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Advantech WISE-2460 smart vibration sensing solution for health monitoring equipment

Mon, Jan 15, 2024

Advantech has introduced the new WISE-2460 innovative vibration sensing solution. This device supports RS-485 serial communication through Modbus/RTU protocols and boasts Z-axis sensitivity spanning from 5 to 10000Hz. ISO 10816-1 compliant and capable of operating in a wide temperature range of -20°C to 105°C, WISE-2460 sets a new standard in vibration sensing technology.

Designed for monitoring equipment RPM and frequency detection ranges in challenging environments, WISE-2460 features an ARM Cortex-M7 processor, a high-detection-range Z-axis accelerometer, and a temperature sensor, all enclosed in a robust IP68-rated enclosure. The device simplifies configuration and alarm threshold management through the user-friendly Advantech WISE Studio utility.

Unlike conventional piezo vibration sensors that require connection to a high-speed DAQ card and subsequent calculations on a remote IPC, the WISE-2460 series offers an integrated solution. Capable of swiftly executing data acquisition, processing, and publication in seconds, it easily outperforms costly and inefficient traditional setups. WISE-2460 is designed to identify vibrations within the 5 to 10,000 Hz range through single-axis measurements. It transmits data using RS-485 and supports the Modbus/RTU protocol, making it well-suited for a variety of industrial applications. Its enhanced sensitivity enables the sensor to detect emerging problems not visible at lower frequencies. WISE-2460 also provides vibration data for four machine classes across four levels, following ISO 10816-1 guidelines. By analysing these vibration characteristics, operators can swiftly diagnose motor problems. This empowers maintenance teams to proactively tackle issues before they deteriorate, reducing downtime and averting expensive equipment malfunctions.

Advantech WISE Studio is user-friendly yet powerful utility software for configuring, managing, and monitoring IoT devices, which encompasses device management, monitoring, and data visualisation features. This tool enables seamless cloud connectivity, firmware updates, and the useful creation of personalised data dashboards. Utilising Advantech WISE Studio, users gain access to all the necessary vibration characteristics like velocity RMS, acceleration RMS, acceleration peaks and more. The advanced configuration of WISE Studio enables operators to personalise detection range settings with up to ten detection bands. Additionally, users can directly acquire time waveform data from the WISE-2460 series, facilitating further diagnostic analysis.

The WISE-2460 series is built to endure extreme temperatures ranging from -20°C to 105°C and boasts an IP68 protection rating. This makes it suitable for deployment in the most demanding industrial settings, even those deemed too hazardous for extended human presence. It excels at monitoring critical vibrating machinery while also withstanding high equipment surface temperatures.
Applications include proactive maintenance for vibration monitoring, serving sectors such as semiconductor, automotive assembly, steel and cement production, and the food & beverage industry. Equipment under surveillance by WISE-2460 include rotary lobe pumps, screw pumps, propeller pumps, air compressors, gearboxes, motors, fans, blowers, belts and chain drives, couplings, centrifugal pumps, piston pumps, sliding vane pumps, piston compressors, centrifugal compressors, screw compressors, closed coupled machines, spindles, and more.

Cost Effective Solution for Enhancing Asset and Facility Management
Deploying the WISE-2460 series for predictive maintenance delivers widespread benefits including asset visualisation, enhanced availability, and substantial asset management returns. This versatility empowers industrial plant operators to improve facility management through machine health assessment, fault classification, predictive insight, data visualisation, and optimal maintenance strategies.

WISE-2460 is available now, contact your local sales team or visit the website www.advantech.com/en-eu for more information.

A video demonstration is available to view here https://www.advantech.com/en/resources/video/wise-2460-smart-vibration-sensor

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Nordic Semiconductor-powered smart streetlight controllers turn LED luminaires into IoT assets

Fri, Jan 12, 2024

Smart city solutions provider, obiWAN (formerly Urban Control), has launched a range of smart streetlight controllers that convert a regular LED luminaire into an IoT asset.

Once fitted, the Zhaga ‘obiWAN DCobi-NBZG’, the matchbox-sized internal ‘obiWAN DCobi-NBIN’, and the NEMA ‘obiWAN ACobi-NBNM’ controllers can be used to access information about the smart luminaire’s precise location, identity, and health status. The devices can also be used to remotely control, monitor, and meter the luminaire. The controllers can adapt dynamically to several scenarios to provide better lighting and save more energy. These new products enable obiWAN to address street lighting requirements in many different markets by allowing for different power connectors (including 24 VDC and 85-305 VAC).

