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  • Electrical Networks

    Usually each week something happens that spurs me to think of an interesting article to write for you here about electricity or electrical engineering. Sadly I was struck by no such inspiration this week, so I have something a bit different.

    I went to college for a B.S. in Computer Science. The school I went to wasn’t an engineering school at all, so it lacked many science courses and departments. There was no electrical engineering department or course when I started there. Even the computer science department had weirdly forked off of the mathematics department some 20-25 years prior. There was barely a physics department when I started there. However, by the time I was a senior, they had started ramping up their STEM offerings and were trying out a one-time electrical engineering course with a new professor.

    The biggest thing I remember about the course is that I should have taken it pass-fail. It wasn’t required for my major, and it was extremely hard. Being a new course they hadn’t really yet flushed out the difficulty level yet. Fortunately it didn’t knock me down too hard, and I learned some very interesting things while taking it.

    One of the most interesting things I learned about was electrical network design. I would’ve actually liked to learn more about this, but the course was still under development, so I only got a small taste. In electrical network design, you learn about several laws and theorems.

    The most basic way I can start to introduce the concept of electrical networks (circuits) to regular non-scientific people is by discussing two of the most basic layouts: series and parallel. Think about driving down a road. Say the road is just straight one-way road, with no side streets, no traffic lights, no stop signs…nothing. This is like a short circuit. You will be able to drive down the road unimpeded. Now imagine that the road has a series of traffic lights on it and you get a red light every time. To get down the entire road now, you’re going to have to pause at each light. You have no choice. The traffic lights on this road could be said to be in series with each other.

    Now imagine that just before each light, there is a pull-off that takes you onto another road, parallel to the one you’re on. If you approach the light, and notice that it’s red, you can just pull onto the other road and continue on your way, basically unimpeded. The road that is parallel to the original road may also have lights on it, and you may or may not be able to avoid them as well by switching onto successive parallel roads. The traffic lights in this configuration are said to be in parallel. Assuming you want to get where you’re going as fast as possible, you’ll always choose to pull onto the parallel road if the light is red. You’re taking the “path of least resistance”. Electricity does the same thing.

    Maybe you’re already one step ahead of me here, but there can even be parallel and series configurations on the exact same road network. Say you avoid one light by switching to the parallel road, but then you hit a series of two lights with no choice to switch to a parallel road. However, you’re able to see those two lights in advance, and you know if you stay on the main road, you’ll only need to go through one, so that’s what you do. Just like electricity, you will always take the path of least resistance.

    Remember those old light strings where if one bulb burned out, the whole string wouldn’t work? That’s because the lights were wired in series. If you think about our road analogy, this would be the equivalent of a light that just always stays red. It wouldn’t matter if lights further down the road all turned green, you wouldn’t be able to move at all. Newer light strings connect the bulbs to the power in parallel, so if one bulb fails, the electricity can still get to all the other bulbs. On our road, you’d see that the red light wasn’t changing at all, but you’d be able to switch to the parallel road and continue on your way.

    Of course, in actual electrical networks, series and parallel configurations are far more complex, but these two types of networks are the absolute bread and butter of any electrical system. I know this topic might not have been as exciting as others, but hopefully it was interesting nonetheless. I can’t always tell what will be interesting because what seems like a simple given to me might be very interesting to people who’ve never studied these things.

  • Shhhh! Control Notifications on your iPhone

    If I don’t put my iPhone face down on my nightstand it is constantly coming on with notifications. I like notifications but do I really want to know if my sprinkler went on like it is supposed to every night at 2AM? With sports scores, news and all my HomeKit stuff I get a LOT of notifications and I can see where some people might find that annoying.

    Is every app on your iPhone or iPad constantly nagging you with notifications? It’s like a three-year-old saying “Look at me!” every few minutes, but on the plus side, a little work in the Settings app can quiet your device. And it won’t whine about being sent to a time-out.

    To get started, go to Settings > Notifications and check out the list of apps. Every app that can provide notifications appears here, so it might be a long list. Under the app’s name is a summary of what notifications it can present. That isn’t to say it will abuse that right to show you notifications–every app is different in how chatty it is. Tap an app in the list to see its notification settings.

    There are six notification settings available to apps, but not every app will avail itself of all of them. Here’s what these settings do:

    **Allow Notifications:** This is the big Frankenstein switch. Turn it off if you never, ever, under any circumstances, want to get a notification from the app.

    **Show in Notification Center:** If you swipe down from the top of the screen on an iOS device, you’ll reveal Notification Center, which collects notifications from all apps in one place. It’s a handy spot to review banner notifications you couldn’t read in time, or notifications that you never saw originally. Turn this switch off if you don’t want the app’s notifications to appear in Notification Center. In general, it’s best to leave it on.

    **Sounds:** Those who dislike being interrupted by inscrutable noises from their pockets or purses should disable sounds. If you really don’t like sounds coming from your iPhone, turn off the ringer switch on the side.

