DigiKey has long been a global distribution leader of electronic components, including sensors, with more than 18 million components from nearly 3,000 manufacturers.
Headquartered in Thief River Falls, Minn., the company has always worked hard to share insights about the full lifecycle of electronics, including where sensing products are part of entire applications involving, lately, processing power with AI and more. A big focus has been on how companies can use electronics more efficiently and sustainably, while partnering with other companies with mutual concerns.
Recently, the distributor released a second season of its Sustainable Futures video series, exploring components and technologies behind efficient power systems where sensors play a key role. All three episodes are online at DigiKey.com, as well as episodes from season 1.
Episode 1 of the series looks at how renewable energy generation and smart grid infrastructure matched with intelligence at the edge can create more efficient energy systems. One of the sponsors of the series, Analog Devices, is featured, with its innovations providing system level insights to measure, control and optimize power consumption.
“The modernization of the power grid is among the most demanding engineering challenges of time—requiring breakthroughs in power conversion, real-time sensing and system-level intelligence,” said David Andeen, senior director of business development and marketing at Analog Devices.
In later episodes, Harwin is featured regarding high-reliability interconnects and eco-friendly materials. “Sustainability is a journey and…companies are increasingly expected to reflect the values of their customers and partners,” said Ryan Smart, vice president of product for Harwin.
The role of sensors in edge power efficiency
Sensors help improve power efficiency in edge computing in multiple ways, which engineers try to capitalize upon when designing applications. Moving intelligence closer to the sensor reduces the energy spent transmitting, storing and processing data.
Wireless communications consume far more power than sensing itself, which makes one goal of edge computing to smarten up sensors so they send only valuable information instead of raw data streams. This is where AI and AI agents come in handy.
Sensors can remain in a low power state and wake up when something happens. This is true when a motion sensor wakes a security camera or a radar sensor detects a person or object has fallen to trigger AI processing. In an industrial setting, a vibration sensor may detect a machine anomaly and start a diagnostics process. All these examples avoid running radios and processors continuously, helping reduce power.
Some modern sensors filter compress or extract data before the data reaches a CPU. There’s even a trend to putting neural network tech directly inside or adjacent to a sensor, as with vision sensors that recognize objects. CMOS image sensors are applied to smart cameras, robots and industrial inspections. MEMS microphones may be used with wake-word detection. IMUs (accelerometers and gyroscopes) may be used in drones and robots, even wearables, to save power with wake-on-motion features. Temperature, pressure and humidity sensors as well as gas and air quality sensors are being widely deployed in smart buildings for energy management and cost savings.
In robotics, there’s a trend to save power with local contact event detection, where sensors are sophisticated enough to transmit only the meaningful touch events, although this is still immature technology.
In-sensor AI and near-sensor computing and multimode sensing are focused on maximizing battery life or reducing local power supplies.
While sensors are not the whole story behind power efficient systems and the sustainability theme, they remain as essential as ever.