º  The ISA100 standards committee on wireless systems for automation applications has created a new sub-committee to examine options for converging the ISA100.11a and WirelessHart standards. The move is seen as a key step in the ISA100 committee’s mission to develop a family of industrial wireless standards to meet the needs of end-users in a variety of applications.

º  Toshba Electronics Europe has launched an evaluation kit that combines its latest motor controller chip with a single-chip inverter to provide a complete sensorless sinewave motor control and drive on a single board. TEE says that the kit will simply and accelerate the development of brushless DC drives operating at input voltages up to 220V AC and with output currents from 1–3A.

º  Two US companies, Iconics and Kepware Technologies, have signed an agreement to create what they call "the world’s first total end-to-end OPC-UA solution". The partners, who were both involved in developing the OPC-UA standard, says that the 64-bit Iconics OPC-UA KepServer will integrate HMI/SCADA and visualisation with a library of device connections and will handle several different I/O devices.

º  Mitsubishi Electric has announced a new generation of high-voltage IGBT modules for applications such as large industrial drives and railway propulsion. The 3.3kV IGBTs have lower losses and higher rated currents than previous generations. They also provide better control over dI/dt and dV/dt.

º  Allegro Microsystems has launched a pair of full-bridge brushless DC motor driver chips with integrated Hall commutation and internal PWM (pulse width modulation) speed control. The low-voltage devices are designed for applications requiring rotor speed control and rapid rotor start/stop cycles. The built-in Hall sensor detects the position of an alternating-pole ring magnet and uses this commutate the motor.