February 23, 2012 – 2:24 pm
By Yves Legrand – The California Energy Commission (CEC) has adopted a new power efficiency specification for battery chargers that will be sold in this state. The CEC has taken the lead one more time to impose better designed products that waste less energy. It is expected that the US federal specification will follow this lead. The new rule looks at a charger’s performance over a 24-hour period, measuring energy consumed in charging mode and in maintenance mode (maintaining the charge of the battery). It then fixes a maximum value for maintenance mode plus no-battery mode power. It is a new and better way of measuring these chargers, closer to the real use cases. This new specification also includes rules for new wireless charging systems. Read More »
By Yves Legrand
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Posted in Freescale, Smart Energy, Smart Mobile Devices, The Embedded Beat, Uncategorized
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Tagged appliance efficiency, Battery Charging, california energy commission, cell phone chargers, efficiency regulations, energy efficiency standards, power efficiency, Smart Energy, WattSaver
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February 22, 2012 – 3:51 pm
By Stephane Gervais-Ducouret — Augmented reality and immersive virtual reality can seem complex. These new technologies add contextual information to our environment in a seamless way, overlaying information about what we see around us based on where we are. Already used in smartphone applications, augmented reality navigates us through the quickest route to the nearest subway station, business, and even a home address. Read More »
February 22, 2012 – 6:54 am
By Erich Styger – The outline view is probably something you have open by default in your Eclipse IDE perspective. On the other hand, you might have closed it as just another useless view (in your pursuit of screen real estate). Either way, if you are like a lot of users, you may not be aware of its potential. In case it is not open, you can open it by going to Window > Show View > Outline, as shown in Figure 1. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.
Read More »
February 20, 2012 – 3:24 pm
By Steve Nelson – On Sunday, at the Daytona 500, we’ll watch history unfold as the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series roars into action with fuel-injected engines powered by Freescale technology. And we’re not kicking off this transition at a minor event, but at “The Great American Race,” in front of more than 200,000 fans and 15 million TV viewers.
Doug Yates, CEO of Roush Yates Engines and designer of the Ford FR9 race engine, recently visited with our engineering team and discussed the intricacies of a high performance race engine. Doug was flooded with questions from the team who designed the processor inside of the fuel injection system. (The fire codes prevented us from starting it up.) Read More »
February 16, 2012 – 8:46 am
By Cherif Assad – Sensors are proliferating in our cars. According to IHS, the MEMS sensor market continues to grow strong in automotive applications with compound annual growth revenue (CAGR) of 10% within the 2010-2015 timeframe.
With the emergence of electrification, the 12V battery (also known as a low voltage battery) is more and more solicited by the electronic equipment of the car and has to handle all modes of operation (drive, start, stop, and standby). Read More »
February 14, 2012 – 2:30 pm
By Glen Burchers – Good job, gadget geeks. You’ve shown that you really know where to get your news on the latest technical contraptions. You picked the top 5 and you put some of the best and brightest in that elite list.
Your top 5 includes Sylvie Barak of EE Times who just this week is alerting us to a new 9″ Kindle! Your top 5 includes Brad Linder of Liliputing who recently showed us an open source Linux tablet called Spark (Hmmm, could the name Spark have been inspired by Kindle Fire… nah, just coincidence.) The German contingent again voted in Sascha Pallenberg of Netbook news. And how would we have known that Kobo put the Kibosh on ebook lending unless we read Michael Kozlowski of Good eReader whom you also put in the top 5. And finally, you voted for Joanna Stern of The Verge who actually met Justin Bieber and will soon be on her way to ABC news to cover technology.
Congratulations to our winners and to our pundit voters. You picked well.
February 14, 2012 – 8:56 am
By Tom Thompson — Take a glance around you. Whether you are on a bus, in an office, or at the mall, it’s a safe bet that your gaze will happen upon a touchscreen device, such as a smartphone or a tablet. It’s also a safe bet that of most these devices use capacitive touch screen technology.
The reason is that the capacitive touch screen can detect multiple finger presses. This multitouch capability allows embedded system software to respond to such events in unique and novel ways. Everyone is familiar with using the two-finger “pinch” gestures to zoom in or out of the content displayed by a smartphone screen or tablet. Single-touch gestures, such as a swipe (actually a sliding motion), can also trigger actions in an app. The major downside of a capacitive screen is price: they can cost up to ten times more than a resistive touch screen of the same size. In the embedded systems industry, where price is paramount in a product design, the high cost of a capacitive screen alone could be a deal breaker. However, since capacitive touch screens help implement the gesture recognition that vastly improves the user experience, that capability often trumps cost. Read More »
By Tom Thompson
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Posted in Freescale, Software Meets Silicon, The Embedded Beat
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Tagged capacitve screen, CRTouch, gesture recognition, multi-touch, pinch gesture, pinch to zoom, resistive screen, swipe gesture, touch screen, Xtrinsic
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