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Board-level EMI shielding: DIY in minutes

ProtoShield sheets from Tech-Etch are depth-etched with a checkerboard pattern for folding, so they can be easily formed into many diverse configurations. In the product-development stage, fully functional shields can be created in minutes with just a pair of scissors and a straight edge for folding. Offered in two sizes: standard (.25-in. squares) and metric (5-mm squares). Both versions are solderable and corrosion resistant due to nickel silver material. Shield prototypes can be directly soldered to the board, or shield clips can be used for easy mounting. Samples available.
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Isolated probing tech for fast-switching power device testing

Keysight Technologies has developed an optically isolated differential probing family dedicated to enhancing efficiency and performance testing of fast-switching devices such as wide-bandgap GaN and SiC semiconductors. Validation of floating half-bridge and full-bridge architectures commonly used in power conversion, motor drives, and inverters requires measurement of small differential signals riding on high common-mode voltages. This measurement can be challenging due to voltage source fluctuations relative to ground, noise interference, and safety concerns.
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Protect sensitive electronics in explosive environments with new aluminum ATEX Cabinet Cooler Systems

EXAIR's ATEX Cabinet Cooler^® Systems deliver a powerful and affordable solution for keeping electrical enclosures cool in hazardous ATEX classified areas -- and they're now available in durable aluminum construction. Engineered for use in Zones 2 and 22, these coolers are UL tested, CE compliant, and meet stringent ATEX standards for purged and pressurized enclosures. With cooling capacities up to 5,600 Btu/Hr., ATEX Cabinet Coolers are ideal for preventing overheating in electrical cabinets. EXAIR offers a comprehensive lineup of systems.
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PLC handbook chock full of must-know information

Automation-Direct's Practical Guide to Program-mable Logic Controllers Handbook has been improved with tons of new need-to-know info, making it a more comprehensive guide to the world of PLCs. Besides covering the basics of PLC history, PLC hardware, and PLC software, this guide takes you deeper into the ever-changing world of PLC communication, the importance of feedback loops, cyber security, and many other areas that are a must-know for any PLC novice or seasoned automation professional.
Get this great resource today.

Haptic feedback prototyping kit from TDK

Get your customers to feel the difference your products make. TDK has released a development starter kit for fast haptics prototyping. It gives mechanical designers and engineers first impressions of the haptic feedback using PowerHap piezo actuators, shows how the mechanical integration works, and provides a reference design. Applications include automotive, displays and tablets, household appliances, vending machines, game controllers, industrial equipment, and medical devices.
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Mini ESD preset torque screwdriver

Need precision fastening with ESD protection at the smallest torque levels? Mountz has you covered. The new FG Mini ESD Preset Torque Screwdriver is built for low-torque, high-precision tasks. Its compact design makes it ideal for tight spaces and small fasteners, while delivering the same reliable control and ESD protection users have come to expect from Mountz. Two models available: FG25z (3 to 25 ozf.in, 2 to 17.7 cN-m) and FG50z (20 to 50 ozf.in, 14.1 to 35.3 cN-m).
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Laumas load cells and electronics from AutomationDirect

Automation-Direct has added Laumas precision-engineered load cells, transmitters, and accessories that deliver reliable performance in industrial weighing and force measurement applications. The FCAL series high-precision bending beam load cells are ideal for low- to mid-capacity systems. CTL series load cells are designed for both tension and compression, with excellent linearity. The CBL series low-profile compression load cells are perfect for space-limited applications. Laumas load cell transmitters are available too for precise monitoring and control. Very good pricing.
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Engineer's Toolbox: What is ground loop feedback?

Improper grounding can create problems in data logging, data acquisition, and measurement and control systems. One of the most common problems is known as ground loop feedback. Experts at CAS DataLoggers run through five ways to eliminate this problem.
Read the full article.

What is a braking resistor?

According to Automation-Direct, "Braking resistors don't actually provide braking directly -- rather, they allow a drive to stop a loaded motor faster." Why is this important? Protect your AC or DC drive system from regenerative voltage that can create an over-voltage fault on the drive -- especially with high inertial loads or rapid deceleration.
View the video.

