Susan Nordyk @ edn.com discuss about the Kionix’s accelerometer with integrated pedometer.
The K126 16-bit tri-axis digital accelerometer from Kionix integrates a step detector and step counter, yet minimizes power consumption. Housed in a tiny 2×2×0.9-mm LGA package, the K126 offers user-selectable g ranges of ±2 g, ±4 g, and ±8 g and output data rates of up to 25.6 kHz.
Tri-axis sensor embeds pedometer – [Link]
Chris @ chris3d.com build his own Attiny85 board:
The modularity of Arduinos is great, but after playing with them for a year or so, I wanted to start building things that needed a little more integration. I also wanted to design the components and programming around the actual controller I’d be using. So, I decided to start by building a small breadboard friendly ATTiny85.
Breadboard Friendly ATTiny85 – [Link]
Imagine you won’t need electricity mains wherever you are outside! PowerPlant by Nuuq is trying to solve this issue by providing its charging mains-alike power bank. PowerPlant is light enough to be convenient to carry, suitable for you backpack and is TSA approved. Also, it is powerful enough to charge loads of device with its 95 Watts power output.
Check this video to know more about PowerPlant:
Fortunately, PowerPlant includes a universal plug input, a replaceable battery, plus an inner temperature protection. In addition, it will provide you with easy read via its LCD plus fast charging. Furthermore, it has many competitive advantages compared to similar products.
To summarize, below are the full specifications of PowerPlant:
PowerPlant is now live on a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. Amazingly, it has achieved 500% of its goal and still has 11 days to go. Finally, PowePlant is available for $150, you can check the campaign for more details.
Intelligent Power Module (IPM) board has been designed using FSBS5CH60 IC from Fairchild, which provides a fully-featured, high-performance inverter output stage for AC Induction, BLDC, and PMSM motors. These modules integrate optimized gate drive of the built-in IGBTs to minimize EMI and losses, while also providing multiple on-module protection features including under-voltage lockouts, over-current shutdown, and fault reporting. The built-in, high-speed HVIC requires only a single supply voltage and translates the incoming logic-level gate inputs to the high-voltage, high-current drive signals required to properly drive the module’s internal IGBTs. Separate negative IGBT terminals are connected to shunt resistor to provide the current feedback to the micro-controller. This IPM module helps to develop lots of power applications and also can be used as H-Bridge for brushed DC motor. The module is manly helps to drive Hall sensor based or encoder based motors, it doesn’t support FOC algorithm, FOC based IPM board is under development and will be publish soon.
Inteligent Power Module (IPM) Board for Brushless Motors – [Link]
Intelligent Power Module (IPM) board has been designed using FSBS5CH60 IC from Fairchild, which provides a fully-featured, high-performance inverter output stage for AC Induction, BLDC, and PMSM motors. These modules integrate optimized gate drive of the built-in IGBTs to minimize EMI and losses, while also providing multiple on-module protection features including under-voltage lockouts, over-current shutdown, and fault reporting. The built-in, high-speed HVIC requires only a single supply voltage and translates the incoming logic-level gate inputs to the high-voltage, high-current drive signals required to properly drive the module’s internal IGBTs. Separate negative IGBT terminals are connected to the shunt resistor to provide the current feedback to the micro-controller. This IPM module helps to develop lots of power applications and also can be used as H-Bridge for brushed DC motor. The module mainly helps to drive Hall sensor-based or encoder-based motors, it doesn’t support the FOC algorithm, FOC-based IPM board is under development and will be published soon.
This board is designed to evaluate Fairchild Semiconductor’s FSBS5CH60. The motion SPM is installed as the motor power module on the board to drive a three-phase AC Induction Motor (ACIM), Brushless DC (BLDC) motor, Brushless AC (BLAC) motor, or Permanent-Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM). The board has bulk capacitors and microcontroller (MCU) interface circuitry. As this board is designed for a wide variety of motor types, not all included circuitry is required for all types of motors. Some motor types may require some additional circuitry be added, depending on the control algorithms being implemented.
