Tech Articles

Capacitive touch has found a spectrum of application domains. From portable consumer products including mobile phones and PDAs, automotive, kitchen appliances, medical to industrial and commercial sensing, the intuitive capacitive touch based solution has made its mark as a preferred human-machine interface. The robust and reliable capacitive touch solution replaces conventional resistive sliders, mechanical buttons and rotary controls.

In the first half of 2010, Mouser had already far exceeded its entire 2009 European sales turnover and achieved a growth of 225% over the same period in 2009. This is not a reflection on poor 2009 performance since last year was also a record year for the company at more than doubling the business in a market recession.. This year, Mouser expects to achieve sales figures in Europe in excess of $70M. With just under 40% of the company’s worldwide sales now outside of the USA, the company is developing product policies in line with this expansion, and is now bringing more European-focussed parts to its customer base. However the company’s prime focus is global – to have available the “newest parts for the newest designs”.

GSM modules are increasingly being integrated into different types of devices, demonstrating that having a wireless communication functionality is essential not only for consumer items such as computers, modems and PDAs, but also for industrial and automotive applications. GSM protocol requires specific current pulses, but if the capacitance and ESR of the system are not carefully designed, the voltage drop caused by the current load can result in the GSM module resetting itself.

More than 40 years after first being introduced, and despite competition from programmable and system-on-chip devices, demand remains for 74-series logic devices. These often provide an efficient and cost-effective solution to challenges such as interfacing to displays, driving signals across boards or backplanes, and performing numerous bit-manipulation, signal masking, chip-enable and similar functions.

There are four models in the Aeroflex 3250 Series range of spectrum analyzers available in the frequency ranges from 9 kHz to 3 GHz, 8 GHz, 13.2 GHz and 26.5 GHz. The frequency range covers everything from radar and satellite, wireless and cellular, UHF, VHF and HF, right down to 9 kHz for EMC requirements. The digital IF processing stage provides resolution bandwidth digital filters from 5 MHz down to 1 Hz, providing a filter bandwidth to suit most measurement requirements. With an SSB phase noise at 1 GHz of –115 dBc/Hz, 10 kHz offset, a low noise local oscillator provides the high performance required for testing of quality oscillators and transmitters. Such performance supports a phase noise measurement mode, which allows the user to plot the phase noise profile of an applied signal at offsets from 10 Hz to 1 GHz.

The availability of high quality and flexible manufacturing subcontract services is increasingly important in an era when outsourcing and vendor reduction are essential parts of modern, efficient and streamlined production processes. To meet this demand Quadrant Connections, a company renowned for manufacturing and distribution of high quality cable assemblies and components, has increased its capacity to supply expert subcontract services by setting up a new manufacturing company in Slovakia.

LED lighting is today’s big thing, and deservedly so. High Brightness LED manufacturers have successfully increased the luminous flux from successive generations of devices to levels now sufficient to allow a wide range of applications and markets to benefit from the many practical advantages of solid-state lighting. The high efficiency of today’s power LEDs, in terms of lumens per Watt, is a major attraction, particularly for home owners and businesses looking to control their carbon emissions as well as spiralling utility bills. There are, however, many further exciting aspects to this lighting revolution; advantages such as smaller dimensions, lower operating voltages, longer lifetimes, opportunities for processor-controlled lighting effects, and surface-mount package technology of power LEDs promise to change the way lamps and lighting are designed and used.

Building on the long running success of its NPC range of batteries, Yuasa has recently introduced a new range of cyclic VRLA batteries. The new TEV range has excellent cyclic ability coupled with an added advantage of higher capacity. Here, Matt Jordan, Technical Services Manager at Yuasa Battery Sales (UK) Ltd, gives a brief overview of these new batteries and how they differ from conventional float/standby batteries. Cyclic batteries are specially designed for use in applications where the battery is repeatedly charged and discharged. Typical applications include portable equipment, golf trolleys, wheelchairs and mobility scooters and radio controlled toys etc.

An important trend in power management, often overlooked, is standby power minimization in consumer products, appliances, portable electronics, and computer systems. It may be thought that the standby power consumption of electronic equipment is trivial compared with active power consumption; however, this is far from the truth. Several studies have shown the total energy consumed by electronic equipment and their power adapters while in standby or under no-load is very significant.

Embedded systems designers have long looked to FPGAs as technology that could transform their designs and liberate their design methodology. But the brass ring always appeared just out of the designer’s reach. Since the early years of embedded processor design and FPGA design, both silicon advancement and design techniques for each have evolved independently—two very distinct design flows, styles, and engineering disciplines. FPGA vendors have approached the problem by consistently adding more features and functions to their architectures, to give embedded designers a greater utility to the FPGA’s already renowned flexibility.

