Of course. However, the conversion process to get useful electricity certainly is not. Also, several design considerations must be taken into account to ensure a system’s success. This includes thinking differently about power consumption. With all of the wireless communications applications expanding in consumer, commercial and industrial applications, the power must be achieved without connecting […]
Wireless
How will 5G technology impact sensors?
Fourth generation (4G) wireless cellular networks can theoretically download at speeds up to 100 Mbps, but a fifth generation (5G) network can achieve from 1-10 Gbps. While some fifth generation (5G) wireless cellular systems began operation in limited areas of the US and other parts of the world in 2018, 2019 should mark the real […]
What is the status of autonomous vehicles in industrial applications? Part 2
Part 1 of this blog addressed the different levels of autonomous driving as defined by SAE for road vehicles and introduced the topic of autonomous farming. This blog will provide additional information about autonomous farming applications as well as lift trucks. All of these areas are well-controlled environments that do not need the extensive mapping […]
How can the power consumption for computing be reduced for energy harvesting?
At Sensors Expo 2018, Chet Jewan, vice-president of sales and business development from Eta Compute, explains how his company’s computing technology can benefit heart rate monitoring and energy harvesting applications. The first demo, with an Eta Compute chip running at 0.476V powered by solar energy, displays Jewan’s heart rate. A second demo has sensors being […]
How can you harvest RF energy?
At Sensors Expo, Eric Biel, an engineer from Powercast Corporation, explains how radio frequency or RF energy can be used in energy harvesting applications. RF wireless power transmitted by the PowerSpot transmitter is received by two receiver sticks with LEDs. The TX91503 PowerSpot transmitter broadcasts an RF signal in the unlicensed 915 MHz industrial, scientific […]
How can asynchronous power produce longer battery life?
At Sensor Expo 2018, Paul Washkewicz, Vice-President of Marketing for Eta Compute explains how his company’s application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) uses asynchronous logic to lower the power to the microcontroller unit (MCU) to extend battery life. The ASIC is based on an ARM M3 and has a CoolFlux digital signal processor (DSP) from NXP in […]
What’s new in batteryless sensing?
To solve the problem of replacing batteries in ever-increasing wireless sensing applications in the Internet of Things (IoT), PsiKick has developed proprietary sensors called Smart Sense Nodes (or S2Ns) that employ ultra-low-power digital and RF circuit technologies. The S2Ns are powered by energy harvested from heat or indoor lighting that eliminates the need for a […]
What’s new in solar energy harvesting for sensors?
At Sensors Expo 2018, Ben LeNail, Director of Business Development at Alta Devices, a maker of thin, flexible solar photovoltaic cells for energy harvesting, provided an update on the company’s technology, its applications and energy harvesting solutions for sensors. The company’s specialty photovoltaic cells are ultra-high efficiency devices. Alta Devices has held the world record […]
What’s new in IMUs?
At Sensors Expo 2018, Faheem Faheem, the Director of R&D for Visionix Engineering for Thales Visionix, discusses NavChip 2, a next-generation inertial measurement unit (IMU) with high sensitivity and high performance. Architected around proprietary technologies and advanced signal processing techniques, the IMU contains a microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) 3-axis accelerometer and 3-axis gyroscope for 6-axis motion sensing. […]
What’s new in robotic sensing?
At 2018 Sensors Expo in San Jose, CA, Jacob Hicks, an Applications Development Manager from Omron Electronic Components, discusses including sensors in the Omron LD autonomous robot. The robot is linked to sensor technologies from Omron including cross-referenced Raspberry Pi based cameras to provide locations and status information, similar to what might be required in […]
