Gleichmann Ultratec signs Europe-wide distribution agreement with KDS Daishinku
Volketswil, Switzerland – KDS Daishinku, a Japanese manufacturer of quartz, and Gleichmann Ultratec, a Swiss daughter company of Gleichmann Electronics (part of the international MSC Group), have signed a European-wide distribution agreement.

With a total of ten factories in Japan and South East Asia, KDS Daishinku Corp. - which was founded in 1959 – is one of the worldwide leading manufacturers of quartz, crystal resonators, crystal oscillators, monolithic crystal filters (MCF) and optical quartz products. According to Yoshitaka Tokuda, managing director of KDS Europe, the decision for Gleichmann Ultratec as sales partner was above all based on the experience and technical competence of Gleichmann Ultratec’s employees in their handling with quartz products. “Customer satisfaction is the first priority for KDS. With Gleichmann Ultratec, we have a found a partner, who absolutely shares this philosophy with us. The cooperation with Gleichmann Ultratec puts us in a position to be able to optimally support and advise our customers right up to the circuit design level,” says Yoshitaka Tokuda.

For Hans Eggensberger, managing director of Gleichmann Ultratec, the cooperation with KDS Daishinku is an ideal enhancement to the existing product portfolio. “Most of the products feature an extended temperature range from -40°C to +150°C as well as high vibration resistance and shock resistance. This therefore, allows these high quality products to be used with virtually no restrictions in various security, medical, automotive and telecommunications applications”.

According to Hans Eggensberger, an additional advantage of KDS’s balanced product portfolio is the availability of various packages, which allows an exact replacement of products from other manufacturers. “This puts us in the position of being able to react and adopt even faster and more flexibly than before to our customers’ wishes and requirements.”

Photo caption: Emphasis on high quality quartz products and technical competence (from left to right): Hans Eggensberger, managing director of Gleichmann Ultratec and Yoshitaka Tokuda, managing director of KDS Europe.

You have the task of designing a motor control in a small quantity, there is plenty of space available and the component costs play a secondary role? Congratulations, you have indeed hit the jackpot. However, as a rule, especially designers of motor controls are confronted with a variety of adversities, which make the selection of an optimal motor control more of an ordeal than a simple choice.
For example, the charging control in a battery-powered drive solution in standby mode must be displayed on a small display, a controlled volume (dosing) pump may only have minimal deviations and requires an exact rotation regulation or the control of a battery-driven miniature motor should have a high performance however, the power consumption should be as low as possible. Maybe a controller is required, which can control the grinder, dosing pumps, communication and user guidance of a coffee machine and at the same time possibly integrate lots of peripheral hardware in order to save costs and save space. These few examples demonstrate how diverse and different the requirements nowadays are for microcontrollers in the field of motor controls. In the meantime, the spectrum of functions for microcontrollers ranges from simple on/off brush-commutated motors to complex multi-axial position controlled, high dynamic electroniccommutated 3-phase DC(BLDC) motors. By the way, BLDC motors are becoming more important - not just because of their significantly higher efficiency compared to normal DC motors. The simple mechanical construction and considerably lower wear are also advantages of this type of motor. Moreover, they are smaller, more rugged and efficient, and allow more freedom of choice for the control.

Even though, in the meantime (after the fire at the manufacturing plant at the end of September 2007) production of Matsushita Battery Industrial Co., Ltd. (MBI) lithium-ion rechargeable batteries have been allotted to various locations and full production capacity has once again been resumed, there is currently no easing of the market tension in sight. To the contrary, demand will probably remain significantly higher than the supply and this is expected to continue well in to the second half of this year. One of the major reasons for this is the increasing demand for lithium-ion products. Those currently placing new orders for cells from LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Sanyo or Sony must be prepared to accept delivery times of up to nine months. Nobody can rule out that delivery conditions will substantially worsen in the coming weeks. Market researchers predict that the second fire at a lithium-ion rechargeable battery production plant within a few months – this time, at LG Chem – could lead to production losses of many millions of cells per month till at least the middle of this year. Above all, victims of this development could be new and existing European customers. This is no surprise when one considers the numbers.
The European market share of the worldwide demand for lithium-ion rechargeable batteries is not more than 8% to 10%. To make the proportions clear: Laptop manufacturers alone claim significantly more than 20% of the lithium-ion rechargeable batteries market. With so much market power, it is obvious who will have the disadvantage during allocation times.