Additionally, several sensors—including a location, ambient light, mains-power monitoring, temperature, and tilt and impact—can be connected to the lighting interface of the smart controllers, with the acquired data relayed to a smart city Central Management System (CMS). A variety of sensors compatible with the intelligent lighting interface can also be deployed around the streetlight controller, such as a movement detection sensor, light spectrum sensor, and people/vehicle identifier and counter.

Nordic-enabled cellular IoT
Each obiWAN luminaire controller is powered by Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF9160 low power SiP. The multimode LTE-M/NB-IoT modem with integrated RF Front End (RFFE) enables the nRF9160 to transmit the sensor data directly to the Cloud. The company considered a number of wireless technologies before ultimately settling on Nordic-enabled cellular IoT connectivity.

“Wi-SUN, LoRa, and Bluetooth were considered, but LTE-M/NB-IoT cellular connectivity allowed us to minimise data consumption, energy usage, and overall cost, as well as maximise network coverage, bandwidth and data throughput, security, and the interoperability between devices and systems,” explains Miguel Lira, obiWAN CEO.

Further, obiWAN says it is keen to adopt the new features coming in the nRF91 Series cellular modem firmware, such as the ‘pseudo PSM mode’. To make its products even smaller with even lower power consumption, the company is planning to become the first Nordic Semiconductor customer to use Onomondo’s new ‘SoftSIM’ – a software-based, UICC SIM supporting all of the features required for connectivity. SoftSIM is directly integrated into the Nordic nRF Connect SDK. This works for both new radio modules manufactured today and for existing radio modules already deployed in the field with a firmware update.

“As soon as Onomondo launched the SoftSIM, running with the Nordic nRF9160, we immediately decided to test it as this supports our strategy for future developments,” says Lira.

“Having completed the testing phase we are now looking to make SoftSIM available in all our cellular street lighting controllers. We want to use the SoftSIM for several reasons including miniaturisation of our devices, decreased cost of our Bill-of-Materials, to maximise the reliability of our products, the possibility of over-the-air SIM changes/updates, increased security, and even lower power consumption.”

The target market for the obiWAN solutions can be segmented based on municipal applications (streets, roads, highways, public places, bridges, and tunnels), enterprise applications (such as supermarkets, shopping malls, retail stores, parking lots, and outdoor eating areas), and sensor applications (environmental, traffic flow, security monitoring, crowd management, smart parking, and others).

“As the communication of these street lighting controllers is based on the existing cellular network and they are truly plug-and-play devices, they remove the complexity in the adoption of intelligent IoT technologies for street lighting control deployments, no matter their scale of implementation—from small towns to major cities—so customers can focus on providing better services, more attractive cities to live in, and increased energy savings,” says Lira. “One of the main reasons, if not the main reason, to use our smart street lighting controllers relies on the energy savings and carbon emissions avoided.

“We rely on the Nordic nRF9160 SiP’s processing power, on both the cellular and GNSS radios, on all its security features, its very low power consumption, and its interfaces and peripherals,” adds Lira. “Our development team is used to Nordic’s excellent technical support and information, forum discussions, development tools, and the high level of expertise from the Nordic engineering team.”

https://www.nordicsemi.com/

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NXP extends industry first 28 nm RFCMOS radar One-Chip Family

Thu, Jan 11, 2024

NXP has announced an extension of its automotive radar one-chip family. The new SAF86xx monolithically integrates a high-performance radar transceiver, a multi-core radar processor and a MACsec hardware engine for state-of-the-art secure data communication over Automotive Ethernet. Combined with NXP’s S32 high-performance processors, vehicle network connectivity and power management, the full system solution paves the way for advanced, software-defined radar.

The highly integrated radar SoC (System-on-Chip) is intended for streaming rich low-level radar sensor data at up to 1 Gbit/s. It helps carmakers optimize next-generation ADAS partitioning for software-defined vehicles, while providing for a smooth transition to new architectures. Additionally, OEMs will be able to easily introduce new software-defined radar features during the lifetime of the vehicle through Over-the-Air (OTA) updates.

