http://www.epn-online.com/enCopyright 2007 - Reed Business InformationThu, 11 Mar 2010 00:17:17 +0100Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:17:17 +0100EPN Onlinelchevalier@reedbusiness.frlchevalier@reedbusiness.frhttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rsshttp://www.epn-online.com/page/new134579/smallest-slide-switch-is-low-profile-for-mobile-device-use.htmlnew134579ALPS Electric has developed the SSAJ series of 0.7mm high slide switches for use in compact devices including mobile phones, digital cameras and compact music players which, as they become slimmer, require smaller, thin and compact slide switches placed on the side of the device. The slide switch measures 5.5x2.5x0.7mm, which is a 36% reduction in volume to decrease the space required on a circuit board compared with the company's conventional SSAD products. Moreover, this slide switch supports lead-free soldering. For durability, the operational knob on the slide switch is reinforced by a metal plate inserted inside its plastic body. For tactile feedback, there is a plate spring which realises an operating force of 1.5N.Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100http://www.epn-online.com/page/new134485/free-half-day-seminars-for-dc-dc-regulator-use-venues-around-europe.htmlnew134485Linear Technology has announced a series of free half-day seminars on the use of its family of high performance DC/DC µModule regulators. The seminars run from now to the end of May. The company describes the seminars has structured to help designers solve their power design challenges with the regulators. The programme began in Germany and there are two remaining seminars there - in Berlin, Tuesday 9 March and Jena, Wednesday 10 March. In France there will be a series of seven seminars: Paris, Tuesday 16 March; Rennes Thursday 18 March; Strasbourg Tuesday 23 March; Lyon Thursday 25 March; Nice Tuesday 30 March and Toulouse Wednesday 7 April. In the UK, there will be eight seminars spanning March and April. The first will be held in Bristol, Thursday 16 March and followed by ones in Southampton Thursday 18 March; Belfast, Northern Ireland, Thursday 25 March; Bedford, Tuesday 13 April; Reading, Wednesday 14 April; Coventry, Thursday 15 April; Cambridge, 27 April and Manchester Tuesday 29 April.There is a single seminar in Cork, Ireland on Tuesday 23 March.Barcelona, Spain will host a seminar on Tuesday 13 April.In Italy, there are six seminars to take place in May. They will be held in Torino, Wednesday 12 May; Milan, Thursday 13 May; Padova, Wednesday 19 May; Bologna, Thursday 20 May; Florence, Wednesday 26 May and Rome, Thursday 27 May.Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100http://www.epn-online.com/page/new134375/flash-mixed-signal-fpgas-blends-cortex-m3-core-with-programmable-analogue-blocks.htmlnew134375Actel has released SmartFusion, claimed to be the world's first intelligent mixed-signal FPGA. The devices feature the company's FPGA fabric, a microcontroller sub-system built around a hard ARM Cortex-M3 processor, with its access to ARM partners' tools, software and middleware; and programmable analogue blocks on a flash process. The processor runs at 100MHz and has a multi-layer AHB communications matrix with up to 16Gbit/s throughput and a 10/100 Ethernet MAC with RMII. There are two SPI, two I2C, two UARTs, and two 32bit timers as well as up to 512kbyte flash memory and 64kbyte SRAM and an external memory controller. There is also an eight-channel DMA controller. The proprietary analogue compute engine performas sample sequencing and computation which offloads the processor from analogue initialisation and processing. The ADCs and DACs have 1% accuracy and there are up to three 12bit ADCs available with up to 600ksample/s. There are up to three 12bit first order signma delta DACs and up to 10 50ns comparators. There are also multiple, integrated temperature, voltage and current monitors. The devices are based on the company's ProASIC architecture on a 130nm CMOS process and deliver 350MHz performance and up to 204 I/Os to reduce board space and power consumption of the overall system. There are three devices, the 200k-gate A2F200 is available now. The AF500, 500k-gate device will be available in Q2 and A2F060, 60k-gate device is scheduled for the second half of the year. The devices are supported by Libero IDE v9.0 which includes synthesis, simulation and debug tools as well as SoftConsole Eclipse-based IDE with GNU and evaluation versions of Keil and IAR System.Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100http://www.epn-online.com/page/new134360/application-design-platform-model-expands-into-northern-europe-uk-and-baltic-region.htmlnew134360Arrow Electronics has announced the roll-out of its Embedded Platform Concept to customers in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, the UK and the Baltic countries. The concept allows developers to create application-optimised designs, reducing embedded system development time and cost. In addition to conventional reference designs and traditional starter kits, the programme allows designers to combine various hardware, software and service modules according to specific application needs. The programme is built around hardware modules that feature semiconductor, passive, electromechanical and interconnect technologies from the company's linecard; software and IP blocks developed by