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    **Badge App Icon:** Many apps, including Mail, Reminders, and Calendar, can tell you how many unread messages, overdue events, or other waiting items they contain. They do this by putting a red number badge on the app’s icon. If you don’t find that number useful–knowing that you have 13,862 unread email messages isn’t exactly calming–you can turn off the badge for the app.

    **Show on Lock Screen:** Only important notifications should appear on your Lock screen, so you can see what’s happening at a glance. If you have a recipe app that likes to tell you about every new recipe, you might want to disable this option to prevent it from cluttering your Lock screen with trivialities.

    **Alert Style When Unlocked**: The last option is the notification style the app will use when you’re actively using the device. You have three choices here: None, Banners, and Alerts. Select None if you don’t want to be bothered while you’re working on the device. Banners and alerts are similar, but banners slide down from the top of the screen, pause briefly, and then slide back up, whereas alerts stick around until you dismiss them. In general, use banners for most things, and restrict alerts to only the most important apps.

    You don’t need to sit down and go through every app in the Notifications screen. Instead, just let apps do what they want by default, and take side trips to Settings > Notifications whenever an app starts to annoy you with the frequency, location, or type of notifications.

  • Back To The Roots

    We are living in a century unlike any other. There are countless examples of modern tech that have reimagined and rebuilt the way…

  • Beware Of Counterfeit Cables

    Earlier this week I had a customer asking me about an inexpensive cable for their Mac. Their current charging cable had finally stopped…

  • As you know by now I am a Boston Celtics fan and there have been many Boston Celtics heroes over the years. But Isiah Thomas has got to be one of the most amazing and inspiring of the bunch. I am really enjoying watching the Celtics in the playoffs and who knows, if they can keep up the good work maybe I will find my way to see an Eastern Conference final game.

    Speaking of Boston, I am really proud to report that my granddaughter, Khadija, will be attending Boston University in the fall. She accepted admission when she was visiting here last week. She will be studying theater and education. It seems hard to believe that way back 18 years ago when I announced here in Kibbles that Khadija was born with my “just call me gramps” headline.

    Grace and I are heading back north this weekend with our pups and as little gear as we can manage in our Chevy Volt. It will be good to back in the Green Mountains!

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Emily & Hadley_

  • Insulate!

    If I started to talk about insulation, what would be the first thing that comes to mind? A down coat? The pink stuff in the walls of your house? Something else? Actually, I won’t be talking about any of those things here. Within electrical engineering, insulation is sort of the less-glamorous sibling of all of the flashy electron goodness we normally talk about.

    We normally don’t think about insulation but it’s critical to both how all of our electronics function as well as our own safety. The opposite of an insulator is a conductor. Conductors conduct electricity, insulators insulate electricity. The difference isn’t so clear cut though because technically speaking, everything can be a conductor…if the voltage is high enough. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this in relation to other topics before but I think it’ll be worthwhile to really dig into it specifically here.

    In many previous articles, I’ve mentioned how voltage can be thought of as analogous to pressure in a water system. What creates the pressure in a water system though? Typically the pressure is created by some kind of gradient across which there is some difference in potential energy. Think of a water tower. Water is pumped high up into the tank at the top. While the water is sitting there, it has potential energy. If the pipe to the tank is opened, gravity will push the water down. Once the water dissipates at ground level, it has no more potential energy. As the water flows in the pipe, pressure will be exerted on the pipe walls, as well as at the end nozzle.

    Electricity doesn’t work exactly the same way because it’s not a fluid, but the key element is the potential energy gradient. We refer to this gradient as voltage in electrical systems. The higher the gradient, the higher the pressure. In our water tower, say we had a valve at the bottom of the pipe. That valve is able to withstand and hold back some amount of pressure, but at some point, if the pressure became great enough, the valve would fail. There is ??always?? some amount of pressure where the valve would fail. It might be really, really high, but it does exist.

    Electricity functions basically the same way. Insulators don’t allow electricity to flow, just like our water valve, but just like our water valve, if the pressure (voltage) becomes great enough, the valve (insulator) will fail. This property is something engineers pay very close attention to, in both design and safety aspects. A printed circuit board, for example, has lots of tiny wires placed very close to each other. Their functionality depends on the electricity being isolated to those wires and not jumping between wires. This doesn’t happen because the plastic substrate onto which the wires are etched is an insulator that doesn’t allow electricity to flow. Engineers may test circuit board designs by applying varying amounts of voltage to see where the insulation breakdown occurs to make sure that under normal operating voltages, the circuit will function normally.

    Obviously there are safety aspects to this as well. If you were working near open conductors, you might want gloves that would sufficiently insulate your hands from the electricity. These kinds of properties are known for all sorts of materials and conditions. Some materials (rubber, glass, air, Teflon, diamonds, wood) are very good insulators for normal uses. Some materials are just ok insulators (graphite, sea water), but then you start to switch back into things we commonly refer to as conductors such as copper, iron, tungsten, etc. Obviously for some voltages there won’t be a practical insulator available. Sometimes instead of trying to insulate against the full force of some voltage, engineers will channel the electricity elsewhere. Examples of this are lightning rods and faraday cages.

