eCompass for high-precision pedestrian dead reckoning

Fitness-tracking smartphone apps, smartwatches, and bands need continuous location data for mapping and recording, and accuracy is critical for wearers who like to monitor their progress and share achievements online. A built-in eCompass helps calculate location when satellite signals are unavailable, such as inside buildings or when running or cycling under tree cover. A new eCompass reduces the heading error to less than 4° instead of the typical 10° of current devices.

After Intel and Atmel another major semiconductor manufacturer has officially affiliated itself with the Arduino platform by announcing the STAR (ST and ARduino) program, an agreement to bring the STM32 family of microcontrollers closer to the Arduino maker community. Interestingly, the AR in the STAR “alliance” refers to Arduino.org, not Arduino.cc.

Competition is fierce among microcontroller manufacturers. One of the reasons is that putting an MCU together has become pretty easy: just license a core from a well-known UK MCU core designer (no, not IKEA), buy some peripheral IPs from other vendors, put it all on a chip and away you go. The result is an exponential growing number of MCUs and ditto manufacturers. However, making an MCU is one thing, selling it is quite another and so MCU manufacturers are designing all sorts of product evaluation boards intended to trick a maximum number of potential users into using their products.

STMicroelectronics has introduced two rugged 36-V opamps for automotive and industrial applications. The opamps feature a wide supply voltage range, high stability under difficult operating conditions, and ESD tolerance up to 4 kV.

Most Linux distributions are free, and open-source application software makes the Linux world attractive to technology enthusiasts. Until now, however, most development tools for embedded computing have been available only for Windows PCs.

STMicroelectronics has launched their second-generation distance senor VL53L0, which is based on STM’s popular FlightSense technology. This sensor is suitable for use in smartphones and tablets to make quick distance measurements for an integrated camera, but it can also be used in robots, drones and wearables.

Time was when audio engineers carefully crafted amplifier circuits using time-honoured analog principles and any frequency greater than 20 kHz appearing in the circuit was a no-no, or at least an unwanted design ‘feature’ that ...

To help get Elektor readers up and running with this latest NFC technology we have arranged, together with STMicroelectronics, to give away a free ST25TA02K NFC tag with the January & February 2016 edition of Elektor magazine!

STMicroelectronics has extended its range of STM32 Nucleo development boards with scalable, small-form-factor variants to support the 32-pin members of its STM32 microcontroller family. The STM32 Nucleo-32 boards...

The latest MEMs device from STMicroelectronics is said to be the world's most advanced six-axis motion-sensor device designed to support image stabilization in smartphones, tablets and digital still cameras...