Page 612 – Electronics-Lab.com

Short on MLCCs? Choose Panasonic Polymer Series

Posted on 30 October, 2018 by mixos

*Only infotainment or non-safety critical circuits

Panasonic has expanded the CS, CT, and CX SP-Cap series to include higher voltage caps with range up to 35V. The newest additions to the SP-Cap product line features high voltage, low profile, high-temperature reflow, and unique electrode materials for high withstanding voltages. The higher voltage SP-Caps are used with DC/DC converters, output signal stabilization, and filtering. Panasonic’s SP-Cap Polymer Organic Aluminum Capacitor is a surface mount aluminum electrolytic capacitor that uses a conductive polymer as its electrolyte in layered aluminum construction. The SP-Cap product line from Panasonic consists of multiple series that offer capacitance range up to 560µF, voltage range from 2VDC to 35VDC, and the lowest ESR/impedance in the industry, achieving very good noise suppression and transient response. Unlike MLCCs, SP-Caps are free from temperature drift and DC/AC bias characteristics. In addition, voltage deration is not needed in SP-Caps, as in tantalum capacitors, due to their safety features. SP-Caps are the perfect solution for input and output capacitor for various DC/DC converters.

POSCAP utilizes sintered Tantalum as an anode sytem and highly conductive polymer created with Panasonic’s unique method as a cathode system. This enabled POSCAP to be thin, small and at the same time have low ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance) and superior high frequency characteristics. These features make POSCAP one of the best candidates for digital/high frequency applications. POSCAP also has high reliability and heat resistance.

OS-CON is an aluminum solid capacitor with high conductive polymer. OS-CON acquires low Equivalent Series Resistance (ESR), excellent noise reduction capability and frequency characteristics. In addition, OS-CON has a long life span and its ESR has little change even at low temperatures since the electrolyte is solid.

View whitepaper on polymer capacitors as a replacement for MLCCs

Miniature NanoPi Duo2 Board With Camera Connector

Posted on 29 October, 201829 October, 2018 by Tope Oluyemi

FriendlyElec has launched an upgraded miniature $20 “NanoPi Duo2” board that updates the original Duo with an Allwinner H3, Bluetooth, a camera connector, and an optional 2G carrier board. NanoPi Duo2 has two 16-pin GPIO headers with breadboard pins in a dual-in-line layout. The Duo2 can be placed into an embedded design like a computer module or it can be plugged into a breadboard or optional carrier board.

The NanoPi Duo2 comes with an optional, $10 IoT-2G Application Carrier Board equipped with a 2G radio, which is specifically designed for the Duo2. The microSD slot and micro-USB OTG port make the Duo2 barely an SBC. The 55 x 25.4mm Duo2 is a bit larger on one end than the 50 x 25.4mm Duo. The extra space houses the new camera connector, which supports a ribbon cable connected to OV5640 based camera.

The 1,397 sq.mm, Duo2 is still one of the smallest Linux-ready SBCs available, even smaller than the 40 x 40mm (1,600 sq. mm) NanoPi Neo line of boards. Some of the latest Neo models are much larger, like the 85 x 56mm, Rockchip RK3399 based NanoPi Neo4. The NanoPi Duo2 switches from an Allwinner H2+ to an Allwinner H3. This has the same four, 1.2GHz Cortex-A7 cores and Mali-400 MP2 GPU, but supports 4K video instead of HD. The Duo2 offers a 256MB DDR3 option, unlike the Duo that offers 256MB or 512MB DDR3.

There’s an enhanced 802.11b/g/n wireless module, which adds Bluetooth 4.0. However, the Duo2 has a slim 20 to 70℃ operating range than the Duo. An IoT-2G Application Carrier Board, which is set to replace the Duo’s earlier ”Mini Shield” carrier is also available. It is said to be dedicated to the Duo2. The 85 x 56mm IoT-2G board is shaped like a Raspberry Pi board, but it’s restricted to dual USB 2.0 host ports. The board has a “SIM800C” quad-band, 2G GSM/GPRS module and microSIM slot, as well as a 2G antenna and dual 2G status LEDs. There’s also an IPX to SMA antenna converter for a WiFi antenna. The IoT-2G Application Carrier Board is fitted with a power-only micro-USB port and a 10/100 Ethernet port. There’s a debug UART, as well as audio, CVBS, UART, and I2C headers.