New Graphic Controller provides universal, low-power, low-cost link between microprocessor, display and display driver

Solomon Systech has introduced the SSD1961 graphic controller for mobile applications including smartphones and portable media players (PMPs), but also for energy sensitive applications such as room temperature controllers or controls for window blinds. The SSD1961 supports resolutions of up to 640 x 480 pixels (VGA) at up to 18-bit colour depth. Furthermore, key product features of the device include 675 Kbytes of embedded display SRAM, which serves as frame buffer between the host processor and the LCD display.

Universal, low-power and low-cost link between microprocessor, display and display driver

Solomon Systech (Distribution: Gleichmann Electronics) has introduced the SSD1961 graphic controller for mobile applications including smartphones and portable media players (PMPs), but also for energy sensitive applications such as room temperature controllers or controls for window blinds. The SSD1961 supports resolutions of up to 640 x 480 pixels (VGA) at up to 18-bit color depth. Furthermore, key product features of the device include 675 Kbytes of embedded display SRAM, which serves as frame buffer between the host processor and the LCD display.

The on-chip integrated LCD and MCU interfaces reduce the wiring effort to a minimum. The SSD1961 supports different types of monochrome, color, active and passive LCD displays including 4/8-bit monochrome/color STNs, 12/18-bit active matrix TFTs and 16-bit HR TFTs with 160 x 160 pixels and 320 x 240 pixels. The universal built parallel 8/16-bit controller interface enables the connection of CPUs from different manufacturers.

The SSD1961 contains an integrated graphic engine, which allows display rotation of 90°, 180° and 270°. The hardware implemented display rotation is significantly more efficient than the usual software solutions, where the content of the display buffer must be entirely rewritten every time. The graphic engine also supports “Virtual Display” mode. This allows viewing of portions from a larger image by means of panning and scrolling of the display. Furthermore, the implemented “Floating Window” mode enables the overlaying of various size windows on the main window. For improved image quality, brightness, contrast and color saturation can each be separately set and programmed.

To extend the battery life in mobile applications, the SSD1961 uses an innovative dynamic backlight control technology. The sophisticated algorithm of this technology helps to reduce backlight power consumption by up to 50%.

The four general-purpose inputs/outputs (GPIOs) require a supply voltage of between 1.8 V and 3.3 V and the controller core itself 1.2 V. The SSD1961, with dimensions of only 5 mm x 5 mm, is available in a 64-pin TFBGA (Thin Fine-pitch Ball Grid Array) package.

Solomon Systech has announced that in the fourth quarter of 2008 it will introduce a further graphic controller, which will support the new WVGA (Wide VGA) with 800 x 480 pixels resolution and 24-bit color depth.

The 16:9 format is not yet established in industrial use. Most applications for process visualization or presentation of images are still designed with the 4:3 format. Nonetheless, the interest for such displays is constantly growing, because the 16:9 format is more natural to the human eye’s field of vision and therefore offers an enormous variety of applications.

One of the current highlights in this field is NEC LCD Technologies’ brand-new 7.0 inches (18 cm diagonal) TFT display NL8048BC19-02, which is designed mainly for industrial applications. The NL8048BC19-02 not only features an above average long lifetime backlight, but also long-term availability. The NL8048BC19-02, built using twisted nematic (TN) technology, has a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels and is controlled via a selectable 6-bit or 8-bit low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) interface. Luminance is 400 cd/m² and contrast ratio 1000:1. A sophisticated foil technology allows both horizontal and vertical viewing angles of 160° typical. An additional guarantee for optimal viewing conditions is the integrated reverse scan function. If required, this allows the user to rotate the image 180 degrees so that it can be mounted - depending on the application - to operate with optimal viewing angle.

