Bench Talk

In this week's New Tech Tuesday, we will explore cybersecurity kits from Infineon Technologies and Maxim Integrated, plus the importance of digital engineering in cybersecurity research.

This week, New Tech Tuesday examines how products from STMicroelectronics and Silicon Labs can benefit the delivery of temperature-sensitive supply chain products.

Products that help obtain and process biometric data show great promise in future consumer devices. This week's New Tech Tuesday will look at biometric solution products from Maxim Integrated and Kneron and their potential in consumer devices.

In this week's New Tech Tuesday, we'll look at the roles the Infineon Traveo™ II microcontroller and Molex MXP120 sealed connector system can play in automotive safety, security, and performance.

While on a recent trip, I noticed that my phone was having problems navigating and keeping me on course. The phone’s display kept pointing in the wrong direction, and the problem did not seem to be with Google Maps or acquiring a good global positioning system (GPS) signal. Instead, the problem seemed to be with the phone’s gyroscope.

Today’s video gaming industry is big business with total revenues for the industry in the U.S. hitting $23.5 billion last year—a 5% jump over 2014, according to the Entertainment Software Association, the industry lobbying body, which also hosts the Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show. All the major industry players—software and hardware—are reaping profit margins at record levels, with software sales leading with some $16.5 billion a jump of 7% from the 2014 figures and hardware manufactures seeing their best sales ever. The prediction is that this growth trend will continue mainly because software sales are largely viewed as the best barometer of the industry’s growth and overall health.

Current predictions on the future of Internet of Things (IoT) and the Wearables market indicate exponential growth in the years to come. An analysis done by Morgan Stanley in 2013 stated that “75 billion devices will be connected to the internet of things by 2020.” Undoubtedly, some of this growth will extend to sensors.

Have you ever tried to use a switch in an application and wondered whether the difference between the AC and DC rating on switches really matters? ­­There is a fallacy that any switch can be used so long as its current rating exceeds the maximum load requirements in the circuit. Who cares if it’s AC or DC, it’s only a 12VDC system right? Wrong; when it comes to switches, the differences in current-carrying capacity are dramatically different between AC and DC circuits and this is typically reflected in the switch’s AC and DC ratings.

Most of us tend to associate technology in terms of consumer products. For example, if you were to ask the average person what the word “technology” means to them, they are probably going to say things like smart phones, laptops, tablets, or maybe game consoles. Their answers would probably include acronym words like Wi-Fi, 4G, USB, 4K, or words like portable, wireless and Bluetooth. But, seldom will you hear someone talk about technology in medical terms, or more precisely, portable medical devices.

One of the hottest gifts this past holiday season were consumer DRONES. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) projected one million of these devices were under Christmas trees this past December. The word Drone is one of the oldest official designations for “remotely controlled aircraft” in the American military lexicon dating back to 1935. “Drone” was adopted to refer to these aircraft as in homage to the queen in a bee hive, and became the official US Navy designation for targets for many decades.