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Adapter simulates EVs for AC charging Mode 3 for safety testing

Wed, Oct 05, 2022

For the installation and maintenance of EV charging stations, the FEV300 electric vehicle charging station adapter from Fluke is designed to simulate an EV for AC charging Mode 3 with connector types 1 and 2.

The adapter is designed to simulate an EV attached to the EV charging station and allows for the output voltage of an AC charging station Mode 3 to be safely and accurately tested in accordance with IEC/HD 60364-7-722 and IEC/EN 61851-1. 

EV charging stations are critical to reducing the charging time for vehicles, said Fluke. A typical, compact vehicle can take between 24 and 36 hours to charge from a domestic mains supply. An EV charging station provides one or three phase supply with a mains voltage at 230 or 400V, charging EVs much faster. 

For safety, communication between the charging station and the connected EV must occur before an output voltage is delivered. The FEV300 adapter can be used in the installation and mandatory routine testing of Mode 3 EV charging stations which provide accelerated charging of 3.7 to 22kW. 

Testing of EV charging stations must be performed at regular intervals. There are local safety regulations, international and European standards, including the IEC / HD 60364-6, IEC / HD 60364-7-722 and IEC / EN 61851-1, to which installation and testing must adhere. Both the safety and communication functions of an EV charging station must be accurately tested to ensure the safety and efficiency of the electric system for safe use. The tests required include continuity of conductors, insulation resistance, automatic disconnection of supply (loop impedance, RCD or RDC / DD test) and functional tests. These can all be performed using a multi-function installation tester such as the Fluke 1663 or Fluke 1664FC. 

The FEV300 adapter can also be paired with Fluke’s range of multimeters or scope meters for investigative troubleshooting.

The FEV300 adapter includes safety features such as a touch electrode function which quickly displays if there is a high-risk earth fault and improved safety sockets which are covered by plastic lids to protect the connectors in wet weather conditions. 

Fluke provides training programmes for the testing and installation of EV charging stations in Germany. 

http://www.fluke.com

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Low profile 5G and 4G LTE antennas are slim for limited spaces

Tue, Oct 04, 2022

Two low profile antennas have a low height of just 1.6mm. This makes the Alcor and Atria suitable for a variety of applications, said Synzen Precision Technology.

The Alcor is a 5G low profile surface mount antenna that is compact but still covers bands from 617 to 6000MHz. It has a small footprint of 40 x 10 x 1.6mm, a minimal clearance of 40.0 x 13.5mm and a fallback to 4G / 3G / 2G.

Atria is even more compact at 30.0 x 7.0 x 1.6mm but still covers bands from 698 to 2690MHz. Minimal clearance is 30.0 x 12.0mm. It also falls back to 3G / 2G. It requires a small clearance area, added the company.  (don’t be fooled by claims of small antennas which often need a much bigger clearance area).

“Many antennas calling themselves low-profile are double the height – around 3.0mm. We’ve been able to halve that without losing any performance. Our elegant design solution is also cost-effective for customers because it doesn’t require any external RF switch circuits,” said Synzen’s technical director, Chris Tomlin. 

Alcor and Atria are suitable for MIMO applications and are designed to work in compact devices with limited space. These antennas are suitable for wearables, health monitoring, smart meters and other slim IoT devices, confirmed Synzen Precision Technology. Left and right corner mount versions are offered.

These latest antennas form part of Synzen’s Galaxy class, which all feature low-profile design.

Synzen Precision Technology is an antenna and module product design company based in Taipei, Taiwan. The company offers advice and support for customers for antenna choices. The company will advise on optimal placement and tuning and offers free testing to characterise the performance. The company can even test and prove a design within a day without charge.

For custom design or additional support for an ongoing project, the company offers free technical support for the lifecycle of a product.

http://www.synzen.com.tw

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Industrial ATX motherboard is scalable for AIoT

Mon, Oct 03, 2022

Equipped with an LGA1700 socket for the 12th generation Intel Core i9 / i7 / i5 / i3 processors (code named Alder Lake-S), the IBM540 is the latest industrial ATX motherboard from Axiomtek.

It has quad displays and dual GPU expansion for AIoT applications. The IMB540 is built with the Intel R680E chipset and the Alder Lake-S CPU options. It also has four DDR4-3200 ECC/non-ECC un-buffered long-DIMM slots with a total capacity of 128Gbyte. There are five PCIe slots, two 4.0 x16 slots and three x4 slots for GPU, AI acceleration, frame grabber, NIC and motion control card configurations. 

The networking interfaces consist of a 2.5GbE LAN port with time-sensitive networking (TSN), a GbE LAN port, as well as a PCIe mini card slot with SIM slot for Wi-Fi / Bluetooth / LTE connectivity. The Intel Iris Xe Graphics allows for support of up to four independent displays via HDMI, DVI-D, VGA, and DisplayPort++.

For storage, there are four SATA 3.0 ports with integrated RAID 0 / 1 / 5 / 10 and additional storage is available via an M.2 Key M 2280 slot with PCIe x4 signal for NVMe SSD. The USB interface support includes four USB 3.2 Gen2, four USB 3.2 Gen1 and five USB 2.0 ports. The board is further equipped with four RS-232, two RS-232 / -422 /- 485, eight-channel programmable digital I/O, one HD codec audio, one SMBus, and one PS/2 keyboard and mouse. 

The industrial ATX motherboard can withstand a wide operating temperature range from 0 to 60 degrees C. It also supports onboard Trusted Platform Module 2.0 (TPM) to provide hardware-based data protection. Operating systems are Windows 10 and Linux.

The IMB540 drives AI computing performance and includes sufficient I/O, high-speed interfaces, multi-display connection capability and flexible expansion slots for medical imaging, video surveillance, computer vision and data analysis, said Kasper Tsai, the product manager of the AIoT team at Axiomtek. “Moreover, we have the capability to assist with any customer’s industrial integration requirements and achieve fast time to market,” he added.

http://www.axiomtek.com 

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Display Technology adds Aaeon’s Boxer-8221AI to linecard

Mon, Oct 03, 2022

The latest box PC designed by Aaeon which is powered by Nvidia’s Jetson Nano for AI applications.

The Boxer-8221AI Box PC is intended for mid-level deployment of AI and edge computing applications, confirmed the company. The Jetson Nano SoC combines the quad-core Arm Cortex-A57 MPCore processor with Nvidia Maxwell GPU architecture featuring 128 Nvidia Cuda cores.

The fanless embedded Box PC allows processing speeds up to 472GFLOPs (floating operations per second) and is capable of operating multiple neural networks or processing several high resolution images at the same time. The Nvidia Jetson Nano also provides the Boxer-8221AI with 4Gbyte RAM and 16Gbyte eMMC storage.

The Boxer-8221AI is certified to CE and FCC class A. It has one LAN and two RS-232 ports as well as one M.2 E-Key 2230 port for Wi-Fi.

The power input is 12V DC.

Established in 1996 as Display Solutions and acquired by Display Technology in September 2018, the UK subsidiary of Fortec Elektronik. Display Technology delivers the latest technical innovations in displays, touch screens and embedded computing backed by services from initial consultation through to sample design, volume manufacturing and immediate-response after-sales support. 

In the UK, the company specialises in embedded computing market sectors, including industrial instrumentation and control, transportation, retail/point of sale, outdoor signage, medical, marine, audio and lighting control and energy management.

http://www.displaytechnology.co.uk

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