Adding a Wi-Fi interface to your IoT sensor node does not have to be a big deal, writes Tim Bonnett of Alpha Micro Components.

Read full article: Design options to give your IoT node a Wi-Fi interface

At the recent NIDays in London it was interesting to see Lego exhibiting. They were promoting the IET-backed First Lego League (FFL).

Read full article: Mindstorms EV3 powers First Lego League

Russian scientists have let two electrons loose in a system of quantum dots to create a quantum computer memory cell of a higher dimension than a quantum bit.

Read full article: Russian researchers make next step to quantum computing

It looks as though the Lattice-China deal is going to get the bum’s rush from the US government. Last week a group of US legislators wrote to the US Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, suggesting that they block the deal. One of the legislators, Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama, said: “In an alarming …

Read full article: Lattice-China Deal Under US Political Scrutiny

Globalfoundries says it has demonstrated 56Gbit/s SerDes performance in silicon on the semiconductor foundry’s 14nm FinFET process. This makes it able to fabricate Asics which will meet the emerging 50Gbit/s industry standards such as OIF CEI-56G-LR and IEEE 802.3cd. The SerDes core, designated FX-14, supports both PAM4 and NRZ signaling, with the capability to equalise over 35dB of …

Read full article: Globalfoundries demoes finfet silicon running at 56Gbit/s

We were very pleased to announce recently that Tony Fish – co-founder of FabLab London – was joining the selection panel for the EW BrightSparks programme.

Read full article: FabLab London’s Tony Fish looks for EW BrightSparks creativity

US national security concerns nixed the earlier sale to China, so the Dutch company sells to a New York investment firm for about half the price in breaking LED business news.

An SSL projector system can now dynamically bathe both the Canadian Horseshoe Falls and the American Falls in colored light on the Niagara River.

Strategies in Light co-chair Bob Steele asks 2017 speaker Brent York of Tangenysys Consulting what opportunities and enhancements spatial tuning will bring to SSL applications and technology.

The Oracle October 2016 Patch Set Updates (PSU) are now available for Amazon RDS for Oracle. To create a new Oracle “11.2.0.4.v10” and “12.1.0.2.v6” DB instance with just a few clicks, use the “Launch DB Instance Wizard” in the AWS Management Console and select the appropriate DB engine version. To upgrade an existing database instance, use the “Modify” option in the AWS Management Console and select the appropriate DB engine version. Before you upgrade a production database instance, we recommend that you test the upgrade process on a snapshot restore of your production DB instance to verify the duration of the upgrade process as well as test your application with the new DB engine version.

To learn more about Oracle PSUs supported on RDS, visit the RDS patch update documentation .