Newsletters July 2008

July 2008

Welcome to our second Newsletter of 2008. This newsletter comes to you from a new location, and includes details of our new offices, an update on our B-BBEE status, and more information on activation. Our technical content includes the first of a four-part series on Model-Based Design, and an article on using anonymous functions.

As always, you will find information on our upcoming public seminars, public training courses, and webinars available to you at your desktop. With broadband access becoming accessible to more South Africans, webinars are an effective way to learn about technology from The MathWorks without having to leave your office. Of course, if you would like us to visit you, you can always contact us on 011 325 6238, or e-mail info@optinum.co.za.

 

Wishing you a warm winter

The OPTI-NUM solutions team. 

 

 

 

 

We have moved

OPTI-NUM solutions has a new home, not very far from our previous offices. We are still in Hyde Park Corner, but have moved from the fourth floor south to the 5th floor north. Our new offices provide more room for growth, and have been designed to provide better service to our clients, through a bigger training room, and a better working environment for our staff.

Once we’ve solved all of the minor teething problems with the new offices, look out for our news release including pictures. This news release will be available from our home page.

B-BBEE status update

As a company committed to the principles underlying the Broad-Based Economic Empowerment Act of 2003, OPTI-NUM solutions has completed an internal B-BBEE scorecard, under the Qualifying Small Enterprises framework introduced on 9 February 2007. Under that framework, OPTI-NUM solutions is pleased to announce a B-BBEE score of 67.35 points for the period ending 31 December 2007. This makes OPTI-NUM solutions a Level 4 contributor to any of our customers’ procurement spends. You will find our summary scorecard here, or you can contact us for more information.

Activation explained, or “Where is my R2008a PLP?”

As we mentioned in our March newsletter, Release 2008a of The MathWorks products introduced activation to all products in the MATLAB® and Simulink® product families. We have had many queries from customers about the activation process, and thought we would spend some time in this newsletter covering common issues related to activation.

You can find out more about activation from The MathWorks Activation Overview page. That page contains a link to a short (less than 3 minutes) video describing the activation process.

What happened to my PLP?

The MathWorks no longer produces Personal License Passcodes for R2008a and later versions of MATLAB and Simulink products. Instead, during the install process, if your computer has an Internet connection, the MATLAB installer contacts the activation server to retrieve your License File and put it on your computer. The License File contains computer-specific information that is transmitted during the activation process. If your computer does not have Internet access, you can activate your software through the License Center.

Read more about PLPs and activation here.

How do I access the License Center?

To access the license center, you need to log in to The MathWorks with your MathWorks Account information. If you have forgotten your password, visit here to get it e-mailed to you. If you do not have a MathWorks Account or have forgotten your login details you can e-mail our sales team or call 011 325 6238 for assistance.

Technical Content

This newsletter contains two longer articles containing technical content.

Model-Based Design: Part 1 of 4

This is the first of a four-part article in which we will demonstrate how Model-Based Design methodology can be applied to a practical design example; design of a robot arm controller. In Model-Based Design, a system model is at the centre of the development process—from requirements capture and design to implementation and test.

For the full technical article, click here.

Anonymous Functions: Passing additional parameters to other functions

A frequent MATLAB programming pattern we are seeing involves passing a function as an argument to some other function. Anonymous functions can be used in callbacks for Handle Graphics objects, or as event handlers in MATLAB’s new object-oriented programming features. This technical article examines the use of anonymous functions to allow additional parameters to be passed to a calling function.

For the full technical article, click here.

Featured User Story

BAE Systems Achieves 80% Reduction in Software-Defined Radio Development Time with Model-Based Design

With spending in Software-Defined Radio (SDR) technology expected to top billions of dollars, BAE Systems explored a new design approach for rapidly developing SDR systems. BAE Systems saw an opportunity to evaluate their traditional approach of hand-coding FPGA’s in VHDL, against Model-Based Design using MathWorks and Xilinx tools. Running two SDR waveform development efforts in parallel, they found that Simulink and Xilinx System Generator dramatically reduced development time. Their parallel efforts showed a 10-to-1 reduction in the time to develop the signal processing chain of a software-defined radio.

Read the full user story.

View featured user stories.

Events

Upcoming Training Courses

OPTI-NUM solutions regularly holds paid, public training courses covering the use of The MathWorks products, as well as providing technical training on a variety of subjects associated with The MathWorks products. Take advantage of our discounts on multiple training bookings and save on MATLAB and Simulink training! If you purchase more for than 5 days of training, you become eligible for a discount, which increases with the number of training days you purchase. If you are a student or lecturer then you can also receive an additional academic discount.

OPTI-NUM solutions' next 5 standard training courses are shown below.

14 September 2010	Statistical Methods in MATLAB
15 September 2010	Advanced MATLAB Programming Techniques
16 September 2010	MATLAB for Building Graphical User Interfaces
19 October 2010	MATLAB Fundamentals
3 November 2010	Simulink for System and Algorithm Modelling

View our full training schedule.

Upcoming Seminars

06 October 2010

Johannesburg

Algorithm Development with MATLAB for C and C++ Programmers

 

View all upcoming events.

Upcoming Webinars

09 September 2010	Image Acquisition and Processing Using GigE Vision Cameras with MATLAB
14 September 2010	Analyze, Model and Simulate Energy Risk with MATLAB – a SAP Integration at RWE
14 September 2010	PID Control Made Easy