New Digital Static Meter: Precise measurement, easy use

Static electricity isn't just a nuisance; it's a serious threat to manufacturing efficiency, product integrity, and workplace safety. Unchecked static can lead to costly downtime, product defects, material jams, and even hazardous shocks to employees. If static is interfering with your processes, EXAIR's upgraded Model 7905 Digital Static Meter offers an essential first step in identifying and eliminating the problem. With just the press of a button, this easy-to-use, handheld device pinpoints the highest voltage areas in your facility, helping you diagnose static issues before they become a problem.
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New laser cutting modulating strategy tested with Mikrotron high-speed camera

Modulating a laser beam's intensity distribution optimizes energy delivery to the process zone, resulting in better cutting speed, cut edge quality, and cut kerf geometry. Scientists in Belgium have come up with a new method that they say produces better cutting results.
Read the full article.

All-in-one embedded PLC based on Raspberry Pi 4 -- build control applications

The new PLC CPI-PS10CM4 from Contec Co. is a compact embedded programmable logic controller (PLC) that is loaded with CODESYS, the world's most widely used software PLC. This product uses Contec's original single-board computer, which is based on Raspberry Pi's latest embedded module, the Compute Module 4 (CM4). By using the wide range of peripheral devices for Raspberry Pi, such as Contec's CPI Series, you can build various control applications in a PLC language that complies with the IEC 61131-3 international standard.
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Torque sensors for fastening applications and more

Saelig Company has introduced the Sensor Technology SGR525/526 Series Torque Sensors to provide precision torque monitoring that is critical for performance and safety. The square drive design (for applications with non-cylindrical shafts) allows for seamless integration into power tools, test rigs, industrial machinery, and precision fastening applications, ensuring superior torque measurement without the need for additional adapters or modifications. The SGR525 offers torque measurement only, while the SGR526 provides torque, speed, and power measurement using a 360-pulse-per-revolution encoder. Industries include automotive, aerospace, manufacturing, and research and development.
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Wide-angle camera optimized for larger, faster conveyor belts

Wider conveyor belts operating at higher speeds are now commonplace in modern logistics. To keep up, SVS-Vistek is offering a cost-effective alternative to multi-camera systems with its fxo901CXGE 10-GigE color camera featuring the Sony IMX901-AQR wide-aspect global shutter 16.4-megapixel CMOS sensor. Unlike standard cameras, this unit captures targets in a wide field of view while maintaining high resolutions. The 4:1 horizontal aspect ratio allows one fxo901CXGE to replace an entire multi-camera system, removing the need for image synchronization.
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Handheld thermal imager cuts diagnostic time

The FLIR TG268 is a next-generation thermal imager that provides professionals in the utility, manufacturing, electrical, automotive, and industrial sectors with a lightweight, handheld, affordable condition monitoring tool. Latest enhancements include higher temperature ranges, improved resolution, and larger data storage capacity. Go beyond the restrictions of single-spot IR thermometers to view and evaluate hot and cold spots that may signify potentially dangerous issues. Accurately measure temps from -25 to 400 C. Native thermal images improved with Super Resolution upscaling.
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New system can automatically retouch cellphone images and display result in real time -- before you take the photo

By Larry Hardesty, MIT

The data captured by today's digital cameras is often treated as the raw material of a final image. Before uploading pictures to social networking sites, even casual cellphone photographers might spend a minute or two balancing color and tuning contrast using one of the many popular image-processing programs now available.

Last week at Siggraph, the premier digital graphics conference, researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Google presented a new system that can automatically retouch images in the style of a professional photographer. It's so energy efficient, however, that it can run on a cellphone, and it's so fast that it can display retouched images in real time, so that the photographer can see the final version of the image while still framing the shot.

The same system can also speed up existing image-processing algorithms. In tests involving a new Google algorithm for producing high-dynamic-range images, which capture subtleties of color lost in standard digital images, the new system produced results that were visually indistinguishable from those of the algorithm in about one-tenth the time -- again, fast enough for real-time display.

