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RedBoard Artemis – Sparkfun’s New Bluetooth Enabled Artemis Module

Posted on 13 December, 2019 by Rik

SparkFun‘s new DEV-15444 RedBoard Artemis has an Arduino Uno R3 footprint, 1M Flash/384 KB RAM, and a processor that uses less than 1mA of current at peak. This Artemis board includes a modern USB-C connector and a Qwiic connector that makes programming and I2C easy. This RedBoard is fully compatible with SparkFun’s Arduino core and can be easily programmed with the familiar Arduino IDE. It also has a digital MEMS microphone which is definitely going to help with always-on voice commands and machine learning with TensorFlow lite. The DEV-15444 RedBoard runs at 48MHz (turbo up to 96MHz) and Bluetooth to boot. This Artemis board also features 2 UARTs, 6 I2C buses, and 4 SPI buses. There is also added support for jumpers to measure current consumption for low power testing.

SparkFun RedBoard Artemis Spec List:

Processor – 32-bit Ambiq Apollo3 Cortex M4F
Memory – 384KB RAM, 1MB Flash
I/O Pins – 21 PWM channels, 24 GPIO – all interrupt capable
Wi-Fi – N/A
Bluetooth – Built-in BLE 5.0
Video – N/A
Ethernet – N/A
Input Voltage – 5V
Operating Voltage – 3.3V
Software Support – Arduino or Ambiq Apollo SDK
Dimensions – 6.9cm X 5.3cm

This board comes handy for the use of Machine Learning and voice recognition with the help of the on-board microphone support. Unfortunately, right now the Machine Learning setup is a little rough around the edges. The user will have to leave behind the familiar Arduino editor and start learning a new SDK to make sure the machine learning applications work properly with this board. This board from Sparkfun is taking hobbyist electronic design to the next level. Machine Learning is a lot of fun and is clearly the direction of the future. RedBoard Artemis is currently is selling at 19.95 USD. More information and buying options can be found on this SparkFun Product Page.

New SUF350 – fan-less 250W in only 3 x 5” and up to 95% efficient

Posted on 13 December, 2019 by mixos

Blue stage spotlights., light show at the Concert

FiDUS Power is pleased to announce the addition of the exciting convection cooled, high efficiency, SUF350 AC-DC open frame power supply.

With the SUF350, system designers can utilize 250W of output power from the dense 3 x 5” package without the need for fan cooling. Where fan cooling is acceptable, the full 350W potential of the SUF350 can be realised with an optional 12V fan rail available to assist.

The SUF350 has been designed to ensure engineers need not fear limiting footnotes or narrow operating conditions. The full 350W (250W convection) is available across a universal 90-264VAC input and in output voltage models as low as 12VDC without derating. The unit also operates across a wide -40°C to +50°C full power temperature range, working up to +70°C conditions at reduced power.

Certified to the latest IEC/EN/UL 62368-1 safety standard, the SUF350 provides 7 output voltage models from 12-48VDC, ensuring a good fit for a wide range of professional electronic system. Potential applications include broadcast, audio, communications, instrumentation, automation & process control.

The SUF350 also aims to cool any system compliance or thermal design concerns. With efficiencies as high as 95% limiting waste heat, as well as low radiated & conducted emissions figures, the SUF350 is well placed to assist with successful system compliance and aid a long product life.

Customers of the SUF350 can expect the same 5-year warranty, free UK delivery and hands-on application support available with all FiDUS Power solutions.

If you are working on a design that might benefit from the SUF350, please get in touch for a free engineering sample.

Renesas Electronics Announces World’s Smallest Photocouplers for Industrial Automation

Posted on 13 December, 2019 by mixos

Renesas Electronics Corporation, a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, announced five new 8.2mm creepage photocouplers that are the world’s smallest isolation devices for industrial automation equipment and solar inverters. With a package width of 2.5mm, the RV1S92xxA and RV1S22xxA photocouplers reduce PCB mounting area by 35 percent compared to competitive couplers. They help designers shrink equipment size, increase robot axes, and improve factory floor productivity. They also meet the needs of the zero-energy house that requires smaller solar equipment for more installations in limited space. The RV1S92xxA and RV1S22xxA photocouplers are ideal for DC to AC power inverters, AC servo motors, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), robotic arms, solar inverters, and battery storage and charging systems.

