New Products Recently Introduced – July 2013

Charge mobile by sending SMS

Running out on your phone’s battery? Now all you need to do is to send an SMS to recharge it. Buffalo Grid has developed a solar-powered cellphone charging station that gets activated by an SMS. The system can be beneficial for people living off-grid as recharging their phone is now an SMS away.

The company has designed the technology particularly for rural areas in the developing parts of the world like Africa and Asia. According to a ‘NewScientist’ report, a trial of the technology has already been conducted in Uganda. The technology works in a way that the battery of the cellphone derives its power from a solar panel via a technique called maximum power point tracking (MPPT). The battery, via this unique technique, is charged by a 60-watt solar panel.

Charge mobile by sending SMS

Crash-proof computer

Ever imagined a computer that never crashes? Well, you don’t need to imagine that any more. Computer scientists at the Unicersity College London (UCL) have come up with a self-repairing, inspired-by-nature computer that never crashes.

“This technology could find its way into mission-critical systems that must not fail, or it could improve the overall reliability of computers in general  - which is a good thing, considering how almost everything we interact with is governed by a digital computer,” said a report by Extreme Tech.

Battery that recharges in 10 minutes

Battery that recharges in 10 minutes

Say hello to the next-generation lithium-ion battery which can be recharged within ten minutes! Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering claim that the new batteries hold thrice as much energy as its existing counterparts.

The new batteries could be used in anything from cellphones to hybrid cars. The design, currently under a provisional patent, could be commercially available within two to three years. “It’s an exciting research. It opens the door for the design of the next-generation lithium-ion batteries,” said Chongwu Zhou, professor at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, who led the team that developed the battery.

Bracelet that connects to Android smartphone

Bracelet that connects to Android smartphone

Technology knows no bounds! For all the Android smartphone lovers who want to avoid carrying their huge de­vices in their hands, here is a bracelet that will keep you connected to your smartphones without the burden of carrying one.

Embrace plus allows users to set notifications for incoming calls, text messages, Instagram, email, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Linkedln, Skype, Calendar Alerts and much more. The bracelet can be connected to any An­droid smartphone running Android 2.3 and above.

India-based firm designs smallest Android smart watch

India-based firm designs smallest Android smart watch

Samsung belongs to Korea, HTC is lo­cated in Taiwan, Sony is a Japan-based brand and even Micromax sources its products from China. But amongst all these biggies, an India-based tech firm, called Android Systems Pvt Ltd. has launched the smallest Android-based watch that comes with smartphone ­like features.

The company has priced the in­novative miniature device, starting at $249. This smartwatch sports a 5cm (2-inch) display and runs Android 2.2 aka Froyo. The watch is powered by a 416MHz processor and 256MB RAM. It also comes with a camera, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support, SIM card slot, Google Play Store and other wireless modes. The watch also has an internal storage capacity of 8 GB.

A 3D see-through computer

A 3D see-through computer

A transparent 3D computer was recently unveiled at the Technology, Entertain­ment and Design (TED) 2013 conference in California. Developed by Jinha Lee - a graduate student at MIT, the SpaceTop 3D desktop has the potential to radically alter the way we interact with personal technol­ogy. The device works via a combination of a transparent display and 3D gesture detection algorithms that are placed in the input space. 3D rendering, as per Lee, is achieved without tethering or burdening users with 3D glasses.

Nano technology to double HDD density

Nano technology to double HDD density

HGST (formerly Hitachi Global Stor­age Technologies) is leading the disk drive industry to the forefront in nanolithography by creating and rep­licating minute features that will allow the doubling of hard disk drive (HDD) density in future disk drives.

HGST Labs announced that they have combined two innovative nano­technologies - self-assembling molecules and Nano imprinting - to create large areas of dense patterns of magnetic islands only 10 billionths of a meter (10 nanometers) wide. These features are only about 50 atoms wide and some 100,000 times thinner than a human hair.

Power management IC

ROHM has developed a dedicated system power management IC (PMIC)

ROHM has developed a dedicated system power management IC (PMIC) to support Intel's latest Atom-based platform, codenamed Bay Trail. It is a highly integrated power management solution targeted towards ultra-thin form factor tablet and convertible devices.

Dr Takahisa Yamaha, managing director and head of ROHM semi­conductor division, said "Our PMIC represents more than just a success­ful IC design. It represents a strong collaboration with Intel's Mobile and Communications Group that allows Intel to release a cutting-edge tablet SoC platform. Customers will enjoy the benefit of a fully-integrated PMIC which delivers improved battery life and higher integration."

IC for embedded computing

Here comes the Apalis T30, the first product in the new Apalis module family by Toradex

Here comes the Apalis T30, the first product in the new Apalis module family by Toradex. Complementing the existing Colibri module family, Apalis comes with a range of new features which customers can use to develop the most advanced, robust products with minimum overhead and risk.

Apalis module is based on NVIDIA Tegra 3 Cortex-A9 Quad Core 1.4 GHz CPU. Other features include SATA,

PCIe, USB3.0, and gigabit Ethernet; DVFS and thermal throttling for achieving the lowest power consump­tion; and up to 127 GPIOs, SPI, CAN, PWM, parallel camera and other indus­trial interfaces.

USB 3.0-SATA3 bridge SoC

USB 3.0-SATA3 bridge SoC

Renesas Electronics has introduced its new SuperSpeed Universal Serial Bus (USB 3.0) to Serial ATA (SATA) Revision 3 bridge SoC (system on chip, part number ^PD720231) that enables the reduction of the total BOM significantly.

The µPD720231 enables effective multi-gigabit per second (Gbps) data transfer between a USB 3.0 host system and a SATA device used in widely adopted external USB hard drives and solid state drives (SSD).

Through integration, the new |iPD720231 USB 3.0-SATA3 bridge SoC has reduced the number of com­ponents by 40 per cent compared with the number of other commercial devices with equal functions. It fea­tures an embedded voltage regulator and power-on reset circuit. The new product can store firmware in SATA devices such as hard discs and SSD, and can also omit external serial flash ROM.