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Würth Elektronik shrinks Proteus Bluetooth Low Energy radio module

Thu, Mar 17, 2022

Continuing the Proteus Bluetooth Low Energy series, Würth Elektronik has introduced the Proteus-e radio module. It is based on the Bluetooth Low Energy 5.1 standard and includes certificates of conformity for CE, FCC, IC and TELEC. It has an integrated antenna yet measures just 7.0 x 9.0 x 2.0mm. This is one third smaller than the earlier Proteus-III model.

Proteus-e has been introduced to deliver basic Bluetooth functionality for price-sensitive applications. For applications with customer own firmware development, the module is offered under the name Ophelia-I as pure hardware.

Proteus-e and Ophelia-I are based on Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF52805 chipset, which includes a 64MHz Arm Cortex-M4 processor, 192kbyte of flash memory and 24kbyte of RAM. The maximum output power is 4dBm and the maximum data rate is 2Mbits per second.

The module was developed for mobile applications. In power-saving mode, it requires only 0.3 microA. In addition, the Proteus-e allows the connection timing, advertising packets and timing, beacons and UART to be freely configured, said Würth Elektronik.

The company also offers an evaluation board to connect the module to microcontrollers for application development. Würth Elektronik provides design-in support and offers firmware development services on request.

The radio modules and evaluation boards are available from stock with no minimum order quantity.

Würth Elektronik eiSos Group is a manufacturer of electronic and electromechanical components for the electronics industry. It is claimed to be one of the largest European manufacturers of passive components and is active in 50 countries. Production sites in Europe, Asia and North America supply a growing number of customers worldwide.

The company’s product range includes EMC components, inductors, transformers, RF components, varistors, capacitors, resistors, quartz crystals, oscillators, power modules, wireless power transfer, LEDs, sensors, connectors, power supply elements, switches, pushbuttons, connection technology, fuse holders and solutions for wireless data transmission.

All catalogue components are available from stock without minimum order quantity, and the company offers free samples and extensive support through technical sales staff and selection tools.

Würth Elektronik is part of the Würth Group, the assembly and fastening technology company.

http://www.we-online.com

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Ambiq increases security in power processor SoCs

Wed, Mar 16, 2022

Additions to the Apollo4 SoC family by Ambiq are the Apollo4 Plus and Apollo4 Blue Plus with Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity. They have robust security features, said the company, to better protect power-constrained IoT endpoint devices without compromising power efficiency.

The Apollo4 Plus is the fourth generation system processor built upon Ambiq’s proprietary Subthreshold Power-Optimized Technology (SPOT), enabling new features while reducing devices’ overall system power consumption to extend their battery life. Embedded with Mbytes of MRAM, SRAM, low power processors, solid software stacks and up to 192MHz operating frequency with TurboSPOT, the Apollo4 Plus enables more AI-capable operations, including data ingestion, pre-processing, inference and actuation. Apollo4 has a low power, end-to-end audio subsystem, to run compute complex algorithms needed for precise voice recognition and higher fidelity voice capability needed for voice calls. Its integrated GPU and display controller, coupled with fast and efficient memory access, offer manufacturers the ability to differentiate products with bigger and richer display user interfaces with vivid colours, high-resolution and smooth graphics. Ambiq’s Secure by Design features allow OEMs to secure products from the ground up when implementing SecureSPOT with tools to implement end-to-end security from the start of the design.

“The future of IoT is in the intelligence of things that stay on and connected 24/7,” said Dan Cermak, vice president of Architecture and Product Planning at Ambiq. “The latest product and feature additions to our Apollo4 SoC family demonstrate that battery-operated devices no longer have to compromise performance for power constraints.”

Apollo4 Plus is now in mass production. The enhanced graphics display and greater voice capabilities serve as either an application processor or a coprocessor for battery-powered endpoint devices, said Ambiq. Target applications are smartwatches and smart bands, consumer medical devices, motion and tracking units and smart home devices.

Ambiq specialises in energy-efficient semiconductors for battery-powered IoT endpoint devices. Ambiq has helped leading manufacturers worldwide develop products that can operate for days, months, and sometimes years, on a battery, and even do away with the battery entirely by harvesting energy.

Ambiq’s patented Subthreshold Power Optimized Technology (SPOT) platform has enhanced IoT endpoint devices by enabling a significant increase in compute power at reduced energy levels. The company says its goal is to bring artificial intelligence (AI) where it has never gone before in mobile and portable devices using Ambiq’s low power microcontrollers and SoCs.

http://www.ambiq.com

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u-blox antenna board enables Bluetooth positioning indoors

Wed, Mar 16, 2022

In order to bring reliable indoor positioning devices to market, u-blox offers the ANT-B10 antenna board for Bluetooth direction finding and indoor positioning applications. The board is designed for integration into commercial end-products and enables low power, high precision indoor positioning. It also speeds up evaluation, testing and commercialisation of Bluetooth direction finding and indoor positioning solutions, said u-blox.

