Alternative energy is definitely a hot topic in the smart grid industry today. We recently met with Rob Spiegel, senior editor at Design News, to discuss how automation technology is helping generation of alternative energy like solar and wind become more consistent.  

According to Spiegel, automation tools that manage volatile load swings are smoothing out the inconsistencies of solar and wind power generation. This has led to the growing integration of these tools into the grid and is expected to accelerate transition of alternative energy into the mainstream.  He explains in the article that one way to make alternative energy more useful is to create micro-grids. 

The smart grid of alternative energy sources requires advances in generation, transmission, and distribution.

Read this Design News article by Spiegel to hear more from our very own Kripa Venkat and Bart Basile from TI’s Smart Grid & Energy Solutions team to understand the important impact automation is having on alternative energy. Leave us a note below and let us know—do you foresee solar, wind or other alternative energies going mainstream thanks to automation?

For more information about TI’s role in alternative energy, visit our renewable energy page. 

Five of our valued third party design partners have created hardware modules to help you get to market faster with Sitara™ AM437x processors.

1. SVTronics– SOM437X Board

SOM437X is a System-On-Module for AM437x CPU. It has AM437x, DDR3, PMIC(TPS65218), eMMC or NAND FLASH, Gigabit PHY on board and uses 2.0mm DIP connector. Except for the DDR3 pins and power pins all CPU pins have been connect out to the DIP Connector. SOM437X module dimension are 66x66x10mm, 5V power input, power consumption is 2W typical.

Click here to learn more about the SVTronics SOM437x Board

2. bytes@work – byteENGINE AM437x

 The new byteENGINE AM437x module demonstrates the capabilities of the Sitara AM437x processor with ARM Cortex-A9 clocked at 1 GHz.

 The main functions are available on one of the three plug-in connectors for a variety of applications, such as medical, measurement and motor drive control.

 Click here to learn more about the bytes@workbyteENGINE AM437x

3. Variscite VAR-SOM-AM43 CPU

The new VAR-SOM-AM43 CPU showcases the quad-core PRU on the AM437x.  These are ideal for offloading real-time processing from the main Cortex CPU, managing deterministic tasks and supporting dedicated industrial protocols. The PRUs alongside the rich industrial connectivity of the VAR-SOM-AM43 makes it an optimized solution for products targeting automation, robotics, controllers, HMI and other industrial segments.

 Click here to learn more about the Variscite VAR-SOM-AM43 CPU

4. Mistral – AM437x Product on Module (POM)

Mistral’s AM437x Product on Module (AM437x PoM) is a low cost, small footprint, high performance, easy-to-use Product on Module (PoM).  With extensive integration such as quad core PRU-ICSS, PowerVR SGX 3D acceleration core, dual camera, QSPI-NOR, up to 512KB on-chip memory, dual ADC and an easily extendable architecture, the AM437x PoM is the perfect solution for developers looking at faster time-to-market of their products.

 Click here to learn more about the Mistral AM437x POM

5. MYiR– Rico Board

 The Rico board is equipped with 512MB DDR3, 4GB eMMC Flash, 16MB QSPI Flash and 32KB EEPROM on board. Additionally, it has rich peripherals including a Debug serial port, USB 2.0 Host and Device ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, TF card slot, HDMI port, dual camera interfaces, LCD interface, etc. Two 2.54mm pitch 40-pin expansion connectors allow the availability of more I/Os for peripheral signals like two SPI, two I2C, two CAN, four UARTs, one MMC and eight-channel ADC.  The Rico Board is capable of running Linux operating system and provided with Linux 3.14.0 SDK of which the kernel and many drivers are in source code. MYIR also offer a complete Rico Board development kit that includes a Rico Board, necessary cable accessories, an optional 7-inch LCD Module (including capacitive touch screen) and detailed documents to enable rapid development when customers getting the board out-of-the-box.

 Click here to learn more about the MYiR Rico Board

The number of different motors in the world is mind boggling. We showed you some of the more exotic ones in a previous post, but this barely scratches the surface.

Whatever your motor type, we want you to get your motor up and running without all the fuss of complicated motor system design. Although we can’t cover every motor out there, we are doing our best to catch the majority. One of the ways we have been doing this is by introducing a series of Motor Driver BoosterPacks (BOOSTXL-DRV8301, BOOST-DRV8711) for rapid prototyping and evaluation on TI’s LaunchPad ecosystem.

