Embedded World 2024, Nuremberg: Chip producer STMicroelectronics (STMicro) is working with ambient IoT startup Dracula Applied sciences to make use of its energy-harvesting natural photovoltaic (OPV) know-how in its new STM32U0 line of microcontrollers (MCUs). The 2 French companies are displaying Dracula’s LAYER OPV product on the STM32U0 MCU at Embedded World this week. Dracula has joined STMicro’s ‘companion program’ to formalise the partnership.
As trailed in these pages via the back-end of 2023, Dracula has already developed a prototype tracker that runs on its LAYER OPV cell – which will be printed in any dimension, relying on the facility output, onto an 0.3mm adhesive sticker on a daily inkjet printer utilizing particular OPV ink. For advertising functions, it’s introduced as a bat-shaped photovoltaic printout (see picture) that works at 200 lux, and even right down to 100 lux. It’s pitching the answer for affordable and battery-free low-power IoT.
The OPV unit – which makes use of a reference LoRaWAN module from Semtech and a cloud stack from TTI – works in low mild in darkish rooms. It attracts energy within the murkiest situations, akin to in warehouses or factories, the place the luminous flux per unit space (lux), which measures illuminance, goes as little as 500. (Outside mild registers at nearer to 10,000 lux.) Dracula says its cell wants solely a flash of sunshine (“as little as one lux,” the corporate has stated) to wake and ship out a sign.
Its new membership of the STMicro companion membership goals to “streamline the event of end-to-end options, decreasing product growth efforts and accelerating time to market,” it stated, additionally speaking a couple of “battery-free future through the use of ambient indoor mild to generate sustainable micro-power gadgets”. It added: “The initiative aligns with ST’s dedication to pushing the boundaries of innovation within the ultra-low energy phase.”
With the Dracula OPC cell, the STM32U0 achieves “unprecedented static energy consumption ranges”, the 2 firms claimed. The unit is geared for purposes within the industrial, medical, metering, and client markets. Thierry Bousquet, in command of advertising for the STM32 line at STMicro, stated: “[This] demo marks a brand new period of energy-efficient microcontroller models. Our goal… was to allow purposes… for quite a few self-powered autonomous sensors.”
One of many demos at Embedded World featured an illuminometer primarily based on a single-panel OPV module that works with solely 5 lux. Bousquet stated: “The STM32U0 will assist design groups save vitality and supply the optimum compromise between vitality consumption, built-in options, and cost-effectiveness.”
Jerome Vernet, vp of gross sales at Dracula, stated: “This collaboration represents the end result of our shut relationship and shared imaginative and prescient, leading to highly effective synergies. Being chosen to energy this product marks a big milestone, and we’re delighted to hitch the ST Accomplice Program to additional drive innovation in vitality harvesting.”
In January, Dracula Applied sciences introduced a brand new electrical vitality storage resolution, known as LAYERVault, which retains photovoltaic energy, drawn from mild sources even in murky venues, on a single versatile movie. It really works with the agency’s present LAYER resolution. LAYERVault was introduced at CES in Las Vegas as a “first-of-its-kind”, which integrates electrical storage with low-light natural photovoltaic (OPV) vitality harvesting.
The agency is within the technique of ramping-up “high-volume” manufacturing (in “early 2024”) at a brand new 2,500 metre-square sensible manufacturing facility, in Valence in southeastern France. The ability is to be totally automated, with capability to supply as much as “150 million sq. centimetres” of natural photovoltaic (OPV) gadgets per yr.