the company and selected partner organisations; and dedicated services including design-in and engineering support and access to documentation, seminars and workshops. Applications are built by combining a baseboard fitted with common standard interfaces and processor modules, DC/DC boards and other modules from display adapters and memory to extension boards for specific applications such as LED lighting, industrial Fieldbus connectivity and wireless functionality. There is support for identification and selection of analogue devices and programmable logic devices. There is also access to technical consultation, design and engineering support, performance tests, simulations, programming and prototype creation. Semiconductor suppliers engaged with the programme are Analog Devices, Atmel, Fairchild Semiconductor, Freescale Semiconductor, Intel, International Rectifier, National Semiconductor, NXP, ON Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Toshiba. Bourns, EPCOS, Panasonic, Samtec and Tyco are also involved.Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100http://www.epn-online.com/page/new134378/intelligent-display-compact-model-needs-no-programming-language.htmlnew134378A 2.8inch LCD from Demmel has been added to the company's range of intelligent LCDs. The colour display can significantly reduce development costs for price-sensitive applications, says the company, as well as shorten time to market. The compact 240x320 pixel display has a touchscreen which can be operated in both portrait and landscape mode. All panels in the company's iLCD panel range can store any Windows font, static and animated graphics, text messages and macros in the controller's flash memory. The panels offer USB, RS232, I²C and SPI interfaces and can be controlled with an inexpensive microcontroller. If necessary, panels of different sizes can be swapped without having to modify either the hardware or software of the controlling application. On larger displays, the controller's 32Mbyte flash memory can be extended via an on-board micro SD card holder. A battery-backed, real-time clock, interface options for a keyboard matrix, relays and signal transmitters as well as additional digital and analogue inputs and outputs are also included.Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100http://www.epn-online.com/page/new134356/programmable-dual-usb-2-0-soc-host-slave-inclusion-lowers-component-count-and-costs.htmlnew134356Future Technology Devices International has launched the Vinculum VNC2 user programmable dual USB 2.0 host/slave intelligent SoC controller. The progression from the company's VNC1L introduces the capability for designers to develop their own application firmware and programme the host controller. The controller is supplied with a royalty-free software development environment. The integrated design environment includes a compiler, linker and debugger to use the increased memory and multitude of communication protocols. The software developed toolkit is based on the ‘C' language and provides a suite of object files to provide support for USB host functionality including USB flash drive storage, HID, USB Comms class and FAT file functionality. There is a customised 16bit MCU core, 256kbyte on chip programmable e-flash program memory and 16kbyte of SRAM data memory. The IO communication capability has been enhanced to include two SPI slave controllers, one SPI master controller, one high speed UART interface plus a flexible eight channel PWM block allowing precise 16bit control of motors, servos and other analogue application areas. The one-pin debugger interface functions independently of the MCU core and provides a debugging / device programming interface. There are three pin-count sizes, the 32LD, 48LD and 64LD supporting up to 44 user defined IO pins. Each pin-count size is available in LQFP or the compact QFN package option. The 48LD LQFP version, offers a close-fit equivalent pin-out to the current controller for easy system upgrades. The controller operates from a 3.3V DC supply and has a low standby current of typically 128µA and also has three low power modes.Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100http://www.epn-online.com/page/new134351/32bit-micrcontroller-with-enhanced-timer-allows-miniaturisation-for-motor-and-inverter-control-systems.htmlnew134351Renesas Technology Europe has released the RX62T, the third family of RX microcontrollers. The next generation of devices integrate the functions of the company's existing 16- and 32bit products. There are 40 products microcontrollers for applications such as air conditioners, washing machines, solar inverter solutions and lighting control with a multifunction timer pulse unit 3, which can drive up to two three-phase motors. They integrate a 16bit general-purpose PWM timer that can drive a single three-phase motor. As a result, the microcontrollers can drive up to three three-phase motors at the same time with a single chip. The timer uses the same clock at 100MHz, which is the CPU's maximum operating frequency. As a result it is able to achieve a range of width measurements for PWM output waveforms with a 10ns resolution. The devices also feature two 12bit ADC units and one 10bit ADC, and can capture analogue input values from up to 20 channels at a minimum conversion time of 1µs. The two 12bit ADCs can be used for sensorless vector control methods, like three-shunt or single-shunt current detection. As each of the ADCs can be triggered by timer units and sample three phases in parallel, an independent motor control for two separate motors can be applied. For vector control algorithms, which require fractional calculations, the microcontrollers support a single precision floating point unit. A scalable memory from 64k to 256kbyte flash with up to 16kbyte RAM embedded is available as well as independent 8kbyte of data flash memory with a background operation function that enables data to be written at the same time a program is executing. The microcontrollers are available in 64-, 80-, 100 and 112-pin LQFPs.Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100http://www.epn-online.com/page/new134357/cyclone-iv-gx-development-kit-develops-applications-for-factory-automation.htmlnew134357EBV Elektronik presented a new board in Nuremberg, the Cyclone IV GX development kit which is targeted at low-cost, high volume, transceiver applications. The board is described by the distributor, part of the Avnet group, as a logical continuation of the company's Snake-Bytes reference design. The board's number of I/O pins, together with possibilities for add-on boards and the use of user specific hardware, makes it adaptable for many applications. Designers can start developments on an evaluation board and produce the first measurement results on their own application environment. The board consists of Altera's Cyclone IV FPGA and components from National Semiconductor and Samsung. It can be used for Ethernet-based Fieldbus; medical; hardware in loop simulation and I/O expansion for PCIe motherboards.Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100http://www.epn-online.com/page/new134358/low-power-microcontroller-suite-has-added-functionality-for-third-party-cad.htmlnew134358The Atmel QTouch Suite is now available with additional functionality to provide third-party CAD developers access to QTouch technology. The CAD software tools allows designers to add touch buttons, sliders and wheels during schematics, PCB layout design and prototyping stage. Designers can develop low-power applications with touch functionality using the company's AVR microcontrollers. The suite provides touch options, including buttons, sliders and wheels, which can be included early in the design stage. The module includes the QT600 development kit, QTouch Studio, AVR Studio and QTouch Library software.Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100http://www.epn-online.com/page/new134293/cortex-m3-microcontroller-5v-operation-is-for-industrial-and-home-appliances.htmlnew134293Toshiba Electronics Europe claims that the TMPM380FY is the world's first ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller to feature a single 5V supply. It combines serial connectivity and is the first in a series of devices that will reduce the component count and simplify the development of embedded designs for industrial and white goods applications, says the company. Integrated functionality includes the ability to drive motors and control IGBTs, high-accuracy ADC, and an oscillation frequency detector. The latter facilitates hardware monitoring of the CPU clock to simplify compliance with the IEC60730 Class B home appliance safety standard. There is 256kbyte of on-chip flash memory and 16kbytes of on-chip RAM. A three-channel 16bit multi-purpose timer provides a function that combines three-phase PWM control with an ADC trigger and a protection circuit. The timer can be used to deliver an externally triggered 16bit PPG output for IGBT control. Additional on-board functionality includes power-on-reset and voltage detection, an 18-channel high-accuracy 12bit ADC, a two-channel encoder input circuit, a watchdog timer and a real time clock. The encoder circuit offers a three-phase sensor input and supports rotation direction and absolute position detection. The general-purpose serial interface is configurable for either synchronous mode or up to five UARTs, while the built-in two-channel serial bus interface offers I2C or synchronous mode operation. A two-channel synchronous serial bus interface supports SPI flame, SSI flame and Microwire flame formats. The microcontroller is available in a 100-pin QFP or 100-pin LQFP package. Operating range is 4.5 to 5.5V.Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100http://www.epn-online.com/page/new132038/programmable-oscillators-operate-from-20-c-to-70-c.htmlnew132038TST TAI-SAW Technology's PCXO-3225 and PCXO-2520 series programmable oscillators offer a clock source that is suitable for many frequencies and has a very short delivery time. The programmable oscillators have an internal PLL and can generate frequencies within a range of 1 to 166MHz. They are available in 3.2 x 2.5mm and 2.5 x 2mm SMD packages also used for standard oscillators with direct frequency generation. The operating temperature ranges from -20 to +70 °C with a frequency tolerance of ±25ppm or -40 to +85°C with ±50ppm. All programmable oscillators are RoHS compliant and lead free for lead-free soldering. The PCXO series oscillators are manufactured as "blanks" and can be set at a later point in time by programming the internal PLL for the desired source frequency. This results in the capability to program small lots on short notice at MSC Vertriebs GmbH and deliver them within 48 hours. Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100