Tag: Blog

My partner Ben Mesander had a really cool post the other day: An H.264 encoder written in 30 lines of C code. Ben’s encoder outputs completely valid H.264, but it doesn’t actually compress anything. (What do you expect from 30 lines!) In fact, because of the necessary H.264 headers, the output of Ben’s encoder is... View Article

H.264 has a complicated specification with several options, many of which are not commonly used. So, I decided to write the simplest possible H.264 encoder.

I had intended to give the indemnification issue a rest. But then the following caught my attention this morning: One big difference between patents and other kinds of intellectual property, like copyrights and trademarks, is that patent-holders who want to sue someone for infringement don’t have to show that their patents or their products were... View Article

Discover why Cardinal Peak chose to walk away from an engineering engagement for the first time. Learn about our stance on indemnification and why it matters in high-stakes engineering contracts.

In an earlier post, I suggested making all your memory allocations go through a single routine, and deletions through another. When you centralize allocation and deallocation like this, you gain a couple of benefits. First of all, you make the memory allocation more explicit, which will tend to make programmers more careful. Second, you can... View Article

In my first post on ΔΣ converters I presented an intuitive way to derive the modulator portion of the converter. Now we need to look at what comes after the modulator — namely, the digital filter and the decimator. The high-level structure of the converter looks like this: The analog input voltage, v(t), is assumed... View Article

Finding memory leaks and other problems in your code can be challenging, but there are tools available to help simplify that process. Remember to add time to your schedule so that you can apply the available tools for finding memory leaks and other problems.

Discover the essence of Delta Sigma modulation with clear insights and a practical approach. Learn how to implement and understand this vital technology intuitively.

Learn how to prevent memory leaks in C/C++ with Ben's Golden Rule. Follow these steps for effective memory management and ensure your embedded systems run smoothly!

As all good project managers know, there are three dimensions to any engineering effort: The features of the product: What does the product do and how does it look? (For sake of simplicity, let’s include “quality” as a product feature.) The schedule on which the product is produced: How fast does it get to market?... View Article

NTSC video signals remain vital for many applications due to their affordability and sufficient resolution for security needs. Learn why NTSC still matters today!

This morning brought a front-page Wall St. Journal article that’s a bit of a jaw-dropper: Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. operations. … The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink... View Article