Figure 1: BOOSTXL-DRV8301 (BLDC)

Figure 2: BOOST-DRV8711 (Stepper)

Now, we’re rounding out the family with the BOOST-DRV8848, a dual brushed DC motor BoosterPack featuring the DRV8848.

Figure 3: BOOST-DRV8848 (Brushed DC)

The BOOST-DRV8848 is a 4-18V brushed DC motor drive stage based on our new DRV8848. This design contains everything needed to drive dual brushed DC motors with support for a parallel mode to double the output current capability to a single brushed DC motor.

Figure 4: BOOST-DRV8848 pinout

Figure 5: BOOST-DRV8848 schematic

The BOOST-DRV8848utilizes the DRV8848 to minimize BOM component count for your motor drive system. The DRV8848 requires only two external capacitors (C1 and C3) for operation. The low value filtering capacitor (C2) and current sense resistors (R3 and R4) are optional depending on your system requirements. The DRV8848 integrates the dual H-bridges, digital control logic, and a suite of protection features including power supply undervoltage, overcurrent and thermal shutdown.

The BOOST-DRV8848 allows you to control each H-bridge through the AIN/BIN signals. The AIN and BIN signals determine whether the H-bridge is high impedance, driving forward/reverse or driving low. The onboard potentiometer allows you to adjust the DRV8848 VREF voltage. The VREF voltage directly sets the current regulation limit of the DRV8848. You can refer to the DRV8848 datasheet for more details on the implementation of the current regulation scheme. The nSLEEP signal allows you to place the DRV8848 in a low current sleep mode and nFAULT indicates when the device is in a fault condition. Two terminal block headers allow you to easily connect your external power supply and motors.

All of these combine to create an intelligent motor drive system that fits in the palm of your hand!

For more information, you can visit the TI Motor Driver Forums or check out the TI Motor Drive & Control Home Page. If you would like to Build You Own BoosterPack, check out ti.com/byob!

Integrity has been the cornerstone of our business since TI was founded in 1930 as Geophysical Service Inc., an independent prospecting company established to do seismic oil exploration.

Eighty-five years later, our business has evolved to focus on technology, but our essence remains the same. Our core values of integrity, innovation and commitment define us, laying the foundation for our culture.

As director of Ethics, I am once again humbled by TI’s recognition today by the Ethisphere Institute as one of the world’s most ethical companies.

We have relished this distinction for nine consecutive years, grateful for its affirmation of our commitment to high ethical standards – and honored by our position as a global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethics.

The World’s Most Ethical Companies designation recognizes organizations that have had a significant impact on the way business is conducted by fostering a culture of ethics and transparency at every level of the company.

Ethisphere’s assessment is based on its Ethics Quotient (EQ), a framework developed to provide a way to assess an organization’s performance in an objective, consistent and standardized way.

Scores are generated in five key categories: ethics and compliance program (35 percent), corporate citizenship and responsibility (20 percent), culture of ethics (20 percent), governance (15 percent) and leadership, innovation and reputation (10 percent).

At TI, our foundational belief in doing the right thing is woven throughout the fabric of our history. Even in our early days of oil exploration, our founders knew that our reputation for integrity was the company’s most effective marketing tool.

“Integrity rides at the highest levels in the exploration industry, where a man’s word is his bond,” said Cecil Green, who was among our company’s founders and served as exploration party chief during the 1930s. “I’m convinced that the high demands of science breed integrity and modesty as well.”

Eleven short years after our company was founded, petroleum exploration ventures began to wither under the foreboding threat of World War II. About that time, Green partnered with Eugene McDermott and Erik Jonsson to purchase our fledgling company, signing the papers only one day before the attacks on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

During the war, the company obtained government contracts to make military equipment in our Dallas labs. This military manufacturing venture created a new business opportunity that grew into Texas Instruments.

In 1961, we became one of the first American companies to articulate our devotion to ethics in a written document. We issued Ethics in the Business of TI, abooklet that focused on ethical issues of the era, including price-fixing, misrepresentation, trade secrets, use of company assets, and gifts and entertainment. Within its pages, the book’s purpose was explained this way:

“Good ethics are good business, both from the moral and practical standpoint. The trust and respect of all people – fellow workers, customers, stockholders, suppliers, competitors, neighbors, friends, and the general public – are assets that cannot be purchased. They can only be earned.”

This ethics publication was revised each decade throughout the 1900s.

In 1987, as Americans grappled with the consequences of insider trading and corporate takeovers financed by junk bonds, TI established a formal Ethics Office and Ethics Committee, further demonstrating its commitment to operating with integrity.

