The AD-SYNCHRONA14-EBZ is an ideal self-contained device to use in evaluation and prototyping of applications that need a highly accurate frequency and phase-controlled source clock. It is designed around the Analog Devices AD9545 and HMC7044 and greatly simplifies clock distribution and multi-channel synchronization in complex systems. 

The AD-SYNCHRONA14-EBZ is intended to be used by trained professionals in a laboratory environment, and not intended as an end product for commercial use. It can be taken as a complete reference design and customised as required for any end customer applications. Full design details are made available free of charge. 

The device comes in a 1U mechanical form factor and uses industry-standard SMA and TwinAX connectors that are commonly found in labs. Its applications include: 
• High accuracy reference clock distribution 
• Systems clocked from a single source 
• Clocks derived from 100MHz or 122.88MHz 
• Phased Array Systems, RADAR, EW, SATCOMS, SDR 
• Bench Equipment 
• Remote controlled operation 

Analog Devices’ evaluation board can be purchased from Farnell in EMEA, Newark in North America and element14 in APAC. 



 

Farnell, an Avnet Company and global distributor of electronic components, products and solutions, is now delivering INTERCONTEC circular connectors from TE Connectivity, a world leader in connectivity and sensors. The innovative INTERCONTEC plug-and-play connector concept simplifies modular machine design by offering a wide range of variants including power, signal or data - or all options combined - in one connector, providing a customised solution for specific applications. Applications include drive systems, robotics, automation, packaging, aerospace, food and textile industries.

TE INTERCONTEC connectors feature an innovative 1/8 quick locking system and offer simple, fast and reliable installation into control panels without the need for special tools. INTERCONTEC’s innovative crown clamp allows the EMC shielding mesh to remain uncut. The design enables technicians to easily replace any defective parts without specialised training, minimising potential downtime. TE INTERCONTEC products are sealed to IP 66/67when mated, feature a temperature range from -20 °C to 130 °C and rated for 500 mating cycles.

The INTERCONTEC range of connectors now available from Farnell include:

• Speedtec 940Power 6-pin Connectors deliver consistent power to drive motors, spindle drives and servo motors, managing high speeds and start-stop stresses with ease. The connectors handle voltage up to 630 V and currents up to 200 A in the toughest of environments.
• Speedtec 623 Signal Connectors are the perfect solution for signal transmission in motor control and monitoring the functions of complex machines. The 17-pin connector is rated at 125 V (AC/DC) and 7 A. Quick release and industry standard M23 threaded versions are available in flange or right-angle mounting.
• Speedtec 723 Hybrid (Power & Signal) 10-pin M23 Connectors offer a number of configurations for custom applications and features a separate shielded data element. Meeting requirements for higher electric strength, the connector may be daisy-chained for decentrally controlled servo motors up to 850 VDC. This super-hybrid connector can handle 30 A and a wire cross section up to 4mm².

Simon Meadmore, Global Head of IP&E at Farnell, said: “We are delighted to extend our connector range with the introduction of the high-tech INTERCONTEC circular connectors from TE Connectivity. With designers seeking to reduce the size of control panels, the compact INTERCONTEC plug-and-play range is an ideal and flexible solution which enables three times faster installation than traditional mating systems thanks to the Speedtec locking system. Now available from stock, this product range shows our continued commitment to deliver a world-class connector portfolio to our customers.”

INTERCONTEC was acquired by TE Connectivity in 2016 and is a well-established brand in the industrial and automation markets.

Farnell offers a full range of products to support electronic design and continues to deliver the latest in cutting-edge connector technology to customers. Customers also have free access to online resources, data sheets, applications notes, videos and webinars and excellent customer and technical support, available 24/5 in local language.

TE Connectivity’s range of INTERCONTEC circular connectors are available for fast delivery from Farnell in EMEA, element14 in APAC and Newark in North America.

Newark, an Avnet Company and global distributor of electronic components, products and solutions, is now offering fully customisable high-end IP67 electronics enclosure solutions from its private label brand Multicomp Pro. Using a unique and intuitive online tool available on Farnell’s website, customers can now create a custom enclosure in minutes, moving from prototype into full production from a single configuration.

