Sensors
Living sensors at your fingertips
Engineers and biologists at MIT have teamed up to design a “living material” — a tough, stretchy, biocompatible sheet of hydrogel injected with live cells that are genetically programmed to light up in the presence of certain chemicals. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers demonstrate the new material’s potential for sensing chemicals, both in the environmen...
RFID sensors: Filling a real need or hoping for the best?
RFID is booming - it now accounts for the largest number of silicon Integrated Circuits (ICs) made of one particular type. But in addition to over 20% growth over the next few years, there is much more to come. According to IDTechEx, RFID is moving beyond wireless identification alone to wireless sensing of parameters such as temperature, humidity and much more.
Thin and flexible coils look to empower smart cities
LEM has upgraded its 'ART' Rogowski current sensor so that it measures current of up to 10,000A AC and beyond with class accuracy 0.5. The ART achieves IEC 61869 Class 0.5 accuracy without the need for additional components like resistors or potentiometers, which can drift over time.
Differential pressure sensors combine accuracy, stability & functionality
Sensirion presents differential pressure sensors from its SDP800 series. The sensor is the result of more than 15 years of experience in measuring air flow to millions of HVAC systems, car engines and patients. They consequently utilize the successful features of the SDP600 differential pressure sensor and come in the same proven housing, which enables easy integration.
SST & Sparkfun collaborate on sensing hardware
In order to address the vibrant and constantly expanding maker market, SST Sensing Ltd. has partnered up with Sparkfun. Together they have developed and simple to implement solution for single point liquid detection using infrared technology. This highly reliable and accurate solution comprises an Optomax Digital liquid level switch which is connected to an Arduino board via the TTL output and powered by its 5V source.
Energy harvester produces power from local environment
Recent advances in ultralow power microcontrollers have produced devices that offer unprecedented levels of integration for the amount of power they require to operate. These are systems on a chip with aggressive power saving schemes, such as shutting down power to idle functions. In fact, so little power is needed to run these devices that many sensors are going wireless, since they can readily run from batteries.
MEMS gyro added to portfolio of inertial products
Acal BFi announces the addition of the award winning Tronics GYPRO3300 MEMS angular rate sensor with supporting evaluation board to its comprehensive portfolio. Tronics has pushed technological boundaries of design with the GYPRO3300; the sensor utilises Tronics’ proprietary vacuum wafer-level packaging technology to deliver best-in-class performance and accuracy in an ultra-compact design, while offering a plug-and-play and open source tes...
Sensors can detect single protein molecules
MIT engineers have designed sensors that can detect single protein molecules as they are secreted by cells or even a single cell. These sensors, which consist of chemically modified carbon nanotubes, could help scientists with any application that requires detecting very small amounts of protein, such as tracking viral infection, monitoring cells’ manufacturing of useful proteins, or revealing food contamination, the researchers say.
Image processing software aids EyeScan 3D sensor
EVT presents the EyeVision 3D software for the EyeScan 3D sensor series. EVT has with EyeVision 3D another main version of the EyeVision image processing software. This version contains the commands of the Basic version and a broad 3D command set for evaluating and measuring on 3D point clouds. The 3D command set has roughly 40 commands. Included are commands such as '3D Blob' to count objects also in a point cloud.
On-chip sensor detects nanoscale changes in the environment
Chip scale high precision measurements of physical quantities such as temperature, pressure and refractive index have become common with nanophotonics and nanoplasmonics resonance cavities.