Thin Film announced a partnership with G World Group at Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2015 for a smart wine bottle using printed electronics technology. The companies plan to deliver a bottle using Thin Film’s NFC (near field communications) OpenSense tags and G World’s Samscan process over the coming months, after a field trial with Ferngrove Wine Group, a Chinese-owned, Western Australia-based supplier of red wine to the Asia-Pacific and China region. “Counterfeit wine, particularly in Asia, is pervasive,” said the companies, citing recent reports claiming that 50-70 percent of all wine sold in China “could be fake.” The percentage is higher for premium brands, they said. The G World anti-counterfeiting solution -- powered by Thin Film’s unique NFC technology – facilitates authentication of individual bottles throughout the supply chain, ensuring they're packaged, shipped, stocked and purchased “in their original factory-sealed state,” said the companies. The thin NFC OpenSense tags can detect a product’s sealed and open states and wirelessly communicate data with the tap of an NFC-enabled smartphone or device, said the companies. The tags, with identifiers that make it possible to authenticate and track products to the individual-item level, remain active after a product’s factory seal has been broken, enabling brands to connect with consumers, they said. Earlier this month Rémy Martin announced a similar concept (see 1507020048) with its Club Connected Bottle that will hit Chinese nightclubs this fall. The technologies are separate, Bill Cummings, vice president-marketing and communications for Thin Film, told us. “The concept of smart bottles has been around for some time as brands have constantly been searching for technology solutions that would enable them to address counterfeiting issues, track and authenticate products, and enhance consumer engagement,” Cummings said. While the functionality has been available, the cost has been prohibitive. “Putting a $4 label/tag on a $25 bottle of liquor/wine is usually cost-prohibitive and doesn’t make much sense from a business standpoint,” he said in an email. Thin Film is receiving interest from brands within the wine and spirits, pharmaceutical, cosmetics and luxury goods markets due to its printed electronics technology that can “scale to ultra-high volumes and significantly lower price points,” Cummings said. Compared with traditional silicon-based solutions, it’s a “compelling alternative” for certain applications, he said.

GreenPeak Technologies announced a single-radio multiprotocol chipset with multichannel receive capability for set-top boxes, gateways and other IoT devices. The GP712 enables simultaneous listening for Thread and ZigBee packets using a single radio, said GreenPeak in a Tuesday news release. The GP712 will enable devices to support multiple protocols in normal operation, or to create a single SKU that determines the type of protocol used in a consumer’s home at the time of installation instead of as a factory selection, said the company. The GP712 comes in a small footprint 24-pin QFN (quad-flat no-leads) package, making it well-suited for low-cost printed circuit board design rules in price sensitive applications, it said.

Sigma Designs launched version 6.6 of its software development kit (SDK) Tuesday, which includes advanced system diagnostics and enhancements to the installation and maintenance application tool, which can shorten installation time for service providers, it said. In addition to enabling more efficient installations, the tool has the foundation to support UL approval using enhancements to the received signal strength indicator, said Sigma Designs. Also among the 30 new features in the version 6.6 SDK are enhanced network statistics, signal strength feedback for optimal network health status, more accurate identification of traffic disruption causes for faster repairs, improved node communication visibility for faster resolution of network communication issues and easier commissioning and de-commissioning of devices, said Sigma.

MotionTracking sensor chip company InvenSense postponed its annual developers’ conference scheduled for Nov. 17-18. The company said its new development tools, due in late June, weren't synched with its conference needs for November. InvenSense chose to push the conference back “until the tools are ready for production and readily available for purchase or download” so developers can acquire the tools upon returning home from the conference. “This has no correlation to our overall InvenSense product development cycle, just specific tools for the developer community,” it said. InvenSense will update invitations in July for the conference that will still be at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California, it said.

Sierra Wireless introduced an open hardware reference design called Project mangOH along with an open interface standard that’s been adopted by Freescale, Linear Technology and Texas Instruments (TI), it said Wednesday. The IoT “can only be realized when technologies are interoperable,” said Sierra Wireless Chief Technology Officer Philippe Guillemette in a statement. Sierra is contributing to both open source and projects and standards bodies, it said. The IoT connector open interface standard is designed to take complexity and cost out of ensuring that different wireless and sensor technologies communicate, said Guillemette. Sierra compared its IoT connector to the Mini PCIe standard used in laptop, tablet and networking applications by enabling plug-and-play hardware for IoT developers. Project mangOH is the first implementation of the IoT connector, and Freescale, Linear Technology and TI have developed wireless module designs based on the standard, enabling Bluetooth, 6LoWPAN, Thread, Wi-Fi and ZigBee technologies, Sierra said.

