STMicroelectronics Showcase Energy-Saving Smart Home Solutions at TECHNO-FRONTIER 2012

The ST booth at TECHNO-FRONTIER has been designed to highlight improvements in power efficiency as its core theme. Visitors are invited to see a wide variety of demonstrations and displays featuring development boards designed to encourage efficient energy use in the home that is both kind to the environment and easy on your finances.



Main solutions highlighted at the ST booth:



-“Visualization” of electricity consumption is an important contributor to the realization of power-efficient smart homes. In particular, real-time monitoring of household power usage leads to the minimization of unnecessary electricity consumption by encouraging residents to use appliances less frequently or to turn them off when not in use. At the booth, ST will introduce solutions to visualize domestic usage of electricity on home displays or gateways. These solutions include a power-line communication system-on-a-chip for use in smart meters and an IC for use in smart plugs.



The ST75xx STarGRID series, a PLC SoC for smart meters, supports a variety of modulation methods and communication protocols in order to transmit power-usage data from a smart meter or smart plugs to a home display or gateway. ST’s unique BCD semiconductor technology allows an analog/digital/power circuit to be built on a single chip, contributing to a lower component count. ST’s STarGRID products are already used in smart meters in Italy and Spain.



In a smart home demonstration, the ARM Cortex-M-based 32-bit STM32W microcontroller with ZigBee support, and the STPM10 power measurement IC are used in wireless transmission of power-usage data to an evaluation board for a home display/gateway based on an STM32F2 microcontroller with Ethernet support. Using the STM32W, manufacturers can benefit from a rich development environment and enjoy the wide potential for system functions and performance.



-Domestic lighting is currently transitioning from incandescent light bulbs and fluorescent lighting to more energy-efficient LED bulbs. LED bulbs are longer-lived and consume less electricity than conventional lighting, which makes them a useful means of saving energy. At TECHNO-FRONTIER 2012, ST will demonstrate a highly-efficient LED lighting system based on a high power-factor LED driver and LED by-pass protection IC.



The LED driver delivers high-level power factor (0.90 or greater) and is compliant with Energy Star. Benefitting from ST’s wealth of patented primary-control technologies, it is the industry’s first high power-factor LED driver to operate without current-sensing resistors, shunt regulators or photo couplers. By adopting this product for use in their LED bulbs, manufacturers can realize products that offer both superior electrical efficiency and fewer components. Furthermore, with an integrated 800V MOSFET, the LED driver also features outstanding robustness.



-Motor systems are widely used in home appliances such as air conditioners, refrigerators and washers. SLLIMM -nano, ST’s IGBT module for motor systems, greatly improves efficiency by reducing power losses through an optimal layout, and offers diverse features such as a bootstrap diode, smart shutdown, sensing and protections. In addition, the SLLIMM -nano uses innovative packaging technology to reduce thermal resistance. At the ST booth, a demonstration will showcase motor-system tuning that integrates –both the power part and the STM32 32-bit microcontroller with user-friendly design tools for vector control systems.Furthermore, ST will demonstrate its sub-1 GHz wireless transceiver IC SPIRIT1, which can be used in a sensor node for detecting temperature, humidity, gas, smoke and other home-environment conditions, and the dSPIN, an SoC for the control of high-performance motors that integrates all required digital control and analog measurement functions together with power-electronics circuits.



Furthermore, ST will demonstrate its sub-1 GHz wireless transceiver IC SPIRIT1, which can be used in a sensor node for detecting temperature, humidity, gas, smoke and other home-environment conditions, and the dSPIN, an SoC for the control of high-performance motors that integrates all required digital control and analog measurement functions together with power-electronics circuits.