TechBlog

The all new A30 MEMS High Performance Single Axis Accelerometer offers excellent bias with a small light weight form factor and low power. Designed for commercial stabilization and aircraft applications, the unit utilizes standard +5V DC power and has a voltage output.

• Low Cost & High Performance MEMS Single Axis Accelerometer
• Excellent Bias ? 1mg
• Bias Repeatability ? 2.5mg
• Axis Alignment <15mrad
• Low Power < 5 mA Typical
• Light Weight < 10 grams
• Low Voltage +5V (single sided power)
• Bandwidth 40Hz / 100Hz
• Voltage Output
• Reference Voltage
• Internal Temperature Sensor
• Self Test
• Shock Resistant 500g
• Long Life

Continue reading ‘A30 High Performance MEMS Accelerometer’ »

Human-implantable RFID microchips face an uncertain future in the wake of developments that the technology’s developer, VeriChip, announced last week. The Delray Beach, Florida-based company announced it sold most of its assets to tool manufacturer Stanley Works for $45 million and that the rest of the company is for sale (see VeriChip Sells an RFID Business, More Change May Come). The remaining company essentially consists of the VeriMed Health Link business line, a patient identification service based on VeriChip’s controversial, FDA-approved line of implantable RFID tags for lifetime human identification.

“That business is not self-sustainable,” VeriChip vice president of corporate development Jay McKeage candidly told RFID Update. “It cannot stand on its own because of the cash burn involved in marketing to consumers.”

VeriMed Health Link is a service in which patients have an RFID tag injected under their skin in the arm to provide lifetime identification. The tag is encoded with a 16-digit unique ID number, which medical professionals with VeriChip-issued readers can use to access the patient’s complete medical history from a secure database. VeriChip markets the system on patient-safety benefits — emergency room doctors or other medical staff can access a patient’s medical history without relying on a patient response or an ID card. The idea is that even if a patient arrives unconscious or otherwise uncommunicative, his or her complete medical history is still accessible. The FDA approved VeriChip’s human-implantable passive RFID microchips in 2004, but adoption has been limited.

Continue reading ‘Implantable RFID Business ‘Not Self-Sustainable’’ »

Gnat-sized robots, microscopic gyroscopes, television beamed directly onto your retina. This may sound like a grocery list for a crazed sci-fi visionary. But all these projects are in the works today, thanks to an emerging chip technology known as microelectromechanical systems. While magical microbots may still be a few years away, MEMS are already a multibillion-dollar business in the car, printer, and display-projection industries.

Traditional chips are flat, static structures. MEMS, by contrast, are silicon wafers packed with kinetic, three-dimensional gizmos: laboratories, laser-guided mirrors, canals flowing with chemicals. An offshoot of the semiconductor industry, MEMS benefit from the well-known peculiarities of the silicon universe - every year chips get tinier, cheaper, and faster.

Continue reading ‘As the MEMS Revolution Takes Off, Small Is Getting Bigger Every Day’ »

Cleveland Botanical Garden and Kent State University’s Liquid Crystal Institute today officially launched a pioneering research project to explore the potential of liquid crystal technology for creating more sustainable, energy-efficient greenhouses.

At an event held on Wade Oval, the Garden and the University unveiled the two greenhouses that will be used in the first phase of the project. One contains liquid crystal panels and the other, a control, has plain glass. A demonstration revealed how the panes “switch” to manage the amount of sunlight that enters the greenhouse.

Continue reading ‘Smart - Greenhouse Research Partnership Unveiled’ »

Infortrend Unveils The World’s First External iSCSI-To-SAS/SATA RAID Arrays With Four Ports On Each Controller

Building on the success of its iSCSI-to-SATA RAID subsystems, networked storage expert Infortrend recently announced the world’s first external iSCSI to SAS/SATA RAID arrays with four Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports on each controller: the EonStor (ES) S16E-G1130 single-controller and S16E-R1130 redundant-controller subsystems. With these 3U, 16-bay arrays, organizations can achieve best-in-class performance while benefiting from the affordability and straightforward management of IP SANs.

Faced with the continuing need for greater storage capacity and the complexity that traditionally accompanies such growth, many organizations decide to implement a SAN built on a Fibre Channel or iSCSI infrastructure in order to consolidate data for improved manageability and data accessibility. Budget-conscious companies tend to choose iSCSI as it leverages the existing investment in an Ethernet network, and does not require complicated maintenance or high-priced peripheral devices. Among available iSCSI RAID devices, Infortrend’s EonStor S16E subsystems stand out for three main advantages:

• Performance: combining multiple host channels into a portal group increases the applicable bandwidth of each iSCSI session. In an end-to-end RAID5 configuration with two host channels combined into a portal group, the S16E can achieve 215MBps reads and 201MBps writes; when four host channels are combined, the performance can be further improved to 380MBps reads and 250MBps writes.
• Scalability: the S16E allows users to start with the storage capacity they currently need and scale up to a massive 80TB as more capacity is required.
• Flexibility: users have the flexibility to populate the S16E with a mix of SAS and SATA drives in order to build a tiered storage environment: SAS drives for often-accessed, business-critical data and SATA drives for backup or archives.