Specifications listed for the NanoPi Duo2 include:

Processor — Allwinner H3 (4x Cortex-A7 @ up to 1.2GHz); ARM Mali-400 MP2 GPU @600MHz
Memory — 512MB DDR3 RAM; empty SPI flash socket
Storage — MicroSD slot (bootable) for up to 128GB
Wireless — Ampak AP6212 with 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 LE; IPEX antenna connector
Other I/O – Micro-USB OTG port with power input, 2x USB host pins, Audio I/O header, Camera connector that supports OV5640 based camera
Debug serial header, 32-pin dual-in-line interface via 2x 16-pin headers (UART, SPI, I2C, audio, Ethernet, IO, etc.)
Other features — 2x LEDs; mounting holes; GPIO key; optional IoT-2G carrier
Power — 5V/2A DC via micro-USB OTG
Operating temperature — -20 to 70℃
Dimensions — 55 x 25.4mm; 6-layer PCB
Weight — 7.36 g without pin headers
Operating systems — FriendlyCore 16.04 (based on Ubuntu Core) with Linux 4.14-LTS kernel and U-boot-2017.11

Further information may be found on the NanoPi Duo2 product page and wiki, as well as the IoT-2G wiki.

Hardkernel ODROID-H2 with Intel Celeron J4105 To Launch soon

Posted on 29 October, 201820 November, 2018 by Tope Oluyemi

Hardkernel started working on an ODROID x86 board since last year, and the board was slated to launch later in 2017 according to the CEO in an interview published in ODROID magazine. After several repetitions, procedures, and processors considerations, the ODROID-H2 is set to become available by November as the first ODROID x86 board. The ODROID-H2 has an Intel Celeron J4105 Gemini Lake processor, two SO-DIMM slots for memory, two SATA ports, M.2 NVMe slot for storage and two Gigabit Ethernet ports. The Odroid-H2 is equipped with a pair each of USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports, as well as a rather scanty 20-pin GPIO connector. Obviously, this is less of an IoT tinkering board than it is of a media and gaming platform.

ODROID-H2 is in the final stage of development and shipment is expected later in November. A series of performance tests were carried out, like the thermal design and power consumption testing of the board with Ubuntu 18.04. The board can stay cool (under 70°C) under heavy load, it consumes 4 watts at idle mode, and up to 22 Watts during a CPU+GPU stress test and 4K 60fps H.265 to 720p H.264 video transcoding can be done faster in real-time with performance improving by 25% when using dual channel RAM configuration. There’s no WiFi, so if you use the M.2 slot for storage, you’ll need to tap one of the four USB ports. There’s a wide-range 14-20V DC input, a power management IC, and a real-time clock. A large heatsink keeps the CPU running smoothly at 2.3GHz even at 70°C. Since the heatsink is high, the design is able to stack the coastline ports in towers like a mini-PC. So what you get has a compact footprint, but also a high profile.

The company also released a video that shows the board runs Ubuntu 18.10 with Kernel 4.18 from eMMC storage. They ran Dolphin emulator accelerated by Vulkan GPU driver and were capable of smoothly playing Wii games with three players . The price for the device is not known yet, but with LattePanda Alpha board as a competitor, we can get an idea of the price of the Hardkernel ODROID-H2.

**ODROID H2 loaded with 8GB RAM and an NVMe SSD**

The LattePanda board comes with a similar Celeron N4100 processor, but different to the Hardkernel board, it includes a RAM soldered on the board. The LattePanda Alpha 800 model price is listed as $298 on DFRobot, which includes 8GB LPDDR3 RAM, and active cooling. Based on this price information, and the typical price for Celeron J4105 mini PCs, it is expected the barebone version of ODROID-H2 board to sell for around $180-$200 without accessories due to the fact that it also includes extra features like dual Ethernet, dual SATA, NVMe SSD support, etc, which is not often found in lower cost mini PCs.

The ODROID-H2 board specifications include:

SoC: Intel Celeron J4105 quad-core processor @ up to 2.3 GHz (real frequency) with 12EU Intel UHD Graphics 600
System Memory: Dual-channel Memory DDR4-PC19200 (2400MT/s) supporting up to 32GiB RAM in total
Storage: M.2 PCIe 2.0 x4 slot for one NVMe storage, 2x SATA 3.0 ports, eMMC flash support
Video Output: HDMI 2.0 up to 4K (4096×2160) @ 60 Hz
DisplayPort: 1.2 up to 4K (4096×2160) @ 60 Hz
Audio: HDMI, audio jacks for HP, MIC. and S/PDIF
Connectivity: Dual Gigabit Ethernet (RJ45)
Expansion: 20-pin header with I2C and UART (3.3V)
Misc: RTC battery
Power Supply: 14V to 20V DC power input
Dimensions: 110x110x43mm
Weight: About 320 grams with a heatsink, two DRAM modules, and M.2 NVMe SSD.