System requirements force design engineers to push as much computer processing power as can possibly fit into board level solutions. Increased computing power, speed and functionality are demanded in smaller packages that ideally consume less power and weight. To accomplish this, designers must select powerful ASICs, use miniature periphery components and follow aggressive system packaging requirements.

While circular connectors have long been utilized in the harsh environments of off-road vehicles and industrial equipment, certain applications in these markets have limited space, such as narrow power-train compartments. Similarly, sensors for engine, transmission, and suspension systems are too space-constrained to employ traditional-sized connectors. Not only must the circular connectors be miniature in size, they must also be sealed to IP69K specifications to protect against fluid and designed to withstand the intense shock and vibration conditions experienced in these environments.

Customizable processor cores first hit the market in the late 1990s, and since then many improvements have been made in the way these processors can be customized. Much of the process now is highly automated to speed up the process and guarantee that the processor core can’t be broken during the customization process. So why should you consider customizing a processor core instead of using one “off the shelf”?

Training and exercise equipment is a highly fashion conscious industry, and even POWERbreathe, a respiratory exercise system design recognised by the Design Council in 2001, needed to evolve to meet the needs and expectations of its users. Manufacturers HaB International recognised the need to offer users new levels of information, control and usability, which entailed adding electronics. At the same time, they recognised that the equipment will end up in a corner gathering dust if the batteries don’t last. Electronic product design specialists ML Electronics were given the challenge of creating an electronic design that met users’ expectations fully, but could comfortably run from rechargeable NiMH AAA batteries – including driving a 12V stepper motor.

The rapidly growing market for implantable medical devices is estimated at over £25 billion is on the verge of revolutionising healthcare treatment and disease prevention by becoming interactive in nature collecting data from the body and transmitting it directly to the physician’s phone or PC. With medical devices becoming such a prominent part of our future health care system, the reliable transmission of current via an electrical connector is a vital component to guarantee the device’s reliability, often life critical. For this reason, Hypertronics Corp, the business unit of Hypertac Group in North America manufacturing ultra reliable medical connectors for 40 years, has developed ImplantTac® contacts for use in pacemakers, neurostimulators and defibrillators as well as for more recent applications in implantable devices such as orthopaedic, visual and sensory aids, implantable patient ID and active monitoring systems (see Figure 1). This article will discuss some of the foremost medical device advancements and outline the nature of how ImplanTac® was designed to meet the critical needs of interconnect systems in medical devices.

Clocks provide the electronic heartbeat for a diverse variety of consumer electronics, communications and computing applications. These timing components provide critical reference frequencies to processors, FPGAs, ASICs, DSPs, ADCs, DACs, memory and physical layer devices. The combination of frequencies required in a given application can change dramatically based on component selection of the other ICs in the system, since each processor, FPGA, etc. can have unique frequency requirements. In addition, timing requirements can vary considerably from application to application based on performance, processing and line rate requirements.

The home is generally considered a benign environment for electronic systems, but the kitchen is an area of the domestic scene that can be particularly challenging. Cooking not only involves heating, but often releases steam and condensing water vapor. A power supply for the electronic controls in a cook-top must perform reliably at an ambient temperature of up to 105°C and under high-humidity conditions. In addition to meeting international standards for EMI and safety, the power supply must contribute to increasingly tough energy-saving goals.

Low or high tyre pressure adversely affects the contact between tyre and road surface, therefore to ensure automobile safety it is vital that the correct air pressure is maintained at all times in all tyres. However, tyre pressure is affected by many factors including ambient temperature, the tightness of air valves, how snug the tyre fits to the wheel rim or hidden defects. The problem of fluctuating ambient temperature has a simple solution: tyres can be filled with nitrogen, which has less affected by temperature changes than air, thus the pressure remains more stable. However, the other factors listed always exist and result in low tyre pressure, which often goes unnoticed by drivers because the effect is slow and gradual. It is not only adhesion between tyre and road surface which is adversely affected. Rolling resistance also increases leading to greater increasing of fuel consumption and more CO2 emissions.

Electromechanical switch and relay demand is recovering as the wider electronics industry recovers, but there is no doubt that customer needs have changed. In medical, remote energy monitoring, security and to an extent HVAC and white goods, the requirement tends to be for a solution that offers a very specific performance within a tight size and cost envelope. A standard catalogue of quality parts is no longer enough to secure the sale. The 2010 relay customer is looking for products adapted to his specific niche or application, then further customised to suit his needs.

The trend in miniaturisation of electronic equipment continues coupled with demand for greater functionality, making devices in turn increasingly vulnerable to electrical interference. As electronic equipment increases in complexity and features, so the processing speed of ICs is becoming faster and number of gates used is increasing significantly. Consequently, power supply circuits supplying power to those devices are gaining in importance. When power supplied to a rapidly switching device is unstable, its operation may also become unstable. This is becoming increasingly evident with semiconductor devices operating under lower voltage. For this reason, stable power supply has become a key issue.