Ascenten Newsletter

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Electronic Design
Embedded Software
Product Engineering

July 2012 / Issue #4

10 years Celebrating a Decade of Engineering Excellence!

From the CTO’s desk

	As always, we are delighted to bring you this edition of our monthly newsletter and share technical insights and best practices from the embedded world. I hope we have succeeded in winning your readership and interests through this earnest venture of producing high quality articles derived from our industrial R&D experiences.
It also gives me immense pleasure to inform you that Ascenten Group has just completed a decade in business. Back in 2002, we started off as a motley team of technology enthusiasts with a zeal for electronic design and innovation. The 10 years of our prominent existence saw our foray into the Automotive industry with indigenous products that brought to us a unique distinction of being the largest independent Indian manufacturer of Electronic Autogas devices for OEMs. Come 2006, we established ourselves as a fast growing Product Engineering Services Company engaging with a global clientele from various industries. Our long running R & D partnership with a global leading industrial company has resulted in breakthrough engineering feats. From a team of 7 engineers we are now an 80-member strong turnkey design & manufacturing center with a state of the art design facility, production and assembly workshop, leased machining and molding centers and a fully automated PCB fabrication center in the network. Steadfast commitment to innovative research and development has been the cornerstone of our success. Clad with this passion, we are determined to partner with major Semiconductor, Automotive, Industrial and Software entities and further our reach across the globe. We have come to share a special bond with you through our newsletter and we certainly look forward to foster it by means of an enlightening communiqué between us. Please share your thoughts, comments and suggestions with me on JigarPatel@Ascenten.net.

Cheers! Jigar Patel

The Life Saver – An In-vehicle Accident Safety Device

Meet Kumar (Founder & Managing Director, Ascenten)

On a slow, hot April afternoon I was heading to my Koba office. My car had juggled for a good 30 minutes through a maze of bumpy, crowded Ahmedabad roads and as I approached Avani circle I had felt a sense of relief – the rest of the road would be an uncluttered highway which meant smooth sailing and I could focus on my work in my driver driven vehicle. As we cruised along the highway, a myriad of thoughts occupied my mind – on consolidating marketing and sales at Ascenten, on test results of our recent metering project and on my impending trip abroad. In a few minutes, I felt the car slowing down...

Success Story: Energy Meter
Enabling off-grid, renewable energy based rural electrification to empower sustainable living

Ultra low cost class 2 Energy Meter for solar electricity supply with energy management features and a safety switch board.
Turnkey product development feat by Ascenten that encompassed feasibility research, hardware design, PCB design, embedded software, product design, mechanical design, plastic molds, reliability testing, production and deployment.
Programmable remote control for bi-directional wireless communication.

Displays status of available energy and trips off power supply once the budget is expended, only to be reloaded at the next programmed hour.
Features innovative, low cost techniques to reduce device power consumption, detect under voltage, over voltage, thermal management and electronic and mechanical tamper detection.

News from the Industry

FRAMs as alternatives to flash memory in embedded designs

Priya Thanigai, Texas Instruments

Ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM) is widely known as a non-volatile, stand-alone memory technology that has been a part of the semiconductor industry for more than a decade. In recent years, integrated circuit manufacturers have been considering FRAM as a strong contender for embedded, non-volatile memory, as an alternative to flash technology. This article discusses key technology attributes of FRAM while exploring specific use cases that demonstrate FRAM’s advantages.