Distribution
Mouser sees the trends in sensors for IoT applications
With new product development cycles happening faster than ever before, it’s important to be up to speed on the latest products driving the trends which is not always easy with hundreds of new components being released by multiple manufacturers every week. CIE editor, Amy Wallington finds out more about product releases and trends that can be found at specialist NPI distributor, Mouser
P
erhaps returning to work invigorated after a couple of weeks vacation, we often feel in a very positive forward
mode, ready to tackle fresh projects and catch up quickly on anything in our field of expertise we may have missed – but time is short, so where’s a good place for the design engineer to do this? There are online resources which are well worth a visit, particularly for engineers seeking new products for their particular market sector or project. A good “one stop shop” to catch-up on product releases and trends organised by applications and technologies can be found at Mouser, the specialist NPI distributor.
Bringing together the two evolving technologies of wireless connectivity and smart sensors and combining them with recent advances in low power microcontrollers is at the heart of what is driving the IoT. As we are able to connect more and more machines to the internet easily and cheaply using these embedded systems, the IoT grows. So it can be seen that all the electronic elements which go to make up the whole of an IoT system are inter-dependant, and that advances in one product group will enable the whole IoT to advance another step. Over this summer, there have been many product
amount of data generated by multiple systems. The “Internet of Things” implies that these sensors are networked by the internet using WiFi or Ethernet but the networking can equally use a non-IP address protocol such as Zigbee or Bluetooth,
depending on node distribution and data quantity. Data collection, analysis and storage are done in the main computer, often also programmed to initiate system
decisions based on that analysis. Sensors fall into several types:
environmental and motion (temperature, acceleration, pressure, humidity etc), optical sensors (light of different wavelengths), video sensors (CCD and CMOS light). There are also Smart Sensors, which have some in-built data processing capability, ranging from basic to advanced functions. Many IoT systems have environmental sensors to measure motion, position, acceleration, pressure, temperature, humidity or orientation and they can be simple temperature sensors or complex MEMS devices. TI’s HDC 100x Digital Humidity and
Mouser aims to be first to bring the
latest products from leading manufacturers to market, making its website the place to head for a good overview of the newest introductions, as well as trends and application articles. Here we look at some new sensors recently highlighted for the IoT market.
www.cieonline.co.uk
introductions, such as innovations in connectivity, data collection, processors and power and storage.
Data is collected in an IoT node from
different sensors. The type and accuracy of the sensor is dependent upon the value of the data being collected and the amount of data to be processed. No human interface is required to collect the large
Temperature Sensor integrates both functions in a tiny 3mm x 3mm footprint and can operate over a wide supply range of 2.7V to 5.5V with very low power consumption, at operating temperatures ranging from -20°C to +85°C. Typical applications include HVAC, smart thermostats and room monitors, printers, medical devices and handheld meters. From Bosch, there is the BME280 Humidity and Pressure Sensor, an integrated environmental sensor developed specifically for mobile applications where size and low power consumption are key design constraints. This unit combines individual high linearity, high accuracy sensors for pressure, humidity and temperature. The humidity sensor has an extremely fast response time which supports performance requirements for emerging applications, such as context awareness, e.g. skin detection and room change detection, so it can be used for many diverse applications, such as devices monitoring health and well-being, measuring lung volume and air flow, as well as navigation and IoT applications. Optical sensors detect the presence of light in different wavelengths, including infrared. New optical sensors include the ROHM Semiconductor RPR-0521RS
Proximity and Ambient light sensor, which is another device that integrates several functions – optical proximity, a digital ambient light sensor (ALS) and an infrared LED (irLED) proximity sensor. It detects approaching people or objects and light intensity, enabling, for example, LCD displays to be dimmed or illuminated according to whether someone is nearby, improving visibility and reducing power consumption. It is compatible with the I2
C
bus interface and 1.8V logic interface. Launched last month, Panasonic’s second-generation of Grid-EYE infrared array sensors integrate a sensitive MEMS sensor chip, a digital ASIC (I2
C interface),
and a silicon lens in a small 11.6mm × 8mm × 4.3mm package. 64 thermopile elements in an 8×8 grid format detect absolute surface temperature without any contact. The Grid-EYE sensors provide thermal images by measuring actual temperature and temperature gradients, enabling detection of multiple people, identification of positions and direction of movement, almost independent of ambient light conditions. The contactless sensors enable high-performance measurements for safety, household appliances, medical systems, lighting control, industrial controls, and IoT applications. An evaluation kit is available which enables fast prototyping. Video camera sensors are light-sensitive CCD and CMOS arrays, used where video monitoring is needed, such as automated highway traffic management systems. The sensor arrays can translate an image into electrical signals. Smart Sensors offer on- board data processing, anything from basic processing such as that usually available on environmental sensors, to highly accurate MEMS sensors with a gyroscope and accelerometer with integrated digital processing for sensor fusion calculations.
www.mouser.com Components in Electronics September 2016 41
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