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December 18, 2015December 18, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

SimpleLink Battery-less Power Switch Leverages RF & Energy Harvesting Technologies

SimpleLink may be the name used by Texas Instruments for their wireless MCU family, but there’s also a Chinese company called SimpleLink Technology that develops wireless smart home solutions including battery-less power switches that communicate over sub GHz band to receivers using energy harvested from pressing the button(s) on the switch. They have different models with 1 to 4 buttons, and round and square shapes. Let’s have a look at SIM1010-K1 specifications: Switch Type – Push-Button; operating force: 7N; typical total travel: 4mm Number of Keys – 1 gang Power Mode: Self-Powered Control Distance – Up to 30 meters indoor (works though walls), 100+ meters outdoor Frequency Bands – 433/315/868/915MHz Lifetime – >200,000 times Connectivity – SimpleLink (most probably entirely unrelated to TI SimpleLink); +10dBm Tx power Operating Temperature: -25~70℃ Operating Humidity: 0~95%RH Dimensions – Ф 70 x 15.5 mm Weight – 44g That self-powered wireless switch will prevent the […]

December 4, 2015October 13, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Cypress Unveils a $49 Solar Powered IoT Development Kit with Bluetooth LE Connectivity

Cypress Semiconductors has recently launched a Solar powered IoT device kit, with the easy-to-remember codename S6SAE101A00SA1002, featuring the company’s CYBLE-022001-00 Bluetooth Smart module, and S6AE101A energy harvesting power management IC (PMIC) on the main board, as well as all accessories such as a small solar panel, a BLE-USB bridge, and all necessary components and cables. Target applications include battery-less wireless sensor node (WSN), IoT device that monitors various sensors, BLE Beacon, wearable device, building energy management system (BEMS), Home EMS, Factory EMSystem, wireless lighting control,wireless HVAC sensor and security system. The main features of the Energy harvesting motherboard include: Cypress CYBLE-022001-00 Bluetooth Smart module with ARM Cortex-M0 @ 48MHz, 128 KB flash, 16KB SRAM Cypress S6AE101A energy harvesting PMIC Sensor – Temperature & humidity sensor USB – 1x USB port for programming and debugging Debugging – SWD (serial Wire Debug) connector, JTAG header for USB-BLE Expansion – Sensor expansion connector […]

December 1, 2015December 1, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

ShiftWear Shoes Integrate a Flexible e-Paper Display, Energy Harvesting Capabilities (Crowdfunding)

ARM CTO, Mike Muller, showcase imprinted electronics, that is an integrated circuit printed on a plastic film, at ARM TechCon 2015, and several products are featured flexible displays, so in future flexible electronics could bring innovation applications from truly wearables electronics to traceable bank notes, and so on. A company has launched an Indiegogo campaign for a new product, that’s both cool and relatively useless, with ShiftWear sneakers that integrate a flexbile e-Paper display, a battery that recharges by harvesting energy from your steps, and some connectivity (likely Bluetooth LE) to update the display from your iOS, Android or Windows device. Three models are available: L1, M1 and H1 referring to low height, medium height and high height of the part around the ankle (heel tab?). But all three have basically the same features: Always-on HD color e-paper flexible display Up to 30 days of battery life Waterproof up to […]

June 13, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Renesas DevCon Extension Organizes Free One-Day Courses About IoT, Low Power, Sensors and More

I’ve just come across a YouTube video called Ultra-Low-Power Solutions for Wearable Technology and the ‘Internet of Things’ On Renesas channel. The video itself promotes Cymbet EnerChip Solid State Batteries and Kits, working together with Renesas MCUs, and the interesting part is that they’ll provide a free training session for the kit as part of Renesas Devcon Extension 2014. This is not a single event as you may think, but instead the company hosts one-day workshops in various cities in the US and Brazil covering various tracks all year long, as you can see in the simplified schedule below. RTOS & Middleware track is not available anymore, but you can still attend training sessions for Human Machine Interfaces, Low Power designs, the Internet of Things and Sensors. As an example, the following lectures are available for the Low Power track: Renesas Low-Power MCU Lineup (30 minutes) – Updated technology roadmap […]