Continue reading ‘Infortrend Unveils The World’s First External iSCSI-To-SAS/SATA RAID Arrays With Four Ports On Each Controller’ »

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -

Engineers have created the first “active matrix” display using a new class of transparent transistors and circuits, a step toward realizing applications such as e-paper, flexible color monitors and “heads-up” displays in car windshields.

The transistors are made of “nanowires,” tiny cylindrical structures that are assembled on glass or thin films of flexible plastic. The researchers used nanowires as small as 20 nanometers - a thousand times thinner than a human hair - to create a display containing organic light emitting diodes, or OLEDS. The OLEDS are devices that rival the brightness of conventional pixels in flat-panel television sets, computer monitors and displays in consumer electronics.

Continue reading ‘Engineers make first ‘active matrix’ display using nanowires’ »

How often have you thought to yourself “I wish I had an ice cube maker?” I’m going to guess that most of you won’t have ever had that thought. It’s understandable, since practically everyone owns a freezer, which makes ice cubes. However, if you need a lot of ice in a short while, you’ll be disappointed. This is why the Ice Cube Maker Machine was created.

This simple device can freeze up a dozen cubes of ice in just 10 minutes. When you’re serving a lot of guests at a large gathering, a steady supply of ice is always needed. It accomplishes this feat by utilizing a highly efficient compressor which can freeze at much faster rates than a regular freezer. You’ll also be happy to note that it is a low-noise machine, so your guests won’t be bothered by any loud humming noises.

Continue reading ‘Freeze a dozen ice cubes in just 10 minutes’ »

Sanyo has just rolled out its Xacti G9 MPEG-4 digital camcorder that targets beginners and newcomers to the digital video recording world. This pocket-size design is small enough for you to carry it virtually everywhere you want, and it is a snap to upload high quality video as well as high resolution still photographs to the Web in various formats, including optimized ones for instant sharing on social networking sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace among others. Sounds like the perfect tool to carry around if you want to record precious memories there and then.

According to Tom Van Voy, Vice President and General Manager of Sanyo’s Audio Video Division, “The SANYO Xacti CG9 is a high-performance digital video and still camera in one sleek, compact package. It offers great performance and exceptional value to those buying a camcorder for the first time and everyone who wants to easily capture their special memories and share them in a whole new way.”

Continue reading ‘Sanyo releases Xacti G9’ »

Now that it’s time to break out the turtleneck sweaters and ski parkas for the holiday season, it only makes sense that we talk about …. Swimming accessories? Sure. Why not. Especially when the Finis Lap Track timer will help swimmers to cut valuable seconds on their lap time.

Completely waterproof, the Finis Lap Track helps swimmers track the laps, lap times, spilts, the works. It also gives an estimate of the number of calories burned in a swimming workout. And with it’s single, extra large button swimmers push on each lap, it’s hard to miss even when one is doing the back stroke. After which, the swimmer’s split time will be displayed for 5 seconds in order to check your times as you swim.

Lastly, it has a lap count down feature, which let’s swimmers presset the Lap Track for time and laps and a signal will count down to zero until a swimmer’s workout of through.It attaches to the pool wall by suction pad, or thanks to a plastic arm and weight bag which allows it to hang over the side.Cost is about $80 US and is available for preorder with delivery time well in advance of Christmas.

Extreme sports enthusiasts wanting to document their shredding, can be just like Warren Miller thanks to O’Neill – the sports manufacturer famous for wetsuits and clothing lines. They have upgraded it’s Campack with a portable media player/recorder and external camera lens. Snowboarders, skier’s, and anyone who is addicted to getting the rush of extreme sports can use the H4 Campack to record their relentless pursuit of cheating death.

An external camera for video taping extreme sports is nothing new. Samsung had a wireless sports camera setup last year and still has the wired variant in the SC-X300L. But what makes the H4 system so cool isn’t the external camera lens that attaches to a head or goggles, but the fact that recording is completely controllable through the backpack itself. Control buttons, large enough for ski gloves to press them, are located on the shoulder strap. Stop, start and record are easily accessible in this fashion. Sadly though, gone are both iPod and Bluetooth connectivity as well as a solar charging option which was part of the H2 system.

The player sports a media 2.4-inch 240k color LCD, and stores video on either it’s 512MB of internal memory or up to 2GB in SD card storage. Very disappointing that a high capacity SD storage wasn’t used as snowboarders (and others) will have to stop and change SD cards after only about 2 hours of YouTube quality PAL video. Ever try changing something the size of a quarter with ski gloves? Nice effort though. Cost is going to be about $400 USD starting in December.