In 1997, we published The Values and Ethics of TI, articulating the core values of integrity, innovation and commitment that had defined us for more than 60 years. In 2004, we revised the book to include our Code of Conduct.

And I am pleased to share that next month, in keeping with our rich history of commitment to ethical business practices, we will unveil our updated Code of Conduct.

The intent is to reflect recent changes in laws, regulations and practices and make the code more useful to employees and other stakeholders by presenting it in an interactive, searchable format and treating it not only as a living document, but a training tool.

We are proud of our heritage of ethics and look forward to unveiling the next chapter in our journey – an updated Code of Conduct guiding the behavior of every TIer around the globe.­­

When designing for human interface, programmable logic controller, thermostat or any battery powered applications, extending shelf life and improving standby time are big challenges.  These challenges become even trickier when the end equipment sits idle for years on a shelf before it gets sold to end customers. The clocks in the devices still need to run to ensure the equipment wakes up at the right time. 

Several options exist to improve the standby time for these applications – even up to 5 years. Normally to improve standby time, you might increase the battery size, which would make the system bulkier, or shut down the functions on the board to reduce the power consumption. The ideal situation is to improve system standby time while keeping the same battery chemistry and capacity.

Traditionally, the power circuit for a real-time clock (RTC) includes the 2 diodes, a low-dropout regulator (LDO) to power the RTC functions on the processors, and the diode switches between the main battery and backup battery (whichever is higher) to power the RTC. The total power loss in a circuit following this approach is about 63µW as shown in Figure 1. 80% of the total power loss occurs in the 2 LDO circuits. To compensate for the power loss from these 2 LDOs, you would need an 850mAh battery to improve system standby power.

With the TPS65218 integrated power-management solution, a 5-year shelf-life duration is possible with a battery as low as 300mAh for human interface or power line communication applications. The TPS65218 incorporates highly-efficient, dual low Iq DC/DC converters with an integrated power path that allows you to remove the external diodes from the board to decrease power loss. The highly efficient micropower converters cut power loss by almost 70%, as shown in Figure 2. The overall leakage of the LDO diodes can be replaced by the ultra-low leakage of the power-management integrated circuit (PMIC). The TPS65218 enables you choose a low capacity and cheaper coin-cell battery, which reduces overall system cost significantly. And the TPS65218 PMIC enables a 300mAh battery to keep the system on standby for 5 years.

Are you designing applications that can benefit from a 5-year standby time?  

I recently completed a project converting my own personal car to an electric vehicle (EV), and as an engineer, it had to be done right.

Figure 1 shows the batteries as I received them; I was only told that they were from a Porsche 944 EV conversion that had maybe 200 charge/discharge cycles. The seller was unhappy with the performance of his conversion. He mostly attributed it to having a car in bad shape to begin with. Without the budget to properly mount everything, the car’s performance resulted in poor balance, poor handling and possible safety risks. As a result, he expanded his goals to design a new car from the ground up. His batteries were no longer appropriate for his new project, but I could certainly use them, while paying only one-third the cost of new ones.As a simple low-volume user, I don’t have access to the best Lithium-Ion battery technology, and if used batteries are chosen, then I have no idea if they were used in the same pack or environment. I have to use whatever I can afford, or get. I have no idea if the multiple batteries that connect in series to form my pack were made on the same hour, day, week, month or even year! But I was able to find used batteries for a significant savings – too good to pass up.

As you can see, they came in various groupings, as they were scattered around the car wherever there was room for them, both under the hood and in the rear hatch. I had no idea when they were purchased (together or separately), what temperature these batteries had been exposed to, if they were being monitored and/or managed by a battery management system (BMS), or how they were charged.

Normally, a new pack constructed for original equipment manufacturer (OEM) EV use is built from well-matched cells and assembled directly as they come off the battery-cell production line. These cells will always be charged together, used together and managed with the same algorithm. Most OEM applications have some sort of thermal management as well, ensuring that all cells in the pack are subject to as equal an environment as possible.

Temperature can have the largest impact on a cells performance by causing changes in the cells impedance. If an equal load is applied to all cells but some cells are at different temperatures, they will be subject to additional expansion and contraction of cell materials. This all leads to very different aging characteristics. The result is a charge mismatch, and because they cells will age differently; soon there will be a capacity mismatch. If left unmanaged, the overall pack capacity becomes limited by the lowest cell voltage, leading to reduced vehicle range.