IoT developments are growing exponentially as many companies look to tap into the benefits of the technology. Sourcing a suitable enclosure is often left until late in the new product design process which can present packaging challenges and impact performance. In addition to this, standard off-the-shelf enclosures are rarely suitable for mission critical IoT applications. Current enclosure options available to designers seldom offer the durability, robustness and protection required for the end applications. A cost effective, fast turnaround custom enclosure is the ideal solution for design engineers tasked with critical builds on a finite budget.

The online configuration typically takes around five minutes, saving engineers many hours of work sourcing approved components from multiple sources. Customers can now easily and efficiently source the required solution to support IoT and other mission critical applications used in Intelligent Transportation (ITS), connected vehicles (V2X, CV2X, RSU 4.1), rail track and tunnel monitoring, mobile security, smart cities and agriculture, and more.

Benefits of the Multicomp Pro customisable enclosure range now available from Newark include:

• Quick quoting within 5 business days and delivery in less than four weeks.
• Use of standard or N Type IP67 antennas to enable GPS/GNSS, Wi-Fi, LTE, DSRC and LoRa.
• Access to a range of I/O modules including USB, Cat5, Cat6, SIM and power.
• mSmart-box enclosure solutions providing a reliable IP67, EN60950-22-Ready, modular concept specifically tailored to needs within days of initial contact.
• Enclosures are tough and hard-wearing, with integrated Gore® valves, Sur Tec 650 anti-corrosion coating and 100 per cent IP67 guaranteed.
• Customisation of colour, cable length and more.

Gareth James, Senior Product Manager, Private Label at Newark, said: “This new offering demonstrates Newark’s continued commitment to our customers in the IoT space and ensures we deliver valuable solutions that support the design process. We recognise that our customers all have different requirements, and we can now offer bespoke, unique enclosures that can be configured exactly to their needs in a matter of minutes. The quick and intuitive online customisation tool is the most recent in a long list of new engineering resources we have added to our online offering. Our Multicomp Pro range is recognised as the engineer’s choice because it represents market-leading value for money without comprising on quality. Adding custom enclosures to our range ensures customers have access to tailored solutions to achieve their designs at the low prices they expect from Multicomp Pro.”

Newark’s Multicomp Pro brand provides reduced upfront and product-lifetime costs compared to other brands, making the range an ideal choice for equipping design and development labs, service facilities and educational establishments where budgets may be restricted. The range is also a suitable option for OEMs and CEMs seeking added value from sourcing lower cost, production-grade components. The Multicomp Pro range includes more than 60,000 products and is suitable for engineers at any level, with average savings of up to 30 per cent compared to branded products.

Custom enclosures are just the latest in a range of customisation services offered by Newark, including custom cables and components, to make replacing obsolete or hard-to-find parts as easy as possible.

Multicomp Pro custom enclosures can be configured and ordered from Farnell in EMEA, Newark in North America and element14 in APAC.

Farnell, the Development Distributor, has added the Portenta H7, the latest offering from Arduino, to its extensive range of single board computers. The device targets growing demand from enterprise, small medium business (SMB) and professional makers for low-code modular hardware systems to support IoT development. The Arduino Portenta family provides low-power boards designed specifically for industrial applications, artificial intelligence (AI) edge processing and robotics, whilst introducing a new standard for open high-density interconnect to support advanced peripherals.

The first member of the family, the Arduino Portenta H7 module, includes everything needed to get started with IoT hardware development including crypto-authentication chip and communications modules for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy and LTE, as well as Narrowband IoT. Its low-code application development platform with modular hardware, allows companies or makers to build, measure and iterate without lengthy integration projects and users also benefit from the value and usability of the new Arduino IoT application development platform (Arduino IoT cloud, Pro IDE with cloud integration, IoT UI editor) to help simplify the creation and deployment of custom connected products to the market.

Its combination of performance and flexibility makes the board suitable for applications where performance is key, such as High-end industrial machinery, Laboratory equipment, Computer vision, PLCs, Industry-ready user interfaces, Robotics, Mission-critical devices, Dedicated stationary computer and High-speed booting computation.