More information can be found on Hardkernel’s Odroid-H2 announcement.

[update 20/11/2018] Hardkernel launched the board today for $111 on their online store with shipments scheduled the start on November 27th.

AVR-IoT WG development board

Posted on 29 October, 201830 October, 2018 by mixos

Microchip released a new IoT Development board, the AVR-IoT WG with part number: AC164160

The AVR-IoT WG development board combines a powerful 8-bit ATmega4808 MCU, an ATECC608A CryptoAuthentication™ secure element IC and the fully certified ATWINC1510 Wi-Fi® network controller – which provides the most simple and effective way to connect your embedded application to Google’s Cloud IoT core platform. The board also includes an on-board debugger, and requires no external hardware to program and debug the MCU.

Out of the box, the MCU comes preloaded with a firmware image that enables you to quickly connect and send data to the Google Cloud IoT platform using the on-board temperature and light sensors. Once you are ready to build your own custom design, you can easily generate code using the free software libraries in Atmel START or MPLAB Code Configurator (MCC).

The AVR-IoT board is supported by two award-winning Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) – Atmel Studio and Microchip MPLAB® X IDE – giving you the freedom to innovate with your environment of choice.

Smart – Expand IoT functionality using the powerful ATmega4808 with 48 KB Flash and 6 KB RAM.
Secure – Entrust encryption to the latest in Microchip’s CryptoAuthentication portfolio, based on ATECC608A.
Connected – Propel your design into the Cloud with Microchip’s ATWINC1510, a single-band 2.4 GHz network controller.

ATmega4808 microcontroller

Four user LED’s
Two mechanical buttons
mikroBUS header footprint
TEMT6000 Light sensor
MCP9808 Temperature sensor
ATECC608A CryptoAuthentication™ device

WINC1510 WiFi Module

On-board nEDBG Debugger

Auto-ID for board identification in Atmel Studio and Microchip MPLAB X
One green board power and status LED
Programming and debugging
Virtual COM port (CDC)
Two DGI GPIO lines

USB and battery powered

Integrated Li-Ion/LiPo battery charger

TruffleBot Sniffs Out and Accurately Identifies Specific Chemical Odors

Posted on 27 October, 201827 October, 2018 by mixos

TruffleBot identifies smells by measuring small changes in air pressure and temperature. By Megan Scudellari

An electronic nose typically identifies odors by detecting the “fingerprint” of a chemical compound across an array of sensors monitored by pattern-recognition software. E-nose technology is already in use across many industries, including agricultural, environmental, food, manufacturing, and the military.

Electronic sniffers are also being tested for their ability to detect disease, by sensing blood glucose levels from one’s breath and sniffing out gut disease from samples of poop. Better an electronic nose than a real one, right?

At Brown University in Rhode Island, electrical engineer Jacob Rosenstein and colleagues are now taking electronic noses a hop, skip, and a boogie closer to the real thing with a device that actually sniffs odors, sucking up vapors in a premeditated pattern through four pathways, and moving those vapors across chemical and mechanical sensors.

Review: Siglent SDS1204X-E four-channel oscilloscope

Posted on 27 October, 201829 October, 2018 by mixos

Here is a nice mini review of Siglent SDS1204X-E four-channel oscilloscope by Harry Baggen @ elektormagazine.com:

A few years ago I wrote a review about the Siglent SDS1102X and back then I was very enamoured by the quality and extensive capabilities of this affordable instrument. In the meantime there have appeared a few successors in this series of mid-range oscilloscopes by Siglent and here I’m looking at a somewhat more expensive, four-channel model that has been available since the beginning of 2018, the SDS1204X-E. When it comes to the design and feature set this is very much a continuation of its predecessors. The most conspicuous change compared to the 1100 series is the increased bandwidth of the input stages, these are now 200 MHz (was 100 MHz earlier).

Review: Siglent SDS1204X-E four-channel oscilloscope – [Link]

An i.MX 8M Development Kit for Amazon Alexa Voice Service

Posted on 26 October, 201826 October, 2018 by Ayo Ayibiowu

Smart electronics help us save time at home especially when one cannot wait to get the party started. To provide a solution to this situation, Amazon created speakers and stereo systems, which are equipped with the Alexa Voice Service. Alexa Voice service gives a new voice experience to electronics devices and adds a more personal user experience.

Devices that incorporate Alexa Voice Service can be called electronics with Alexa Multi-Room Music capabilities. These devices can play music, read books and many more. Some of them can even connect to the TV and control it.