Basic battery pack design principles:

• When the first cell becomes full, the charge must stop.
• When first cell becomes empty, the discharge must stop.
• Weak cells will age faster than strong cells.
• The weakest cell ultimately limits the pack’s usable energy (weakest link).
• Systematic temperature gradients in the pack weaken cells running at higher average temperatures.
• Without balancing, at every cycle the voltage difference between the weakest and strongest cell increases. Eventually, one cell will always be near the maximum voltage and another cell near the minimum voltage → preventing the ability to charge or discharge the pack.

As these batteries were never going to be matched from their original use, and because I knew my installation would require them to be subjected to different temperatures, I had to provide cell balancing.

Lithium-Ion batteries experience two primary kinds of mismatch; charge mismatch and capacity mismatch (see Figure 2). Charge mismatch occurs when cells of equal capacity gradually diverge to contain different amounts of charge. Capacity mismatch occurs when cells with different initial capacities are used together. Because packs are typically assembled with cells all constructed at nearly the same time with very low process variation, cells are typically well matched, and charge mismatch only is more common. However, if a pack is assembled from cells of unknown origin, or there is high construction process variation, capacity mismatch can be possible.

There are two basic types of cell balancing: passive balancing and active balancing. Here is a brief list of the basic features and their pros and cons:

Passive balancing:

• Simple to implement (hardware and software)
• Cheap
• Reduces charge mismatch
• Small balancing current (<1A)
• Creates heat – throws away energy!

Active balancing:

• Greater efficiency
• Increased usable capacity
• Reduces the effect of charge and capacity mismatch
• Faster pack charge time
• Works in charge and discharge
• Large balancing current (>1A) to quickly balance large batteries
• Longer pack lifetime
• Mix/match new/old modules
• Can use mismatched cells within modules (increase production yield)
• Active balancing looks like the way to go!

I decided to use the most aggressive TI BMS I had access to. All of the cells would be kept within millivolt of each other at all times to ensure that I always received the most from the pack. The batteries, managed by TI EM1401EVM boards, used all TI parts to provide 5A active cell balancing (that I designed).

Figure 3 shows the basic architecture. One of the BMS boards is mounted next to the cells that manage each module or group of batteries.

Here are the major specs for the vehicle:

• 51x160Ah Thundersky LiFePO4 batteries, arranged in five modules around the vehicle as follows:

• Under the hood: one 12-cell module and one 6-cell module (see Figure 4)
• Under the rear floor (replacing the gas tank and spare tire): three modules of 11 cells each (see Figure 5)

• ~170V fully charged: 27kWh
• 1000A water-cooled DC motor controller
• ~150kW at full power: ~200hp, 250ftlbs
• 2900lbs curb weight
• ~80-mile range
• Gauge cluster converted to Android ODROID board and 7-inch touchscreen displaying real-time power, voltage, current and Wh/mile
• Wh consumed is ~250Wh/mile to ~325Wh/mile

Additional resources:

• Download TI’s new Battery Management Solutions Guide.
• For more details about the architecture and performance, see the TI Designs link here.

To learn more about how TI drives Innovation, check out these other Automotive Innovation blog posts:

• Driving Innovation: In the right lane to making the drive safer, greener and more fun
• Eyes in the back of your head: Automotive radar goes mainstream
• “Driving” subsystem interconnect with voltage level translators

Digital control has been making waves in the world of power supplies for more than two decades. During its onset, people from all over the power supply industry asked questions like, “What does a digitally controlled power supply do that an analog power supply can’t?” While there still may be a few wondering about this, the reality is that ship has sailed. There are a multitude of innovative companies using digital power to bring efficiency increases, field upgradability, fault diagnostics, etc. To this end, in the coming years the adoption of digital power is projected to pass analog control in many significant markets. For it to do so effectively, I fundamentally believe that we are going to need a different kindof digital controller to step up to the plate.

OK, so what do I mean by that? Essentially, over the past decade we’ve seen a huge push for higher efficiency. Commercial power supplies have made amazing improvements in this regard. However, I think the next big trend is going to be miniaturization. We’re never going to see a runway model showcasing the latest digital power technology, but if the power supply becomes invisible, stand back and watch how excited people get. Now invisible is a tall order; the last time I checked, that technology wasn’t yet available. J But there are things we can do to make the technology less intrusive.

