The speculation du jour is, of course, over Intel’s rumoured job cuts. Why? And where will they fall? The speculation is all over the map. The most likely reason why is that the Q1 results being announced tomorrow are shitty and the job cuts are a way of diminishing the consequent fall in the share …

Intel Speculation

Plessey has been awarded the Manufacturing Business Award 2016 for large businesses by the Plymouth Herald. The awards, now in their sixth year, were presented at a gala dinner at the Plymouth Pavilions. Paul Burton, Editor of the Herald, said; “If the success of the businesses shortlisted is anything to go by, the Plymouth’s future …

Plessey wins Manufacturer of the Year award

Thanks to our technology editor, and keen cyclist, Steve Buish for flagging this one – a project to build a bike power meter. Basically the idea is to prototype a low-cost affordable fitness power meter for cyclists (using “an ESP8266 WiFi module, 4 strain gauges in Wheatsone arrangement measured by HX711 24-bit instrumentation amplifier”). It …

How to build your own bike power meter

The number of 300mm wafer fabrication facilities in operation continues to grow and is expected to reach 100 this year, reports IC Insights. At the end of 2015, there were 95 production-class IC fabs utilizing 300mm wafers (there are numerous R&D IC fabs and a few high-volume fabs that make “non-IC” products such as CMOS …

Number of 300mm fabs to top 100

VersaSense, the industrial wireless sensor module supplier from Belgium, has developed a networking system based on Linear Technology’s SmartMesh IP embedded networking platform. Called MicroPnP, the low power wireless network will identify sensors and actuators using the SmartMesh protocol. The low power wireless technology is designed for very long “decade battery lifetime”, with real time …

MicroPnP IoT sensor network runs for decades on single battery

Find out how NI FlexPod retrieved and reconstructed real-time images from space

Read full article: NI enables Live HD streaming from space

The BBC micro:bit educational computing module is the focus of a Model Rocket Car design competition for schoolchildren. Microsoft is behind the technology education initiative and it has joined with the Bloodhound landspeed record Project, along with the British Army and Buckingham Palace to create ‘Race for the Line’, a competition designed to encourage pupils …

Microsoft combines BBC micro:bit and Bloodhound in skills initiative

Imec and kerfless epitaxial wafer start-up, Crystal Solar have demonstrated a homojunction solar cell with a record 22.5% conversion efficiency said to pave the way to low-cost solar wafer commercialisation. The potentially disruptive wafer technology was used to fabricate a standard monocrystalline 156x156mm2 cell on 160um to 180um thick grown n-type wafer with built-in rear …

Imec develops solar cell with 22.5% conversion efficiency

The total value of the transaction is approximately $195 million.

Google announced a new more secure version of its Eddystone beacon format to protect user privacy, called Eddystone-EID. Eddystone-EID protects user privacy in an app by broadcasting secure beacon signals, including website address URLs, using what’s termed a ‘rotating ephemeral identifier’. According to Google, this will allow manufacturers to manage access to beacons to avoid …

Google increases IoT user privacy with Eddystone beacon