Autolicht-Alarm (Auto)

These pages offer our design staff - and, we hope, our readers! - a long wished for opportunity to eject more-or-less wild ideas. It often happens that promising ideas cannot be converted into practical cir- cuits. The problem may be lack of specialised knowledge, lack of equip- ment or even simply lack of time. Several examples of this kind of thing are still floating around the Elektor laboratories, such as a spot-sinewave generator and an OTA-gyrator. For the time being, development of these pro- jects was stopped after unexpected technical problems arose. We simply cannot afford to spend any. more development time on these projects at the moment. Sometimes projects are put on ice at an even earlier stage, especially when it is obvious from the start that develop- ment will cost a disproportionate amount of lab time. In this case the design may never get past the block diagram stage, or it may be de- veloped bit by bit in the course of (several) years. An example of this type of thing is the one-line intercom. That basic idea dates back to 1971, but it is only now nearing completion. It is rather frustrating to see a recent Philips Press release describing a very similar arrangement developed at their research laboratories . . . . . .