It also shares a common architecture with the SAF85xx introduced last year and leverages 28 nm RFCMOS performance for significantly improved radar sensor capabilities, compared to prior-generation 40 nm or 45 nm products. It enables Tier-1 suppliers to build more compact and power-efficient radar sensors. Drivers and other road users will benefit from extended detection range beyond 300 m, along with more reliable detection of small objects like curb stones as well as vulnerable road users including cyclists and pedestrians.

The new radar one-chip supports NCAP safety functions including emergency braking and blind-spot detection. It also supports advanced ADAS and autonomous driving applications, including advanced comfort features for SAE levels 2+ and 3 such as traffic jam assist, highway pilot and park assist, front and rear cross-traffic alerts, as well as lateral and rear collision avoidance.

“Using our new SAF86xx radar one-chip family, OEMs can quickly and easily migrate their current radar platforms to new software-defined vehicle architectures,” said Steffen Spannagel, SVP and GM, ADAS, NXP Semiconductors. “A network of connected radar sensors with software-defined functions on a dedicated S32R radar processor in a distributed architecture can enhance radar-based perception to support advancements in autonomous driving. That includes 360-degree sensing, more powerful AI-based algorithms and secure OTA software updates.”

The comprehensive SAF8xxx family featuring the new SAF86xx and SAF85xx can be tailored for individual OEM use cases. It supports a range of sensor outputs, including object, point cloud-, or range-FFT-level data for smart sensors in today’s architectures and streaming sensors in future distributed architectures.

https://www.nxp.com/saf86xx

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TI debuts new automotive chips at CES, enabling automakers to create smarter, safer vehicles

Tue, Jan 09, 2024

Texas Instruments has introduced new semiconductors designed to improve automotive safety and intelligence. The AWR2544 77GHz millimeter-wave radar sensor chip is the industry’s first for satellite radar architectures, enabling higher levels of autonomy by improving sensor fusion and decision-making in ADAS. TI’s new software-programmable driver chips, the DRV3946-Q1 integrated contactor driver and DRV3901-Q1 integrated squib driver for pyro fuses, offer built-in diagnostics and support functional safety for battery management and powertrain systems. TI is demonstrating these new products at the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Many automakers are adding more sensors around the car to improve vehicle safety and autonomy. TI’s AWR2544 single-chip radar sensor is the industry’s first designed for satellite architectures. In satellite architectures, radar sensors output semi-processed data to a central processor for ADAS decision-making using sensor fusion algorithms, taking advantage of the 360-degree sensor coverage to achieve higher levels of vehicle safety.

The AWR2544 single-chip radar sensor is also the industry’s first with launch-on-package (LOP) technology. LOP technology helps reduce the size of the sensor by as much as 30% by mounting a 3D waveguide antenna on the opposite side of the printed circuit board. LOP technology also enables sensor ranges to extend beyond 200m with a single chip. In satellite architectures, these features enable automakers to increase ADAS intelligence for higher vehicle autonomy levels to make smarter decisions from farther away. The AWR2544 is the latest in TI’s radar sensor portfolio, which supports a wide range of ADAS applications and architectures with sensors developed for corner, front, imaging, side and rear radar systems.

Supporting the trend toward software-defined vehicles is challenging designers to develop smarter, more advanced battery management systems (BMS). Two new highly integrated, software-programmable driver chips from TI address requirements for safer and more efficient control of high-voltage disconnect circuits in a BMS or other powertrain system. Both drivers are International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 26262 functional safety-compliant and offer built-in diagnostics and protection to reduce automotive engineers’ development time.

For BMS and other powertrain systems, the DRV3946-Q1 is the industry’s first fully integrated contactor driver. It includes a peak-and-hold current controller that helps automakers increase system power efficiency. The device also implements safety diagnostics to monitor the condition of the contactor.

TI’s DRV3901-Q1 fully integrated squib driver enables an intelligent pyro fuse disconnect system by using built-in circuitry to monitor the pyro fuse and provide diagnostic information to the system microcontroller. This gives hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) and EV BMS designers flexibility to use a pyro fuse instead of traditional melting fuse systems while minimizing design complexity.

https://www.ti.com/

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Advantech WISE-2460 smart vibration sensing solution for health monitoring equipment

Nordic Semiconductor-powered smart streetlight controllers turn LED luminaires into IoT assets

NXP extends industry first 28 nm RFCMOS radar One-Chip Family

TI debuts new automotive chips at CES, enabling automakers to create smarter, safer vehicles

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