With the widespread of the USB Type-C interface and its innovative features such as image transmission, charging, sound effect, and internet, Type-C is getting increasingly popular. Despite its various functions, Type-C faces issues when connected to a non-supporting device. This is where Billboard plays the key role as it instantly informs users the issues.
USB
High Speed Connector Development Trends and Key Points for Quality Certification
General Overview
With the rapid development of the IT industry, transfer quality, speed and application diversity have initiated a continued drive towards the development of faster transfer speeds. In order to enhance signal transfer encoding speed and shorten user waiting sessions. 1. Lowering package precision. 2. Providing full duplex transfer modes are both plausible ways to tackle the issue. In order to reach this goal, all individual components must be able to minimize signal decay, distortion and resistance towards interference.
Hence, the connector which acts as a bridge would also require an upgrade, due to the increasing role it plays in transmission quality and speed. The flow chart below shows the evolution of USB transmission speed from USB 1.0 to USB 3.1 Gen 2. Another important point to mention is the transmission mode which upgraded from half-duplex to full duplex.
Shaping 2017! A Taste Of The Course To Come
As CES marks half a century of bringing innovation to the world, there were over 3800 vendors from 150 countries and 170000 attendees. Many conceptual products shown in the past have become actual or even mass production products this year. Out of all the products exhibited “VR” related products has been the focus of attention, this can be seen in the 79% increase for related products. Autonomous vehicles & vehicle related technology have also been the focus of this year, with well over 200 thousand Square foot of exhibition space. Allion is here to provide first hand coverage for all you tech fans out there.
[Special Feature] MCPC & Allion Actively Promoting Mobile Charging Certification Together
On August 4th 2016, Allion Labs was officially recognized by MCPC ( Mobile Computing Promotion Consortium ) as the First and only ATL to provide mobile device MCPC Certification. ( Certification Details ) Actually efforts from Allion & MCPC have spent 2 years planning & organizing this important Certification program. Ever since the start of the program, Allion has worked closely with MCPC’s mobile device charging working group to set and plan the mobile device safety testing criteria and overall operation. We would also like to take this opportunity during the initial stages of the certification program to invite and interview some of the key promoters & facilitators of mobile device charging safety. Mr. Masahiro Hataguchi who is the Head Secretary & Chief of Internal Affairs for MCPC, also Chief Technical Commissar Mr. Kenji Oguma and finally CEO of Allion Labs ( Japan ) Mr. Hideaki Nakayama. Together they will share with us the facilitation & promotion of mobile device charging safety in the future.
The Importance of An Impartial Third Party Testing Lab
As more and more of us rely on smart devices to lubricate and ease the perpetual motion of our daily activities, we may have alluded or taken for granted the safety and precautionary measures hence provided by industries and manufacturers.
Recent media coverage regarding the safety of consumer electronic devices, have caught our attention; especially when many of our gadgets today are manufactured and tested by the same institutions. Hence, possibly causing flaws or biased judgment during the certification process. Therefore, when another related incident from a product which, was born via this “α & Ω solution”. We as a responsible and professional institution had to ask ourselves the dodgy question we’ve all known for a while by now. “Is a one way arrangement from drawing board to certification and manufacturing, really what we want?” However, in defense of multinational conglomerates one must understand the implications and benefits of having everything wrapped up together as a single package. The following, will endeavor to shed light on these issues and possible alternatives that may further and promote better safety and scrutiny towards certification and compliance standards.
VESA 2016 Workshop: DisplayPort 1.4 Support 8K Displays with USB -C
VESA has announced the up to date DisplayPort 1.4 standard, with promising support for 8K display and Alternate Mode on USB-C. In order to promote DisplayPort 1.4, VESA has hosted a series of workshops in Asia. Representatives from Allion attended the press conferences and workshops in Japan, Taiwan, and China. For this article, we share some important notes that are related to DisplayPort 1.4 standard and its certification.
Allion Presents USB Type-C Specifications and Technical Seminars — Grasping New Markets and Igniting Sales through Quality Innovation
The new USB Type-C standard provides tremendous business opportunities for cable and connector manufacturers. In order to achieve maximum benefit from these opportunities, and enhance competitiveness, these manufacturers are constantly trying to find ways to speed up product certification.
Allion Labs, a market leading testing laboratory, successfully held
two seminars on May 6 and May 7, 2015 for more than two hundred (200+) attendees. These two seminars not only helped attendees quickly understand the latest USB Type-C specifications, but also accurately prepared them for market changes by reviewing a list of certification action items. Additionally, Allion shared Type-C certification testing FAQs and delivered on-demand Q&A debugging services.
To meet the rapidly rising market demand for USB Type-C certification requirements, Allion has prepared this article for its customers who could not attend and any other interested parties. This article provides an overview of the topics presented at our USB Type-C seminars. It also presents results of the seminar survey which was used to analyze current sentiments. This survey data can provide vendors with deeper insights into potential avenues of growth and obstacles to overcome. As USB technology continues to advance, Allion will continue to provide its valued customers with superior certification services and customized engineering solutions.
