Developments in a couple of product areas have implications for the HMI/display market.
Developments in a couple of product areas have implications for the HMI/display market. Recent introductions include two new instrumentation systems on Palm handhelds from Datastick Systems and a mobile display digital interface LCD controller from Sharp Corp . Details follow, along with links to the company Web sites for more information.
| Two data acquisition systems from Datastick feature strip-chart recorder emulation that lets a user see a familiar strip-chart on the screen and, at the push of a button, see data in an Excel spreadsheet on a PC. |
Datastick has released two data acquisition systems that feature strip-chart recorder emulation and up to 8 analog input channels for user’s sensors and digital-switch input and output lines. DAS-1254 and DAS-1294 include two hardware modules that attach to Palm PDAs, three additions to the Datastick Connection suite of software applications, and a fast, easy way to get information from a handheld instrument to a desktop PC.
Improvements eliminate one of the most frustrating problems of portable data logging and handheld instruments: ability to quickly view measurement data on the desktop PC, integrate with standard databases and other enterprise applications, and publish the data in reports and on the Web. Software conduit translates proprietary data formats into a file that Microsoft Excel software can read, copies them to the PC, launches Excel, and seamlessly loads data into the Datastick Report System notebook.
Instrumentation systems also have a variety of other new features, among them enhanced power management, lower analog input noise, and faster sample rates. The strip-chart display, with adjustable line patterns and symbols, lets the user see a familiar strip-chart on the screen and, at the push of a button, see the data in an Excel spreadsheet on a PC.
Sharp Corp . announces development of a mobile display digital interface LCD controller. Model LR38869 uses a high-speed serial interface MDDI for CDMA2000 and WCDMA (UMTS) 3G cellular phones. Device ensures high-speed mass data transfer between the LCD panel and MSM chipset. The integrated MDDI technology reduces the number of signals across the device’s hinge from the conventional 21 to four. The reduction allows development of sophisticated designs, such as rotation-type displays. It also features reduced power consumption and decreased EMI noise.
—Jeanine Katzel, senior editor, Control Engineering, [email protected]
