Silicon Craft Technology, a leading innovative ASIC design company in RFID & NFC, has successfully developed a new passive NFC transponder IC with UART and GPIO interface in order to meet demand in the toy, advertising, and souvenir markets. This product aims to unleash new ideas and applications based on the passive NFC technology including, for instance, interactive toys without batteries.
Recently, NFC technology has been incorporated in mobile payment and transportation applications. Still, NFC technology has the innovative potential to reach new frontiers in industries such as smart toys and printed media.
“We see this as a new emerging market for which our NFC technology can fashion new ideas. Our SIC4310 ‘NFC Enabler’ offers various advantages for developers that include bi-directional communications through UART interface, with up to 8 GPIOs and the ability to supply power to external components at up to 10mA at 3.3 Volts,” explained Manop Thamsirianunt, Managing Director at SIC.
Some of the reference designs based on the NFC Enabler, such as “LEDs control” and “Energy-Harvested Sound,” can be applied and incorporated into smart toys. The GPIOs of the SIC4310 are able to turn LEDs and other components on or off. Meanwhile, the UART interface can emulate different MIDI tones and directly drive a piezo speaker to play any melody, without any need for batteries or a dedicated microcontroller.
Ultimately, the SIC4310 is the only single-chip solution available that can offer these exclusive features, in turn allowing developers to effortlessly design and integrate it into their new products.
“We believe that there will be a huge demand for passively-operated/passive-powered NFC solutions, and we aim to be the leader in this market. Therefore, SIC will continue to develop new revisions with more features and capabilities including integrating sensors and a processor, with a target date to launch in 2014,” Mr. Thamsirianunt added.
About Silicon Craft Technology (SIC)
Established in 2002, SIC offers novel, custom, and standard design microchips for RFID & NFC applications and delivers products that carry high-value added features and superior overall systems performance. SIC is dedicated to enhancing newapplications based on its ASIC solutions to customers. The exceptional quality of the SIC product range is endorsed by years of lasting partnerships. SIC’s reputation has been further solidified through its experience and expertise in the design and development of world-class foundry semiconductor manufactures of linear and mixed-signal integrated circuits. For more information, visit SIC at http://www.sic.co.th
Please follow the video link below to check out the harvested sound and LED uses of SIC4310 ‘NFC Enabler’, or search under ”Silicon Craft” on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIvmkMG_6rQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9bu2bru5Gg
