Planet Analog

Let us now dive into the world of isolated comparators, where we will explore the essential theory and practical applications to fortify your circuit designs. It’s helpful to first understand that an isolated comparator is fundamentally different from a standard comparator because its input and output stages are electrically separated by an isolation barrier, whereas a standard comparator shares a common ground.

What’s a homing sensor, and how does it work? What are the major types of this sensing device? Here is a brief tutorial on homing sensors, featuring simplified schematics and minimalist design highlights. The article also presents a homing sensor adapter module to demonstrate design details and highlight key building blocks. Read the full article at Planet Analog’s sister publication, EDN. Related Content

A single-camera solution, combined with interior-sensing technology, enables automotive OEMs to install a single camera inside the cabin for driver and occupancy monitoring. STMicroelectronics and Tobii are jointly mass-producing this advanced interior sensing system for a premium European carmaker.

If you look for a desktop or laptop PC, you’ll see that with very few exceptions, the hard disk drive (HDD), which has served us for decades, is no longer offered as an internal storage medium. Instead, these PCs come with solid state drives (SSDs) with capacity of 120 GB, 250 GB, and more. It would be easy and even logical to assume that HDD storage has been made obsolete by SSDs, just like vinyl disks, CDs, DVDs, and other volatile and non-volatile storage schemes. That assumption would be wrong.

A new motor driver featuring pulse-width modulation (PWM) and serial interfaces ensures quiet and robust motor operation in industrial and consumer applications. The motor driver IC, supporting both sensor-based and sensorless control, runs reliably through load transients and fault recovery, avoiding the unexpected resets common in less sophisticated drivers.

Analog and mixed-signal specialty foundry X-FAB has joined hands with Thalia Design Automation to accelerate IP migration and preserve the design integrity of chips manufactured on its process nodes. The combined expertise of Thalia and X-FAB will allow semiconductor firms to transition designs quickly and cost‑effectively from one process technology to another.

Hybrid relays are changing the way we think about switching inside electronic circuits. By combining the fast response of solid-state components with the reliability of mechanical contacts, these devices offer the best of both worlds. Whether you are designing a power control system or tinkering with a do-it-yourself (DIY) automation project, understanding how hybrid relays work can help you build smarter, more efficient solutions.

A new custom sensing solution enables precise, responsive, and context-aware motion tracking for smart glasses at an ultra-low-power consumption. That ensures high-accuracy head tracking, stable image and video capture, intuitive UI control, and posture recognition in intelligent eyewear.

What can the addition of a negative temperature coefficient (NTC) resistor input capability bring to sensors? According to Melexis, a better detection of variations in system temperatures. The Tessenderlo, Belgium-based developer of sensor solutions has added NTC resistor input capability to the MLX91230 Hall-effect current sensor and the MLX91231 shunt interface for DC current sensing.

I have always been intrigued by the many ways scientists and engineers have devised to sense basic physical parameters such as temperature, pressure, voltage, current, and electric fields, to cite just a few. In some cases, the challenge is the wide dynamic range needed, while in other cases, it’s the need for extreme sensitivity and resolution of signals we are striving to capture.