Author: Rik

Recently Californian startup Chirp Microsystems officially announced two discrete ultrasonic Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensors, the CH-101 and CH-201, with maximum sensing ranges of 1m and 5m, respectively. Both chips have a 3.5x3.5mm package and they are powered by same ASIC or...

Inspired by the biology of a bee, researchers at the Wyss Institute developed RoboBees, man-made microbots that could perform endless roles in agriculture or disaster relief. A RoboBee is about half the size of a paper clip, weighs less than one-tenth of a gram, and flies using...

AVR is a family of microcontrollers developed by Atmel beginning in 1996. These are modified Harvard architecture 8-bit RISC single-chip microcontrollers. The Atmel AVR core combines a rich instruction set with 32 general purpose working registers. Atmel’s ATmega8 comes from the AVR...

In the Moore’s Law race to keep improving computer performance, the IT industry has turned upward, stacking chips like nano-sized 3D skyscrapers. But those stacks have their limits, due to overheating. Researchers from IBM have solved this problem by developing an intra-chip...

A new research initiative between the University of Washington's Sensor Lab and the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands has created a microprocessor that can power itself through stray radio waves and receive programmable updates in the same fashion. While the RISC-derived...

Lithium-ion batteries are flammable and the price of the raw material is increasing. Scientists and engineers have been trying to find out a safe yet efficient alternative to the Lithium-ion technology. The researchers of Empa and ETH Zürich have discovered promising approaches as to how...

Engineers and scientists from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and SRI International, California, have created a thin flexible device that could keep smartphones and laptop computers cool and prevent overheating. The component is based on...

Hariharan Mathavan at allaboutcircuits.com designed a project on using Bluetooth to communicate with an Arduino. Bluetooth is one of the most popular wireless communication technologies because of its low power consumption, low cost and a light stack but provides a good range. In this...