Embedded Insiders

Send us Fan Mail Location awareness is a term that’s in vogue. It’s sort of like positioning, but not exactly. And what’s the hop application for location awareness? Cattle tracking. Yup, you heard right. Cattle farmers have too much at stake (or should I say steak) to not invest in the latest technologies to maintain their investments. In this week’s Five Minutes with…discussion, I spoke to Dr. J...

Send us Fan Mail In the consumer space, a few of the industry giants have stepped up to take charge of the IoT, a la Google, Apple, and so one. But in the industrial space, that has not happened, for reasons that are discussed in this week’s Embedded Insiders podcast. Will it happen, and if so, who is the giant that’ll step up? Listen to the podcast and see if you agree with the “experts.” For mor...

Send us Fan Mail The Industrial Internet Consortium, aka the IIC, recently released a whitepaper titled Introduction to Edge Computing in IIoT. Hence, I thought it was a great opportunity to speak to the Co-Chair of the IIC’s Edge Computing Task Group, Todd Edmunds, so I could get a better understanding of the IIC’s involvement in standard setting, and what the whitepaper might mean to a developer...

Send us Fan Mail Can you determine location by hearing an object or person’s position? Sort of, and that’s the technology that’s deployed by PoLTE. The company uses a sensing technology over a cellular medium to very accurately determine location. Hear more about it in this week’s Five Minutes with…discussion with Ed Chao, PoLTE’s CEO. https://polte.com/ For more information, visit embeddedcomputi...

Send us Fan Mail The Embedded Insiders talk Google, for two separate reasons. Are those two things connected? We’ll let you decide. First, Google announced its Android Things initiative. What’s the end game? Getting more devices into the Google Cloud? Probably. Either separately, or if you’re into conspiracy theories, not separately, Google Cloud has joined the LoRa Alliance. Not much detail here,...

Send us Fan Mail According to Jothy Rosenberg, the Founder and CEO of Dover Microsystems, processor technology is not keeping pace with the security that needs to be implemented, particularly in the case of cyber security. The key to fixing that problem is to address security at the “root level.” In this week’s Five Minutes with…discussion, Jothy explains what that means, why it is the case today,...

Send us Fan Mail This week’s Five Minutes with…discussion has to do with artificial intelligence (AI), and the guest is Robert Gendron, a Corporate Vice President, in charge of power components at Vicor. Power and AI? Doesn’t seem like a fit, does it? Actually, these two technologies are tied much closer than you might expect. Listen to find out why. http://www.vicorpower.com/ For more information...

Send us Fan Mail The IoT is all about gathering data. Until recently, finding ways to gather that data was the hard part. With the proliferation of end devices, both in the consumer and industrial sectors, that’s not the case anymore. Now we have the other problem—what to do with all this data we’ve collected, and how to store it and keep it safe. Virtium is one of those vendors that helps in that...

Send us Fan Mail Last week, the Embedded Insiders spent some time at IoT World. And it turned out to be a worthwhile experience, and there were lots of new technologies to see. Check out this week’s Embedded Insider podcast to hear about the highlights. For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us Fan Mail UnitedSiC is a fabless company that designs silicon carbide (SiC) ICs. SiC technology is just starting to take off and according to this week’s Five Minutes with… guest, Chris Dries, the President and CEO of UnitedSiC, there’s very good reason for that. Hear his reasons why. And don’t go comparing to gallium nitride (GaN). http://unitedsic.com/ For more information, visit embedded...

Send us Fan Mail It was recently reported that routers were being hacked, and “Officials said they had high confidence that the Russian government was behind the campaign.” https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/16/politics/russian-hackers-network-devices-alert/index.html Hmm, is that what it’s come down to now? And what does this mean to life as we know it? Before everyone gets all up in arms over the issue...

Send us Fan Mail Software insecurities are badly addressed by current “best practices.” Those are the words of this week’s Five Minutes with… guest Yannick Moy, a Senior Software Engineer at AdaCore. I couldn’t let that statement pass without some explanation, so that where the discussion began. And it got very interesting after that. https://www.adacore.com/ For more information, visit embeddedco...