Bluetooth indoor positioning uses the angle of arrival (AoA) of a Bluetooth direction finding signal emitted by a mobile tag at several fixed anchor points to calculate the tag’s location in real-time with sub-meter accuracy. The technology exploits Bluetooth’s vast ecosystem and interoperability across platforms and is gaining traction due to its low cost, high accuracy and relative ease of installation and maintenance.

The ANT-B10 is a self-contained Bluetooth low energy antenna board for direction finding and indoor positioning. It has an antenna array comprising eight individual patch antennas, and is built around a u-blox NINA-B411 Bluetooth 5.1 module. After processing incoming RF signals emitted by mobile tracker tags in the module’s radio and angle calculation processor, the antenna board outputs the calculated angle of arrival without requiring any additional processes.

The release also includes the XPLR-AOA-3 explorer kit. This features an application board, which offers developers a quick and easy way to evaluate and test the ANT-B10 antenna board, as well as u-blox’s direction finding algorithm. An off-the-shelf pin header on the application board allows for easy bring-up and testing of ANT-B10 and third-party antenna boards. Connecting the two boards yields a ready-to-use AoA indoor positioning anchor point in seconds, added u-blox.

ANT-B10 and XPLR-AOA-3 complement u-blox’s indoor positioning portfolio which includes the XPLR-AOA-1 and XPLR-AOA-2 kits. Developers can use u-connectLocate, which runs on ANT-B10’s Bluetooth module, to execute the angle calculation algorithms using AT commands.

Common use cases for Bluetooth indoor positioning and direction include tracking assets in industrial settings such as in warehouses as well as people and things in hospitals, retail environments, or museums. Additionally, access control systems deployed in connected buildings can use angle detection to determine which side of a door users are located on.

To determine the angle of arrival of incoming signals for direction finding, the ANT-B10 board concurrently processes them on all eight patch antennas. Implementing multiple RF paths connected to multiple RF switches unnecessarily increases power demand and introduces errors, so the ANT-B10 board uses a single RF switch component from CoreHW that cycles through the eight antennas in microseconds.

The ANT-B10 boards are available today.

http://www.u-blox.com

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Segger partners with HPMicro for free of charge Embedded Studio for RISC-V

Tue, Mar 15, 2022

Partnering with microcontroller and embedded provider, HPMicro Semiconductor, Segger offers its Embedded Studio integrated development environment (IDE) free of charge to all HPMicro’s customers using HPM6000 series RISC-V microcontrollers.

Embedded Studio includes the tools and features for streamlined, professional embedded development in C and C++, said Segger. It comes with a powerful project manager and build system, a source code editor with code completion and folding, and a package system to install board and device support. It also includes Segger’s optimised emRun runtime and emFloat floating point libraries and its smart linker. These functions have been developed from the ground up by Segger specifically for resource-constrained embedded systems. The built-in debugger is fully integrated with J-Link, for performance and stability, added Segger.

“Our goal is to provide the best possible development solution for our RISC-V devices,” said Jintao Zeng, CEO at HPMicro. “Following an in-depth analysis of the market, we found that Segger’s Embedded Studio delivers the best results in terms of firmware size, performance and user experience”.

“Embedded Studio has been gaining a lot of popularity recently and now complements the HPMicro product families, helping software engineers unleash their full potential and shortening the time to market,” says Ivo Geilenbruegge, managing director of Segger. “Furthermore, collaboration between Segger and HPMicro will go a long way in advancing the RISC-V ecosystem in the embedded industry.”

HPMicro’s real-time RISC-V microcontroller series HPM6000 was released in December 2021 and is in full production. According to HPMicro, the flagship HPM6750 microcontroller set a new performance record of over 9000 CoreMark and 4500 DMIPS, with dual RISC-V cores running at a frequency of up to 800MHz. The HPM6000 series MCUs, including the dual-core HPM6750, the single-core HPM6450 and the entry-level HPM6120, are equipped with double-precision floating-point units and powerful DSP extension instructions. They also have built-in 2Mbyte SRAM, multimedia functions, motor control modules, communication interface and security encryption. HPM6000 has sufficient computing power to accelerate applications such as industry 4.0, smart home appliances, edge computing and the IoT.

https://www.segger.com

http://www.hpmicro.com

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Würth Elektronik shrinks Proteus Bluetooth Low Energy radio module

Ambiq increases security in power processor SoCs

u-blox antenna board enables Bluetooth positioning indoors

Segger partners with HPMicro for free of charge Embedded Studio for RISC-V

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