The RV1S9260A 15 Mbps communications coupler and RV1S9213A intelligent power module (IPM) driver are the first photocouplers to use tiny LSSO5 packages with a 0.65mm pin pitch, half the pitch of conventional packages. With a package height of 2.1mm, the photocouplers can be directly mounted on the backside of a PCB, freeing up valuable space for topside mounted components. Three times infrared reflow soldering provides maximum flexibility. The RV1S92xxA photocouplers’ electric isolation and high CMR noise rejection (50 kV/µs) protects low voltage microcontrollers and I/O devices from high voltage circuits when transferring high-speed signals.

The RV1S2281A and RV1S2211A are DC input and low DC input, transistor output photocouplers, and the RV1S2285A is an AC input, transistor output coupler. The RV1S22xxA devices also provide 8.2mm creepage distance, 2.5mm package width and 2.1mm package height. They come in LSSOP packages with a 1.30mm pin pitch. All five photocouplers deliver 5000 Vrms reinforced isolation and high temperature operation to withstand harsh operating environments. The RV1S92xxA and RV1S22xxA photocouplers support 200V and 400V systems with reinforced insulation to meet industrial safety standards. All five devices adhere to the strict UL61800-5-1 standard for motor drive equipment, and the UL61010-2-201 standard for control devices such as PLCs.

“The RV1S92xxA and RV1S22xxA photocouplers give designers a variety of functions and the layout flexibility to significantly reduce equipment size and maximize factory floorspace,” said Philip Chesley, Vice President, Industrial Analog and Power Business Division at Renesas. “Our isolation devices also meet the stringent safety requirements of the UL61800-5-1 and UL61010-2-201 standards, enabling manufacturers to design a new generation of high voltage systems for their smart factories.”

more information: www.renesas.com

Ultra-compact 200W desktop power supply from FiDUS features Gallium Nitride switching

Posted on 13 December, 2019 by mixos

FiDUS Power, the technical power supply distributor specializing in innovative solutions and new products that benefit system designers as they seek to differentiate their end products, sets a new bar for the size of external power supplies with the launch of the new model GDA200. The use of Gallium Nitride (GaN) rather than silicon semi-conductor switches provides increased efficiency, reduced heat losses and operation a higher-frequencies, allowing the size of magnetics and other components to be reduced. The result is an amazingly-compact 200W external desktop power supply with market leading 12.5W/In³ power density.

The FiDUS GDA200 will be welcomed by system designers looking for a sleek power supply to accompany and enhance innovative new products that deliver an image of quality and leading edge technology. It will be advantageous to designers of portable equipment and instrumentation in markets including; high end audio, test and measurement, bench top and audio broadcast equipment.

The ultra-compact size is also advantageous to customers incorporating external power supplies into their designs to speed up the approvals process. The very small size, just 150 x 54 x 33mm (5.9 x 2.12 x 1.3”) may also reduce total system package size resulting in higher shipping and storage densities, especially when the closest competitive product is some 2 ½ times larger.

Mark Gibbons, Engineering Manager at FiDUS Power, comments:

“The ultra-high power density and exceptionally small size of our new GDA200 external power supply gives designers of portable products a great deal more value for money and design flexibility. This is the first of a new family of ultra-compact external desk top products to be announced by FiDUS Power with the 300, 160 or 150 and finally GDA 120W series to follow early next year.”

more information: fidus-power.worldsecuresystems.com

Low cost, platinum RTD surface, temperature sensor capsule from RdF Corporation

Posted on 12 December, 201912 December, 2019 by mixos

The 29309 series from RdF offers a small strong design which allows this package to conform on curved surfaces for accurate response in milliseconds. These surface temperature sensors offer a long term stability, better than ±0.05°C per 5 years. The moisture resistance for condensing environments or shallow immersion is provided by Kapton®/Teflon® lamination that completely encapsulates the assembly and lead entrance. The leads are welded within the sealed platinum RTD sensor which helps to provide this sensor’s durability.

Features:

Operating temperature range -50°C to +232°C (up to 260°C in dry applications)
Self heating is typically less than 25mW/°C
Response time of 0.3s in water flowing at 3ft per second
Sensing elements of 100Ω or 1000Ω at 0°C
Platinum per IEC 751 (α = 0.00385 Ω/Ω/°C, Class A and Class B)
Long term stability better than 0.05°C per 5 years
Lead wires of 28 AWG nickel plated copper, PFA Teflon® insulation
4 wire configuration
Encapsulated in Kapton®

The 100Ω and 1000Ω sensing element choices are available with a IEC 751 Class B accuracy offering a tolerance of ±0.12Ω and ±1.2Ω respectively at 0°C. 100Ω and 1000Ω platinum elements are also available with the tighter IEC 751 Class A accuracy offering tolerances of ±0.06Ω and ±0.6Ω respectively at 0°C.

