AdaptivEnergy's Joule-Thief™ energy harvesting module produces the highest output per unit weight AND per unit volume of any energy harvester available today. Built on AdaptivEnergy's Powered by RLP™ technology platform, this kit demonstrates battery-less wireless transmission using TI's ultra-low power MSP430 microcontroller. In stock; $699 per kit. View Product Brief

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Dan Shepard brings over 23 years of strategic marketing and business development in early stage growth companies as well as mid-size corporations. Jim Vogeley, CEO, said "Dan's track record to continually grow a company well into profitability is astounding just by finding the sweet spot for the product offering."

Dan has worked for companies such as SolmeteX, Inc, Krofta Technologies, Grundle/SLT Environmental, Exceltec International, Baker Hughes/Baker CAC and British Airways.

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DALLAS (June 9, 2008) - Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE: TXN) today announced a breakthrough generation of ultra-low power MSP430 microcontrollers (MCU), offering the industry's lowest power consumption for devices that can provide up to 25 MHz peak performance, increased Flash and RAM memory and integrated peripherals such as radio frequency (RF), USB, encryption and LCD interfaces. With as low as 160 uA/MHz (microamp per megahertz) active power consumption and 1.5 uA in standby, MSP430F5xx MCUs enable longer battery life and the ability to use smaller batteries for portable applications, or no batteries at all for energy harvesting systems that run off of solar power, vibration energy or human body temperature. For more information, please visit: www.ti.com/5xx.

TI customer, Jim Vogeley, CEO, AdaptivEnergy, explains that their product, the Joule-ThiefTM energy harvester, "collects and stores electrical energy from tiny mechanical vibrations and then uses this harvested energy to power a small, low-power MSP430 MCU. The MCU helps enable a compact RF sensor design to implement ambient intelligence that can detect and report critical conditions in factories, automobiles, offices, homes and other environments, all without wiring or batteries."

Increased memory and integrated peripherals like RF, USB, encryption and LCD interfaces allow designers to add functionally needed to advance fields like personal medical, home automation, human interface control, automated meter reading (AMR), portable instrumentation, sensors, consumer electronics and security. Development tools, collateral, third-party support, training and university programs facilitate ease of use and shorten time to market.

"The conflicting demands of increased performance, functionality and energy efficiency are the biggest challenges facing the industry today," notes Max Baron, principal analyst, In-Stat. "As designers strive to do more with less, the new MSP430F5xx MCU generation will help reduce the power consumed by existing applications while enabling new designs requiring very low power."

More than 50 percent more performance for ultra-low power
With more than 50 percent more processing performance and double the Flash and RAM memory of previous 1xx, 2xx or 4xx generations, F5xx devices help systems perform demanding tasks while operating from very limited power sources. Designers can tap into peak execution performance of up to 25 MHz while consuming as low as 160uA/MHz (microamp per megahertz). A wake up time of less than 5 microseconds with full status retention from both standby and sleep modes provides full performance on demand and instant reaction to events like external interrupts. Multi-channel direct memory access (DMA) permits data exchange with peripherals while the core remains in low-power modes. The industry's highest code density among comparable devices maximizes performance while minimizing memory and power requirements.

A true 32-bit real-time clock (RTC) with an alarm requires just 1.5 uA of standby current, enabling batteries to operate without servicing for 20 years or longer. Extended battery life is critical for customers in the electric, gas and water metering infrastructure industry that save significant time and money by replacing batteries used in their metering systems less frequently. A new, cutting-edge power management module (PMM) offers flexibility to choose the optimum core voltage dynamically for lowest power vs. performance requirements while enabling accurate power on reset and supply voltage supervision with monitoring. A unified clock system (UCS) offers a selection of clocks to achieve the right mix of power and precision, including an option for operation without a crystal.

Integrated peripherals give designers more options
Intelligent, high-performance digital and analog peripherals consume no power when not in operation, and future F5xx devices will include peripherals such as RF, USB, encryption and LCD interfaces. A new high-resolution timer will offer advanced processing capabilities to enable applications like voice-activated home security systems. Up to one megabyte (MB) of linear memory mapping enables robust user interfaces, as well as applications for ZigBee® and other low-power RF sensor networks. F54xx devices offer up to 16 kilobytes of RAM and up to 256 KB Flash, doubling Flash and RAM available on previous MSP430F2xx, F1xx and F4xx devices. The new devices offer read/erase/write capability down to 1.8 V; for applications based on two AAA batteries, Flash write is possible down to the battery end of life voltage of 0.9 V for each battery.

Support, availability and pricing
The MSP430F5xx generation is 100 percent instruction set-compatible with earlier-generation MSP430 devices, making upgrades easy and allowing choices from the entire portfolio for applications. Supporting tools; extensive training, third party and university support; and comprehensive documentation, code examples and libraries help designers get to market quickly. MSP430F5438IPZ devices are sampling now and MSP430F5437IPN, F5436IPZ, F5435IPN, F5419IPZ and F5418IPN will be released in August 2008, with additional F5xx introductions scheduled for the coming months. Package options include both 80- and 100-pin thin quad flatpacks (TQFPs), the latter with additional general-purpose I/Os. Pricing at 1ku quantities is listed in the chart below; additionally, F5418IPN devices will be priced

TI enables innovation with broad range of controllers
From ultra-low-power 16-bit MCUs in the MSP430 platform, industry standard 32-bit MCUs and the high performance TMS320C2000TM digital signal controller platform, TI offers the broadest range of embedded control solutions. Designers can accelerate their designs to market by tapping into TI's complete free software and low cost hardware tools, extensive third-party offerings and technical support. For more information on TI's controllers, see www.ti.com/mcu.

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AdaptivEnergy RLP® test bed achieves 1 Billion Cycles!  RLPs® under test still looks like the day they first became RLPs®. 

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AdaptivEnergy to debut Joule-Thief™ Energy Harvesting device at Sensors Expo & Conference, June 9-11, 2008 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, Rosemont, IL.

AdaptivEnergy Joule-Thief™ Energy Harvester offers the highest power output per unit weight and volume of any commercially available Energy Harvesting Device (EHD) enabling battery-free applications. Joule-Thief™ Energy Harvester coupled with low powered electronic components and proprietary circuitry provides very high energy collection efficiency. Collection electronics an collect energy over extended time periods to accumulate usable energy from extremely low vibration amplitudes. Joule-Thief™ is ideal for wireless sensing applications. Demonstrations available in Booth 934 AdaptivEnergy’s Joule-Thief™ in action.

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Jim Vogeley, CEO of AdaptivEnergy will attend the In-Q-Tel portfolios companies technology management symposium.

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Richard McKee brings 25 years of professional sales experience to AdaptivEnergy. Richard's vast knowledge of varying technologies and industries presented him to be a perfect match for the position. Richard will establish sales strategies to meet the organizational objectives, sell AdaptivEnergy's “Powered by RLP™” branded products, and educate the market place on RLP® products, markets and technology.

"Richard is very customer centric and focused on building relationships which is important to a company introducing a break through technology. These situations not only include simple sales but product development opportunities as well, notes Jim Vogeley, CEO."

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