Recent company acquisitions in the component distribution sector may only be the start of things. Since selling over the internet changed the way companies and so-called “maker” designers find and buy new components, the distribution business has been turned on its head. For decades the component distribution business was straight-forward. Supply companies with components for …

Makers make their mark with distributors

Qualcomm has developed a prototype radio system for 5G mobile communications research and first network trials. Interestingly, this latest 5G prototype system from Qualcomm operates in the sub-6GHz spectrum bands and not in the millimetre-wave (28-65GHz) frequency bands. However, this just confirms the likelihood of a two stage introduction of 5G services over the next …

Qualcomm offers 6GHz radio chips for early 5G launch

Maybe everyone else has known this for ages, but at last there is enough information on led and collimator data sheets to work out how far one should be form the other to get the specified beam. Gaggione LLC17N This was bought to my attention by optics maker Gaggione – which I had know had …

Updated: Designing led/optic assemblies gets easier

One of the increasing number of things which puzzle me is what IBM is doing in semiconductors. When it sold its semiconductor business to GloFo last year, IBM said that it “expects its unparalleled semiconductor and materials research to continue to advance its capabilities in systems for years to come.” And so it has. A …

Power Trip

Microchip has created the lowest power and least costly family of PIC32 microcontrollers (MCUs), positioned between the PIC24F XLP and PIC32MX families, and the first PIC32s to have the firm’s ‘core independent’ peripherals. Called PIC32MM, the family is aimed at IoT, consumer, industrial and motor control applications. Key figures are: sleep down to 500nA and a 4x4mm package. …

Microchip extends PIC32 range downwards

We know Raspberry Pi stories for high-end audio often prove popular, so check out the RaspTouch audio project on KickStarter, from France.

Raspberry Pi powers RaspTouch open source music player

BlueInGreen unveiled three completed installations in Jefferson Parish, La., Fayetteville, Ark. and Parkville, Mo., as well as two upcoming projects.

Strategic actions promote safe and reliable water supplies for decades to come.

The company has agreed to spend approximately $7 million to improve environmental measures at its brewery operations.

The Chinese are about to feel the lash of Qualcomm’s fearsome legal department. At the height of Qualcomm’s litigious spree towards the end of the last decade the company was spending $200 million a year on legal fees trying to assert its rights to exploit CDMA technology which it was obliged to license under FRAND …

China To Feel Qualcomm’s Legal Lash