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Ultracapacitors drive industrial robotics 

Thu, Nov 28, 2019

To address the fast-growing markets in manufacturing and warehouse logistics, Skeleton Technologies has introduced the SkelCap SCA0300 ultracapacitor series.

Strict power quality requirements in manufacturing are driving the demand for ultracapacitor-based uniterrruptible power supplies (UPS), says Skeleton. The company has designed the SCA0300 family for high power and to protect sensitive manufacturing equipment, such as warehouse and fulfillment centre robotics.

Shuttle and automated guided vehicle (AGV) manufacturers are replacing batteries with ultracapacitors due to power, reliability, and their lifetime advantages, says Skeleton.

The 300F-sized SCA0300 is designed to be easily mountable to PCBs. The high power and thermal characteristics are the result of the low ESR of the cell.

The SCA0300 complies with the strict IATF standard used in the automotive industry, ensuring the safety, quality, and reliability required in passenger vehicles, and also meets the requirements of applications in medical machinery, oil and gas, grid, and renewable energy production.

Skeleton Technologies claims to be the global leader in graphene-based ultracapacitors and energy-storage systems. It says use of patented ‘curved graphene’ has resulted in breakthroughs in ultracapacitor performance and successfully commercialised them in trucks, buses, and grid applications. Its ultracapacitor technology is claimed to deliver up to twice the energy density and four times the power density offerered by other manufacturers. Customers range from Tier One automotive companies and industrial equipment OEMs to lorry/truck fleet operators and aerospace prime contractors.

http://www.skeletontech.com 

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STMicroelectronics and Maxon collaborate on robotic motor control

Tue, Nov 26, 2019

Servo control development kits for drives, robotics and automation that have been jointly created by STMicroelectronics and Maxon will displayed at this week’s SPS event in Nuremberg, Germany (stand 10.1/138).

Maxon develops precision motors and is a member of the ST Partner Program to accelerate the design of robotics applications and industrial servo drives.

The Evalkit-Robot-1 helps users approach the world of precise positioning and high-end motion in servo drives and robotics. The kit includes a Maxon 100W brushless direct current (BLDC) motor with built-on 1024-pulse incremental encoder. The magnetic design motor ensures smoothness and balance to allow fine control even at low rotor speeds, says the company.

The kit’s servo control board contains ST’s STSPIN32F0A intelligent three-phase motor controller and a complete inverter stage built with ST power transistors ready to connect to the motor. Motor control firmware is also included to start the motor and begin sending commands.

ST’s STSPIN32F0A system-in package contains critical circuitry for motor control, including an STM32F031C6 microcontroller and three-phase inverter driver in a compact 7.0 x 7.0mm VFQFPN package. The microcontroller is loaded with firmware for Modbus communication and field-oriented control with precise positioning capabilities. Power management and current sensing circuitry are also embedded in the device making it more flexible and versatile, says ST.

The Maxon EC-i 40, 40mm diameter, 100W BLDC motor embeds a Maxon ENX 16 Easy 1024-pulse incremental encoder for precision control. Hall sensors for detecting rotor position are included. The motor is designed for high output torque with low cogging torque, which permits smooth motion across the speed range and enhances positioning precision.

The three-phase BLDC inverter power stage features ST’s STL7DN6LF3 60V, low on-resistance, N-channel MOSFETs, capable of 6A maximum output for driving the motor.

The kit is available now.

Maxon drives are used wherever the requirements are particularly high, such as in NASA’s Mars Rovers, in surgical power tools, in humanoid robots, and in precision industrial applications.

Semiconductor specialist, ST delivers energy-efficient products to enable smarter driving and smarter factories, cities and homes and the next generation of mobile and IoT devices.

http://www.st.com

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Panasonic shrinks Bluetooth 5.0 Low Energy module for IoT

Tue, Nov 26, 2019

The low energy PAN1740A Bluetooth 5.0 module is compact and has a fast boot time for IIot and smart home applications as well as remote controls.

The module is the successor of the PAN1740 Bluetooth module. The PAN1740A is an optimised version, offering a quicker boot time and supporting up to eight connections to create more advanced applications. It can be used as a standalone application processor or as a data pump in hosted systems. The device is optimised for remote control units (RCU) requiring support for voice commands and motion/gesture recognition.

The Bluetooth Low Energy firmware includes the L2CAP service layer protocols, Security Manager (SM), Attribute Protocol (ATT), the Generic Attribute Profile (GATT) and the Generic Access Profile (GAP). All profiles published by the Bluetooth SIG, as well as custom profiles, are supported.

The footprint is only 9.0 x 9.5 x 1.8mm and features a Dialog DA14585 board and an Arm Cortex-M0 microcontroller. The operating temperature range is -40 to +85 degrees C and the supply voltage range is 2.2 up to 3.3V.

The fast boot is a benefit to industrial IoT (IIoT) devices, like connected sensors or human machine interface (HMI) devices, says Panasonic. Smart home and building automation devices like lighting systems, metering applications, remote controls, trackers or smart home nodes will benefit from the PAN1740A’s low power consumption, says Panasonic.

Panasonic develops diverse electronics technologies and solutions for customers in the consumer electronics, housing, automotive, and B2B businesses. The company celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2018 and operates 582 subsidiaries and 87 associated companies worldwide.

Panasonic Industry Europe is part of the global Panasonic Group and provides automotive and industrial products and services in Europe. As a partner for the industrial sector, Panasonic researches, develops, manufactures and supplies key electronic components, devices and modules up to complete solutions and production equipment for manufacturing lines across a broad range of industries. Panasonic Industry Europe is part of the global company Panasonic Industrial Solutions.

http://industry.panasonic.eu

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ADI announces quad-channel member of RadioVerse family

Fri, Nov 22, 2019

Designed to support base station applications (including single and multi-standard 3G/4G/5G macrocell base stations, massive multiple input multiple output (M-MIMO), and small cell systems, the ADRV9026 is the latest member of Analog Devices’ RadioVerse family.

The quad-channel, wideband RF transceiver offers quad-channel integration with the lowest power, smallest size, common-platform solution, according to Analog Devices.

It is supplied in a 14 x 14mm BGA package and is claimed to be the smallest size, lowest power transceiver for base transceiver stations. The small size reduces footprint and enhances form factor flexibility.

It also reduces power consumption by 50% compared with the previous generation, ADVR9009, for increased radio density and enables open radio access network (ORAN) small cell designs with lowest system power and cost, the company continued.

The integrated, high performance software defined radio supports up to 200MHz bandwidth and covers all bands from 650MHz to 6GHz.

Other features are the quad-channel transmitters and receivers with dual-channel observation receivers, local oscillator (LO) frequency of 650 to 6,000MHz and a maximum receiver/transmitter bandwidth of 200MHz. Maximum observation receiver/transmitter synthesis bandwidth is 450MHz.

There is also multi-chip phase synchronisation for all local oscillators and baseband clocks.

Future software upgrades for new features will include external local oscillator support, extending the local oscillator frequency down to 75MHz, with Filter Wizard to support custom profiles.

A common platform design for 3G, 4G and 5G reduces complexity, development costs and time to market, says Analog Devices. The single-chip FDD/TDD simplifies hardware and software development and a common application programming interface addresses multiple applications.

For macro base stations or small cell designs the ADVR9009 reduces product development cycles for band and power variants and enables modular architecture for scalable radio solutions. An evaluation kit is also available.

http://www.analog.com

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