Gleichmann Electronics has in its product portfolio: special microcontrollers from NEC Electronics Europe for sensor applications, intelligent relays, switches, keypads, toys or other end applications, which must be implemented in the smallest possible space.

With dimensions of only 2 x 2 mm, the three derivatives of the K series are currently the smallest devices. Each of the 8-bit MCUs, available with different memory sizes, is provided with an internal 8 MHz oscillator and a 240 kHz oscillator for watchdog functions. Special features include a 10-bit A/D converter with a conversion time of < 5 μs. In addition, an integrated poweron reset and the programmable low-voltage detection help to save external components.

The 16-bit area is covered by the 78K0R/Kx3 generation in 5 x 5 mm2 BGA package. Furthermore, in addition to the above mentioned features such as internal oscillators, low-voltage detection or power-on clear, members of the 78K0R/Kx3 series offer an innovative 16-bit timer array unit, a serial array unit as well as a real-time clock with watch function and calendar function.

Transmission speeds of up to 10 Mbits/s at operating temperatures up to 110°C:
Stutensee, Germany - NEC Electronics has newly introduced the IGBT drive optocoupler PS9301 and the high-speed couplers PS8302, PS9303, PS9313 and PS9317 (Distribution: Gleichmann Electronics) in a 6-pin SDIP (Shrink Dual Inline Package) with pin pitch of 1.27 mm. The 6‑pin SDIP occupies about 50% less mounting area on the PCB than a comparable 8-pin DIP.

In the field of SMD, the shrink dual inline package contributes to a significant improvement of isolation characteristics. Some of the key features of the ICs, designed for 1Mbit/s and 10Mbits/s data transmission speeds, are 5000 VRMS isolation voltage, 0.4 mm internal isolation distance and 8 mm outer creepage and air distance.

Furthermore, thanks to an integrated electrical shield, a common mode transient immunity (CMR) of at least 15 kV/µs is achieved. This therefore makes the new optocouplers ideal for use in noisy environments.

Optocouplers of the PS93/83xx family have each been optimized for various fields of application. For example, the PS8302 with 1 Mbit/s data transmission speed and 35 V output voltage rating is ideally suited for use in industrial communication. The same applies for the PS9317, a digital optocoupler with open-collector output and up to 10 Mbits/s data transmission speed.

The PS9313 optocoupler with IPM interface, open-collector output, up to 1 Mbit/s data transfer rates and a 35 V output voltage was specifically designed for use in motor controls. On the other hand, devices of the PS9301 series for IGBT and MOSFET gate drives are designed for 0.6 A maximum output current and VCC ranging from 10 V to 30 V.

The PS9301, PS9303 and PS9317 optocouplers operate in the industrial temperature range from 0°C to 100°C and for the first time, the PS8302 and PS9313 with a guaranteed maximum operating temperature of up to 110°C. All five optocouplers are compliant with common international safety standards. Samples in different lead bending options, for through hole or as surface mount device, are available immediately from Gleichmann Electronics.

NEC Electronics has recently introduced two extremely low noise amplifiers for mobile GPS applications. The μPC8233TK, with dimensions of only 1.5 mm x 1.1 mm x 0.55 mm, features include low noise (0.90 dB typical), high gain of 20 dB typical and a supply voltage range from 1.6 V to 3.3V.

The low current consumption of 3.5 mA typical makes the μPC8233TK ideally suitable for mobile navigation systems and tracking devices.

The μPC8236T6N is a low noise amplifier in a 1.5 mm x 1.5 mm x 0.37 mm, 6-pin TSON (Thin Small Out-line Non-leaded) package. Because of its high integration density, the only external components required for this device are four capacitors and a coil. The noise behavior of the device could be optimized to 0.8 dB. As with the μPC8233TK, the μPC8236T6N also operates with a supply voltage range from 1.6 V to 3.3V. Additional advantages are very low distortion and a low current consumption of 6.5 mA typical.