Energy management + harvesting

Ordinary vapor-compression cooling is inefficient and un-green. Future-generations of air conditioning may instead use electrocaloric techniques with almost no moving parts. Leland Teschler • Executive Editor Here’s some bad news about our warming world, courtesy of the International Energy Agency: The use of air conditioners and electric fans already accounts for about a fifth of…

CARLO GAVAZZI has announced the launch of its new EM50 Energy Analyzers. This is a new addition to the company’s range of energy meters and power analyzers, which are targeted to assist manufacturers and end-users in monitoring and managing escalating energy costs. The EM50 is a Class 0.5 ANSI C12.20 energy analyzer that can be…

Solid-state devices that convert heat to energy have a reputation for being inefficient. New materials may eventually change the equation. Leland Teschler • Executive Editor Estimates are that 61% of the energy consumed in the U.S. is lost to heat. No wonder, then, that there is interest in finding ways to harvest some of these…

The Center for Biomolecular Nanotechnologies (CBN) of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), is using a DragonFly additive manufacturing system to 3D print embedded sensors in electrical packaging. IIT is a leading research institute in Italy with the mission of promoting technological development and higher education in science and technology. IIT plans to use the […]

POSITAL’s Wiegand assemblies offer a compact and efficient way of harvesting power for electronic circuits in electromechanical devices, eliminating the need for backup batteries. The operating principle of POSITAL’s Wiegand modules is simple. A “Wiegand wire” is a short length of specially prepared Vicalloy (vanadium-iron-cobalt) wire. When exposed to a changing external magnetic field (e.g. […]

While servomotors remain the gold standard for precision motion control in industrial machinery, the improved performance of stepper motors is making these lower-cost devices an increasingly attractive alternative for many applications. The key to these performance gains is the addition of rotation-measuring encoders, especially the new absolute multi-turn kit encoders from POSITAL. Stepper motors are […]

Many people are familiar with the “wayback machine,” an incredibly useful internet archive at web.archive.org. But until now, there’s been no similar type of system for cyber security professionals. An attack may happen today and then not manifest itself for months or years … by then, it’s nearly impossible to do the sleuthing necessary to figure…

ITT Inc. and its Enidine brand is redefining the shock absorber industry with Sentinel 1, ITT Enidine’s first-generation on-board monitoring system. “Sentinel 1’s new patent-pending design is the first of its kind in the shock absorber industry,” said Farrokh Batliwala, Senior Vice President and President, Connect and Control Technologies, ITT Inc. “By incorporating microelectronic solutions…

Piezeolectric materials are used in many consumer products such as mobile phones, watches, and instruments. Now, scientists at Virginia Tech have found a way to 3D print piezoelectric materials so they are not restricted by shape or size. Xiaoyu ‘Rayne’ Zheng, assistant professor of mechanical engineering in the College of Engineering, and a member of the…

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 […]

At Sensors Expo, Eric Biel, an engineer from Powercast Corporation, explains how radio frequency (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 and […]

POSITAL, a manufacturer industrial position and motion sensors, has upgraded its facilities for producing Wiegand sensors. These components, which generate small amounts of electrical energy from rotary motion, are used to energize low-power electronic devices such as counter circuits. To date, more than 500,000 Wiegand sensors have been manufactured and sold, 80% of which are […]

What happens when gold and silver just don’t cut it anymore? You turn to metallic alloys, which are what Army researchers are using to develop new designer materials with a broad range of capabilities for our Soldiers. This is exactly what scientists Dr. David Baker and Dr. Joshua McClure from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory…

At Sensors Expo 2018, Pierre Mars, head of the applications team at Cap-XX, a supercapacitor manufacturer from Australia, explains the supercapacitor demos in their booth. Using a 800 mF supercapacitor provides the energy to power a 2.9V near-field communication (NFC) 13.5 MHz sensor puck from Silicon Labs. With the charged supercapacitor (above 2.6V) the unit […]

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 […]

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 […]

At Sensors Expo 2018 in San Jose, CA, Jeff Sather, the vice president of Customer Solutions at Cymbet Corporation, explained the various formats for the company’s EnerChip thin-film, solid-state batteries. The wafer fabricated batteries have 5 µAH and 50 µAH ratings. The 5 µAH CBC005-BDC is a rechargeable 1.75mm x 2.15mm x 200 microns thick […]

Posital has expanded its line of kit-style encoders for feedback for servo and stepper motors with new models that use the same mounting form factor as incremental kit encoders from US Digital, Broadcom and other manufacturers. This makes it very easy to upgrade a motion control application from incremental to absolute position control. With Posital […]

POSITAL FRABA encoders for closed-loop motor feedback allow upgrades to existing motion control applications. The mechanical drop-in replacement encoders have the same footprints as US Digital’s E5 models and Broadcom’s (Avago) HEDS-5500 models. POSITAL kit encoders provide absolute position feedback — to give controls complete information on the physical position of the mechanical components they’re […]

Harwin has announced further additions to its Sycamore Contact product offering. While this series was initially capable of accommodating 1 and 1.5-mm diameter contact pins, it now covers pin sizes from 0.80 to 1.90 mm. There are a wide variety of scenarios where electronic devices/modules will require replacement over time (such as depleted gas sensors […]

For Powercast, whose Powerharvester receiver (PCC110) has been deployed in industrial and commercial systems for seven years, today’s answer is reduce the footprint and volume. The company’s new PCC114 receiver chip’s footprint (1 x 0.6 x 0.3 mm) is seven times smaller than the PCC110 (2 x 2.1 x 0.9 mm) and has 20 times […]

For Powercast, whose Powerharvester receiver (PCC110) has been deployed in industrial and commercial systems for seven years, today’s answer is reduce the footprint and volume. The company’s new PCC114 receiver chip’s footprint (1 x 0.6 x 0.3 mm) is seven times smaller than the PCC110 (2 x 2.1 x 0.9 mm) and has 20 times […]

The international FRABA Group, which is about to mark the 100th anniversary of its founding, has enjoyed a year of significant growth in sales and profitability. In fiscal 2017 (ending December 31) turnover increased by 21.5% over the previous year, with total sales revenues of € 31.5 million. Growth has been driven by strong performance…

Q: In what ways are manufacturers preparing for 5G? By Michael Chinn, Deputy General Manager ICT Group, Electronic Components Sales & Marketing Group, Senior Vice President, TDK Referred to as the enabler of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” 5G facilitates wireless solutions for applications across many industries by reliably connecting massive numbers of devices, providing ultra-low…

Energy harvesting (EH) has been an exciting potential source to power wireless sensing nodes for well over a decade. As in many new technology areas, the hype frequently exceeds the capability of the technology, especially within the short term. While some projections have changed within the last few years, EH still has great potential for […]