Portenta H7 features a dual-core ARM Cortex-M7 and Cortex-M4 running at 480 MHz and 240 MHz, respectively, capable of running high level code such as protocol stacks, machine learning or even interpreted languages such as MicroPython or JavaScript along with low-level real time tasks. It follows the Arduino MKR form factor, meaning that any existing MKR industrial shield can be used; can run Arduino code, Python and Javascript, and operates at an industrial temperature-range (-40 to 85°C).

Features include:

• Processor: STM32H747XI dual Cortex®-M7+M4 32bit low power Arm® MCU.

• Connectivity:
  • The onboard wireless module enables simultaneous WiFi and Bluetooth® connectivity. The WiFi interface can be operated as an Access Point, a Station or as a dual mode simultaneous AP/STA and can handle up to 65 Mbps transfer rate. Bluetooth® interface supports Bluetooth Classic and BLE.
  • 10/100 Ethernet phy.
  • High Speed USB phy.
• Memory: includes options up to 64 MByte of SDRAM, and 128 MByte of QSPI Flash.

• Video: Display port over USB-C port.
• Encryption: NXP SE050C2 Crypto.
• GPIO: The Portenta family creates a new standard for pinouts adding two 80 pin high density connectors at the bottom of the board to ensure scalability for a wide range of applications.
• SD card support: Interface for SD Card connector (through expansion port only).
• Operating temperature: -40 °C to +85 °C (excl. Wireless module) / -10 °C to +55 °C (incl. Wireless module).

Cliff Ortmeyer, Global Head of Technical Marketing for Farnell said: “Farnell stocks a broad range of modular solutions that enable customers to reduce time to market and maximise the potential of their IoT developments. The Arduino Portenta H7 combines outstanding performance and flexibility and can be used like any other embedded microcontroller board, or as the main processor of an embedded system. It’s also capable of running processes created with TensorFlow™ Lite, so you could have one of the cores computing a computer vision algorithm, whilst the other delivers low level operations such as controlling a motor, or acting as a user interface. This is a great addition to our range and gives small and medium businesses and professional makers the tools to develop IoT solutions without having to invest in specialized engineering resources.”

Farnell carries a wide range of Arduino products in the MKR and Nano family which, along with the Portenta H7, are available to order from Farnell in EMEA, Newark in North America and element14 in APAC.

Farnell, the Development Distributor, has added the new PicoScope 6000E series of USB oscilloscopes from Pico Technology to its portfolio. The new generation PicoScope 6000E series is an ideal measurement and analysis solution for design and test engineers, Original Equipment Manufacturers, Contract Electronics Manufacturers working with high-performance embedded systems, and researchers and scientists working on multi-channel high-performance experiments in physics labs, particle accelerators and similar facilities.

As a market leading developer of PC oscilloscopes, Pico provides innovative and cost-effective alternatives to traditional test equipment and data acquisition products. Pico’s regular and free software updates future-proof products by continuously improving performance and extending operational life.

The new PicoScope 6000E series delivers:

• Eight analog input channels with 8-bit resolution and up to 5GS/s sampling rate.
• Ultra-Deep Memory waveform capturing memories of 4 giga samples (up to 2 giga samples per channel), many times larger than competing oscilloscopes and enabling the capture of long-duration waveforms at maximum sampling speed.
• Mixed-Signal Oscilloscope (MSO) option adding 8 or 16 500MHz digital channels when optional 8-bit TA369 MSO pods are fitted, allowing digital and analogue signals to be viewed together. Digital signals can be displayed individually, as a bus or as decoded serial protocols.
• 21 serial protocol decoders included as standard allowing serial data to be decoded simultaneously on all analogue and digital channels. This enables up to 24 channels of data, including decoding multiple SPI, I²C, CAN bus, LIN bus and FlexRay signals, to be done at the same time.
• SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface and hardware acceleration ensures that the display is smooth and responsive even with long data captures.