Analysis of Technology Standards of Cable and Connector& the Certification Test Points
In view of high-frequency signal, mechanical properties, electrical properties and environmental factors that change in the performance of cables and connectors, developers need a complete package of professional laboratory tests and certification programs to ensure the products that can meet the quality conditions and can perfectly show the functional characteristics. In this article about validation technique, Allion experts will introduce different specifications of USB and emphasize on certification. It will also concentrate on products with different interfaces such as SAS 4.0, PCIe’s latest specification of OCuLink interface, and fiber optic cable AOC (Active Optical Cable) and will explain each interface’s characteristics. In addition, we will also introduce some equipment and testing content focusing on electrical test, mechanical test, and environmental test.
CES 2014 Part I: The Post Smartphone Era with Wearable Technology
Another CES has come and gone and, undeniably, wearable technology, in the form of a variety of smart bands, smart watches and even smart glasses, will be absolutely the major focus of CES 2014. Functionally, wearable technology that doesn’t fall into categories, such as smartphone and smart TV with the emphases of software and hardware innovation, is talking about the applications of our daily lives and consumer markets including healthcare and fitness. Wearable technology, started in 2013, is an exploding product category, which we can find whether IT brands or sports brands have announced as the mainstream consumer products in 2014. According to the report from IMS Research (as shown below), 14 million wearable devices were estimated to have been shipped in 2011 with almost $2 billion in revenue. However, the market size and the share are projected to seem significantly different by 2016, when 171 million devices will be shipped to achieve up to $6 billion in revenue.
The applications of wearable technology, related to wireless transmission Bluetooth, data processing and detector sensor, have developed to collect, record and manage the data of user’s breathing, heartbeat, pulse, temperature, blood pressure and other physiological responses, sending to his/her smartphone or cloud service afterwards. Thus, Bluetooth technology especially for Bluetooth 4.0 which is famous for low power consumption and able to run streaming data in the low-energy mode for a long period of time, making Bluetooth 4.0 perfect for wearable technology. To ensure the quality of Bluetooth, the relevant certification process has become the critical issue. As the BQTF (Bluetooth Qualification Test Facility) accredited by Bluetooth SIG, Allion is going to provide the vendors with further assistances in conducting certification process, executing interoperability testing, making debugging analysis and providing real-time consultation service.
With the market saturation of smartphone, wearable devices are expected to hit different market without cutting-edge production technology and cost, and to meet the requirement of user experience and user scenario. We can say that CES 2014 could be also called “The wearable technology show” where many IT brands and sports brands including Sony, LG, Nike and Adidas have launched their own wearable devices.
The Smart Band, launched by Sony Mobile, comes in rubber material with the core to connect with the smartphone and tablet PC apps via Bluetooth. The follows of Smart Band could be the life-tracking of heart rate, pedometer and even for marathon. As shown above, Smart Band incorporates with a removable core which is capable of tracking your motion anywhere. Because Smart Band has no built-in display screen, the control and the interaction of smartphone becomes extremely important when users receive calls, messages and listen to the music.
LG’s Lifeband Touch is also a fitness tracker with built-in OLED touch screen by using Bluetooth to connect with smartphone to keep track of time, heart rate and related fitness records. Like Sony’s Smart Band, Lifeband Touch offers the basic features, including incoming call notifications, music playback and so on. In particular, LG’s innovative HRM (Heart Rate Monitor) earphones are not only for listening, but also feature PerformTek sensor technology which can more accurate measure blood flow signals, metabolic rate and maximum oxygen consumption (VO2 max) rate.
Because wearable technology is on the verge of becoming a multi-billion dollar industry; in addition to the IT industry, the global sports brands such as Nike and Adidas also announce the debuts of their own wearable devices. Overall, their market and functional positioning is more oriented toward fitness monitoring system, focusing simply on daily activity tracking and training strategy for the active runner who wants to track and record specific workouts. It’s worth noting that the future intelligent clothing called “Smart Textiles” will be embedded digital components with small computers or detector sensors to track more precise physiological coverage of the whole body; meanwhile, user can completely control the real-time physiological and physical activities.
Wearable technology is going to be a buzzword into the market inevitably. Allion has been keeping up with the times and showed concerns about the trend and development of smart watch (please refer to our competitive analysis test report, “New Friend on Wrist: Smart Watch Test Report”). Our insight is that the certification and validation processes of wearable technology are very essential to ensure its software and hardware integration and interoperability. Different from the past user scenario of IT industry, the vendors have to consider how to integrate the user experience with wearable device so that wearable technology could be a Cyborg with both organic and mechanical parts of human beings.
The New Era of Unlimited Battery Charging Technology: Allion Wired & Wireless Charging Test & Evaluation Report
With the evolution and spread of portable electronic devices such as up-to-date smartphones, Tablet PCs and digital cameras, the high energy usage and charging requirement are predicable and trying to be optimized through all of them. Whether you are using a wired USB interface-based universal charging solution, or adopting the increasing and developing wireless charging and inductive power solution, that allows your device be fully charged with efficiency and lower the power consumption will become the most important and considerable indicator of researching, designing and purchasing the related charging technologies for various kinds of vendors.