November 19, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

EnOcean EDK 350 Developer Kit For Energy Harvesting Wireless Solutions

EnOcean unveiled the EDK 350 developer kit which includes energy harvesting and wireless (RF) modules, and demonstrated the platform at Electronica 2012 on Future Electronics and Farnell booth. The new kit can help OEMs design batteryless applications quickly in a cost-effective manner for building and industry automation, smart homes and machine-to-machine systems. EnOcean EDK 350 Developer Kit includes the following modules: A universal programmer board (EOP 350) TCM 320 (transceiver module) STM 300 (universal wireless sensor module) ECO 200 (mechanical energy converter) PTM 330 (transmitter module for ECO 200) PTM 210/PTM 215 (energy harvesting switch module, PTM 215 includes data encryption function) STM 330 (energy harvesting temperature sensor module) USB 300 (USB wireless gateway) Wireless modules are normally available at frequencies of 315 MHz (for North America and countries following FCC specs) and 868 Mhz (for Europe and countries following R&TTE specs). The EDK 350 developer kit can be extended with […]

November 2, 2012November 2, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

199 Euros “Energy Harvesting Solution To Go” Kit with Energy Micro Cortex M3 Starter Kit

If you’re interesting in battery less ultra low power applications, Energy Micro, Linear Technology and Würth Elektronik have announced an energy harvesting development platform early last month. The “Energy Harvesting Solution To Go” Kit is composed of an Energy Micro Giant Gecko (Cortex M3) Starter Kit and an energy harvesting board that is capable of getting enough solar, thermal, piezoelectric or electromagnetic energy to power the MCU board. The power connector shown above connects directly to the Giant Gecko Starter Kit board to provide power. Although there are 4 energy harvesters on the board, only one power source can be selected at a time via jumpers. Several power sources can be selected by using diodes. The board The energy harvesting board offers two integrated energy sources: A solar cell (32mm x 50mm) A thermo-generator (40mm x 40mm). And 2 other external energy sources can be added to the board via […]

February 29, 2012February 29, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Texas Instruments Announces Ultra-Low Power MSP430 “Wolverine” MCU Series

Texas Instruments announced a new series of its MSP430 MCUs codenamed “Wolverine” for its aggressive power-saving technology. The company claims this ultra-low-power MSP430 microcontroller platform offers at least 50 percent less power consumption than any other micro-controller in the industry with 360 nA RTC mode and less than 100 µA/MHz active power consumption. Since typical battery powered applications spend as much as 99.9 percent of their time in standby mode, Wolverine MCUs power consumption of 360 nA in standby mode would more than double the battery life. Here are the key power savings techniques and technology using the the Wolverine MCU (MSP430FR58xx): Ultra low leakage (ULL) process technology. TI developed ULL technology that offers a 10x improvement in leakage and optimized mixed signal capabilities. Power reduction are also achieved thanks to an improved 130 nm process technology and more than 30 power-optimized analog and digital components. Unified FRAM (Ferroelectric Random […]

February 17, 2012February 17, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Cymbet EnerChip Solid State Batteries and Energy Harvesting Evaluation Kits

Cymbet has developed rechargeable solid state batteries called EnerChip for Embedded Energy, Power Backup and Energy Harvesting. Applications include backing up Real Time Clocks (RTC), Micro-controllers (MCU) and SRAM devices. The company says “EnerChips are ideal for energy harvesting powered devices such as wireless sensors, medical devices, data loggers and remote location tracking equipment.” Those chipsets aim at replacing batteries such as CR2032 batteries that you can find in watches, calculators and other low power devices. The company emphasized three key benefits of such “batteries”: EnerChips are more than 10x smaller than non-rechargeable coin cell batteries EnerChips last 3x longer than conventional coin cell batteries EnerChips are less expensive to use than conventional coin cell batteries or super caps. The price starts at 20 US cents in volume quantities. You can watch the promotion video below for an overview of those chips. Cymbet shows a lot of mobile phones in their video, […]