Researchers from KU Leuven (Belgium), the University of Strasbourg, and CNRS have discovered a new phosphor that could make next-generation fluorescent and LED lighting even cheaper and more efficient. The team used highly luminescent clusters of silver atoms and the porous framework of minerals known as zeolites. Silver clusters consist of just a few silver …
Raspberry Pi 3 becomes Hi-Fi audio player with Sabre DAC
A French firm has designed an open source audio player based on a Raspberry Pi 3 computer module. Called RaspTouch, the audio player is the work of Bordeaux-based Audiophile, which is looking to fund the product introduction on Kickstarter. The firm has created an aluminium chassis for the player which has an ESS Sabre ES9018K2M …
Danish firm creates “first” IoT hearing aid
A Danish company has created an internet connected hearing aid. The designer, Oticon says it will allow the hearing aid to communicate directly with connected devices such as door bells, smoke detectors and baby alarms. Called Opn, the hearing aid is compatible with the web-based service IFTTT (If This Then That) for communicating with other …
GPS chip adds inertial dead-reckoning for car tracking
u-blox of Switzerland has introduced a GPS receiver that works with inertial sensors to add dead-reckoning navigation when satellites signals are weak or before the receiver has locked-on. It requires an external MEMS inertial sensor and flash memory, and also works with other satellite navigation (GNSS) systems (list below). “EVA-M8E adapts automatically to installations anywhere …
Women engineers needed to address skills shortage
UK head of a leading engineering company believes women have the potential to solve some of the world’s biggest engineering problems and address the skills shortage in the sector. On National Women in Engineering Day, the president of Bosch UK believes the internet of things (IoT) could be an opportunity to encourage more woman to …
Today is a very important day
“National Women in Engineering Day (#NWED2016) is an international awareness campaign to raise the profile of women in engineering and focus attention on the amazing career opportunities available to girls in this exciting industry.”
Gadget Watch: A sticky note for the digital age
The latest reinvention of the sticky note is SeeNote, an electronic, wireless device, a little larger at about 3.5-inces square, with a polycarbonate case. It has an ePaper touchscreen and runs on a rechargeable, one-month, li-ion battery.
Fable: The Fall-Out
A team of engineers was once assembled to start a chip company. Heading it were a CEO, an exec vp and three vps. Within three years of founding the company, two of the vps, both of equal status, fell out. The crunch came over the data sheet for what was to become the company’s turning-point …
STM32 developers get access to low-layer APIs
STMicroelectronics has added low-layer application program interface (LL API) software to its STM32 development tool set. This is for experienced designers and will allow them to work with the ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers (MCUs) down to register-level code, to controlling device peripheral and to optimise performance and run-time efficiency. The LL APIs are integrated into the STM32Cube …
COM Express gets Intel Xeon quad-core 14nm processor
Embedded board design kits for COM Express Type 6 modules based on the 6th generation of Intel Core processors, these are the previously codenamed Skylake U and H processors, have been introduced by Avnet Embedded. The Skylake H CPUs range from Celeron dual-core, Core i3, i5 and i7 all the way up to Xeon quad-core 14nm …