Suppliers Expand Offerings in Lighting, Development Kits, and More

LED technology firm NICHIA Corporation and Future Lighting Solutions announced a new distribution agreement covering the Americas and Europe. FLS is a business unit of Canada-based Future Electronics. The distributor will represent NICHIA in the Americas and Europe, with agreements in Spain and Portugal beginning in 2017 and Turkey beginning in 2018, the companies said.

“Future Lighting Solutions is delighted to add NICHIA to our line card with their broad product portfolio.  We look forward to a long-term, successful partnership with NICHIA, and are thrilled to now be positioned better than ever to offer our customers a broadened portfolio of solid-state lighting solutions” Jamie Singerman, corporate vice president, Future Lighting Solutions, said in a statement announcing the partnership.

Distributor element14 also announced the availability of new products and services recently, adding NXP’s Freedom Development Platform K66F. For Kinetis K66, K65, and K26 MCUs, the platform offers optimized performance, scalable integration, and low power capabilities. It is ideal for developing low-cost, low-power applications to replace 8- and 16-bit devices with 32-bit performance, particularly in building control, factory automation, industrial drivers, IoT data concentrators, and medical monitoring, the distributor said.

Industry giant Avnet, Inc. also announced the expansion of its design solution offerings, recently introducing a new multi-protocol Industrial Ethernet Solution and expanding its embedded computing product line.

This month, Avnet introduced the MicroZed Industry 4.0 Ethernet Kit (14EK), allowing multi-protocol Industrial Ethernet solutions based on the Xilinx Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC and Anybus technology from HMS Industrial Networks. Offering seamless hardware and software integration across networks, the I4EK allows designers creating leading edge applications in smart factory automation such as networked sensors, actuators, and motor control “to avoid months of development and debug of their embedded systems,” the company said.

“This kit brings together production-ready embedded hardware and IP to simplify the task of developing equipment that supports multiple high performance Industrial Ethernet protocols,” said Matt Brown, technical marketing engineer, Avnet Electronics Marketing. “Designers use the MicroZed SOM and Anybus IP for evaluation, prototype, and product deployment, which takes months off product development cycles.”

Also this month, Avnet bolstered its embedded computing offering with the addition of the Arnouse Digital Devices Corp. (ADDC) line in the Americas. The distributor will provide the company’s high-performance, small form-factor x86 pluggable computers, servers, and high security devices to customers in the Americas, including military, healthcare, security, and cloud computing.

In other news, Massachusetts-based distributor Heilind Electronics added Omron’s new G6DN PCB power relays to its line of Omron products. Measuring 5mm wide, the miniature SPST power relays feature contacts with a high-capacity resistive switching load rating of 5A at 250VAC for 80,000 cycles. They are ideal for PLC output, temperature controllers, and building automation applications, the distributor said.