Embedded World 2015 Show: The first day Top Ten launches

With nearly 900 exhibiting companies, the Embedded World show in Nuremberg provides technology insights that will pretty much suit every visitor’s needs. This event has always been perceived as an engineer’s show, and as such, companies are keen to launch new products and systems at the event. Here’s a look at ten of the hottest products from day one of Embedded World 2015.

Motion module (www.microchip.com)

Microchip unveiled its MM7150 Motion Module, which combines Microchip’s SSC7150 motion co-processor with 9-axis sensors, including an accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope. With a simple I2C connection to most MCUs/MPUs, embedded/IoT applications can tap into the module’s motion and position data.

The motion module contains Microchip’s SSC7150 motion co-processor, pre-programmed with sensor fusion algorithms that filter, compensate and combine the raw sensor data to provide accurate position and orientation information. The small form factor module is self-calibrating during operation using data from the pre-populated sensors, the Bosch BMC150 6-axis digital compass and the BMG160 3-axis gyroscope. The MM7150 motion module is single-sided to be easily soldered down during manufacturing.

Next-gen Simplicity Studio (www.silabs.com)

Provider of microcontroller, wireless connectivity, analog and sensor solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT), Silicon Labs launched the next generation of Simplicity Studio. The company says this is the first integrated MCU/wireless development environment enabling concurrent MCU and RF design for a range of IoT apps.

This new software supports Silicon Labs’ new 8-bit EFM8 MCU family, new EZR32 sub-GHz wireless MCUs and EM35xx Ember ZigBee wireless SoCs.

Mouser signs Microsemi deal (uk.mouser.com)

International electronics distribution company Mouser Electronics announced at the Embedded World conference it has entered into a global distribution agreement and partnership with Microsemi Corporation - a provider of semiconductor solutions differentiated by power, security, reliability and performance. Microsemi’s portfolio features the SmartFusion2 and IGLOO2 product families.

The SmartFusion2 devices integrate a non-volatile flash-based FPGA with a full feature microcontroller subsystem, enhanced FPGA fabric and high-speed serial and memory interfaces. The IGLOO2 FPGAs integrate a fourth-generation flash-based FPGA fabric with high-performance communications interfaces on a single chip, specifically targeted at the cost-optimised FPGA market with up to 150K logic elements. In addition to the SmartFusion2 and IGLOO2 FPGA devices, Mouser will also stock a variety of the company’s switching ICs and timing and synchronisation ICs.

World’s Highest Areal Density Hard Disk Drive (www.toshiba.co.jp)

An areal density of one terabit per square inch (1Tbit/ in2) within a 2.5inch client hard disk drive (HDD) has been achieved by Toshiba. This disk drive innovation delivers 3TByte capacity using a 750GByte per platter in a 15mm 2.5-inch HDD. The company says this increases areal density over its previous generation products by 40%.

DAVE gets updated (www.infineon.com)

German semiconductor company Infineon revealed the new version of its development platform DAVE, the “Digital Application Virtual Engineer” for its 32bit microcontroller families XMC1000 and XMC4000. Infineon has equipped the virtual DAVE engineer to cut the development time for embedded systems based on the XMC microcontrollers, thanks to component-based software development.

With this latest version of DAVE, the reusability of the software components, otherwise known as the DAVE APPs, is enhanced thanks to the introduction of a device driver level, the XMC Lib.

Sporting dev tools (www.iar.com)

On a more sporting note, IAR Systems says Adidas AG Germany has selected the company’s tools for developing the Adidas miCoach Elite Team System, a system for monitoring personal physiological data in real-time. For several years, Adidas has been using the development toolchain IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM in different development projects because of its ease of use and high performance.

Products for the Internet of Things and wearables focusing on health are continuously growing in use and popularity. A prominent trend among these smart products is applications for monitoring personal physiology.

The Adidas miCoach Elite Team System is the first system of its kind that uses personal physiological data in real-time, sending it straight to a coach’s tablet on the side-line.

Boost for static analysis solutions (www.programmingresearch.com)

PRQA | Programming Research, a static analysis specialist, has developed additions to both its Framework environment and QA•Verify code management web interface. These releases are designed to make inspection and compliance with coding standards more effective.

The new desktop Framework environment provides a component-based plug-in architecture, incorporating QA•C and QA•C++ components. This will make it easier to add additional third-party components to facilitate integration into the broader software development toolchain.

BlueCore platform extended (www.csr.com)

CSR has developed BlueCore CSRB5348, a dual-mode system on chip (SoC). The company says this Bluetooth Smart compliant platform is suitable for several emerging applications in the Internet of Things (IoT) space, requiring both Bluetooth and Bluetooth Smart Ready capabilities.

The industrial temperature grade SoC, part of the BlueCore CSRB534x series, includes an embedded Bluetooth v4.1 compliant radio, 80MHz RISC MCU, 40MHz DSP, USB charger and large I/O. This package should cut bill of materials (BOM) costs while providing design flexibility.

Disty opens a dedicated automotive division (www.rutronik.com)

Rutronik has opened a business unit dedicated to serving companies in the automotive sector. Uwe Rahn, senior manager of the company’s newly formed Automotive Business Unit (ABU), explained:

“Due to the ever shorter technological advances, the manufacturers are working intensively on not getting left behind technologically. The automotive market has always been heavily contested, but due to increased market concentration and the steady advance of globalisation, the competitive situation has become even fiercer. On top of that we see the immensely increasing electronic percentage of vehicles, which poses many companies completely new challenges. Together with the selected partners, we will provide our customers with a focused offer and global support at eye level to support them to develop innovative and trendsetting solutions.”

High-performance AMC boards (www.vadatech.com)

And finally, the manufacturer of embedded boards, VadaTech, has developed two new high-performance AMC boards that use Xilinx All Programmable FPGAs. The AMC523 is a dual 1-bit 250 MSPS DAC featuring an XC7K410T Kintex-7 FPGA from Xilinx. The FPGA has an interface to the DDR3 memory, allowing for large buffer sizes to be stored during processing and queuing the data to the host. The MicroTCA.4 compliant AMC523 allows for flexible external clocking and internal clocking. It also has a corresponding RTM with 10 ADCs. VadaTech also showed the AMC525, which is a dual FPGA Mezzanine Card carrier per VITA 57.