A new system can automatically retouch images in the style of a professional photographer. It can run on a cellphone and display retouched images in real time. [Courtesy of the researchers: Edited by MIT News]

 

 

 

 

The system is a machine-learning system, meaning that it learns to perform tasks by analyzing training data; in this case, for each new task it learned, it was trained on thousands of pairs of images, raw and retouched.

The work builds on an earlier project from the MIT researchers, in which a cellphone would send a low-resolution version of an image to a web server. The server would send back a "transform recipe" that could be used to retouch the high-resolution version of the image on the phone, reducing bandwidth consumption.

"Google heard about the work I'd done on the transform recipe," says Michaël Gharbi, an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science and first author on both papers. "They themselves did a follow-up on that, so we met and merged the two approaches. The idea was to do everything we were doing before but, instead of having to process everything on the cloud, to learn it. And the first goal of learning it was to speed it up."

VIDEO: Deep bilateral learning for real-time image enhancement.

Short cuts
In the new work, the bulk of the image processing is performed on a low-resolution image, which drastically reduces time and energy consumption. But this introduces a new difficulty, because the color values of the individual pixels in the high-res image have to be inferred from the much coarser output of the machine-learning system.

In the past, researchers have attempted to use machine learning to learn how to "upsample" a low-res image, or increase its resolution by guessing the values of the omitted pixels. During training, the input to the system is a low-res image, and the output is a high-res image. But this doesn't work well in practice; the low-res image just leaves out too much data.

Gharbi and his colleagues -- MIT professor of electrical engineering and computer science Frédo Durand and Jiawen Chen, Jon Barron, and Sam Hasinoff of Google -- address this problem with two clever tricks. The first is that the output of their machine-learning system is not an image; rather, it's a set of simple formulae for modifying the colors of image pixels. During training, the performance of the system is judged according to how well the output formulae, when applied to the original image, approximate the retouched version.

Taking bearings
The second trick is a technique for determining how to apply those formulae to individual pixels in the high-res image. The output of the researchers' system is a three-dimensional grid, 16 x 16 x 8. The 16 x 16 faces of the grid correspond to pixel locations in the source image; the eight layers stacked on top of them correspond to different pixel intensities. Each cell of the grid contains formulae that determine modifications of the color values of the source images.

That means that each cell of one of the grid's 16 x 16 faces has to stand in for thousands of pixels in the high-res image. But suppose that each set of formulae corresponds to a single location at the center of its cell. Then any given high-res pixel falls within a square defined by four sets of formulae.

Roughly speaking, the modification of that pixel's color value is a combination of the formulae at the square's corners, weighted according to distance. A similar weighting occurs in the third dimension of the grid, the one corresponding to pixel intensity.

The researchers trained their system on a data set created by Durand's group and Adobe Systems, the creators of Photoshop. The data set includes 5,000 images, each retouched by five different photographers. They also trained their system on thousands of pairs of images produced by the application of particular image-processing algorithms, such as the one for creating high-dynamic-range (HDR) images. The software for performing each modification takes up about as much space in memory as a single digital photo, so in principle, a cellphone could be equipped to process images in a range of styles.

Finally, the researchers compared their system's performance to that of a machine-learning system that processed images at full resolution rather than low resolution. During processing, the full-res version needed about 12 gigabytes of memory to execute its operations; the researchers' version needed about 100 megabytes, or one-hundredth as much. The full-resolution version of the HDR system took about 10 times as long to produce an image as the original algorithm, or 100 times as long as the researchers' system.

"This technology has the potential to be very useful for real-time image enhancement on mobile platforms," says Barron. "Using machine learning for computational photography is an exciting prospect but is limited by the severe computational and power constraints of mobile phones. This paper may provide us with a way to sidestep these issues and produce new, compelling, real-time photographic experiences without draining your battery or giving you a laggy viewfinder experience."

Published August 2017

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