ABLIC upgrades battery-less water leak detection sensor
ABLIC Inc. upgrades its CLEAN-Boost energy-harvesting technology for the U.S. and EU markets. The battery-less drip-level water leak sensor now offers a communication range that is approximately 2× that of its predecessor and an expanded operating…
Compact DIN-rail power supplies deliver high efficiency
TDK Corp. adds a new single-phase series of DIN-rail-mount power supplies to the TDK-Lambda range of products for industrial and automation applications. The cost-effective D1SE entry-range series provides an AC and DC input and is rated for…
My 100-MHz VFC – the hardware version
“Facts are stubborn things” (John Adams, et al).
I added two 50-ohm outputs to the schematic of my published voltage-to-frequency converter (VFC) circuit (Figure 1). Then, I designed a PCB, purchased the (mostly) surface-mount components,…
Protecting precision DACs against industrial overvoltage events
In industrial applications using digital-to-analog converters (DACs), programmable logic controllers (PLCs) set an analog output voltage to control actuators, motors, and valves. PLCs can also regulate manufacturing parameters such as temperature,…
EcoFlow’s DELTA 3 Plus and Smart Extra Battery: Product line impermanence curiosity
Earlier this summer, I detailed my travails struggling with (and ultimately recovering from) buggy firmware updates I’d been “pushed” on my combo of EcoFlow’s DELTA 2 portable power station and its Smart Extra Battery supplemental capacity…
Mastering multi-physics effects in 3D IC design
The semiconductor industry is at a pivotal moment as the limits of Moore’s Law motivate a transition to three-dimensional integrated circuit (3D IC) technology. By vertically integrating multiple chiplets, 3D ICs enable advances in performance,…
Power pole collapse
Two or three days ago, as of this writing, there was a power pole collapse in Bellmore, NY, at the intersection of Bellmore Avenue and Sunrise Highway. The collapsed pole is seen in Figure 1, lying across two westbound lanes of Sunrise Highway.…
SoC delivers dual-mode Bluetooth for edge devices
Ambiq’s Apollo510D Lite SoC provides both Bluetooth Classic and BLE 5.4 connectivity, enabling always-on intelligence at the edge. It is powered by a 32-bit Arm Cortex-M55 processor running at up to 250 MHz with Helium vector processing and…
Vertical GaN advances efficiency and power density
onsemi has developed power semiconductors based on a vertical GaN (vGaN) architecture that improves efficiency, power density, and ruggedness. These GaN-on-GaN devices conduct current vertically through the semiconductor, supporting higher operating…
Reconfigurable modules ease analog design
Chameleon adaptive analog modules from Okika provide preprogrammed, ready-to-use analog functions in a compact 14×11-mm form factor. Each module employs the company’s FlexAnalog field-programmable analog array (FPAA) architecture—a reconfigurable…
CAN FD transceiver boosts space data rates
Microchip’s ATA6571RT radiation-tolerant CAN FD transceiver supports data rates to 5 Mbps for high-reliability space communications. Well-suited for satellites and spacecraft, it withstands a total ionizing dose of 50 krad(Si) and offers single-event…
System-level tool streamlines quantum design workflows
Quantum System Analysis software, part of Keysight’s Quantum EDA platform, simulates quantum architectures at the system level. It unifies electromagnetic, circuit, and quantum dynamics domains to enable early design validation in a single…
