Sensors

NXP is aiming at ASIL D safety approval with a vehicle battery junction box controller IC, intended to fire the pyrotechnic disconnect switch during a serious fault, as well as report faults over a serial bus. MC33777A, as it will be known, redundantly measures currents, voltages and temperatures, then deduces situations – a short circuit or a crash, for example ...

  Infineon has announced a 5V version of its compact (13.8 x 14 x 7.5mm) CO2 sensor. “The sensor is based on the photoacoustic spectroscopy principle, where CO2 molecules within the sensor cavity absorb infrared light, generating small pressure changes that are detected by an acoustic detector,” according to the company. “CO2 concentration is then delivered in the form of ...

Allegro MicroSystems had introduced 1MHz bandwidth current sensors that can measure hundreds of amps – the first fruit of its acquisition of Crocus Technologies. The technology is tunneling magnetoresistance, and the sensors are intended to sit over the current-carrying PCB track to be measured. Output is a voltage linearly proportional to the current, responding within 300ns. There are two base ...

Health-related chemicals can be detected on dry skin, according to the National University of Singapore (NUS), which developed a stretchable ‘ionic-electronic bilayer hydrogel’ sensor with the Singapore Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star). The chemicals are known as solid-state epidermal biomarkers. “These biomarkers, which include cholesterol and lactate, are found in the stratum corneum, the outermost layer of the ...

HBK has launches what it describes as a “tactical-grade” embedded inertial navigation system in a 38 x 24 x 8.6mm 8.3g package – 18% thinner and 20% lighter than its earlier 3DMCV5. 3DM-CV7-INS, as it will be known, has 1.5°/hr gyro bias instability – which is where the tactical grade comment comes from, and is calibrated over its operating range ...

At the Small Satellite Conference in Utah, Imec announced a hyperspectral sensor with an on-chip line-based filter covering 450 – 900nm in 96 bands. It had equidistantly divided spectral bands and, compared with its previous generation, double the TDI (time-delayed-integration) capacity – to 10 line per band. Underneath the filter is a ‘2/3inch’ 2,048pixel image sensor from AMS – the ...

ROHM has developed an ultra-compact 1.8V – 5V, rail-to-rail CMOS op amp – the TLR377GYZ, optimised for amplifying signals from sensors such as temperature, pressure, flow rate, used in smartphones, small IoT devices, and similar applications. The size of smartphones and IoT devices continues to decrease – requiring smaller components. To accurately amplify small signals as needed in high precision ...

Panasonic has produced a range of micron-accurate industrial distance measuring sensors. Unlike its earlier similar sensors, digital output devices in the new HL-G2 series include interfaces for both Ethernet and RS-485 in each unit, selected by the cable used to connect them to the host system. They can communicate using EtherNet/IP, SLMP (seem-less message protocol), Modbus TCP or Modbus RTU. ...

The AH3712 is a latching Hall-effect magnetic sensor, protected for automotive electrical conditions, in a choice of SC59, SOT23 or SIP-3 packaging. The single output is switched ‘on’ with a magnetic pole above a certain flux density, and then switched ‘off’ when exposed to the opposite pole of the same flux density magnitude. There are three parts: AH3712: south pole ...

Nature provides the model for integrating sensors for a distributed edge AI system, say Bartosz Boryna and Zuzana Jirankova. The horseshoe crab (limulus polyphemus) is recognised by scientists as an interesting model for vision research because the animal’s body is large enough to study and its retina neurons are quite easily accessible. The crab has several compound eyes distributed over ...