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Integrated devices from onsemi support KNX and PoE for building automation

Thu, Jun 09, 2022

Supporting the KNX and the PoE building automation protocols respectively, the NCN5140S and NCL31010 are integrated devices released by onsemi to shorten the development of smart building control panels and connected lighting.

For the development of access and control panels, the NCN5140S is the first system in package (SiP) certified with the KNX Association. The NCN5140S integrates all critical and certifiable elements of a KNX device, including a digital KNX transceiver, a 32-bit Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller with a pre-certified software stack, and system power DC/DC converters, into a single package. The level of integration reduces material costs, said onsemi, and allows manufacturers to develop very slim and modern designs of less than 5mm total depth.

The second introduction address PoE for Ethernet-powered connected lighting. The NCL31010 integrates an intelligent LED driver and PoE interface into a single package to support for both the lighting and power delivery needs of fully connected and managed lighting systems.

The pre-certified KNX SiP and intelligent LED driver can provide manufacturers with the latest technology and a headstart to develop complex, full-scale automation systems in a shorter time, said the company.

KNX products must demonstrate compliance to supported protocols and profiles through the association’s certification program to ensure seamless connectivity. The NCN5140S platform is pre-certified, so device KNX certification testing is not necessary. All that is needed is a KNX declaration of product modification, confirmed onsemi, eliminating the time and engineering efforts of a complete certification process.

The IEEE 802.3bt compliant NCL31010 can deliver over 90W via PoE. It integrates a Visible Light Communication buck LED driver. This involves modulating data directly onto the LED light, which remains imperceptible to the human eye, allowing it to broadcast data and function as a location beacon for use in indoor positioning systems.

The NCL31010 and the NCN5140S are available now through onsemi sales support and authorised distributors.

http://www.onsemi.com

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Arm has released the Mali-C55, and said that it is its smallest and most configurable image signal processor to date.

Thu, Jun 09, 2022

Image signal processors (ISPs) are used in IoT vision systems such as commercial, industrial or domestic cameras and drones.

The ISP has multi-camera capability for up to eight separate inputs, support for image resolutions up to 8K and a maximum image size up to 48Mpixels. According to Arm, the Mali-C55 offers the most efficient combination of image quality, throughput, power consumption and silicon area.

Image quality has been enhanced, compared to earlier generations, including the Mali-C52, with improved tone mapping and spatial noise reduction, enhanced support for high dynamic range (HDR) sensors and seamless integration with machine learning accelerators for access neural networks for various de-noising techniques. Being able to send the output from the ISP directly to the ML accelerator reduces cost and processing time by having less data sent from device to cloud, explained Arm. This is achieved without having to compromise on inferencing, said the company.

In addition to multi-camera support and integration with ML accelerators, the Mali-C55 also includes industry standard AXI and AHB interfaces for easy integration with either Cortex-A or Cortex-M based SoCs.

By combining multiple Mali-C55 ISPs, larger image sizes can be achieved for applications that require greater than 48 MP capabilities, such as video conferencing.

The Mali-C55 occupies half the silicon area size of previous generations, significantly lower power consumption to extend battery life, said Arm. It also contributes to a reduction in the cost of devices, said the company.

The Mali-C55 works under a wide range of different lighting and weather conditions, reported Arm. Its performance and power budget mean it is suitable for power- constrained applications, such as smart camera and edge AI vision applications in surveillance and security as well as smart buildings. For example, said Arm, cameras will be able to detect more critical details, such as recognising precise information on car number plates as the vehicle is travelling at up to 75mph. They can also be used to capture higher resolution images inside and outside of buildings in security systems and in smart home hubs they can efficiently include advanced features like secure visual unlock.

There is also a software package for controlling the ISP, as well as tuning and calibration tools.

http://www.arm.com

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PAN1316C supports BLE and Bluetooth Classic in “RF-unfriendly conditions”

Thu, Jun 09, 2022

For applications with RF unfriendly housings, Panasonic Industry has introduced the dual-mode PAN1316C module which is an antenna-less variant of its PAN1326C2.