The board is designed to connect DC power sources feeding current to the motor. The three-phase motor output terminals (U-M1, V-M2, W-M3) from the screw terminal should be connected to the motor windings. Three bootstrap power supply circuits are designed into the board, one per phase. A bootstrap capacitor, charge resistor for charging the capacitor, and the blocking diode for high-voltage isolation make up each bootstrap supply. The microcontroller (MCU) or motion-controller development board connects to this IPM board via the provided 16 Pin header connector. Six low-pass filters are used between the signal input connector and the gate input signal pins of the IC. Short-circuit current protection is provided by a single shunt resistor, op-amp, and low-pass filter. Additional resistor divider circuitry is included to monitor bus voltage, inverter phase current, and module temperature.
This board is made for low voltage motor up to 90V DC load up to 5Amps, however it can be used for higher voltage motor up to 400V DC by changing bulk capacitor, refer note for more details. Two 4mm holes were provided to mount the heat sink on top of the IC. The board also works with 28-40 Pin PIC Micro-Controller and dsPIC shield which helps easy interface with many PIC micro-controllers and Motor dsPICs. 16 PIN header connector can be hooked up to any port pin of PIC/dsPIC development board using female to the female wire harness.
| SR. | QNTY | REF | DESC |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | CN1 | 2 PIN SCREW TERMINAL |
| 2 | 1 | CN2 | 4 PIN SCREW TERMINAL |
| 3 | 1 | CN3 | 16 PIN HEADER CONNECTOR |
| 4 | 1 | CN4 | LMV7235 SMD |
| 5 | 1 | CN5 | MCP6021 SMD |
| 6 | 6 | C1,C3,C8,C12,C15,C20 | 0.1uF SMD 0805 |
| 7 | 3 | C2,C9,C13 | 33uF35V |
| 8 | 1 | C4 | 0.1uF/630V |
| 9 | 1 | C5 | 33uF/35V |
| 10 | 2 | C6,C7 | 470uF/100V |
| 11 | 2 | C10,C14 | 33KPF SMD 0805 |
| 12 | 1 | C11 | 1KPF/50V SMD 0805 |
| 13 | 1 | C16 | 47KPF SMD 0805 |
| 14 | 2 | C17,C19 | 33PF SMD 0805 |
| 15 | 2 | C18,C27 | OMIT |
| 16 | 6 | C21,C22,C23,C24,C25,C26 | 1KPF SMD 0805 |
| 17 | 3 | D1,D3,D4 | 1N4007 SMD 4007 |
| 18 | 1 | D2 | 15V/1W ZENER |
| 19 | 1 | PR1 | 5K TRIMMER POTENTIOMETER |
| 20 | 7 | R1,R3,R4,R7,R9,R12,R13 | 2.2E SMD 0805 |
| 21 | 4 | R2,R11,R19,R26 | 0E SMD 0805 |
| 22 | 1 | R5 | 220K SMD 0805 |
| 23 | 3 | R6,R20,R25 | 1K SMD 0805 |
| 24 | 1 | R8 | 10K SMD 0805 |
| 25 | 2 | R10,R16 | 2.2E SMD 0805 |
| 26 | 1 | R14 | 62E SMD 0805 |
| 27 | 1 | R15 | 0.01/3W |
| 28 | 1 | R17 | 2K4 SMD 0805 |
| 29 | 1 | R18 | 1M SMD 0805 |
| 30 | 1 | R21 | 20K SMD 0805 |
| 31 | 3 | R22,R23,R24 | 330E SMD 0805 |
| 32 | 6 | R27,R28,R29,R30,R31,R32 | 100E SMD 0805 |
| 33 | 1 | U1 | FSBS5CH60 FAIRCHILD |
In less than two years since making a 7nm test node chip with 20 billion transistors, scientists have paved the way for 30 billion switches on a fingernail-sized chip. IBM with its Research Alliance partners, GlobalFoundries and Samsung, have unveiled their industry-first process that will enable production of 5nm chips.
The new 5nm technology is one of the first ICs based on GAAFET (Gate-All-Around) topology transistors and also probably the first serious application of EUV (Extreme UltraViolet) lithography.
