Wireless and energy take the lead

Sensors Conference and Exposition, June 9-10, Rosemont, IL, www.sensorsexpo.com.

-- Test & Measurement World, 6/18/2009 2:18:00 PM

Last year, "wireless sensor networks" was the hot phrase at Sensors Expo (June 9–10, Rosemont, IL). This year, "energy harvesting" joined the fray. Several technologies for energy storage appeared in 2009. In 2008, energy harvesting wasn’t even listed as a product category in the show directory. This year, the new category consisted of 14 companies.

Companies such as Cymbet exhibited ICs that use thin-film batteries to store energy. Batteries and capacitors can be charged by electronic or mechanical means, including RF energy. Using an RF transmitter, receivers from Powercast convert RF energy into DC to charge capacitors embedded in products.

Data-acquisition equipment held its own in 2009, and there was one new entry: VTI Instruments. The company exhibited its LXI-compliant EX1266 multifunction measurement and switching system, which combines a DMM (digital multimeter) with multiplexer modules for voltage or temperature measurement. National Instruments introduced the NI9213, a 16-channel temperature module for its CompactDAQ, CompactRIO, and wireless modular data-acquisition systems.

Pico Technology exhibited its line of USB oscilloscopes, with two or four channels and 8-bit or 12-bit resolution. Yokogawa exhibited its MV2000 series paperless data recorder, DML2000 mixed-signal oscilloscope, and WT500 power analyzer. OriginLab demonstrated Origin 8 data-analysis and graphing software for engineers and scientists. HBM exhibited the former LDS/Nicolet GEN5i data-acquisition system that samples at 100 Msamples/s.

The conference consisted of several technical tracks. On the wireless track, Charlie Stiernberg of National Instruments presented “Understanding IT Network Security for Wireless and Wired Measurement Applications.” Stiernberg covered network topology and protocols and explained how measurement equipment can connect to corporate networks.

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