    As with so many things, it’s interesting to find that electricity is not merely insulators and conductors but the entire gradient of those materials.

  • Beware of Counterfeit Cables!

    Earlier this week I had a customer asking me about an inexpensive cable for their Mac. Their current charging cable had finally stopped worked and they were looking for a replacement. I honestly can’t tell you how many times over the years I have had to answer the question about what other option besides the Apple branded charging cable for their Mac, iPhone or iPad. The short answer is there are very few. When it comes to your MagSafe charger the answer is pretty straight forward. You absolutely want to buy the Apple charger. If your shopping on the internet or walk into a store and find a killer deal on a charger it’s very likely it’s a knock off and there are legitimate dangers with these too-good-to-be-true chargers.

    I’ve seen in our service department over the years a handful of Apple lookalike MagSafe chargers. It’s usually a minor detail in the manufacturing that tips us off it’s not authentic. The real problem with these chargers and iOS chargers is the risk of fire. Eventually many of us will end up with cables that need replacing. With both your computer’s MagSafe and your iOS charging cable a common failure is the wires becoming frayed and exposed. Once the wires become exposed you do want to replace them rather than trying to repair or just cover them with electrical tape. The electrical tape trick can work for a little bit, but you’re still at risk for a short and in extreme cases you can end up damaging your charging port or even worse cause the device to catch fire.

    When you are looking to replace your cables, there are alternatives besides the Apple Lightning or 30pin charger, but you want to make sure you can “identify a counterfeit or uncertified cable”:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204566 before making the purchase. Another tip for purchasing a non-Apple cable for your iOS device is to stick with a manufacturer you have heard of like Belkin or Griffin.

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    Lastly you can do a few things to try and extend the life of your cables as long as you can. Proper cable management is often not discussed. Some of us prefer to keep cables neat and tidy, others just throw them in a drawer and when we find a place to plug them in just make sure the device can reach the port. It’s very important to make sure that you don’t wrap your cables too tight and force tension right at the connector. I’m forever reminding my kids not to use their devices while charging in a manner that the wire right at the lighting cable is bent at a 90 degree angle. This will surely cause the cable to bend and fray in no time. It’s also important to disconnect the cable by grabbing it right at the plug verses just grabbing it from any old spot and tugging.

    Follow these quick tips and steps and you’ll be sure to continue safely charging your devices. Our charging cables go through a lot in a lifetime and they are ultimately fragile accessories.

  • Apple Bores the Street

    Apple’s quarterly financial results were basically boring for those Wall Street analysts. Yeah, what is exciting about $52.9 billion in sales and $2.10 earnings per share? The street expected another couple hundred million in sales but were pleasantly surprised by the extra $0.08 per share in profit.

    Apple shipped 50.8 million iPhones which was down slightly from last year’s 51.2 million but if you take the first two quarters together, Apple shipped 129 million iPhones which is 0.79 million more than expected for the 6 months. Also Apple reduced channel inventory by quite a bit and that does not show up in the iPhone sales numbers (it was already accounted for). That is an enormous number of iPhones. All these rumors about the iPhone 8 certainly have cut into sales. No one wants last year’s phone if they think the new one will have better features.

    Apple’s services business continues to grow and is a huge business on its own. With 18% growth year over year driven by the App tore. With services income at around $7 billion this sector alone is the size of some Fortune 500 companies. The other products category which includes things like Beats, Apple Watch and AirPods saw explosive growth with 31% increase year over year.

    iPad sales continued to decline which is a common trend for tablet sales, however Apple did manage to sell 8.9 million iPads which represents about 83% of the whole tablet market for tablets over $200. The Mac business saw year over year growth with sales of 4.2 million Macs and an increase in the average sales price of Macs driven by the new MacBook Pros. It was good to hear Tim Cook say that Apple is “investing aggressively in its future”.

    Of interest to shareholders and a good indication of the health of Apple, Apple increased its share repurchase authorization by $50 billion and declared about a 10% increase in the dividend paid to shareholders. Taken together Apple has returned over $211 billion to shareholders.

    Apple’s guidance for the next quarter was pretty tepid. It is normally the slowest quarter of the year so Apple is projecting sales of $43.5 billion to $45.5 billion. This is a pretty good indication that new products like the iPhone 8 will probably fall into the later part of the year.

    While Wall Street yawned a bit about the results, but I am much more bullish. Apple is seeing double digit growth in sectors that provide around a third of their revenue and that is not iPhone. Apple is spending a lot of money on R&D with spending in this quarter increased to $2.8 billion and around $5.7 billion for the first six months of the year. Apple’s product pipeline is at least well-funded and I can’t wait to see what’s next.