The dual-mode PAN1316C supports Bluetooth Low Energy and Bluetooth Classic and is ready for the connection of an external antenna via bottom pin and is also equipped with the PAN1326C2’s host controlled interface (HCI) Bluetooth radio frequency (RF) module.

It has been designed to meet the needs of modern device housings to fulfil several criteria at the same time, namely being compact, rugged or waterproof although this might lead to radio waves hitting an impermeable housing structure. To address, this Panasonic Industry offers the PAN1316C “to circumvent a housing’s apparent RF unfriendliness”.

It module has a small footprint of 58.5mm² (9.0 x 6.5 x 1.8mm). It is equipped with the CC2564C Bluetooth core IC from Texas Instruments and is claimed to offer best-in-class performance – about twice the range of other Bluetooth Low Energy solutions.

In addition to a UART interface, the module contains an audio/voice codec interface which is a dedicated programmable serial port that provides the logic to interface to several kinds of PCM or I2S codecs. The module has a wide operating temperature range of -40 to +85 degrees C. The supply voltage range is 1.8 to 4.8V.

The PAN1316C is pin-compatible with previous generations of Texas Instruments-based Bluetooth HCI modules.

The Panasonic Group develops products for consumer electronics, housing, automotive, industry, communications, and energy sectors worldwide.

Panasonic Industry Europe is part of the global Panasonic Group and provides automotive and industrial products and services in Europe.

The company’s portfolio covers key electronic components, devices and modules and extends to complete solutions and production equipment for manufacturing lines across a broad range of industries.

http://industry.panasonic.eu

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Nvidia updates TAO toolkit to simplify AI modelling

Thu, Jun 09, 2022

The latest version of Nvidia’s Train, Adapt and Optimise (TAO) toolkit, is claimed to simplify and accelerate the creation of AI models for speech and vision AI applications.

Developers can use the power of transfer learning to create production-ready models customised and optimised for particular use cases without the need for massive amounts of data, explained Nvidia. Typical applications include detecting defects, translating languages, or managing traffic.

The latest version boosts developer productivity with the introduction of pre-trained vision and speech models. It also includes key new features such as ONNX model weights import, REST APIs, and TensorBoard integration.

It is now possible to build a new AI service or integrate AI into an existing one with REST architecture (representational state transfer) application programming interfaces (APIs). The TAO Toolkit service can be managed and orchestrated on Kubernetes. With TAO Toolkit as-a-service, IT managers can deliver scalable services using industry-standard APIs.

It is also possible to fine-tune and optimise non-TAO models with TAO. It is possible to import pre-trained weights from ONNX and take advantage of TAO features like pruning and quantisation, with support for image classification and segmentation tasks.

Developers can understand model training performance by visualising scalars such as training and validation loss, model weights, and predicted images in TensorBoard. They can also compare results between experiments by changing hyperparameters.

In addition, pre-trained models speed up the customisation process with the ability to fine-tune through the power of transfer learning, with less data. Some of the new pretrained models in this latest version can apply data gathered from lidar sensors for robotics and automotive applications, advised Nvidia. It is also possible to classify human actions based on human poses. This can find applications in public safety, retail, and worker safety use cases.

Another use for pre-trained models is to estimate key points on humans, animals, and objects to help portray actions or simply define the object shape.

Users can create custom voices with just 30 minutes of recorded data to power smart devices, game characters, and quick service restaurants for example.

Enterprise support for TAO Toolkit is available with Nvidia AI Enterprise, an end-to-end software suite for AI development and deployment.

http://www.nvidia.com

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Integrated devices from onsemi support KNX and PoE for building automation

Arm has released the Mali-C55, and said that it is its smallest and most configurable image signal processor to date.

PAN1316C supports BLE and Bluetooth Classic in “RF-unfriendly conditions”

Nvidia updates TAO toolkit to simplify AI modelling

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