Send us Fan Mail Silicon Labs is just announced the acquisition of the Z-Wave assets from Sigma Designs. Did they really need another protocol, already having Bluetooth, ZigBee, and WiFi? I wondered if that sends a mixed message to engineers trying to sort through the various media. In this week’s Five Minutes with…discussion with Tyson Tuttle, Silicon Labs’ CEO, we walked through what it means fo...

Send us Fan Mail Gallium nitride, better known as GaN, is a power technology that seems forever locked in a battle with Silicon carbide, aka SiC. Is that battle a real one, or is it more a fabrication? Who better to answer that question than Larry Spaziani, a vice president at GaN Systems, who was this week’s guest in our Five Minutes with…discussion. https://gansystems.com/ For more information,...

Send us Fan Mail There’s a good chance that your IoT Edge device needs to run on a battery. There’s also the possibility that it’s located someplace where you really don’t want to change that battery for a long time. That’s where Qoitech comes in. The company offers tools that help developers prolong the life of their devices. In many cases, the “mistakes” made by designers can be overcome using a...

Send us Fan Mail Embedded Insiders – Episode #42 – Into the Wind by Embedded Computing Design For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us Fan Mail Two organizations that are involved in specifications that align with the IoT have merged—IPSO and the Open Mobile Alliance. What does that mean and what effect will it have on developers going forward? Those are the first of lots of questions I asked on the General Manger of the new organization, Seth Newberry, in this week’s Five Minutes with…discussion. https://www.omaspecworks...

Send us Fan Mail Acquisitions in our space are nothing new. But in many cases, they deserve a little explanation. Simply, “Why did you make this acquisition, and how does the new company fit in with the old company?” That’s what I found myself asking in this week’s Five Minutes with…discussion with Stefan Skarin, the CEO of IAR Systems. The news from IAR is that they acquired a 100% stake in Secur...

Send us Fan Mail PICMG has been around for quite some time, nearly 25 years. If you’re not familiar, PICMG, or the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group, is a non-profit organization who charter is to promote various industrial architectures and maintain the specifications for these standards. Is such a group required, and is PICMG relevant? Those are the questions I asked of Jessica Isquith...

Send us Fan Mail Artificial intelligence, aka AI, means different things to different people, mostly dependent on the application/market they find themselves. In the embedded and industrial industries, it has the potential to be a very important tool, and many vendors are working toward such a goal. One of those vendors is MediaTek, and they are developing devices that can enhance AI or machine le...

Send us Fan Mail Rich Nass, one half of the Embedded Insiders, returned from the Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC) last week. There, he was surprised to learn that semiconductor companies are no longer evaluating digital power or Silicon Carbide (SiC) and Gallium Nitride (GaN) power MOSFETs. They are actually already on their second and third generation of products. Tune in for more. For...

Send us Fan Mail Some sectors of our industry change faster than others. But the connector industry? I think you might be surprised to learn what's happened in that space, as I was. These revelations come from Doug Snader, the International Business Director for SV Microwave in this week's Five Minutes with…discussion. https://www.svmicrowave.com/ For more information, visit embeddedcomp...

Send us Fan Mail OTA, or over-the-air updates, are becoming popular in the automotive space. They serve as a simple way for auto makers to update their vehicles without requiring the car owner to bring the car in to the shop. Taking that technology to the next step is to employ a bidirectional OTA medium. That technology is closer than you might think, according to Mark Singer, a Director at Excel...

Send us Fan Mail The Insiders, one way or another, have made it back from Embedded World 2018. This year's show was the busiest either have attended, and but lacked any consistent theme. Tune in to find out what they experienced at the event, as well as their take on more recent merger and acquisition (M&A) activity. For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us Fan Mail Many MCU vendors tout their low-power devices. Ambiq Micro takes it to another level, using what the company calls subthreshold technology. Wearables is a great place to embed such technology, but that's only the beginning. In this week's Five Minutes with…discussion, Scott Hanson, the Founder and current CTO of Ambiq explains how the technology works and what kind of fu...