IoT

Eight-port PoE switch supports IEEE 802.3bt for smart lighting

Wed, May 22, 2019

An eight-port Power over Ethernet (PoE) switch released by Microchip guarantees 60W per port for all eight ports simultaneously. The PDS-408G PoE switch can be used for digital ceiling installations to run noiseless, fanless lighting designs.

In enterprise connected lighting applications, the PDS-408G connects separate systems such as lighting, sensors, heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and Wi-Fi access points over a single switch. Eight ports is deemed the optimal number for connected lighting and the PDS-408G can save energy and reduce operating costs, claims Microchip.

The PDS-408G complies with IEEE 802.3bt, the new PoE standard. It provides a total of 480W, including up to 90W for any individual port or 60W for eight ports simultaneously.

The PDS-408G is plenum rated and can be installed in any air handling space, and is fanless for noise-free operation in offices, hospitals and hotels. The PDS-408G also exploits PoE with safe power, simple installation, flexible deployment and remote power management features.

The PDS-408G PoE switch is available now.

Microchip offers an array of easy-to-use hardware and software tools to accelerate PoE designs, including the PIC18 PoE mainnboard, which features a PIC18 MCU, ATECC608A secure element and MIC28512 buck regulator.

https://www.microchip.com

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Software development kit streamlines SLAM in mobile devices

Tue, May 21, 2019

To develop simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) –enabled mobile devices, augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) headsets, robots, autonomous vehicles and drones, Ceva offers the SLAM software development kit for CEVA-XM intelligent vision DSPs and NeuPro AI processors

The kit incorporates hardware, software and interfaces that can “significantly lower the entry barrier” to integrate efficient SLAM implementations into low-power embedded systems, says Ceva.

According to Ilan Yona, vice president and general manager of the vision business unit at Ceva: “SLAM is the underlying technology that enables high-accuracy 3D mapping of a device’s surroundings”. He believes that the company’s expertise in designing vision DSPs and software algorithms will introduced customers to 3D machine vision design.

The Ceva-SLAM software development kit has a detailed interface from a CPU to offload the heavy lifting SLAM blocks to the Ceva-XM DSP. These building blocks use the DSP to support both fixed point and floating point math and extend the device’s battery life. They also include capabilities for image processing (including feature detection, feature descriptors, feature matching), linear algebra (including matrix manipulation, linear equation solving) and fast sparse equation solving for bundle adjustment. The software development kit can run a full SLAM tracking module on the Ceva-XM6 DSP at 60 frames per second consuming just 86mW (using a frame size of 1280 x 720, running on Ceva-XM6 using TSMC’s 16nm process).

The software development kit, deployed with a Ceva-XM DSP or a NeuPro AI processor, can be used for visual positioning, classical and neural network workloads for imaging and vision using SLAM.

The Ceva-SLAM software development kit is available for licensing now, exclusively in conjunction with the Ceva-XM intelligent vision DSPs and NeuPro AI processors.

Ceva will presenting the Ceva-SLAM software development kit at the Embedded Vision Summit in Santa Clara, California, USA (Wednesday 22 May).

Ceva licenses signal processing platforms and artificial intelligence processors.  It provides low power IP for vision, audio, communications and connectivity including   DSP-based platforms for LTE/LTE-A/5G baseband processing in handsets, infrastructure and cellular IoT (NB-IoT and Cat-M) enabled devices, imaging and computer vision for any camera-enabled device, audio/voice/speech and low power always-on/sensing applications for IoT markets.

http://www.ceva-dsp.com

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Aetina showcases transportation options at Computex 2019

Mon, May 20, 2019

Smart transportation and smart logistics of artificial intelligence (AI) with vehicle cameras will be on display at Computex 2019 at the Aetina stand (H 1-K0806) in Taipei (28 May to 1 June).

The company has identified intelligent transportation and logistics will be the main drivers of smart cities and e-commerce.

The edge AI computing company has worked with a third-party partner to embed AI for road and transit products.

For transportation, Aetina bases its edge computing on the Jetson for data processing when it is used to infer road situations, such as to calculate traffic flow, vehicle recognition, and traffic law enforcement. As well as immediately addressing an urban area’s traffic issues and adjusting conditions for short term gain, this can also help the transportation scheme in the city over a longer period of time and in the planning of future schemes.

In logistics, whether robotics in a warehouse, tracking or monitoring systems, AI can improve edge computing, says Aetina. Aetina has collaborated with ecosystem partners to deliver a 10 meter length of FPD link cameras and internet of vehicles (IoV) hardware, for AI logistics.

According to Aetina’s general manager, Joe Lo, “Everything will not only get onto the internet but will also have the ability to infer, to create more possibilities for a city”.

Aetina was founded in Taiwan in 2012. It is a provider of high-performance general purpose graphics processing units (GPGPUs) and Jetson edge AI computing products for embedded applications.

Aetina focuses on the industrial market, providing industrial grade components and is also an integrator of artificial intelligent IoT, offering a smart, innovative, and reliable solutions of GPUs.

http://www.aetina.com

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RX72T motor control MCUs serve industrial robots

Fri, May 17, 2019

32-bit motor control microcontrollers (MCUs) from Renesas Electronics have dedicated hardware accelerator IP to perform the complex, high-speed computations required for motor control in robots and other industrial equipment.

The RX72T series achieves an 1160 CoreMark score as measured by EEMBC benchmarks, claimed to be the highest level for a 5.0V MCU operating at 200MHz.

The RX72T extends the migration path across the RX family for low-cost designs in compact industrial robots, explains Renesas.

Typical applications are servo systems. The rising demand for compact industrial robots is a target application, where high-precision control of the position, direction, speed, and torque of the motor is required to implement complex motions.

The RX72T MCUs include dedicated accelerator hardware that enables the high-speed position control and speed control calculations required for implementing servo motor control in compact industrial robots. The current control loop calculation can be performed in less than 1.5 micro seconds. This presents a choice for users to independently develop servo systems where previously they only had the option of purchasing existing servo systems.

Implementing calculations in software can require excessive computing time. However, completely hardware-based calculations can adversely affect the flexibility to implement user control operations. The RX72T MCUs, Renesas implement only the single-precision floating point trigonometric function (sin, cos, arctan, hypot) and a register bank saves the function in hardware as dedicated IP. This retains flexibility while increasing the calculation speed, says Renesas. The save function increases the speed and precision of interrupt handling, improving the device computation performance, Renesas adds. The MCUs also include 200 MHz PWM inverter control timers with up to four channels of three-phase control, two channels of five-phase control or 10 channels of single-phase control.

Pairing Renesas’  Failure Detection e-AI Solutions for motors with the RX72T MCUs can improve productivity, says Renesas. Characteristic data (current and speed values) that indicate the motor state can be used directly to implement motor control and e-AI-based failure detection with a single MCU. The MCUs also feature hardware-based system failsafe functions and a hardware cryptography module that can be used to encrypt/decrypt communications data.

Renesas also provides the Renesas Motor Workbench 2.0 for real-time debugging and an RX72T CPU card that supports the 24 V motor control evaluation kit.

The MCUs will be available in mass production quantities beginning in Q4 2019.

https://www.renesas.com

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