Mouser Electronics announced that it has updated its automotive applications site with new sections devoted to infotainment. The semiconductor and electronics components distributor said it is aiming to keep its visitors up-to-date as in-vehicle entertainment technology evolves rapidly.
Indeed, in an interview at NIWeek earlier this month, Noah Reding, automotive and aerospace product manager at National Instruments, said, “Infotainment is evolving at a very quick pace—quicker than some other parts of the car.”
To help its customers keep up with this evolution, Mouser is now adding two new sections: Automotive Digital Radio and Automotive Infotainment Systems.
Automotive Digital Radio, Mouser notes, offers much better sound quality than traditional FM receivers while also being almost immune to noise and interference. Digital radios are also include advanced technologies like Radio Data System (RDS), so passengers can view a readout displaying the stations being listened to and the name and artist of the song playing.
Automotive infotainment systems, the company says, integrate many of the features commonly found on handheld devices such as GPS navigation, high-resolution displays, and touch controls into automotive systems. This information, along with vehicle status information, can be displayed to the driver by dashboard display system.
In a presentation at NIWeek, Dinu-Tudor Gruian, leading technical expert for electrical test at Continental AG, agreed that consumer-like mobile communications and GPS technologies are moving to the automobile. “These technologies bring into the automotive industry components that are not automotive-grade,” he said, “so we have to think about new designs and test concepts.”
I'll elaborate on how Gruian meets the challenge and offer more on automotive infotainment test in our October cover story.
Meanwhile, you can visit Mouser's automotive sections to access detailed block diagrams that explain automotive infotainment system operations. The two new sections complement several already existing sections covering rear vision, instrument clusters, HEV battery charging, HEV start/stop, HEV main inverters, braking systems, central body control, electric power steering, sear control, and keyless entry.