🤖 The PolarBear - Open-Source 3D-Printable Multipurpose CNC Machine

Computer numerical control (CNC) is a method for automating control of machine tools through the use of software embedded in a microcomputer attached to the tool.

Nice project of a useful desktop machine that can be used in many ways, from soldering to 3D-printing, depending on the task, tool, and a program.

Thanks to the PolarBear's unique design and kinematics, the limits between the needs of the different functions are more blurred. While it can be as fast as a 3D printer, it can be rigid for use as a CNC milling machine as well. The machine can be build of available off-the-shelf components and has 3D-printable parts.

More information:
The Official website
The GitHub page

#projects #robots #tools

📰 The worldwide chip shortage consequences

Toyota is to slash worldwide vehicle production by 40% in September because of the global microchip shortage. The world's biggest carmaker had planned to make almost 900,000 cars next month, but has now reduced that to 540,000 vehicles.

Volkswagen, the world's second-biggest car producer, has warned it may also be forced to cut output further.

The COVID pandemic boosted demand for appliances that use chips, such as phones, TVs and games consoles.

▫️ Renault forecasts its car production could be down by about 100,000 this year

▫️ Sony says it is difficult for it to bump up production of the PS5 consoles

▫️ Apple expects the impact of the shortage to worsen and extend to iPhone production

▫️ Tesla says it is using alternative chips and rewriting software

▫️ Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing plans to build new factories in the US and Japan

More information...

#news

🔋 New Lithium-Metal Battery Could Revolutionize Electronics

In the past, lithium-metal batteries have been extremely unstable and even exploded, making them far too dangerous to push out to the commercial world. But with the new advances uncovered by researchers at the Helmholtz Institute Ulm (HIU), they could last far longer and be much safer.

The new battery uses a combination of cobalt-poor, nickel-rich layered cathode (NCM88) and a commercially available organic LP30 electrolyte, which, when working together, enable storage of high energy per mass and a largely stable capacity over many cycles, per the researchers.

And the results are remarkable. Its energy density is above the 500-Wh/kg typical threshold that's used to power next-gen EVs, and well above the regular 250-300-Wh/kg energy density that lithium-ion batteries provide. Moreover, the team explained that its new lithium-metal battery retained 88% of its initial storage capacity after 1,000 cycles.

More information...

#news #battery

📟 Thread Sensor Tag

Monkey Store’s Thread Sensor Tag is an open-source pressure, humidity, temperature, and light sensor that connects to the OpenThread network, and is capable of transmitting MQTT/UDP data every 20 seconds over a period of around three years from a single coin cell battery.

Thread Sensor Tag specifications:
▫️ VEMLS6030 I2C light sensor
▫️ MS8607 pressure, humidity, and temperature sensor
▫️ Minew MS88SF2 Wireless module
▫️ Cortex-M4 Microcontroller
▫️ Power – Coin cell battery

More information...

#projects #sensors #IoT

📃 Next-Gen Chips Will Be Powered From Below

Buried interconnects will help save Moore's Law

Delivering the current to billions of transistors is quickly becoming one of the major bottlenecks in high-performance SoC design. As transistors continue to be made tinier, the interconnects that supply them with current must be packed ever closer and be made ever finer, which increases resistance and saps power. This can't go on: Without a big change in the way electrons get to and from devices on a chip, it won't matter how much smaller we can make transistors.

Power consumption is crucial whether you're worrying about the cooling bill for a data center or the number of times you have to charge your smartphone each day.

In today's processors both signals and power reach the silicon from above. New technology would separate those functions, saving power and making more room for signal routes.

More information...

#articles #electronics

📟 Magnetic Field Visualizer

This project is about developing a simple magnetic field visualizer. Here, the XMC1100 is the system MCU with fetches magnetic field data of a nearby magnet from the TLV49 3D magnetic sensor.

The MCU communicates with the sensor over I2C protocol. For visualizing the data, an E-Ink display is added to the system. The display is 3.3 V like rest of the system and communicates with the host MCU over SPI.

This visualizer can be used for :
▫️ Identifying North/South poles of a magnet
▫️ Magnet's orientation/heading on XY plane
▫️ Visualize virtual Field lines
▫️ Detect effective field area of a magnet
▫️ Compare magnets strength qualitatively

More information...

#projects #sensors

📃 The Tesla Dojo Chip Is Impressive, But There Are Some Major Technical Issues

An interesting analytical article from SemiAnalysis about recently presented chip from Tesla

One of Tesla’s biggest draws is that the chip-to-chip interconnect is incredibly powerful. It’s more an order magnitude higher bandwidth than the competing ASICs and Nvidia. Tesla achieved this by packing every edge of the die with 112G SerDes. This IP is entirely licensed from Tesla’s partnership with a 3rd party provider. With a total of 576 of these SerDes, they reach a mindboggling 8TB/s IO.

In order to get this massive IO out of the chip, Tesla has to rely on very exotic packaging. Their chip packaging is ludicrously expensive, but it is the only way to get 8TB/s of IO out of such a small package. Normal LGA style packaging that a desktop or server CPU would utilize would not have anywhere near enough pins.

More information...

#articles #electronics