New Technology for Air Quality Monitors and Smoke Detectors

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New Technology for Air Quality Monitors and Smoke Detectors [Copy link]

Air quality sensors are not new. In fact, we all have one on our face. Unfortunately, our noses are sometimes unreliable, failing to detect odorless harmful gases or when a fire breaks out nearby while we are asleep. Microcontroller-based air quality sensors and smoke detectors have also been around for a while, but now a new generation of low-power, highly integrated, high-performance microcontrollers are being combined with ultra-sensitive sensors to detect even the faintest particles of critical gases or smoke in homes, offices, construction and anywhere else. For many applications, such as smoke detectors, these new microcontrollers are essentially detectors on a chip minus the light tube. For other applications that require the connection of specialized sensors for specific gases, such as carbon monoxide, the high level of integration of these microcontrollers makes them a very cost-effective solution.

Many microcontrollers have integrated memory resources, but few have unified, on-chip memory blocks to avoid the limitations of a "RAM and Flash" architecture. The FRAM (Ferroelectric Random Access Memory)-based memory architecture provides developers with more flexibility and configurability, simplifying the way to adapt applications to this platform. For example, instead of having more flash space and less RAM space, system designers can configure the memory to meet the needs of the application, rather than having to squeeze the application into a memory architecture dominated by available memory modules. Some applications may need more memory space to store data logs to track when gas concentrations exceed a certain threshold. Such a detector may need to allocate more of the available memory space to flash equivalent storage and less to RAM storage to store programs. For other applications, this allocation may be reversed. With a unified memory architecture, developers can easily reconfigure the memory to meet the needs of the application. Another advantage of this integrated memory flexibility is that higher integration reduces bill of materials (BOM) costs and board space. In addition to eliminating external memory devices, some new generations of highly integrated microcontrollers use external oscillators and analog front-end components such as operational amplifiers. Some new microcontrollers even use super-sensitive transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs) that can perform monitoring and convert small current signals into voltage signals. Up to six discrete chips can be removed from the original design, and the size of the circuit board can be reduced by 75%. All of the above features make for a very cost-effective new product design. Of course, the high level of system integration also affects the reliability and power consumption of the system. The reduction of external components simplifies assembly and reduces manufacturing costs. Many residential, industrial and commercial air quality detectors are not connected to the power grid and are powered by small batteries such as button cells or AA batteries. Therefore, low power consumption is a priority because it affects the battery replacement cycle of the detector. In most cases, the longer the battery life, the better it is for the user. Homeowners may want to install smoke detectors that do not need to replace batteries for 10 years or more. In industrial environments such as factory production lines, gas detectors may be installed in difficult-to-access or dangerous locations. Reducing the cycle of replacing new batteries can reduce production line downtime for maintenance, improve production line efficiency and output. Interestingly, low power also helps detectors that are not powered by batteries or wires to use more power modes in a network, enhancing the ability to cope with limited power supplies. Another issue to consider in some cases is communication support, because in many applications air quality detectors are part of engineering automation or building maintenance systems. Standard I/O interfaces such as SPI, I2C, and UART can connect directly to a wired network or to wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Additional Resources: Start developing with the MSP430FR2311 MCU LaunchPad development tool. Download the Single-Chip, Portable Carbon Monoxide Detector TI Reference Design (170, 102, 102) featuring an MSP430 microcontroller. 102)]TIDM-1CHP-DTECT-CO).

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alan000345

Not bad sharing, it can be used as a reference for making products.

倾心思梦

Thanks for sharing!