Industrial Factory Automation

Lanner Electronics has released a low-power 3.5in (8.9cm) single-board computer (SBC). The VES-300 SBC utilises the 945GSE + ICH7M chipset and is powered by an Intel Atom N270 processor. The SBC is designed to be deployed in a variety of industrial and commercial settings. The VES-300 has SATA support, comes with a Compactflash socket and holds up to 2Gb of RAM. It comes with six USB and four COM ports for peripheral connectivity and two Ethernet ports for network communication. The VES-300 is built around the Intel Atom N270, which does not consume much power and has a small thermal footprint, while still offering 1.6GHz of processing power. The motherboard is designed to be integrated in a fanless system, relying only on a passive CPU heatsink for cooling. It can operate between 0C and +60C. The SBC is designed for vibrant displays with integrated graphics via Intel 945GSE. The VES-300 supports VGA and LVDS outputs. On the SBC is a SDVO LVDS transmitter, which enables the LVDS outpu...

Wolfson Microelectronics has launched the WM8912, an ultra-low-power DAC designed to extended playback time, reduce system cost and enhance audio performance in portable applications. These applications include media players, headsets, multimedia phones and navigation devices. The WM8912 features Wolfson's SmartDAC technology, a low-power DAC capacitor switching architecture, which enables DAC-to-headphone power consumption of less than 4mW. Also incorporated into the WM8912 is Wolfson's Class W amplifier technology, an evolution of Class G, which includes an adaptive dual-drive charge pump and DC servo circuit architecture. The Class W ground-referenced amplifier technology uses an adaptive dual-drive charge pump to optimise power dissipation and eliminate the need for large DC blocking capacitors on both headphone and line outputs, resulting in savings in PCB space and the audio subsystem bill of materials. The WM8912 also features a control write sequencer to ensure ease of...

Energy Micro is to begin developing a companion range of low-power radio-frequency (RF) transceiver products. The company intends to produce RF devices consuming a quarter of the energy of existing products. A complete range of RF products is planned for 2011, covering multiple frequency bands and supporting both standard and proprietary wireless protocols. Initial market sector targets will include energy metering, home and building automation and alarm and security industries.