There’s no stopping the wind, so we may as well harvest it. By Amy Goetzman and Christine Stieglitz Wind farm installations continued to expand in 2017, with additional capacity added around the globe, notably in places like Texas, Turkey, France, the UK, and India. Wind energy contributed an annual €36 billion ($43 billion) to theRead More

Today’s precision farming techniques rely on interconnect technologies. Although agriculture is the world’s oldest and most essential industry, it’s been completely transformed in recent years by modern technologies, many of which depend on electronics. Electronics now play a role in virtually every step of the agriculture process, from weather monitoring to irrigation to storage ofRead More

The growing number of commercial drones creates demand for connectors that enable quick swapping of batteries and storage. By Terry Costlow, Contributing Editor The takeoff of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) market in areas beyond defense deployments is opening a solid growth market for connector suppliers that can provide compact, lightweight products to commercial andRead More

Small, lightweight connectors designed to withstand harsh industrial environments provide critical support for the advanced robotic systems behind today’s precision manufacturing systems. By Bob Stanton, Omnetics Connector Corporation New Robotic Connectors Industrial robotics are an important element of next-generation automated manufacturing machinery. The development of new end-of-arm-tooling (EOAT) equipment has led to the development ofRead More

LED lighting, along with innovative cooling and irrigation systems, are inspiring the greatest agricultural transformation since the advent of the tractor. Chances are good that the tomato on your salad or the basil on your pizza didn’t grow outside under the sun. Instead, it may have come from an indoor growing facility, nurtured by theRead More

Making the choice between circular and rectangular connectors for the energy industry. Presented by HARTING, Inc. of North America Will Stewart, Industry Segment Manager, Energy Sometimes tradition, rather than functionality, dictates the type of connectors designers specify for an application. That’s the case with circular connectors in the energy industry. Despite their historical employment in thisRead More

Power over Ethernet brings a wealth of efficiencies to smart building initiatives. by Giovanni Frezza, Group Product Manager, Molex Power over Ethernet (PoE) lighting and automation systems help make highly innovative building concepts possible. These distributed networks deliver electrical power and transmit communications signals over standard low-voltage category cabling to various endpoints, including LED lighting,Read More

The petroleum industry relies on rugged, high-temperature connectors to control down-hole drills. By Bob Stanton, Omnetics Connector Corp.   Electronic sensor and detector systems in the gas and oil industry have become more versatile and capable than ever before. However, their use in down-hole applications has been limited because temperatures in many new producing regionsRead More

Cables and connectors in wind turbines must withstand harsh environments and EMI. Wind power is the leading form of renewable energy in the United States. In 2016, wind supplied 5.5% of the U.S. electricity supply, according to the American Wind Energy Association, which expects that number to climb to 10% by 2020. At the heartRead More

Connector technologies are evolving with the reliability requirements for harsh environment applications. By Adrian Green, Director of Engineering, Amphenol ICC   Harsh environment applications present many challenges for electronics systems designers. Reliable operation in industrial and specialized commercial operations subject the connector and the overall system to a range of extreme temperatures, shock, vibration, andRead More

Check out this week’s product roundup for information about some of the latest and greatest industrial communications connectors on the market.   Amphenol Commercial Products’ MDB and MDBR Series rugged D-Sub connectors for industrial communications applications in harsh environments provide outstanding corrosion resistance and offer robust IP68 immersion and ingress protection per IEC 60529 inRead More

Mouser Electronics, Inc., is now stocking the Intel® Joule™ click shields from MikroElektronika. The shields allow engineers to add up to four MikroElektronika click boards™ to Intel Joule Expansion Board for Internet of Things (IoT) and smart device applications. The MikroElektronika Intel Joule click shields, available from Mouser Electronics, help to extend the functionality ofRead More