Cypress Semiconductor’s FirstTouch Starter Kit includes Kionix Accelerometer

Cypress Semiconductor Corporation selected the Kionix KXSC7 accelerometer for use in the new CY8CKIT-014 PSoC5 FirstTouch Starter Kit. The kit is based on the PSoC 5 programmable system-on-chip architecture that uses the 32-bit ARM® Cortex-M3 processor.

The KXSC7 series of Tri-axis, 2g-6, analog accelerometers have low-power consumption and several preset internal low-pass filters with an option for user-definable bandwidth if required for the application. 

In addition to the Kionix accelerometer, the starter kit includes a Thermistor, Proximity Sensing, a CapSense® touch-sensing interface, I/O’s, projects and software to allow users to evaluate PSoC5.

For more information and to order Cypress Semiconductor CY8CKIT-014 PSoC5 FirstTouchTM Starter Kit ($49.00), click here.

For more information about Kionix KXSC7 accelerometer, click here.

MEMS Technology Summit Will Bring Together Several Industry Pioneers

Using the 25^th Anniversary of the founding of NovaSensor as a celebration backdrop, the MEMS Technology Summit will be held at Stanford University on October 19-20, 2010. The event will celebrate the25th anniversary of the company founded by MEMS industry pioneers Dr. Kurt Petersen, Dr. Janusz Bryzek and Mr. Joseph R. Mallon Jr. (shown in the picture).

Other industry pioneers who will present their views on the future of MEMS technology at the conference include Professor Kensal (Ken) Wise of the University of Michigan, Professor Tom Kenny of Stanford University, Dr. Ken Gabriel of DARPA, Professor Emeritus Stephen Senturia of MIT, Professor Emeritus Richard Muller of the University of California Berkeley and Dr. Jiri Marek of Bosch (Germany). 

MEMS technology provides the basis for many of today’s pressure sensors, accelerometers, gyroscopes and other sensors, actuators and more.

For more information on attending this unique event, click here.

MicroStrain’s Wireless Sensor Products now Integrate with National Instruments’ LabVIEW

MicroStrain’s G-Link and SG-Link sensor products now easily integrate with National Instruments’ LabVIEW graphical system design software. The seamlessly connectivity to LabVIEW facilitates data acquisition, graphical display, analysis and data storage for MicroStrain’s wireless acceleration and strain systems.  

For a link to the LabVIEW driver for G-Link click here and for SG-Link click here

Balluff’s IO-Link–based RFID Connects Easily to Networks

Balluff’s IO-Link protocol allows users to connect an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) system to an industrial network via a gateway using standard discrete sensor wiring. Instead of using barcode systems that have high installation costs because of shielded RS232 cables and RS232 communication and an I/O enclosure, the IO-Link-based RFID easily connects with a single IO-Link Expansion Module and four 3-conductor, non-shielded cordsets. The IO-Link block treats the RFID data like a standard I/O point. Running multiple RFID readers from a single I/O block using standard, 3-conductor sensor cables can provide a typical savings of 12% per ID point

For more information about Balluff’s RFID products for IO-Link, click here.

Yole Développement Sees Double Digit Growth for MEMS & Sensors

Yole Développement, a market research and business development consulting company, expects the market for MEMS & sensors in cell phones to experience double digit growth, expanding from $3.5B in 2009 to $7.9B in 2015. For those in terested in this growth, Yole Développement is presenting a free of charge webinar on MEMS & Sensors for cell phones. The webinar will focus on:

• Global overview of the 2009-2015 market for MEMS devices & sensors in mobile phones
• Special focus on MEMS gyroscopes, accelerometers and compass

 Those who are interested can register for webcast with two date & time options:

For Thursday August, 5th at 5:30 pm, Europe Summer Time (Paris, GMT+02:00) > Register here

For Friday August, 6th at 10.00 am, Europe Summer Time (Paris, GMT+02:00) > Register here

Customized Wireless Sensing & Training Courses offered by Libelium

Libelium, maker of the Waspmote wireless sensing is offering a couple of sensing design opportunities to potential customers. First off all, they will integrate a custom sensor with their Waspmote wireless sensing capability for a specific Wireless Sensing network (WSN) application. Waspmote is a low power wireless mesh network that uses ZigBee or wireless technologies.

