Atmosic teams for energy harvesting remote controls and smart homes
Atmosic Technologies is working with Universal Electronics on a range of ultra-low power remote control and smart home products capable of harvesting energy from indoor ambient sources.
“Atmosic is proud to deliver the lowest power radio implementation for connected devices, helping to solve the growing battery waste crisis and provide a better consumer experience by removing the hassle of changing batteries,” said David Su, CEO of Atmosic. “Combining Atmosic’s low power energy harvesting solutions with UEI’s expertise and leadership in the entertainment control and smart home market will enable the deployment of the most energy efficient remote controls ever introduced.”
Atmosic developed a low power radio Bluetooth 5 wireless platform that consumes a quarter the power of the systems and integrates energy harvesting technology to harvest energy from ambient sources including photovoltaic (PV) power from indoor and outdoor lighting and radio waves. This combination of an ultra-low power Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) radio and controlled energy harvesting significantly extends battery life so batteries can last the lifetime of the device.
Atmosic’s technology can even replace the need for batteries entirely, which can help save billions of batteries from ending up in landfills in coming years.
“As the leading technology platform in entertainment control, we feel responsible to help transition the industry towards a more sustainable future, reducing billions of batteries in waste during the lifetime of next generation products, all while improving maintenance costs and introducing new experiences,” said Arsham Hatambeiki, SVP Product & Technology at UEI. “We look forward to our collaboration with Atmosic on current and next generation solutions in our portfolio to delight our customers with groundbreaking new experiences on the most energy efficient voice enabled entertainment control and smart home platforms.”
Atmosic’s SoCs combine ultra-low power Bluetooth LE with an integrated power management unit (PMU) that enables a direct connection to energy harvesting elements like PV cells and radio frequency (RF) antennas. The integrated PMU has multiple benefits, including reducing the bill of materials (BOM) cost by eliminating the need for a separate energy harvesting chip, as well as improving the efficiency of harvested energy usage. Another benefit of this low power, highly integrated design is that a smaller PV cell can be used for the remote, further reducing both the cost and area required for the PV cell. In addition to using PV energy, Atmosic’s energy harvesting solutions can also enable connected devices to use harvested RF energy to run the remote and store energy for future use.
atmosic.com/products/; www.uei.com
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