Fundamentally, we need to raise the switching frequency. At this point most of you are probably saying, “Duh!” While in one sense this is obvious, it’s worth noting that many things are coming together to create a perfect storm to usher this requirement onto center stage now. For example, 97% efficient AC-DC power supplies are commercially available, there are new cost-effective switch technology capable of higher switching frequencies and lower loss (i.e., gallium nitride [GaN]), and process technology advances now enable the integration of magnetics to unimaginably small sizes. To keep up with these trends, we need a new kind of digital controller. We need a digital controller that has the horsepower under the hood to not only keep pace with these advances, but to actually accelerate them.

It’s not hard to see how a conventional microprocessor could have trouble with this. This Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) publication[1], presents a straightforward analysis that shows that a 60MHz processor is computing-resource challenged to achieve a 20kHz bandwidth on a 200kHz switching-frequency power supply! If we’re struggling to keep up at 200kHz, we are going to need a revolutionary new architecture if the switching frequency is 2MHz or even 20MHz.

TI’s UCD line of digital controllers, such as the award-winning UCD3138 digital power controller, has the precise recipe that the industry needs. Instead of putting the burden of real-time control and protection on a high-end microcontroller (MCU), these controllers introduce application-specific state machines that are capable of closing a 2MHz control loop without any processing time required from the MCU[2]. The controller also has a fault management systemthat can take action in just over 100ns to halt the propagation of a fault without any processor intervention. This leaves the processor available for high-bandwidth communication or other process-intensive housekeeping tasks.

In concert with the fault management system, these state machines essentially create exactly what the industry needs to thrive in thisperfect storm: a digital controller with a boatload of processing power strategically placed exactly where it’s needed most. Or if you prefer, a digital controller on steroids.

Additional Resources

• View TI’s full digital power portfolio
• Read: Implementing transition-mode control using UCD3138 devices
• Read: It is not just a PFC controller, it is also a power meter

References and Notes

[1]    Cho, Je-Hyung; Hyun-Wook Seong; Shin-Myung Jung; Jin-Sik Park; Gun-Woo Moon; Myung-Joong Youn. “Implementation of digitally controlled phase shift full bridge converter for server power supply.” Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE), 2010 IEEE, pp. 802, 809, 12-16 Sept. 2010.

Green grid: Measure, control, communicate

The smart grid of yesterday is vastly different from what we see today. The changes in the smart grid have been deployed in multiple stages and have changed the operation of the grid at many different levels. This change has effectively increased the resiliency of the grid thus improving the quality and reliability of the power. The motivation for the smart grid comes from the fact that the legacy power delivery systems waste resources and are not cost effective for consumers and the utilities alike. Lack of resource management and optimization was considerably more detrimental to the environment than it needs to be. The primary barriers to modernization were due to the fact that the industry has traditionally been reluctant to experiment with new technology that, if unsuccessful, could risk significant interruption of service. Not to mention that the benefits of modernization will not be realized instantly and are quite possibly underappreciated, but the costs are real and immediate. Today, engineering at each fold of the grid is enabling a revolution; bringing about grid modernization.

Conventionally, information collected were outputs and consumption was at various points along the transmission. With a uni-directional centralized distribution system the primary goal was to adequately support and measure consumption. This radial grid topology integrated fewer sensors with minimal monitoring and control ability requiring manual restoration in case of an outage. Today’s heterogeneous power grids combine renewables with multiple standby power systems, creating the requirement and opportunity for a profit-optimized grid controller that can calculate the cost of generating power from all available sources, optimizing grid versus renewables such as solar and wind. 

Government mandated increase in renewable energy integration and customer-sponsored generation contribute significantly to this hybrid green grid architecture. Complementary to this, battery technology is improving close to the point of commercial viability, and the major automakers embrace hybrid and electric auto. Standby and off-grid power both combine lead, lithium, flow and flywheels in ways that create opportunities to lower costs by optimally managing responsiveness, regulation and coverage time. With a high degree of sensor integration testing through remote check can be realized while equipping the system for outage recovery through self-reconfiguration. This pervasive control improves the overall grid efficiency while the customer benefits from both awareness and cost.

The historical model of large, central station power generators sending electricity over the grid to passive customers in homes and businesses in a largely one-way flow is increasingly coming under pressure. The future power system may be vastly more decentralized, populated by intermittent generating sources, but it will still be problematic to predict power needs. Thus, the power system of the future will be more difficult to operate and control than the system of today. The grid will require a new generation of power management and control technologies, as well as data management and communications tools. The smart grid is about so much more than just smart meters. Smart meters represent the customer side of the smart grid revolution, and have encountered some acceptance problems. At this point in time, power customers see very little in the way of benefits for themselves from advanced metering infrastructure (AMI).