Gate-all-around FETs are similar in concept to FinFETs except that the gate material surrounds the channel region on all sides. Depending on design, gate-all-around FETs can have two or four effective gates. Successfully, Gate-all-around FETs have been characterized both theoretically and experimentally. Also, they have been successfully etched onto InGaAs nanowires, which have a higher electron mobility than silicon.
IBM claims that it can fit in up to 30 Billion transistors on the chip using GAAFET on a 50 mm² chip. It’s a big move in the semiconductor world, as designs become increasingly complicated to apply. While comparing 5nm GAAFET to 10nm commercial chips, it will achieve a 40% performance boost and a 75% power consumption reduction, at similar performance levels. These are some big claims, so expect some big changes just around the corner.
“For business and society to meet the demands of cognitive and cloud computing in the coming years, advancement in semiconductor technology is essential,” said Arvind Krishna, senior vice president, Hybrid Cloud, and director, IBM Research. “That’s why IBM aggressively pursues new and different architectures and materials that push the limits of this industry, and brings them to market in technologies like mainframes and our cognitive systems.”
For more information you can visit the official announcement.
Patrick Hood-Daniel explains the concept of ADC (Analog to Digital Conversion) as it relates to the STM32 ARM Microcontroller.
How to use the ADC for ARM Microcontrollers Tutorial – [Link]
A 2.5mm thick flexible smart watch with e-ink display, BT 4.0, and health sensors. by Nick Ames @ hackaday.io:
This project aims to build a thin, flexible smartwatch. It’s wrap-around display and touchscreen will allow it to display more data at a glance than current devices. Besides telling time and displaying notifications, the watch will feature pulse rate, blood oxygen, and step sensors for health monitoring.
Flexible Smartwatch – [Link]
VP Process Inc has recently released a new series of Raspberry Pi DIN rail mountable “Hardened” interfaces. The first release is the PI-SPI-DIN-RTC-RS485, which is available in three mounting versions: DIN Rail Clips, DIN Rail Enclosure, and PCB Spacers.
The basic specifications for the PI-SPI-DIN-RTC-RS485 are:
Last week, VP Process added three modules to the series: PI-SPI-DIN-8AI, PI-SPI-DIN-8DI, and PI-SPI-DIN-4KO. Each module of these has 2 x 16 Pin Ribbon Cable sockets and cables and each connector and cable will carry power, I2C bus, SPI bus and 5 GPIO lines for Chip Select. Additionally, each module is available in the three mounting versions mentioned above. Each module takes power from the ribbon cable as a local input power to 5 VDC switching power supply and 3.3 VDC LDO regulator power supply. At the same time, the main module will maintain the 5VDC to keep the Raspberry Pi safe from interfaces loading.
PI-SPI-DIN-8AI : An 8 channel 4-20 mA Input interface based on the 12 Bit Microchip MCP3208 A/D converter. Each input can be re-configured (changing resistors and capacitors) as a VDC input or Thermistor input for temperature applications.
PI-SPI-DIN-8DI : An 8 channel Isolated Digital Inptu interface based on the Microchip MCP23S08 I/O Expander. Since this design has 4 addresses, it allows 4 interfaces to connect together for a total of 32 Inputs, all of 1 chip select. The inputs accept up to 24 VDC or 24 VAC, or switch inputs.
PI-SPI-DIN-4KO ; A 4 channel relay output module. Each relay is rated at 2 AAC and is SPDT. The design is based on the Microchip MCP23S08 I/O Expander. Since this design has 4 addresses, it allows 4 interfaces to connect together for a total of 16 relay outputs.
Fortunately, VP Process had perfectly designed PI-SPI-DIN series to suit many industrial applications by making the designs industrial grade, with adding terminal blocks and enclosures. Furthermore, a new module of the same series is coming soon, PI-SPI-DIN-4AO; a 4 channel analog 4-20mA output module.
Finally, the main module is available for $48, where the remaining modules cost $33 each. More details are available at this page.
Source: WidgetLords Electronics
login
