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Black Sky chooses Memsic sensor |
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2003 Archived News by Black Sky Corporation
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Thursday, February 27, 2003 |
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CARLSBAD, California USA — Memsic, Inc., the market leader in CMOS-based MEMS accelerometers/sensors, today announced that the blacksky Corporation, a top provider of consumer aerospace products, is using MEMSIC?s dual axis sensor in a new precision event timer for sounding rockets.
The Carlsbad, California-based company, which has an installed base of over 2,000 consumer rocket avionics systems and over 500 Rail systems, is using the sensor technology to detect launch in a new timer for sounding rocket and aerospace systems; in the past, the company used a single event g switch, which only worked for fixed levels of acceleration.
"With the MEMSIC sensor, we can adjust the sensitivity of the Timer4 to trigger at different levels of acceleration," said Scott Bartel, president of blacksky. "We were very pleased with the low cost of the MEMSIC sensor, its compact physical size, low power requirements, and on-board signal conditioning. It has provided us the opportunity to provide a 1g to 50 g range of user programmable acceleration levels for sounding rockets and other applications."
The MEMSIC sensor, which replaces an older, more expensive technology in blacksky's application, is factory programmable to high g-ranges +/-5g up to +/-200g. It also provides a digital output that can be directly interfaced to a micro-processor. In addition, the device does not display stiction problems associated with capacitive-based devices and provides shock survival up to 50,000 g, leading to significantly lower failure rates and lower loss due to handling during assembly.
"Our technology is a nice fit for blacksky," notes Dr. Yang Zhao, CEO of MEMSIC. "The resolution of our sensor is defined by the signal noise. In our sensor, the typical noise floor, allowing sub milli-g signals to be measured at very low frequencies."
MEMSIC's sensor technology is based on heat convection and has no mechanical moving parts, eliminating stiction issues associated with other devices. Because MEMSIC has successfully integrated MEMS technology with leading-edge IC processes to create MEMS ICs, the ICs are fully programmable at the end of the manufacturing cycle and integrate the electronics and sensor on the same IC, saving customers money and space. |