 Libelium is also offering its First International Training Course on the Waspmote platform. The course will be held on the 23th, 24th and 25th of November in the Libelium headquarters in Zaragoza, Spain.

For more information on Libelium customized wireless sensing hardware design, click here.  For WaspMote training course info, click here.

RF-Enabled Sensing Benefits from ProximaRF Kit

ProximaRF, a company that specializes in high frequency (13.56 MHz) RFID has developed an RFID–enabled sensor kit that provides users access to Melexis MLX90129 RFID sensor transponder IC.

Using the ProximaRF DVK90129 reader and evaluation kit, developers can immediately read and write code to the RFID IC using a plug and play USB high frequency reader without any additional design requirements. In addition to the USB desktop HF RF reader, the kit includes an XML-based API to simplify sensor interface, ready-to-use dashboard demo tools and the RFID-enabled sensor evaluation board with thermometer, light sensor and potentiometer.

For more information about ProximaRF DVK90129 RFID Sensor Kit, click here.

Customizable Energy Harvesting Development Kit

Microchip and Cymbet have combined forces to offer what is being called the world’s first customizable energy harvesting development kit. The XLP Kit uses Microchip’s PIC24F16KA102 microcontroller with eXtreme Low Power (XLP) technology and Cymbet’s EnerChip EH Eval-08 Energy Harvesting Board.  The EH board converts solar to electrical energy and stores it in an EnerChip solid-state, rechargeable energy-storage device. The kit allows users to evaluate a wide variety of system functions, including ZigBee and proprietary wireless connectivity without designing any hardware.

For more information on the XLP 16-bit Energy Harvesting Development Kit, click here.

Connect Sensors in Point-to-Point Systems Easily with ZMD Dev Tool

Depending on the system, different sensor interfaces are required. For example, in automotive applications, Controller Area Network (CAN) or Local Interconnect Network (LIN) are common networks for communicating sensor data. However, the SAE J2716 SENT (for Single Edge Nibble Transmission) protocol has been developed and companies have started to introduce products that meet it.

 In industrial and commercial sensor interface applications, the IO-Link Consortium’s IO-Link is one of the many protocols for communicating sensor and actuator data. Supported by several automation companies, the field level point-to-point connection system is compatible with existing I/O standards. ZMD AG ZIOL2401 integrated circuit (IC) is a high-voltage line driver for IO-Link and standard I/O applications.

 To make IO Link easier to implement, ZMDI developed both starter kit and a lab kit. Designers can implement serial interfaces and control basic I/O and switching functions with the ZIOL2401 Starter Kit that consists of the ZIOL2401 USB stick, a board with a microcontroller, ZIOL2401 IC and USB interface.

 To develop more complex applications and transfer the results to an existing system, the ZIOL2401 Lab Kit consists of three separate boards: a microcontroller board, a cable-board and the ZIOL2401 prototyping board. Both kits have development software that allows designers to individually program bit-level functions via a graphical interface or use a command-line interface.

 For more information on ZMDI’s IO-Link Master and Device Evaluation Tools, click here.

Software Simplifies Motion Sensing

Motion sensing is one of the hottest sensing areas. Using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based accelerometers and gyroscopes, systems designers are adding motion sensing to smart phones and other handheld products, as well as games, movies and even medical applications. To simplify the use of its MEMS sensors, Kionix has developed a software engine called Gesture Designer. This tool allows developers to easily create, evaluate and implement motion-based gestures based on the algorithms built into the company’s KXTF9 tri-axial accelerometer. With the algorithms, users can access12 tap-enabled, application-specified functions.

For more information about the Gesture Designer, you need to talk to Kionix. (607-257-1080). Kionix Website.

For more information about Kionix KXTF9 accelerometer, click here.

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