Farnell reflects growth potential for instrumentation and medical with new products and design support

Farnell, the leading multi-channel, high service distributor supporting millions of engineers and purchasing professionals globally has enhanced its range of products and online technical resources relating to instrumentation and medical applications. The addition of 1,000 new products and added focus recognises the rapidly growing importance of this market sector and the need to support design engineers in developing industry-leading solutions.

The new product introductions include FPGAs, DSPs, high performance analogue and displays from leading suppliers such as Texas Instruments, Maxim and Freescale.

Instrumentation and medical provides the focus for the latest issue of Farnell’s Technology First Journal that contains a range of informative and interesting articles on the subject. This is supported by access to the new products via the Technology First online guide: ‘Instrumentation & Medical Electronics’ located on the Farnell website. The guide contains comprehensive information to support design work including technical datasheets, manufacturer’s guidance notes, technical articles and web casts.

The rapid growth in the instrumentation and medical electronics market is being driven by a demographic shift that is seeing a massive rise in the average age of the global population. This is stimulating demand for advanced medical electronics equipment that simplifies, speeds, and reduces the cost of healthcare.

Commenting on the focus and new product introductions, Jamie Furness, Technology Development Manager, Farnell said: “Technological capabilities are converging with huge demographic changes to create significant growth opportunities for medical electronics. At Farnell we are reflecting this situation by offering more leading-edge products and supporting them with technical information and insight to help the engineering community incorporate them into their latest product designs.”

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New Digi-Key Toolbar Provides Quick Access to Inventory, Information and More

Designed with engineers, purchasing agents and electronic enthusiasts in mind, the new Digi-Key Toolbar provides quick access to Digi-Key’s vast inventory, product information, training and more – all just a click away and conveniently available in the user’s favorite browser.

“We’re very excited about the addition of this new tool,” said Mark Larson, Digi-Key president and COO. “We pride ourselves on being easy to do business with, and this toolbar, which helps customers derive the most from our web site from anywhere on the Internet, is one more way we are making our customers’ jobs easier.”

Toolbar features include access to Digi-Key’s part search with recent search history and drag-and-drop and contextual menu searches, a complete listing of Digi-Key’s product categories, quick access to any one of Digi-Key’s country-specific websites, eight language options, and one-click access to Digi-Key’s line card and tools, including its library of more than 300 PTM Online . . . On Demand® product training modules.

Downloading the Digi-Key Toolbar is quick and easy. Information, which includes instructions for Internet Explorer and Firefox installation, can be found at www.digikey.com/toolbar. Links to the toolbar landing page are also located on the homepage at www.digikey.com as well as the homepages of any of Digi-Key’s 23 other country-specific web sites.

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Mouser Electronics Now Stocking Industry’s Lowest-Power Zero-Drift Instrumentation Amplifier from TI

Mouser Electronics, Inc., known for its rapid introduction of the newest products, today announced it is stocking the industry’s lowest-power zero-drift instrumentation amplifier from Texas Instruments Inc. (TI).

“In keeping with our goal to be engineers’ go-to source for the newest TI product introductions, Mouser is continuously adding new TI devices to our portfolio,” said Mike Scott, Mouser Vice President of Active Products. “The industry-leading INA333 instrumentation amplifier is just one of the new TI products we have in stock and available for purchase.”

The INA333 features the lowest quiescent current and lowest input bias current, as well as an impressive power-to-noise ratio, very low offset voltage/drift, and 1.8V operation. The device improves accuracy and stability while extending battery life in a variety of precision, low-power applications such as portable medical, handheld instrumentation, weigh scales, and data acquisition.

Utilizing TI’s zero-drift technology that eliminates chopping noise and provides very low input noise, the INA333 features a versatile three op amp architecture to simplify design and reduce board space. Special filters decrease radio frequency interference and dramatically reduce susceptibility to RF-induced offset voltage variations.

With only 75uA of quiescent current and operation on power supplies as low as 1.8V, the INA333 maximizes power efficiency. Low offset voltage of 25uV and offset drift of 0.1uV/C deliver excellent accuracy and long-term stability. Applications with high impedance sources benefit from the device’s low input bias current of 200pA.

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Mouser Electronics Now Stocking NXP’s ARM7™ Flash-based MCUs

Mouser Electronics, Inc., known for its rapid introduction of the newest products, today announced it is stocking the LPC2478 and LPC2470 microcontrollers from NXP Semiconductors, a leading supplier of semiconductors, system solutions, and software.

The industry’s only ARM7™ Flash-based MCU offering integrated LCD support, the LPC2478 and LPC2470 (Flashless version) microcontrollers feature two ARM® high-speed buses (AHB) for the concurrent operation of multiple high-bandwidth peripherals, including LCD, 10/100 Ethernet, USB host/OTG/device, and two CAN channels. The 2007 EDN Innovation Award winning LPC2478 and the LPC2470 devices offer significant saving in cost, area, and power consumption. The devices are ideal for a wide range of industrial, consumer, retail, and medical systems using LCD panels and requiring network or internet connectivity.

The microcontrollers can support most static LCD displays up to 1024×768 pixels, 15 gray-scale monochromes, and up to 24 bits-per-pixel true color TFT panels. LCD implementation allows for code execution on chip and minimizes bus contention with frame data retrieval from external memory. In addition, the LPC2478 provides 512KB, fast 128-bit wide embedded Flash with built-in error correction for maximum reliability. Requiring only single voltage (3.3V) power supply and offering a unique real-time clock (RTC) with 2KB of battery backed-up SRAM, the devices consume only small amounts of current in power-down while quickly waking up with an external interrupt or at user-determined intervals.

“By immediately stocking new, innovative products like the LPC2478/0 microcontrollers and their associated development tools, our design engineering customer base can develop compelling new designs with the newest products on the market,” said Mike Scott, Mouser’s Vice President of Active Products.

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