To see how TI and Nuvation are enabling a Green Power Grid to measure, control & communicate attend the free webinar on 19^th March. To register visit http://www.nuvation.com/nuvation-texas-instruments-smart-grid-webinar

It’s not every day that you get to stand on an empty Formula One Race track, and certainly even rarer is the ability to join your customer at the unveiling of a new product in such an amazing environment. Both of these were the case when BMW hosted TI at the Circuit of the Americas (CoTA) in Austin, TX in February as part of the launch of the all-new BMW 2-series convertible. The car is beautiful, but TI’s interest was mainly in the corresponding unveiling of the all new head-unit which is powered by the TI “Jacinto” family of devices.

BMW’s new head-unit delivers a faster, more responsive user interface and performance truly optimized for power and smaller package design, which enable higher freedom in the forming of the interior cabin.

The TI infotainment processors behind the all-new BMW head-unit employ the “Jacinto” mutli-core heterogeneous architecture, leveraging the latest generation ARM® Cortex®-A15 multicore CPUs and Imagination Technologies multicore 3D Graphics on OMAP5, and DRA65x “Jacinto 5” for advanced sound and audio capabilities. This architecture, leveraging OMAP5 for user-interface and “Jacinto 5” for vehicle interface functions, allows each to perform at the peak of their capabilities without compromising performance.

Check out the video overview from our day at the track below then experience this new head-unit from BMW and TI first-hand at a BMW dealer near you! And don’t be afraid to put the top down!

(Please visit the site to view this video)

(Please visit the site to view this video)

To learn more about how TI drives Innovation, check out these other Automotive Innovation blog posts:

• Driving Innovation: In the right lane to making the drive safer, greener and more fun
• Eyes in the back of your head: Automotive radar goes mainstream
• “Driving” subsystem interconnect with voltage level translators
• Battery management for questionable batteries
• Head-up Display 2.0: TI DLP® Automotive Experts Speak at Transportation Research Board Conference

Unfortunately I was unable to be in Barcelona last week to attend the Mobile World Congress. After the craziness of CES, it is tough trip to make!

From afar though, it is clear that it was a big week for Wireless Charging, with two big announcements from Samsung and IKEA. Samsung announced that their new flagship phones (S6 and S6 Edge) will include wireless charging as standard, and Ikea announced that they are introducing a new range of furniture that can be upgraded with Wireless Power Transmitters. In fact “Marketwatch” ranked both these products amongst the Top 5 Gadgets at MWC.

Both announcements generated a tremendous amount of coverage, but they both have a slightly different impact on the wireless power industry. IKEA is the first major company to announce this level of consumer product rollout of wireless charging into infrastructure. By targeting people buying furniture, they are enabling wireless charging to become a  seamless part of everyday life.

I, personally, believe that the top 3 places to charge a phone are at home, the office and in the car. Clearly, IKEA is making it easier now to charge at home. They also decided to build products that conform to the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) Qi  Wireless Power, which is the more popular standard of wireless charging. This means  only people that have a Qi-enabled phone can charge with this furniture.

Samsung’s phones are not the first on the market with integrated wireless charging, but they are the first major manufacturer to roll out wireless charging in such a high volume flagship product. An interesting details is that they decided that their phone should support both the WPC’s Qi and Power Matters Alliance(PMA)’s Powermat standards. While Qi has the most products in the market with several thousands of charging stations, Powermat wireless charging is being rolled out in select Starbucks. This will offer Samsung customers the opportunity to utilize IKEA’s furniture or wireless charging at Starbucks while they wait for their coffee. 

Both of these announcements will help establish wireless charging as a standard feature in all smart phones. I also believe we will see more companies following in Samsung’s footsteps to support both the Qi and PMA standards  - ensuring a positive user experience wherever and whenever they want to charge. What furniture do you wish had wireless charging capabilities? Where do you want to see wireless charging next?

Additional resources:

• Click here for more about TI’s wireless charging solutions
• Check out the bq51221 wireless power receiver

I’m happy to present our new blog – The Process, where you can find updates and articles regarding all the widespread activities here in the Processors group at TI. 