For further information on the RDF 29309 series, please click here

NanoPi M4B – Another ARM Board Powered By Rockchip RK3399

Posted on 12 December, 201913 December, 2019 by Rik

FriendlyELEC is releasing another revision of NanoPi M4 with NanoPi M4B combining some of the features of M4 and M4V2 boards such as DDR3 memory and power & recovery buttons. The new NanoPi M4B is an RK3399 SoC (6 core ARM Cortex-A72/A53) based ARM board as its successors. It has the same form of factor as the Raspberry Pi B3+ and has ports and interfaces which are compatible with RPi B3+.

The biggest change comes in the form of removal of the USB 3.0 hub from the new board. Now the company is going with the two USB 2.0 interfaces and two USB 3.0 interfaces. This step should lower the manufacturing cost, and in some cases enhance performance. Also, there is only 2 GB DDR3 RAM.

NanoPi M4B Spec List:

SoC – Rockchip RK3399 Hexa-core processor with 2x Arm Cortex-A72 @ up to 2.0GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.5GHz,
GPU – a Mali-T864 with OpenGL ES1.1/2.0/3.0/3.1, OpenVG1.1, OpenCL, DX11, and AFBC, and a VPU with 4K VP9 and 4K 10-bit H265/H264 decoding support
System Memory – Dual-channel 2GB DDR3
Storage – eMMC module socket, MicroSD card slot
Video Output – HDMI 2.0a up to 4K @ 60 Hz with HDCP 1.4/2.2 support
Audio – 3.5mm headphone jack with stereo audio, HDMI digital audio output
Camera – One or two 4-lane MIPI-CSI connector(s) (one multiplexed with MIPI-DSI), dual ISP up to 13MP
Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac WiFi 5 1T1R, Bluetooth 5.0 via AP6256 module, 1x IPX antenna connector
USB – 2x USB 3.0 ports, 2x USB 2.0 ports, 1x USB 2.0 Type-C port for power input
Expansion
- 40-pin GPIO header with 3x 3V/1.8V I2C, up to 1x 3V UART, 1x 3V SPI, 1x SPDIF_TX, up to 8x 3V GPIOs, 1x 1.8V 8-channel I2S
- 24-pin extension port, PCIe x2, 1x PWM, Power key, IR Rx
Debugging – 4-pin UART header (3V 1.5Mbps)
Misc – Power key, recovery button, power LED, 1x user LED, 2-pin header for RTC battery, ADB switch
Power Supply – 5V/3A via USB-C port or GPIO header; RK808-D PMIC
Dimensions – 85 mm x 56 mm (8-layer PCB)
Temperature Range – -20°C to 70°C

OS support for this board includes Armbian built Debian or Ubuntu, Ubuntu Desktop 18.04 64-bit, Lubuntu 16.04 32-bit, Ubuntu Core 18.04 64-bit, and Android 8. More technical details about this board can be found on this Wiki.

Arduino Wristwatch

Posted on 12 December, 2019 by mixos

This simple digital watch is inspired by the Eiriks Binary Wrist Watch from Sverd Industries! Check it out if you didn’t already. by Marijo Blažević

Watch uses the same microcontroller as one on Arduino UNO – super hackable and easy to use! In this tutorial, I’ll be showing how you can make your own programmable wristwatch – from the design process to sourcing parts, soldering and programming.

Measuring thickness at only 10 mm this wristwatch can last for a couple of years on one CR2032 battery and keep extremely precise time and even compensate for temperature using DS3231 Real Time Clock (RTC) chip with built-in crystal!

To show the time we will use 12 LED’s positioned in a circle like a simple analog watch face. for that, I picked size 0603 RED led’s coupled with fairly high value (680 Ohm) resistors keeping the current low and still visible in direct sunlight.

