Development of electronics, which aims to improve the functionality of electronic devices, aims at increasing the packing of transistors in a chip and boosting clock speed (the number of elementary operations per second). While pursuing this objective, one encounters the growing problem of thermal nature. Each switching of the logic state at the elementary level of an integrated circuit is associated with the generation of heat. Due to a large number of transistors and high clock speeds, higher heat flux is emitted by the microprocessor to a level where the component needs to be intensively cooled, or otherwise it will become overheated. This paper presents the cooling of microelectronic components using microjets.

The paper presents a design and performance analysis of a photosensor device enabling the measurement of the visible light illuminance. The sensor is designed for use in the light metering matrix of a mobile measurement platform allowing the correct operation of in-pavement airport lamps. This kind of control can be required by regulations and must meet the standards defined by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). An important assumption of the solution was to obtain the highest possible speed of a measurement acquisition so that the control process would take place in a relatively short time. The proposed module concept is dedicated to the task of testing the quality of airport lamps, due to the characteristics of the photosensitive elements matching the light beams emitted by luminaries. The device is based on a VTP1220FBH photodiode and an ATmega328P microcontroller, which, in addition to the analogue-to-digital conversion and correction, sends the results back to the master unit via the I ²C bus.

The paper describes a prototype operator panel, which was designed to operate with the S7-200 family of Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC-s) from Siemens. Most of the functionality of the operator panel was implemented in a computer program, which runs on a PC-class computer. The program communicates with a PLC through its communication port configured in the Freeport mode. Two kinds of interface between the PC, and the PLC are supported: wired, and wireless. For wired connection a standard PC/PPI cable supplied by Siemens is used. For wireless connection two communication modules were designed, which operate in the free 433 MHz band. The operator panel program is intuitive, and easy to use. States of PLC inputs and outputs are presented using graphical objects. It is possible to modify states of the outputs, and monitor and edit any variable in the M and V memory in the PLC. The application supports also alarming. The program can be run on any computer with the MS Windows operating system installed. This makes the solution very cost-effective. Providing both wired and wireless communication radically increases flexibility of the proposed solution. The panel can be quickly mounted in areas, where pulling new cables is inconvenient, difficult or expensive.