The PicoScope 6000E series consists of two models: the PicoScope 6804E and the PicoScope 6824E that also offers FlexRes. This specification reduces the sampling rate to enable high-resolution 10-bit or 12-bit resolution for audio and other analogue applications, in addition to standard fast (5 GS/s) 8-bit sampling mode. The PicoScope series also offers informative display and advanced waveform analysis, increasing user productivity when conducting signal processing, high-speed communications, process control, avionics, power electronics, mechatronics and automotive design.

James McGregor, Global Head of Test and Tools for Farnell says: “We are delighted to introduce this exciting new range of affordable USB oscilloscopes from Pico Technology. Our range of Pico products give customers access to innovative PC-based test equipment that offers a modern and cost-effective alternative to the traditional benchtop products. We are committed to delivering the latest technologies for our customers and this range of cutting-edge scopes is an excellent addition to an already broad test and measurement portfolio.”

The PicoScope 6000E extends Farnell’s oscilloscope offering. Customers can also access to 24/5 hands-on technical support from Farnell’s in-house test experts, along with access to free online resources including datasheets, webinars and videos. Farnell offers discounts on test products to all educational institutions.

All models in the PicoScope 6000E series by Pico Technology are available from Farnell in EMEA and element14 in APAC.

Newark, the Development Distributor, announces the availability of Infineon’s MERUS™ range of Class D audio amplifier solutions, which use pioneering multilevel switching technology to increase audio performance and reduce power loss during operation. Infineon’s enhanced design and production standards deliver extreme reliability and stability for the entire product lifetime. The new range offers improved power efficiency, decreased size, weight, electromagnetic interference and lower overall cost than traditional solutions on the market.

Electronics engineers can use MERUS™ Class D audio solutions in a range of applications such as battery-operated speakers, wireless and docking speakers, soundbars, multiroom systems and home theatre systems. The MERUS™ portfolio includes fully integrated monolithic audio amplifier ICs, multi-chip audio amplifier modules (MCMs), as well as discrete audio amplifier driver IC and power MOSFET solutions, scalable to meet the most stringent and demanding application needs.

The products now available from Newark include:

• The MA12040P (for 4-18V supply voltage range) and the MA12070P (for 4-26V supply voltage range), suitable for battery operated speakers, wireless and docking speakers, soundbars and multiroom/home theatre systems, both feature an embedded digital power management scheme with an algorithm that dynamically adjusts switching frequency and modulation to optimise power loss and EMI across the output power range. Integrated digital-to-analogue converters enable digital I2S audio stream input. The amplifiers support sample rates from 44.1 kHz to 192 kHz and offer protection against DC, short circuits, over-temperature and under-voltage situations. Flexible “power mode profiles” allow the user to utilise the multilevel switching technique for very low power loss or very high audio performance. Also available, for Analog input, are the complementary MA12040 and MA12070.
• The EVAL_AUDIO_MA12070P easy to use audio evaluation kit contains all the elements needed to evaluate the highly power-efficient MERUS™ digital input multilevel class D amplifier 2×80W (MA12070P). The IC is specifically targeted for high-performance filter-less and heatsink-free audio applications and suitable for applications such as voice controlled audio and professional audio where it is essential to maximize dynamic range and audio performance while minimizing power dissipation and power loss.

Lee Turner, Global Head of Semiconductors and Single Board Computing, at Newark said, “Infineon is known for its pioneering solutions for audio application requirements delivered through patented architectures, proprietary algorithms, advanced manufacturing technologies, and extensive verification and testing. The MERUS™ amplifier solutions, now shipping from Newark, provide customers with an unprecedented sound experience, designed to maximise power efficiency while providing best-in-class audio performance in optimal-fit form factors suitable for design engineers developing products for both, home or professional use.”

“With recent technological innovations, such as multilevel class D amplifiers, which are designed specifically for superior audio quality and power efficient amplification of music signals, designers are enabled more than ever to create better products for their customers. We are delighted by Newark's support in raising awareness and distribution of our future-proof MERUS™ audio-amplifier ICs,“ noted Jens Tybo Jensen, Head of Class D Audio, at Infineon Technologies.

Infineon’s MERUS™ range of Class D audio amplifier solutions are available from Farnell in EMEA, Newark in North America and element14 in APAC.