NXP Semiconductors is a Dutch global company dedicated to enabling secure connections and infrastructure for a smarter world. One of their major goals is advancing solutions that make lives easier, better and safer. Recently, NXP released a new development kit to the public, that costs $219. It is supposed to offer a solution to far-field quality voice detection for the Alexa Voice Service (AVS). The kit comes in a box, and its components are one i.MX 8M PicoPi board, an auxiliary 2-mic VOICEHAT board, an external Wi-Fi antenna, a pair of micro speakers, USB Type-C and Micro-USB cables and standoffs and pin extenders for assembly.

This board has many components that have never been included in a non-Amazon development kit. It is the first kit to come with an Amazon Wake Word Engine tuned to “Alexa” which activates the voice assistant into listening mode. One of the best features is that it is equipped with a far-field voice using only two microphones. The board has been furnished to provide Alexa Voice Services (AVS).

AVS is a collection of various Amazon services built around its voice-controlled assistant called Alexa. One can perform multiple activities using the AVS, some of the activities are: listening to audiobooks, streaming music, making orders online and even receiving reports about storms using the Hurricane center.

The new NXP i.MX 8M kit has various remarkable features, some of which are:

First Development Kit to support Alexa Multi-Room Music (MRM).
It has a Pico-Pi board with i.MX 8M quad-core A53 processor with a speed of 1.3GHz.
Software DSP solution for audio processing.
Supports 2-mic array.
Linux BSP and firmware.
Cost-effective hands-free voice interaction with technology to detect and cancel noise from all directions.
It comes with certain security features such as tamper detection and secure boot.
AVS Device SDK.
Memory: 1GB LPDDR4
Power Input: 5V DC
Storage: 8GB eMMC
Temperature: 0° C to 60° C
M4 architecture
First 2-mic development kit that achieves Far-Field performance.
First non-Amazon development kit that uses the Amazon Wake Word Engine (WWE) tuned to Alexa.

The Kit comes with the following:

PICO-PI-IMX8M including development baseboard + System-on-Module (SOM)
TechNexion Voice Hat 2-Mic Development Kit for Amazon AVS
Pair of speakers (included in the Voice Hat 2-Mic Kit)
External Wi-Fi antenna
Pin extenders
USB Type-C and Micro-USB cables
Standoffs for assembly

The development kit is available for purchase, it costs $219 and can be purchased here.

Security Module for Raspberry Pi

Posted on 26 October, 201826 October, 2018 by mixos

Raspberry Pi is no longer just the purview of educational establishments and hobbyists; Pis of all flavors, and in particular Raspberry, have graduated to commercial applications with millions deployed in the field and many more in the pipeline. This growth should be no surprise given the generation of coders who are growing up on Pi and the accessibility enabled by a low price, expansive ecosystem and robust supply chain. Expect more Pis to show up in thin clients, digital signage, kiosks and more!

A higher standard of security is expected

Pi developers is that they are increasingly being held to a high standard of security by customer CISOs who care about penetration of their networks and by their company CEOs who care about protecting the intellectual property that sits on the removeable SD card. At a recent meeting with an executive of a public company who uses Raspberry Pi (yes they do) we were asked the question

So what specifically is worth securing on our Pi?

This was a serious question on her part, motivated by a proactive strategy of protecting her company’s digital assets and her customers’ infrastructure. The answers we discussed are the motivation for this post.

Features

Multifactor Device ID & Authentication
Data Encryption & Signing
Key Storage & Generation
Physical Tamper Detection
Secure Element Root of Trust

They have two models of the I2C security module: Zymkey 4i going for $43 and available now, and if you need support for blockchain technology, Zymkey 5i can be pre-ordered for $47 with 32 unique key slots, and support for secp256K1 curves. The 5i model is expected to ship on September 15 onwards. The USB stick version appears to be an earlier product, and I could not find it for sale right now.

more info: www.zymbit.com

Highly integrated gateway module speeds LoRa deployments

Posted on 26 October, 201826 October, 2018 by mixos

The release of the LBAA0ZZ1QM (US) & LBAA0ZZ1TY (EU) LoRa Pico Gateway 14-pin metal-shielded module has been announced by Murata. Supporting eight channels and available in two variants for use in either EU or US ISM bands, this ultra compact module measures just 55.0×21.0x3.4mm.