Silicon Labs' Bluegiga is sampling a dual-mode Bluetooth Smart-ready module that integrates Bluetooth Smart and Bluetooth Basic Rate/Enhanced Data Rate (BR/EDR) wireless technologies. The BT121 combines a Bluetooth radio, microcontroller and on-board Bluetooth software stack supported by Silicon Labs’ Bluetooth Smart Ready software development kit and BGScript scripting language, which it said Monday will minimize design time, cost and complexity. Applications include connected home, health and fitness, wearables and point-of-sale terminals, said Silicon Labs. The BT121 module supports ultra-low-power and high-data-rate Bluetooth connectivity applications, enabling it to connect to legacy devices and newer devices that support Bluetooth Smart, it said.

Chinese semiconductor company Rockchip launched an ultra-low-power Wi-Fi system-on-a-chip (SoC) at Computex Tuesday that’s said to cut power consumption of standard Wi-Fi-based IoT devices by 85 percent. The Rockchip RKi6000 claims power consumption equal to that of Bluetooth Low Energy, with receiving power consumption roughly 20 mAh during use. Wi-Fi previously couldn't be incorporated into portable devices with an electrical current limit, Rockchip said, but the RKi6000’s processor and memory technology resolves the power issue, enabling a broader adoption of IoT in everyday products by providing “more efficient power, a lower price, smaller size, and the ability to use Wi-Fi for the development of IoT devices.” Products incorporating Rockchip’s technology can be powered by a coin battery, and AAA batteries powering the SoC can be used for up to 35 years, it said. Target applications include wearables, CE, home appliances, home safety, automation systems, cars and medical equipment, it said. The RKi6000 is expected to be available in Q3.

Boston-based startup Vesper bowed a MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) microphone for smartphones, wearables and other space-constrained products. The VM101’s 68 dB signal-to-noise ratio is said to boost audio clarity and intelligibility for phone calls or recording, while doubling the distance of sound capture and enabling audio zoom for sound-source selection. The VM101 is a “drop-in replacement” for MEMS microphones in use today, Vesper said. Sampling has begun and full production is slated for Q4, it said Monday.

SanDisk is using this week’s World IT Expo in Seoul to introduce the Z400s, billing it as a cost-effective solid-state drive (SSD) designed to replace hard disk drives (HDDs) in computing platforms and “embedded applications,” the company said in a Tuesday announcement. “With a single architecture, SanDisk is able to provide OEMs with an affordable solution for displacing HDDs in today’s cutting-edge consumer devices, and help embedded application designers avoid overpaying for un-needed space -- all while delivering the peak performance and high-reliability that only SSDs can supply,” SanDisk said. The Z400s will be available in a variety of form factors and capacities up to 256 GB, so OEMs can incorporate the component into “sleeker, mobile laptop designs without breaking” bill of materials costs,” he said. And since SSDs have no moving parts, “they are much less prone to failure, which increases device uptime,” it said.

The FCC should rethink a proposal that would force licensed, professional wireless mics to exit parts of the 600 MHz band earlier than other users, wireless mic maker Shure said in comments. These mics should be able to operate as long as low-power TV stations and TV translator stations, Shure said. “Wireless microphones have successfully operated, on a secondary basis, on unassigned channels in the TV spectrum for decades,” Shure said. “Wireless microphone use has grown rapidly and today, these devices provide critical support to a wide range of sectors including TV broadcasting, news casting, theater, live music, sports, religious, civic and academic institutions.” The transition timeline is “critical to users in these sectors and to wireless microphone manufacturers compelled to ensure that the dramatic change in available UHF spectrum resulting from the Incentive Auction and TV broadcast rebanding does not disrupt existing operation of wireless microphones or stymie continued availability of high quality wireless microphone equipment,” Shure said. It filed reply comments in the proceeding defining the official start date of operations for carriers that buy licenses in the TV incentive auction (see 1505190047). The comments were posted Tuesday in docket 12-268.