Arduino Wristwatch – [Link]

Homemade Injection Transformer for PSU Loop Analysis

Posted on 12 December, 2019 by mixos

Adil Malik build his own injection transformer to test switchmode power supplies in his lab. He writes:

Recently, I have been designing some SMPS and required some hardware to measure the actual loop response of the complete converters. People familiar with this area will probably know this can be done breaking the feedback loop of the converter and injecting a small AC signal and measuring the loop response at the output of the converter. However, such a measurement requires a mechanism to inject this signal differential across a small resistor inline with the normal feedback network. Unfortunately, as most signal generators are ground referenced we need special hardware to convert this output to a floating output.

Homemade Injection Transformer for PSU Loop Analysis – [Link]

Axiomtek’s i.MX 8M-based Fanless Embedded System with E-Mark Certification – Agent336

Posted on 12 December, 201912 December, 2019 by mixos

Axiomtek – a world-renowned leader relentlessly devoted in the research, development and manufacture of series of innovative and reliable industrial computer products of high efficiency – is proud to launch the Agent336, its new RISC-based fanless embedded box PC certified with E-Mark for a variety of in-vehicle applications. The Agent336 measures only 164 x 118 x 44 mm and weight about 1.0kg. The cost-efficient embedded computer can withstand harsh operating environments with a wide operating temperature range of -40°C to +70°C and power input of 9 to 36V DC. This low power yet high-quality In-vehicle box computer is powered by the NXP i.MX 8M processor with the ARM® Cortex™-A53 microarchitecture and has a 3GB onboard LPDDR4 memory.

Axiomtek leverages its global expertise to provide complete product solutions for transportation applications. Our first-class transportation embedded box computers are easy to install and offer superior performance and reliability to thrive in harsh environments. Concerning the reliability and durability, the Agent336 comes with intelligent power management for ACC on/off delay, shutdown delay and over/under voltage protection. It runs on Linux (Yocto) and Android 8.1 operating systems. This IP40-rated RISC-based embedded gateway with strict certification is definitely the top choice for in-vehicle solutions, such as devices controller, fleet management, surveillance, and gateway.

“The Agent336 is an all-in-one, extremely small embedded box PC targeted at in-vehicle fields. It featuring tracking, monitoring and displaying functions in one system is well-suited for cold chain logistics and infotainment system, offering instant status reports, vehicle predictive maintenance and real-time vehicle dispatching and routing,” said Gordon Cho, a product manager of Embedded PM Division at Axiomtek. “This low power embedded platform features rich I/O interfaces with isolation protection to provide reliable system operation. For fleet management applications, the Agent336 offers flexible communication modules for 3G/4G, GPS and Wi-Fi connections. Moreover, when connecting to an LCD panel via HDMI, drivers can get visual information in time.”

The newest RISC-based Agent336 supports two RS-232/422/485 ports, one isolated DIO, one HDMI port, two USB 3.0 A-type ports, one console port, one Gigabit LAN port, one RTC battery, one reset button, and five antenna openings. One onboard 8GB eMMC and one Micro SD card socket are available for extensive storage needs. Additionally, the rugged embedded computer has high integration ability with two full-size PCI Express Mini Card slots and one SIM card, which makes it a professional embedded system for transportation applications.

Advanced Features:

RISC-based module (i.MX 8M) processor
3GB LPDDR4 memory onboard
8GB eMMC onboard
9 to 36 VDC wide range power input with terminal block
Ready-to-run embedded Linux/Android operating system
Wide operating temperature range from -40°C to +70°C
E-Mark certified
Intelligent solution of vehicle power management (ACC ignition)

Axiomtek’s fanless transportation gateway, the Agent336, will be available in January of 2020. For more product information or pricing, please visit our global website at www.axiomtek.com or contact one of our sales representatives at info@axiomtek.com.tw.

Stereo volume and balance control with Rotary Encoder using MAX5440

Posted on 11 December, 201911 December, 2019 by mixos

The project described here is a compact stereo volume and balance control with rotary encoder. It provides 32 log potentiometer steps with buffered wiper output. The project can easily replace mechanical potentiometer. 5 LEDs indicate the volume level or balance settings , depending on the status of the mode indicator D1 LED. The MAX5440 includes debounced pushbutton inputs for mute and mode. The mute input allows a single pushbutton to change between volume control and the -90dB (typ) mute setting. The mode input toggles between volume and balance control. A click-and-pop suppression feature minimizes the audible noise generated by wiper transitions.

Stereo volume and balance control with Rotary Encoder using MAX5440 – [Link]