electronica 2018 day two highlights

Another day at electronica 2018 has passed and it was arguably even busier than the first. A constant stream of customers and suppliers kept the atmosphere on the Avnet Abacus stand buzzing, and our schedule was packed full of great speakers and demos. Here’s our recap of day two.

While day one saw visitors easing their way into the event, day two got off to a much faster start as we met with Mario Merino, VP Sales South, Avnet Abacus, to see what he had to say about BQ’s Witbox Go! desktop 3D printer.

“Changing end-user requirements meant that BQ had to make several design modifications without increasing cost or time to market,” said Mario. “Our engineers were able to look at the design specification and make effective recommendations for each iteration.”

You can watch more here.

After getting excited about the 3D printed Star Wars figurines, our attention turned to the first Tech Talk of the day from Eaton’s Akos Labady. Circuit design tips for maximising supercapacitor lifetime was the topic, and we learned the importance of getting protection, balancing and sizing right. Akos noted a key and little known tip: “It’s important to get the type of supercapacitor right for the application, otherwise you risk lower efficiency and shorter lifetime.”

“We started to have a look at the entire design process in terms of how the layout of the board was, relative to the RF. We found that we had inadvertantently created conflicts in terms of noise and electrical interference that could be fix if we just relaid the board. We were then able to test each iteration of the layout in TE's state-of-the-art radio labs in California.”

For our second tech talk of the day, Ralph Semmeling of Molex spoke on high speed connectivity solutions for telecommunications. He provided some great insight on selecting the right types of data connectors for different telecom applications. Be sure to keep an eye out for the full video of his presentation in the coming days.

Our last stop of the day was at TDK’s sensors stand, where Sam Taban talked about the Invensense line of motion MEMS sensors. He noted that for many customers MEMS sensors are still a relatively new technology, however their products and support are designed for ease of implementation, in turn reducing time to market and cost.

And so, day two of electronica 2018 came to an end - the Avnet stand party aside (what happens on the Avnet stand stays on the Avnet stand). Catch up with all the best bits in our highlight video below, and make sure to visit our stand, C5 101, tomorrow.

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