Category: Sensors

$10 Cypress PSoC ARM Cortex-M3 Programmable System-on-Chip


Cypress makes programmable system-on-chip solutions used in a wide range of applications, from consumer and automotive to industrial and military products. They are launching the $10 CY8KIT-059 development board to program their ARM Cortex-M3 PSoC 5LP at http://www.cypress.com/?rid=108038 The Cypress PSoC platform includes several families of devices that feature an ARM Cortex processor surrounded by a host of programmable analog and digital resources that can easily be customized with a simple drag-and-drop design tool called PSoC Creator. Cypress’s newest PSoC innovation includes the PSoC 4 M-Series, which, with its 32-bit ARM Cortex M0- core, 128KB of flash, programmable analog and digital components, dual CAN interfaces and 55 GPIOs, make it an ideal replacement for standard 8-bit and 16-bit applications. Another recent Cypress innovation is the Cypress PSoC 4 BLE, which adds Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity to any device, and is ideal for a variety of wireless applications from fitness and health-monitoring wearables to sensor-based systems in homes.

Atmel | SMART SAM S70 and E70 ARM Cortex-M7 (World’s fastest ARM Cortex-M)


The Atmel | SMART SAM S70 and E70 microcontrollers are based on the high-performance 32-bit ARM Cortex-M7 RISC processors with double precision floating point unit. They operate at a maximum speed of 300MHz and feature up to 2048KB of Flash, dual 16KB of cache memory and up to 384KB of SRAM. They can achieve 1500 CoreMarks or up to 645 DMIPS. On the memory side, they have a flexible SRAM which can be configured as Tightly Coupled Memory (TCM) up to 256KB. Allowing execution of deterministic code or fast processing data. Code executed from TCM is executed at full speed so at 300MHz. The SRAM is multi-port which is reducing the latency over the bus matrix. When they have a lot of burst the latency can be reduced by 16 thanks to the 4 ports. To accelerate the execution of the code from on-chip Flash or nonvolatile memory connected to QuadSPI or over the External Bus Interface, they have integrated a huge L1 cache of 16kByte for the instruction and 16kByte for the data. Both with ECC. The 384KByte of SRAM can be extended through the SDRAM interface. Looking at the features now, they have plenty of serial communications such as SPI, SDIO or USART. Atmel has one High-speed USB Host and Device, with integrated PHY which obviously save some cost and PCB space. There is one CMOS Camera interface for image acquisition. All the series offer two Advanced Analog Frontend (AFE) with Dual Sample and hold capability and Up to 16-bit resolution with hardware oversampling. They also have programmable Gain for small signal input. All series offer real-time event management through direct connection between PWM, Timer and ADC for motor control application. Both series are based on the same feature set, the only difference is coming from the Ethernet, CAN support (SAME70 integrates Ethernet and CAN). Atmel offers all series in BGA and QFP from 64 to 144 pins. Small 64-pin pincount option offers an entry level form factor high performance MCU. All series support the extended Industrial temperature range from -40 to 105°C.

Atmel QTouch Surface Platform, Eirik Slettahjell

Posted by – March 9, 2015

World’s lowest power capacitive touch, the new Atmel QTouch Surface platform builds on the market-proven QTouch capacitive touch button sensing technology supported by Atmel | SMART MCUs. The new solution includes an on-chip peripheral touch controller (PTC), the cornerstone technology that enables higher performance capacitive touch on Atmel MCUs. Consuming less than 4µA, the QTouch Surface technology is perfect for wearables and other battery-powered applications that require a capacitive touch user interface.

Google Project Ara development boards at Linaro Connect, Greybus status with Greg Kroah-Hartman


Greg Kroah-Hartman shows the Google Project Ara prototype phone and development board, and he talks about Greybus the protocol that they are developing to make it possible for these hardware modules that must be able to talk to each other and to the host module, they can be hot swappable, they have to be able to describe themselves so everything just works smoothly, they work on the knowledge that they have from USB, PCI, Firewire and all the previous protocols that people have implemented, they work on the base level of what UniPro can do, and they go from there. This is just another sub-system of Linux that drivers plug into. Rob Herring is the project tech lead at Linaro for Project Ara, and he talks about how the Linaro guys are working on the Kernel portions, the ARM Applications Processor modules and the Android modifications to support hardware modules hotplug in a Smartphone.

