Welcome back to Elektor Lab Notes! The Elektor Lab Team hit the ground running on January 3. Before diving into the some of the projects our engineers and editors have been undertaking, I'd like to post a few updates and reminders for the dedicated pro engineers, students, and makers who follow us each month. We have some exciting announcements and new projects to reveal. 

A New Elektor Lab
As most of you know, Elektor launched the first electronics maker movement in the 1960s. Today, we continue to inspire and support the electronics design community with Elektor Mag, the Elektor Labs online platform, the Elektor Lab Team, and our branded tools and products. At the start of 2022, the Lab Team began working on new a electronics workspace (located in Aachen, Germany) that will be used for working and collaborating on electronics projects. In addition to desk and meeting space for our engineers and editors, we are stocking the new lab with a wide variety of test gear (e.g., oscilloscopes and an LCR meter), engineering tools (e.g., soldering stations and digital microscopes), essential components (e.g., MCUs, LEDs, sensors, motors, and cables), and much more. In the coming days and weeks, Elektor Senior Engineer Mathias Claussen will post updates about the new Lab on our website and through @ElektorMathias.

Elektor X
In January 2022, we launched the Elektor X Initiative to give our Lab Team more opportunity to regularly innovate, test, engineer, and collaborate without the usual workaday distractions. The Elektor X team comprises Elektor's core technical and editorial minds, all of whom are focused on planning new projects and designs that have a real potential to end up in the Elektor Store. Modeled on the idea of a skunk works team, Elektor X team members are holding monthly, in-depth collaborative brainstorming and engineering sessions where they are planning the next Elektor-branded products. While we already have a growing list of potential new products, we are always open to new suggestions. Feel free to email us or share your thoughts below this article. 

Elektor Mag Issue Themes
In 2022, each edition of Elektor Mag will feature in-depth articles about specific themes. The Jan/Feb edition theme is Motor Control. Here are the themes for the rest of the year. 
 
  • March/April - Embedded Development
  • May/June - IoT
  • July/August - Test and Measurement
  • September/October - Wireless Applications
  • November/December - Products and Components

Elektor Summer Circuit Guide
Many long-time Elektor readers will remember our famous summer circuit editions. In summer 2022, we're bringing it back! We've already begun planning a special Summer Circuit Guide for August. The edition will feature the following:
 
  • Fresh new circuits from the Elektor Lab Team
  • Exciting new circuits curated from the Elektor Labs online community
  • Featured new circuits from top engineers and makers from around the world
  • Classic circuits from the pages of old issues of Elektor Mag
  • Circuit design tips and tricks
  • And much more!  

The magazine will be published in early August. Want to contribute circuits or ideas? Use the Elektor Labs platform.

New Shows: Elektor Lab Talk and Elektor Engineering Insights
Great news. In the coming weeks, we are launching two new shows — Elektor Lab Talk and Elektor Engineering Insights — on our YouTube channel. We will stream the shows live and also archive them on the Elektor TV channel. Follow the links below to learn more about each show.
 
  • Elektor Lab Talk: Like reading Elektor Lab Notes? Then you'll love the "Elektor Lab Talk" livestream. Join Mathias Claussen (Senior Engineer, Elektor) and Jens Nickel (Editor in Chief, Elektor) — and occasional special guests — as they disucss a wide  range of topics, including DIY electronics projects, rapid prototyping, embedded programming, design tips, retro electronics, and lab equipment.
 
 
  • Elektor Engineering Insights: Join Stuart Cording (Editor, Elektor) as he talks about real engineering challenges and solutions with notable electronics experts. He plans to tack topics such as EMI/EMC problems, IoT products, the challenges associated with designing RISC-V-based products, and much more.
 

Subscribe to our YouTube channel for notifications about livestreams! 
 

Clemens Valens (Engineer/Editor, Elektor)

At the end of 2021, the Arduino Nano Every board attracted my attention and so I decided to have a closer look at it. It is the cheapest Arduino board and having the Nano form factor it is also quite small. Its MCU is an ATmega4809, which is much more recent than the ATmega328 of the UNO and so there are some differences (four serial ports!) and compatibility issues (the Nano Every has only five PWM outputs). I was particularly interested in the Custom Configurable Logic (CCL) block which is not available on the UNO. Inspired by an application note from Microchip, I set out to use it as a NeoPixel addressable RGB LED driver that would look like a normal SPI peripheral to the program. By adding a simple RC network at the output, I managed to get it working at a 1 MHz SPI clock. This video explains in detail what I did.
 

Luc Lemmens (Engineer/Editor, Elektor)

As we announced at the end of 2021 and above, Elektor will publish an extra edition this summer with — amongst other things — a substantial collection of smaller circuits and projects. Such a New Year's resolution also requires a timely preparation in order to get it done next to our normal workload. To start with, this month we contacted several external designers and authors for their contributions. But as always, even if we have not approached you for this summer issue, if you have any interesting projects that you would like to share with us and other readers, please let us know!
 
Acoustic Levitation
After the three projects on magnetic levitation, this month I took a look at the Acoustic Levitation Kit from Makerfabs, which is offered in our webshop. This time no experimenting and tinkering with relay coils and control circuits, but a complete set of parts and software to make small objects float on ultrasonic sound waves. The TinyLev project itself was developed at the University of Bristol to demonstrate that this type of levitation can be built with off-the-shelf electronic components. A nice challenge to build this, although it was much more work than I had estimated beforehand. In the end, it was rewarding to see that you can also bring objects into a seemingly weightless state with acoustic standing waves.
Makerfabs Acoustic Levitator DIY Kit
Projects and Articles
And then, of course, there was some writing and editing to do. I worked on an article about an Arduino Geiger-Müller counter shield, one presenting a TEA5767-based FM receiver, and, last but not least, a circuit that saves battery power in a commercially available mole repeller.
 
Arduino Geiger-Müller counter shield
 
Digital FM Receiver with Arduino and TEA5767
In the latter text, I wrote that it’s probably best to do nothing if these small mammals are digging in and under your garden; looking at the state of my lawn now, I think that some moles in the neighborhood got hold of a preview of this article.
 
Mole hills in the lawn
Thanks for reading this edition of Elektor Lab Notes. Every few weeks, we will post new lab notes and updates about our design projects, interesting industry news, and helpful engineering insights. Feel free to share your thoughts (and your own lab notes) in the Discussion section at the bottom of the page. Stay curious!