Premier Farnell Announces Live Edge Winner

Premier Farnell, the leading multi-channel, high service distributor and its companies (Farnell, Newark, Premier Electronics, Farnell-Newark CPC, and MCM), announced today the winner of its Live Edge 2008 – Electronic Design for the Global Environment Challenge winner. Pedro Rodrigues from Portugal was awarded a unique prize package including a $25,000 cash prize and support services valued at an additional $25,000 from experts in the fields of design consultancy, marketing, legal and commerce to drive the design towards production. Mr Rodrigues’ winning design is an Intelligent Standby Energy Saver – a system that automatically detects the standby mode of electrical equipment and disconnects the power when it is not required.

“This unique power controller design analyses power consumption using an artificial intelligence algorithm implemented on a high-end micro-controller,” said Pedro Rodrigues, Live EDGE 2008 winner. “This enables the Intelligent Standby Energy Saver to distinguish between the “standby” and “non-standby” modes even when faced with complex consumption patterns and, thus disconnect the load. The device has sensors that detect changes in the environment and intelligently restore power, when required.”

The 2007 Live EDGE winner, Mr. John Noble has already taken his design through to completion and anticipates having the product ready for distribution later this year.

(photo credit: Newscom)