Embedded processing has a long and storied history at Texas Instruments with our first DSPs being shipped over 30 years ago and over one billion (yes one billion) embedded processors shipped to date.  One of the earliest products, the Speak & Spell™, is still one of the most recognizable products (aside from calculators) that TI ever produced with embedded processors.  I personally love the picture below as I actually had a TRS-80 computer back in high school (but not the awesome mustache), it’s hard to believe how far computers and embedded processors have come since then.

More recently, TI processors power most of the world’s cell phone basestation towers and, believe it or not, odds are that any cell call you make goes through a TI DSP at some point.  Our latest push is into the world’s industrial infrastructure markets with everything from factory automation to smart energy solutions.  So while you still might not see us in anything but calculators, we are working hard behind the scenes to make the world’s automated systems more efficient and reliable (see Architecting for the Embedded Industrial Computing World)

Bookmark ‘The Process’ to stay on top of latest trends in embedded processing both here at TI and across the industry.

As a side note, I’m curious how many people out there remember the TRS-80 and what your favorite game was – mine was Pyramid of Doom (I loved the text based adventures back in the day)

When I was first beginning my career in electrical engineering, I had no idea what I really wanted to do.

One of my first professional experiences in power electronics occurred at the Unitrode (now Texas Instruments) Power Supply Design Seminar. The seminar was in Orlando, Florida, and the presenters were Robert Kollman (who would eventually become my boss) and Lloyd Dixon. After spending a day at the seminar I decided this was the field for me, and that there was much I needed to learn.

Fast-forward 13 years into my power supply design career. I am now lucky enough to be involved with the Power Supply Design Seminar as a technical contributor and presenter.

Over the past 35 years or so, some of the most technically sound minds in the industry have been contributors, including Bob Mammano, and Bill Andreycak. The good news is that all of the Power Supply Design Seminar content is now organized and cataloged into a single location.

Access the entire white paper library here.

Over 100 papers – categorized into 21 different topics – are now available. These topics include many different aspects of power-supply design, including:

• Basic switching/magnetics.
• Power factor correction.
• Isolated bridge designs.
• Forward converters.
• Flyback converters.
• Boost converters.
• Power supply control.
• Loop compensation.
• Power supply layout.

The papers provide excellent information that is useful in everyday power-supply design.

The new site also provides information about the latest seminar series and when it is coming to a location near you. As the seminars wrap up, the new content will be archived.

I am extremely excited to have all of this great content right at my fingertips. Please share with me any stories about the TI Power Supply Design Seminar series, or what you feel was the most valuable paper topic for you.

As the world constantly evolves to keep everything and everyone connected, wireless sensors are becoming more and more popular in the Internet of Things (IoT) market. Several definitions for the IoT exist, but one simply defines it as keeping up to date with our surroundings by measuring the environment with remote sensors.

Figure 1: IoT system high-level description

Most IoT applications operate in burst mode, where the system is asleep most of the time. Due to this duty-cycled system behavior, the sleep current becomes extremely important in determining how well the system can conserve battery power and extend the device’s lifetime. In recent years, technological improvements have led to a drastic reduction in system sleep current to only a few tens of nanoamperes, but there’s much more potential to drive system power even lower.

A low-power system timer could be especially beneficial for duty-cycled or battery-powered applications like those you’ll find in IoT applications. That’s why TI introduced the TPL5110 and TPL5010 low-power system timers. Normally in such systems, the microcontroller’s internal timer is used to duty-cycle the system; however, even in low-power or sleep mode, the microcontroller (MCU) can still use several microamperes.

Consuming only 35 nA, the new timers can interrupt the system periodically, drastically reducing the overall system standby current during sleep (Figure 2). Such power savings enable the use of significantly smaller batteries, making them applicable for energy-harvesting or wireless-sensor applications. The timers provide selectable timing intervals from 100 ms to 7200 s and are designed for duty-cycled applications.

Figure 2: Theory of operation

The TPL5010 operates by sending a wake-up signal to the MCU during every programmable delay period (Figure 3). When an MCU works in conjunction with the TPL5010, it can operate in an even lower-powered sleep mode by turning off its internal timer. In addition, an integrated watchdog function constantly checks the system’s MCU ensures high reliability. (For more about this watchdog function, check out the datasheet.)

Figure 3: TPL5010 low-power system timer with watchdog function 

The TPL5110, on the other hand, operates by driving an external metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) to power-gate the system’s supply for even greater power savings. In addition to this normal duty-cycled timing function, the TPL5110 can operate in “one-shot” mode. In one-shot mode, the timer can drive the MOSFET for a single cycle. Coupled with a manual-reset functionality, these two features make the TPL5110 a small and low-cost solution ideal for any simple power-on applications without the need for an MCU.