Designed as a single substrate low cost module that can enable the fast provision of low data rate LoRa radio links, the module comprises a Semtech SX1308 transceiver concentrator capable of managing packets from many remotely dispersed end-points, two Semtech SX1257 highly integrated RF front end I/Q transceivers and an STMicroElectronics STM32F401 Arm Cortex M4 microcontroller. A Skyworks RF front-end multi-chip module provides antenna matching, receiver pre-amplifier and transmitter final stage function.

The microcontroller hosts packet forwarding, communication with the application host controller and the module’s power management functions. The packet forwarder handles the two-way communication of packets between an end-point and the network server while the host driver provisions a USB CDC virtual port to communication with the host gateway application processor.

Alternatively, if desired, the module’s UART port can be used for communication with the gateway’s host. The microcontroller firmware also takes care of the power management, in particular when using a USB port, by limiting downlink power consumption to within the 500mA maximum power budget.

The LoRa network provides a low cost long-range communication infrastructure to communication with thousands of end-points. Example deployments include utility meter reading, smart agriculture and industrial IoT applications. Ensuring reliable communication across metropolitan or rural areas is essential and gateways such as the Murata LBAA0ZZ1 play a part in maintaining network links.

This module is a significant step, ready to accelerate the growth of LoRaWAN use cases requiring widespread deployment of picocells, such as smart building applications,

said Actility CEO Oliver Hersent.

We are working with Murata to ensure out of the box compatibility with our market-leading ThingPark IoT network management platform, so our customers can benefit from the most cost-effective picocell gateways. This will be particularly valuable for integrators of ThingPark Enterprise targeting in-building and in-factory solutions.

Wienke Giezeman, founder and CEO of The Things Network, commented:

Murata understands the future of LoRaWAN very well by providing an easy way for any router, set top box and base station makers to offer LoRaWAN in their products in a very easy way. We are very happy to partner with them to bring the complete solution to the market.

Domenico Arpaia, CEO of OrbiWise, added:

With its new LBAA0ZZ1 series LoRa Pico Gateway module, Murata is greatly simplifying the development of new LoRaWAN gateways, which is a crucial contribution to our ecosystem as LoRaWAN becomes widespread in the most diverse applications.

We have long cooperated with the Murata Team: OrbiWAN, our Carrier-grade LoraWAN Network Server, which already supports all commercial LoRaWAN gateways, now also supports natively Murata’s new gateway module. We are confident that, with Murata’s competence and resources and our own help, their new gateway module will quickly become the solution of choice for many new gateways in the rapidly growing LoRa market.

more info: www.murata.com

Extended battery life in portable devices with new low Iq LDO

Posted on 26 October, 201826 October, 2018 by mixos

Extending battery life in portable devices up to four times longer than traditional ultra-low quiescent (Iq) LDOs, Microchip has announced a linear Low Dropout (LDO) regulator.

With an ultra-low Iq of 250nA versus the approximate 1uA operation of traditional devices, the MCP1811 LDO reduces quiescent current to save battery life, enabling end-users to recharge or replace batteries less often. The minimised power consumption enables portable electronic devices to run for months or even years on a single battery.
Well suited for IoT and battery-operated applications such as wearables, remotes and hearing aids, the 250nA ultra-low Iq reduces power consumption in applications by minimising standby or shutdown current.

Reducing standby power consumption is critical in remote, battery-powered sensor nodes, where battery replacement is difficult and operating life requirements are high.

Available in package options as small as 1x1mm, the MCP1811 consumes minimal board space to meet the needs of today’s compact portable electronic designs. Depending on the application and number of LDOs, designers can take advantage of the extra board space with a larger battery to further increase battery life.

An additional benefit offered by the MCP1811 is faster load line and transient response when compared to other ultra-low Iq LDOs. Faster response times can accelerate wake-up speed in devices such as monitors or sensors that require immediate attention.

Faster transient response can help designers to avoid undervoltage and overvoltage lockout measures used in sensitive applications where transient spikes can result it catastrophic results.

Features

Ultra-Low Quiescent Current: 250 nA (typical)
Ultra-Low Shutdown Supply Current: 10 nA typ (MCP1811A) and 5 nA typ (MCP1811B)
Input Voltage Range: 1.8V to 5.5V
Standard Output Voltages: 1.0V, 1.2V, 1.8V, 2.0V, 2.5V, 2.8V, 3.0V, 3.3V and 4.0V
Low Dropout Voltage: 400 mV (typical) w/ Small Variation Over Load Range
Stable with Ceramic Output Capacitor: 1.0 uF
Overcurrent Protection w/ Foldback
Output Discharge (MCP1811A)
Available in 3 and 5 lead SOT-23, 3 and 5 lead SC70, 4 lead 1x1mm UDFN

more info: www.microchip.com