com/)

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Kicad:GPL PCB Suite


Kicad is an open source (GPL) software for the creation of electronic schematic diagrams and printed circuit board artwork.

Designed and written by Jean-Pierre Charras, a researcher at LIS (Laboratoire des Images et des Signaux) and a teacher in IUT de Saint Martin d'Hères.(France), in the field of electrical engineering and image processing.
Kicad is a set of four softwares and a project manager:

  • Eeschema :Schematic entry.
  • Pcbnew :Board editor.
  • Gerbview :GERBER viewer (photoplotter documents).
  • Cvpcb :footprint selector for components used in the circuit design.
  • Kicad: project manager.

With the project manager, Kicad, you can choose or create a project and launch Eeschema, Pcbnew, etc. This electronic workbench is free of charges and is open source (GPL). It is useful for everybody working in electronic design (schematic diagrams and Printed Board up to 16 layers).

This software (using WXWIDGETS) is MULTI-PLATFORM. It is running under LINUX and Windows (XP or 2000), for which updates are regularly provided. Currently, the precompiled version of Linux has been tested using Mandrake 9.2 or 10.0 (works with 10.1).
Sometime the softwares are also been tested under other O.S., especially FreeBSD and Solaris.

(Source: http://www.lis.inpg.fr/realise_au_lis/kicad/)