Editors' Blog

What Might Make an Accelerometer More Robust?

Last month STMicroelectronics announced a new accelerometer “engineered to withstand stresses of modern mobile life.” They see those stresses arising from increasingly thinner phones and the mechanical and thermal challenges they cause. They called out board bending as a particular challenge to the mechanical integrity of the works inside the accelerometer package.

So how do you improve the mechanical structure of the accelerometer to do this? First, it helps to realize that there are two structures in ST’s accelerometers. One operates in-plane and provides both x and y acceleration information. A separate structure … Read More → "What Might Make an Accelerometer More Robust?"

An Environmental Sensor

by Bryon Moyer

The sensor market is highly fragmented. Many sensor companies are good at one or a few sensors based on super-secret ways they have of building them. When combining with other sensors for things like IMUs, they may actually bring in partners for sensors they don’t make themselves, and they may use sensor fusion software from yet another company.

Bosch Sensortec has been taking a different tack, however. As one of the two really big sensor guys, it’s taking the “you don’t need anyone else” approach, doing a wide variety of its own sensors and … Read More → "An Environmental Sensor"

Net Neutrality Takes a Hit

by Kevin Morris

Imagine that a private company creates a public toll road. This actually happens, so it’s not a crazy idea. In exchange for building and maintaining the road, the company gets to collect tolls. That’s the monetization model.

Of course, once that’s in place, that company (or, more likely, its shareholders) might randomly decide that they simply deserve (or want) more money. So they do a deal with a specific car manufacturer. Now the tolls will be higher for cars that aren’t made by that company. Then they do a … Read More → "Net Neutrality Takes a Hit"

Gesture Oops

by Bryon Moyer

Someone I know got a new phone recently. It had gesture recognition capabilities. (No, I’m not going to name names. Partly because I don’t know.)

Fortunately, he was able to turn that feature off. And you’re not going to believe why he decided to do that.

Apparently, a “wave” gesture was used to end a phone call. And I’m sure that gesture was tested over and over, but only in the obvious use case: when you’re done with a call, you wave and … Read More → "Gesture Oops"

Paper Harvester?

by Bryon Moyer

My skeptic senses are tingling a bit here… Perhaps unfairly; let’s see.

Energy harvesting is a big deal these days, with folks off trying to scavenge enough power to do useful things without the need for an external connection or a battery. Is it possible to take an old party trick and rebrand it as energy harvesting?

Disney has been getting a fair bit of attention over their “paper energy harvester.” Here’s the deal: paper and Teflon are rubbed together, creating a field via the triboelectric effect. The … Read More → "Paper Harvester?"

Your Wall As a Touchscreen

by Kevin Morris

Pico-projectors sound like an absolute dream for anyone who has to travel with a standard projector in tow. Being able to attach a small device to your phone has the potential to eliminate one heavy bag and to give your shoulder a badly-needed rest. In reality, of course, they don’t have the power that a “real” projector has, so you’re not going to thrill an audience in a big room using your phone. But when the need arises, they can allow for ad hoc display of anything on a modest patch of wall.</ … Read More → "Your Wall As a Touchscreen"

It might have to do with governm

by Bryon Moyer

It might have to do with government restrictions on devices that can be used for targeting people – the Panasonic GridEYE is considered a “controlled device” here in the USA. I was going to do a product based on it (i.e. it can tell you how many people are in a room) but the usage restrictions made it too difficult to sell.
So, I just open-sourced the project
http://bit.ly/1clb03r
and people can build their own if they want to try it out.

… Read More →

Mysterious IR Array

by Amelia Dalton

Our bodies have evolved on practical, not principled, grounds. So we have one sensor for photons in the visible spectrum, and we have a completely different sense for photons at wavelengths just longer those in the visible range. One we perceive as light; the other as heat.

But in fact, we now know, intellectually, that they’re just different frequencies of the same thing. It just doesn’t feel that way.

Well, Bosch has taken a page out of the physiology book with its recent infrared detector array. Instead of detecting photons, it … Read More → "Mysterious IR Array"

IntrinsicID and InsideSecure Come to DropBox

by Jim Turley

We’ve taken an occasional look at physically-unclonable functions (PUFs), and, in particular, IntrinsicID’s implementation of them, as they seem to have gone further in productizing their technologies than others have. As we’ve noted before, PUFs rely on intrinsic physical variation from chip to chip. While this variation may drive IC designers and EDA guys nuts, it’s leveraged in PUFs so that a unique key can be created for each individual machine or USB dongle. The key is … Read More → "IntrinsicID and InsideSecure Come to DropBox"

A New Piezoelectric Oscillator

by Kevin Morris

A few months ago, we looked at Sand 9’s initial announcement. They had laid out 3 families at that point: a basic resonator (TM061), a temperature-sensing resonator (TM361), and a “roadmap” family for temperature-sensing oscillators. Well, they recently announced a new device that goes in yet a new family: temperature-compensated oscillators – the TM651. When chip-scale packaged, they claim it’s the smallest oscillator in the world (although an LGA is also available).

They’ve come out swinging at their performance … Read More → "A New Piezoelectric Oscillator"