Pager Motor / ERM Motors :: Pico Vibe™ Range

Overview

Introducing the Precision Microdrives Pico Vibe™ range of Ø4mm ~ Ø7mm micro vibration motors, also commonly known as pager motors; this range is our best selling product line. Used by mobile / cell phone and pager manufacturers worldwide to offer vibration alert ringing functions, this range of pager motors are now being used by a wide range of industrial designers.

Mobile phones have popularised vibration feedback as a way of alerting the users of events (e.g. that their phone was ringing).

Industrial equipment is often used in environments where seeing or hearing a visual or audio alert can be difficult. Micro pager motors can be integrated into a design so that equipment operators and users can rely on a third sense - touch.

All pager motors use miniature Eccentric Rotating Masses, and hence the tend to be abbreviated ‘ERM motors’. ERM pager motors rely on the rotation of an unbalanced load to create vibration effects and are more recently being used for haptic feedback as well as vibration alerting:

Pager Motor / ERM Motors Design

Our Pico Vibe™ range is designed to be used for handheld equipment in the weight range of around 25 ~ 200 g (1 - 7 oz.). Micro pager motors in this range come in either 1.5, or 3v operation which makes them ideal for battery power supplies. The combination of voltages makes these motors suitable for single / double cell power buses of Alkaline, Zinc, Silver Oxide and single cell Lithium primary sources, NiCd, NimH, Li-ion secondary rechargeable batteries.

Pager motors in the Pico Vibe™ range are based on a brushed coreless cylinder design and contain powerful NdFeB Neodymium magnets for an improved magnetic flux circuit.

Electrical connections are most commonly made with flying leads, and for larger orders we can customise lead lengths and add a range of connectors as specified. Our pager motors also come in a number of other form factors that make retrofit and design integration easier:

Applications for ERM Pager Vibration Motors

Miniature ERM Motors are used almost exclusively for vibration alerting and haptic feedback. Therefore in essence any machine or application that uses sound or light to offer user / operator feedback could be further enhanced with a vibration motor.

Integrating pager motors into a design isn’t hard, but there are some tips and tricks that we’ve developed along the way which will save time and effort if you follow them. Take a look at our application notes page. Also, bear in mind that our application engineers will be only too happy to help advise on the best way to introduce a vibration generation function or a haptic feedback feature to your products. You can reach them here.

Examples of recent projects that we’ve worked involving Pico Vibe™ include:

• Pagers (!),
• In cell / mobile phones,
• Tablet PCs,
• Handheld medical instruments,
• Industrial tools and industrial user interfaces,
• Other personal notification devices, such as watches or wristbands,
• Automotive displays / dashboards.

Summary

We offer many different vibrating pager motors in a variety of different form factors to suit a very wide range of application usage scenarios. Their small size and low power requirements, allow them to be easily implemented in handheld devices. In addition a wide range of simple motor drive circuits can be implemented, the addition of haptic feedback or vibration alert is an easy feature to create competitive advantage over competitors.

Remember also that we sell 1+ quantities of stock pager motors shown below. If you're looking for larger quantities, please contact us and with the part number and quantity and we'll reply with a quote by return.

If you need vibrator motors that are a little larger, please follow this link for a full listing of our Vibration Motors.

Finally, remember that if you can’t find what you're looking for, we can modify parts to specification, and customise vibrating motors that we already offer... Just ask!