ARM mbed OS platform for Internet of Things

Posted by – January 28, 2015

ARM talks sensors to servers demonstrations, ways to implement Internet of Things, using the mbed development boards with Arduino headers, the Arduino Shield with a low-power WiFi, doing custom sensor modules with temperature, microphone, ultra-sonic and motion sensors, stacking them up to do sensor nodes, then putting them around the booth to show a dashboard of things happening at the booth hosted on an AppliedMicro X-Gene server.

Interview with Guillaume, analyst at IDTechEx

Posted by – November 18, 2014

Guillaume Chansin (@GChansin) is one of the analysts from IDTechEx. We meet him in Santa Clara where the company is holding their annual US event. We talk about what we will see during the conference and why printed electronics can help make better wearable devices. He also explains printed sensors, flexible displays, and why we will not see flexible LCD anytime soon.

The IDTechEx event on emerging technologies starts tomorrow


IDTechEx brings the business and technology communities on key future technologies together at the Santa Clara Convention Center, in California. Their event is focused on some of the most important and most exciting emerging technologies of the future with focus on 3D Printing, Internet of Things, Printed Electronics, Wearable Technologies, Graphene and Supercapacitors. To attract at least 2,500 attendees and more than 200 exhibitors. Hear from the IDTechEx team a day before the conference kicks off. Find out more about the IDTechEx events at: http://www.idtechex.com/events/

Murata Cheerleader Robots on inverted pendulum showcase sensors

Posted by – October 11, 2014

Self-balancing on a ball by inverted pendulum, they dance synchronized, using sensors, cameras and perfect precision in the remote coordination, they demonstrate some of Murata’s sensor components and innovation ability. You can watch the rest of the video to see some of Murata’s sensors, energy harvesting demonstrations and more.

Moff band, wearable smart toy

Posted by – October 10, 2014

Slap it onto your wrist, and your movements turn into sounds through bluetooth to your smartphone/tablet. Successful on Kickstarter, it has over 30 sounds on the app thus far, you can play air drums, you can sword fight, you can shoot, you can throw ninja weapons or make some magic in the air.

Udar Electronic Instrument

Posted by – October 10, 2014

The Udar Instrument is an invention by Michinobu UDA, the instrument has 400 sensors in a spiral providing several octaves of notes per hand.

Linxee Wireless Smart Home Solutions

Posted by – October 8, 2014

Linxee Wireless shows their intelligent LED light bulbs based on WiFi and ZigBee technology, to remote control the lights and colors with any Tablet or Smartphone. They also show their Smart Power Outlet, Smart Smoke detector, Smart IR blaster (to control TV/etc), Smart Gas detector, Smart Motion detector, Smart Door/Window Magnetic Sensor (detects if opened/closed), Smart Security camera, Smart Temperature sensor, Smart curtain control and more.

Novasentis actuators enable lifelike keyboards and devices

Posted by – October 6, 2014

I met Novasentis in the Silicon Valley, they showed me their ultra thin keyboard powered by their actuators with actual haptic feedback, and its not just sensory but also audible and they can customize both the feeling and the sounds. They refer to their space as the Neo-Sensory Age and they are leading the market in creating actuators that are a fraction of the size of todays incumbent devices. I picked up one of their actual devices, it was thin like paper, weightless, yet the performance was very good because they are not vibrating the entire keyboard or the entire phone, they can localize the vibrations which makes for a better human interface. The products are made from Electro-mechanical Polymer (EMP) technology. This material is comprised of randomly aligned molecules that align in one direction and elongate when electricity is applied. When the EMP material is bonded to a substrate/keyboard, the result is an actuator which provides high definition haptics, audio, or physical morphing feedback yet thinner than a human hair. Novasentis is focused on providing ultra-thin haptic keyboards for the consumer electronics space, but is a platform technology with a variety of innovative uses in industries including mobile devices, wearable, automotive and medical industries. The material is thin, light, flexible and can be the leading contender in the future as major OEMs launch flexible and wearable devices.

Netatmo June bracelet adds fashion touch to sun exposure monitoring

Posted by – April 9, 2014

Created in 2011, Netatmo is an innovation company developing consumer electronics for a better and connected lifestyle. Netatmo carefully designs their products mechanics, electronics and embedded software. Netatmo is basically concentrated in working with wearables related with skin care and sun exposure monitoring.