Figure 4: TPL5110 low-power system timer with MOSFET driver

Let’s take a look at a brief application example.

Figure 5: Typical wireless sensor

In the case of an application where humidity and temperature sensors are being used to monitor the environment, measurements are normally taken once per minute. This means that the duty cycle will be active for approximately 1 s and in off or sleep mode for 59 s. Now normally, an MCU can control the system timing; but if the MCU's sleep current is 120 μA, the system will be burning excess current. With the TPL5110, you are only operating at 35 nA in off mode, which is almost 3,500 times less.

Additional resources:

• Download the TPL5110 datasheet
• Experience the low-power system timer firsthand with the TPL5110EVM.
• Learn how TI is enabling the Internet of Things.

At their core, automobiles are designed to get us from Point A to Point B. As technology has advanced and consumer expectations have evolved, our cars have become intricate machines with complex technological systems, designed for not only safety, but ultimate comfort and enriched experiences.

One of the drivers behind these enriched experiences is the development of head-up display (HUD) systems. Offering clarity, high-brightness, wide field of view and the flexibility to increase virtual image distance – all in a driver’s natural line of sight, from 2 to 20 meters ahead – TI DLP® technology is at the forefront of the next-generation HUD systems.  And the industry is taking notice.

Recently, DLP Automotive experts were invited by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) to present at their annual conference in Washington, D.C., which attracts nearly 12,000 transportation professionals from around the world. This year’s theme was “Corridors to the Future: Transportation and Technology.” TI was the only “component” company invited to present at this workshop.

Understandably, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) is taking a keen interest in the future of HUDs, specifically around the impact that wide field-of-view (FOV) and augmented reality HUDs will have on driver distraction. Automotive-focused innovations often fall under government scrutiny due to public health and safety.  These agencies often rely on guidance from outside groups like the TRB to determine what guidance they should issue.

During the TRB conference, TI focused on the next generation of HUD development. Motivated by the pursuit of a safer flow of information, we started the conversation on how HUDs could be used to safely relay information from car to driver, making the argument for increased FOV and virtual image display (VID). With any new influx of enhanced technology, there are of course challenges that arise and we touched on these as well; the way image quality can suffer with high magnification, sun spot intensities and how wider FOV creates an image that may need to be warped or corrected.

The TRB meeting was an exhilarating glimpse into the development and evolution of HUD systems and the discussion on how best to coordinate seamless communication between human drivers and the increasingly “smarter” cars that ferry them around.  Here are three top takeaways to ponder as the industry moves forward:

1. Automotive Is Ready for a Tech Tune-Up

The automotive industry is feverishly looking to improve communication between drivers and vehicles, both on the input side (how the driver speaks to the vehicle and relays tasks) and on the output side (how the vehicle communicates with the driver.) The amount of information available is rapidly increasing and a HUD system with augmented reality elements will be the primary display to assist drivers in managing the high-flow of information, information such as navigational indicators, real-time landmark details and safety warnings, in the safest manner possible.

2. TI DLP Technology is Changing Lanes

As mentioned earlier, many automotive innovations fall under government control and regulation, simply to regulate standards and safety measures. And with the introduction of new technology, especially a development that displays virtual images inside a moving automobile, an even keener eye will be focused on the industry. TI is working closely with government regulatory agencies (federal and state-level DOTs) to be an early positive influence.

3. Inside Influence is Paving the Way

Research institutes across the world are conducting research into HUD technology, with organizations like the NHTSA hungry for study findings. And in order to influence opinion and maintain our status as the thought-leader for HUD development, TI is getting plugged into the research institutions that are doing these studies. Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and TRB are just a couple of these institutions.

Beyond mobile and cinema projectors, DLP technology is on the fast-track to completely revolutionize the auto industry. HUD is poised to become a primary display in automobiles, as common as a radio and steering wheel. The opportunity we have to influence and guide the industry is a testament to our innovative culture and the quality of people we have in all aspects of our business, from engineering to government relations. 

To learn more about how TI drives Innovation, check out these other Automotive Innovation blog posts:

• Driving Innovation: In the right lane to making the drive safer, greener and more fun
• Eyes in the back of your head: Automotive radar goes mainstream
• “Driving” subsystem interconnect with voltage level translators
• Battery management for questionable batteries
• BMW’s all-new 2-Series Convertible drops the top, TI provides the headroom