Bench Talk

Having worked on many different types of industrial robots—SCARA, cylindrical, Cartesian, Articulated—used in semiconductor manufacturing, I can attest to the importance of choosing the right robot motors and ensuring that their speed and torque are optimized. Otherwise, the overall efficiency and productivity of the robot will be compromised.

At a recent energy conference there was a great deal of discussion on how the commercial real estate market might leverage the current infatuation with smart devices, and buzz around the Internet of Things to help propel building automation technology into widespread adoption. It would seem that the technology maturity, price points, and market desire are finally beginning to intersect. In the final analysis many experts, including technologists, energy managers, engineers, and real estate professionals seemed to converge on the notion that lighting will be the key technology that will help other control technologies, such as HVAC, to finally gain greater adoption rates.

Why does high-voltage innovation matter? It’s a question we hear frequently, and the answer may surprise you. Recently, my colleague Chris Schairbaum and I co-authored a white paper about how we are redefining power management through high-voltage innovation. Here, we have answered some of the more common questions we receive from customers about high-voltage.

The Internet of Things (IoT) will provide an avalanche of data. Remote sensors for just about every ‘Thing’ will provide data on the location of cars, busses, packages, and your dog, as well as measurements of your heart rate, blood oxygen level, and even the amount of half and half in your refrigerator. Lots and lots of data.

In the Internet of Things era, automotive infotainment’s primary role is to intelligently connect the car and all of its subsystems to the driver and passengers’ world; enriching the driving experience and enhancing the safety of the vehicle. Yet the rapid growth in audio and video devices, such as federally mandated backup cameras, lane-departure warning systems, traffic light recognition and collision avoidance sensors, will require more robust in-car networks – as Lucas Merian noted in a Computer World article, Ethernet is coming to cars.

Choosing temperature-sensing products may seem trivial, but with the wide variety of products available, this task can be quite daunting. In this blog post, I’ll present four types of temperature sensors – resistance temperature detectors (RTDs), thermocouples, thermistors and integrated circuit (IC) sensors with digital and analog interfaces – and discusses the pros and cons of each.

I’ve always been fascinated by the audiophile community, as it strives to achieve the absolute best possible audio fidelity, and in the late ‘60s and ‘70s I read magazines like Stereophile, The Absolute Sound, and yes, Stereo Review and High Fidelity cover to cover. I marveled at the insanely-expensive equipment I couldn’t possibly afford but did everything I could within my severely restricted budget to create a system that delivered high-quality audio. I treated my (now-scorned) Shure V15 Type IV cartridge and records like they were gold, built my own speakers, and performed rudimentary testing on them. I was in pseudo-audiophile heaven.

It’s a familiar pattern; a new technology is introduced, everyone gets excited about its potential and then a seasoned engineer inquires if it can be exploited by the bad guys. Such security questions are now being asked about the Internet of Things (IoT); a network currently under development that makes today’s Internet look tiny in comparison.

I was intrigued to hear that Benson Leung, a Google engineer working on the Chromebook Pixel, had gone on a one-man crusade to help early adopters of USB Type-C technology (used in the Pixel) to review Type-C cables online to weed out the ones that were not USB Type-C spec compliant. Turns out that this amazing connector that will de-clutter our lives by channeling up to 10 Gbps data and 100W power in one small cable has many not-quite-right cables flooding the market.

Every major automobile manufacturer is working on them. The potential of autonomous vehicles is also attracting new participants, including Tesla Motors and Alphabet Inc., née Google. Interestingly, a mere eight days after Alan Mulally stepped down as the CEO of Ford Motor Company, he joined the board of Google. It’s even rumored that Apple is trying to find a suitable business partner for the same.