JUNE is the first fashion bracelet that measures sun exposure. It advises the user how to protect their skin on a daily basis from the effects of the sun. Sun exposure can cause sunburn and lead to premature skin aging, even on overcast days. JUNE and its companion App offer a new serenity in the sun.

Aimed at women, JUNE comprises a jewel containing UV sensors that can be worn as a bracelet or a brooch. It connects wirelessly with the user’s smartphone with the companion app monitoring the user’s habits and UV exposure to provide tailored sun-care information and notifications of when to apply sunblock, wear a hat or put on sunglasses.

The June bracelet will be available for purchase with a price tag of $99.

Freescale Freedom Board Sensor Fusion Development Platform

Posted by – April 8, 2014

The Freescale Freedom development platform is a small, low-power, cost-effective evaluation and development system perfect for quick application prototyping and demonstration of Kinetis MCU families. The platform offers an easy-to-use mass-storage device mode flash programmer, a virtual serial port and classic programming and run-control capabilities.

The model of the board in this video is FRDM-KL25Z. FRDM-KL25Z is an ultra-low-cost development platform for Kinetis L Series KL1x (KL14/15) and KL2x (KL24/25) MCUs built on ARM Cortex M0+ processor. Features include easy access to MCU I/O, battery-ready, low-power operation, a standard-based form factor with expansion board options and a built-in debug interface for flash programming and run-control. The FRDM-KL25Z is supported by a range of Freescale and third-party development software.

ARM Cortex-M for Wearables and IoT

Posted by – March 16, 2014

ARM Cortex-M Marketing Manager Diya Soubra talks Wearables and Internet of Things using ARM Cortex-M processor family. The ARM Cortex-M is a group of 32-bit ARM processor cores intended for microcontroller use, consists of the Cortex-M0, Cortex-M0+, Cortex-M1, Cortex-M3, Cortex-M4. The ARM Cortex-M processor family is an upwards compatible range of energy-efficient, easy to use processors designed to help developers meet the needs of tomorrow’s embedded applications. Those demands include delivering more features at a lower cost, increasing connectivity, better code reuse and improved energy efficiency. The Cortex-M family is optimized for cost and power sensitive MCU and mixed-signal devices for end applications such as smart metering, human interface devices, automotive and industrial control systems, white goods, consumer products and medical instrumentation. ARM Cortex-M processors is a global microcontroller standard, having been licensed to over 40 ARM partners including leading vendors such as Freescale, NXP Semiconductors, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba. Using a standard processor allows ARM partners to create devices with a consistent architecture while enabling them to focus on creating superior device implementations.

G-ONE Ripple Light

Posted by – March 15, 2014

G-ONE makes ripple light which is a radio frequency controlled LED lighting system. G-ONE Inc is a Japanese company. The lighting system can be controlled through a mobile device such as an Android device. The protoypes have AAA batteries and the final version will have built in batteries with a battery life of 6 hours and potentially being rechargeable.

Dialog Semiconductor shows Bluetooth Low Energy, LED lighting, Mutli-touch pressure sensitive displays and Audio Beam forming

Posted by – March 3, 2014

Dialog Semiconductor is to most known as a company doing Power management for portable devices, but at MWC 2014 Dialog shows they do some other products:
· DA14580 Bluetooth Low Energy
· iW6401 dimmable LED light
· DA8901 Multi-touch IC
· DA7322 Audio beam former
The demo’s show some easy to understand applications.

NXP Environmental Mobile Sensor Platform demo

Posted by – March 1, 2014

Stefan Crijns demonstrates how NXP’s Mobile Sensor Platform allows mobile users to intelligently measure the temperature and humidity of the environment around them.

UNEO shows ultra thin keyboard and stylus pen technology

Posted by – January 14, 2014

Taiwanese UNEO shows their ultra thin keyboard sensor and pen stylus technology.

Lapka Breathalyzer and PEM, Geiger, EMF, Organic and Temperature/Humidity Sensors

Posted by – December 31, 2013

Lapka releases this new Breathalyzer for iOS and Android, they also have their Lapka personal environment monitor PEM kit, that connects to your Android/iOS phone to measure, collect data and analyze your surroundings. Lapka’s PEM kit features 1 Geiger counter (measure radiation around you), 1 EMF (High Frequency and Low Frequency electromagnetic fields) sensor, 1 Organic sensor (nitrate measurement in fruits and vegetables) and 1 temperature/humidity sensor.