Newark is now shipping an easy to mount and compact Human Vision Component (HVC) from Omron Electronic Components. The HVC incorporates ten different image sensing functions and a choice of wide angle and long-distance options to match users range needs for applications from digital signage and vending machines to home appliances and security doors.

The HVC is an image-sensing unit that can recognize human face expression, gender, age, gaze and blink into a camera module. The HVC-P2 boasts a maximum recognition speed 10 times of HVC model. Ten types of image-sensing functions are incorporated to recognizing human conditions in various perspectives such as face detection, human body detection, hand detection, face direction estimation, gaze estimation, blink estimation, age estimation, gender estimation, expression estimation, (five facial expressions: neutral, happiness, surprise, anger & sadness) and face recognition. The HVC-P2 consists of a camera and a separate main board connected via a flexible flat cable allowing it to be installed on the edge of a flat display unit. Output image can be chosen from three types no image output, 160x120 pixels and 320x240 pixels.

Cliff Ortmeyer, Global Head of Technical Marketing for Newark said: “Design engineers are constantly having to incorporate the latest technologies into their designs which often require specialized knowledge to implement from the ground up. One solution to this challenge is to use modular components, enabling the addition of new functionality without a deep experience in complex topic areas such as facial recognition. The Omron HVC is one such device that allows design engineers to simply and effectively equip their IoT device with the latest technologies, while keeping time to market and costs down.”

Key features include:

• 1600 × 1200 pixels detection resolution
• Long range and wide angle options: Long range - Horizontal detection range (angle of view) is 54°, vertical detection range (angle of view) is 41°. Wide angle - Horizontal detection range (angle of view) is 94°, vertical detection range (angle of view) is 76°
• Supply voltage is 5VDC ±10%, consumption current below 0.4A
• Operating temperature range from 0°C to +50°C (no condensation or freezing)
• Easy to mount and compact format to provide image sensing capability to various devices
• RAW (8bit, Y data) image format
• Camera board size is 25mm x 25mm, main board size is 45mm x 45mm

The Omron Human Vision Component is available from Newark.

Newark is now shipping Particle, a range of next generation cloud-connected development kits with mesh-enabled networking, making it possible to extend your sensor mesh network and get your devices connected to cloud, over Wi-Fi or Cellular networks, in minutes. The Particle IoT platforms offer everything you need to create a robust and securely connected IoT product, from device to cloud, with seamless transition from prototype to global deployment with Device Cloud hosted infrastructure.

Particle offers three developments kits giving different connectivity options to the Particle Device Cloud: Cellular (Boron), Wi-Fi (Argon) and Mesh (Xenon):

• The Argon is a powerful Wi-Fi enabled development board that can act as either a standalone Wi-Fi endpoint or Wi-Fi enabled gateway for Particle Mesh networks. It is based on the Nordic nRF52840 and has built-in battery charging circuitry so it’s easy to connect a Li-Po and deploy your local network in minutes. The Argon is great for connecting existing projects to the Particle Device Cloud or as a gateway to connect an entire group of local endpoints.

• The Boron LTE is a powerful LTE CAT-M1/NB1 enabled development kit that can act as either a standalone cellular endpoint or LTE enabled gateway for Particle Mesh networks. It is based on the Nordic nRF52840 and has built-in battery charging circuitry so it’s easy to connect a Li-Po and deploy your local network in minutes. The Boron is great for connecting existing projects to the Particle Device Cloud or as a gateway to connect an entire group of local endpoints where Wi-Fi is missing or unreliable.

• The Xenon is a low cost mesh-enabled development board that can act as either an endpoint or repeater within a Particle Mesh network. The Xenon is mesh only and designed to function as the endpoint of your IoT network. It is based on the Nordic nRF52840 and has built-in battery charging circuitry so it’s easy to connect a Li-Po and deploy your local network in minutes. The Xenon is best for connecting sensors, motors, pumps, valves, and points of data-interest. Pair it with an Argon or Boron gateway to get all that great data into the Device Cloud.

Particle development kits are available from Newark in North America and are also featured on the Particle design centre space on the element14 Community.