Huge and concerning shortfall

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If you’ve come across Tomorrow’s Engineers Week, you’ll know it took place in November, a couple of weeks back. And it’s a great initiative, designed to ensure that both employers and educators engage young people in the world of engineering. What’s the point? Well, based on recent estimates from Engineering UK, engineering companies will need 265,000 new employees PER year…

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Did Bill say this?

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I was at the Winchester Science Centre recently and I came across this quote: I know that there’s some doubt over whether Bill actually said this, but either way, there’s a point there worth exploring. Memory capacity has obviously grown A LOT over the last 30 years. Sometimes, more memory is necessary, but with embedded systems, we usually overestimate how…

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Misusing your equipment

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I was talking to a company in the Agricultural machinery sector when I discovered something that shocked me. They spend six figure sums fixing warranty claims for one of their product lines. When the claim first comes in, they generally just sent out a replacement part. And when the second or third from the same customer comes in, they’ll have…

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Confidential Queen

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In case you haven’t been keeping an eye on the news this week, a USB Drive was found in the street containing sensitive Heathrow security data, including the Queen’s route to the airport. And it’s not the first time something like this has happened. Back in April, I wrote about malware that was designed to look like Siemens software found…

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Are you coming?

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We’re in Coventry next week. (And no, we haven’t been sent there!) We’re exhibiting at the Engineering Design Show (also featuring the Electronics Design Show AND the Embedded Design Show) and I’m really excited. This show is by far my favourite – it always has excellent sessions, and this year I’m looking forward to hearing content from Williams Advanced Engineering,…

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Pi and custard

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I was talking to a potential customer this week. They’re thinking about using Datakey RUGGEDrive to provide removable storage for their Digital Video Recording system for industrial vehicles. If there’s an incident, they’ll be able to easily remove the footage and analyse it. But here’s the interesting thing: Their entire system is based on a Raspberry Pi. There’s been talk…

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I’d never seen anything like it

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I was contacted the other day by a company that makes an amazing 360 degree HDR camera. What was clear right from the off was that their product was exceptional – I’d never seen anything like it before. What was less clear was exactly how we could help them. The guy I was speaking to explained… The camera’s really lightweight…

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Narrower focus?

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I was just reading a really interesting article that rang true for me, and I thought it might for others too. It’s a piece written by Neil Poxon for theengineer.co.uk, and Neil expresses the view that “innovation success” is often achieved by a small organisation working hand-in-hand with a large one. His point is that because larger organisations have a…

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How much thought do you give to this?

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How much thought do you give to the data you store and transfer and how you store or transfer it? The reason I ask is that I came across an article the other day about the “USB Killer”. If you haven’t heard of it, here’s what you need to know: The USB Killer is a “commercially available USB stick that…

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Kick the pedal

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MICHAEL BARRETT, our managing director at Nexus, is back on his bike again. Michael and the Broughton Boys kick the pedal, for a good cause. At the end of June 2017, the team of friends will meet in the north of France touring from town to town over the following 6 days. The tour starts in Lille leading the team…

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