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Embedded Milestones for 2013 – theirs and ours

Posted on January 8, 2014 - 5:47 am by

The start of a new year is always a good time to both look ahead and to reflect back on what happened during the year that has just ended.

While looking back on 2013, I found an interesting article on embedded.com in which Jack Gaussle gave his take on “The Most Important Milestones in Embedded in 2013”. Here’s the list (with a bit of his description)* of what are, in Jack’s opinion, the embedded-related products “that will shape the future of this industry:”

  • NXP’s LPC4370 microcontroller is the first in what I expect to be many inexpensive MCUs with multiple, and dedicated, cores on board.
  • Crypto engines have been around for a few years, and have been integrated on a few microcontrollers. With the furor this year over government information vacuum cleaners I think that we will see crypto become much more common — and start to be actually used in non-banking type applications that have any sort of connectivity.
  • Touchstone’s TS3310 PMIC Low-power is increasingly important, and vendors are releasing parts with astonishing performance. Touchstone’s new TS3300 PMIC is an example.
  • Analog Devices ADP172 Analog Devices is playing in this field, too. Their ADP172 regulator offers an input voltage down to 1.6 V and has a 50 mV drop out, and under a microamp of shutdown current.
  • Measuring power consumption Vendors have been providing tools to measure power consumption and, in some cases, relate it to the code.
  • Fairchild’s Law? Trillion sensors. This year Fairchild Semiconductor predicted that there will be a trillion sensors deployed by 2020…The future will see us surrounded by a field of sensors.
  • Software  On the software front, LDRA unbundled their unit testing software.
  • Oscilloscope watch One of the coolest things this year, which actually won’t be available till mid-2014, is Gabotronics oscilloscope watch. This is, or will be, a two channel scope with 8 logic analyzer inputs and a waveform generator, all worn on the arm.

I’m naturally excited about that prediction of one trillion sensors by 2020. And, as a geek, I am intrigued by the idea of that oscilloscope watch.

What’s interesting about this list is that a good portion of them are power related.  Low power is becoming increasingly important, and not only for “green” operation. Much of the IOT world will require it as well. If we’re going to make things smart, many will require power that the “dumb” versions didn’t already need. It’s possible that some will even live off of generating their own power through energy harvesting techniques that are just now coming of age.

Anyway, I wanted to add my two cents by calling out a few of Critical Link’s 2013 breakthroughs:

  •  Our first Altera Cyclone V System-on-Chip SoM
  • Our partnership with Timesys, which is providing a Linux toolset for the MityDSP-L138(F) and the MitySOM-335x
  • Wireless support for the MitySOM-335x, with wireless provided by LS Research TiWi R2 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module

Maybe not quite as cool as the oscilloscope watch, but we’re proud of them.

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*For the full narrative, plus diagrams and other illustrations, click through to the full article.

Ringing in the New Year

Posted on January 1, 2014 - 5:01 am by

It’s time to say farewell to 2013, and welcome in a promising new year.  The last few weeks have been filled with family, friends, and thoughts of the future.  I like to take this opportunity to reflect on the time that has passed, and think about all the great things still to come.

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions.  Year after year we try to make the same changes in our lives starting January 1st, and year after year by the time February rolls around they are long forgotten.  I’d do the same thing each time and expect different results…the definition of insanity!  It’s so much more fun to focus on what can be added to my life in the coming year.  More time with family, take a vacation to a new destination, and personally, I can spend hours getting lost in a new tool or app that promises to add functionality to my life, or just save time.

Just like at home, at Critical Link we have been busy wrapping up the current year and planning for what’s to come in 2014.  We hit some key milestones this year, and investments in R&D, production, sales and marketing have positioned us for what is sure to be an exciting time.  Our first big tradeshow of the year — Photonics West in San Francisco — will launch our new camera, an embedded vision system designed for sensor evaluation.  We are excited about the technology this puts in our customer’s hands, coupling high performance imaging sensors from partners like Fairchild Imaging/BAE Systems with the technology in Critical Link’s Altera SOC system on module.  More on this as the year rolls out.

To all of you and yours, we wish you a very Happy New Year!

Positive Train Control

Posted on December 18, 2013 - 5:18 am by

‘Tis the season to be jolly, and for many, to travel.  In September 2008, a terrible collision between a freight train and a commuter train in California took twenty-five lives.  Just last summer in Spain, a derailment caused by speeding, resulted in 80 deaths and scores of injuries.  The recent commuter train crash in the Bronx “fortunately” occurred on a weekend, when there were fewer travelers, so “only” four individuals were killed.

These and other accidents are putting the spotlight on Positive Train Control (PTC), which, if it had been in place, might have prevented these incidents.

PTC is a computer-based system used to help minimize human error, such as an engineer nodding off or otherwise distracted (hopefully not by texting, which has been a factor in a number of high-profile train crashes.)

How does PTC work? This definition – which I saw online on the NBC News site – is as good as any. With PTC: 

The computer can warn a train’s crew if the train is going too fast. It can stop trains from colliding with each other, from switching onto the wrong track or from going the wrong way. It can also prevent high-speed derailment by automatically applying the brakes when a train is going too fast.

By the end of 2015, such systems are scheduled to be in place throughout the US passenger and freight rail network. (There has been some pushback to extend this deadline – PTC systems are very complex to implement – but the recent NYC crash will likely push back on that pushback.)

Critical Link is working with a company that provides PTC systems, and is embedding our System-on-Modules in its product. (More on this at a later date!) 

When PTC becomes more widespread, it’s safe to say that rail travel will become safer – something we all want to happen as soon as possible.

867-5309/Jenny

Posted on December 11, 2013 - 4:59 am by

‘Tis the season when many of us find ourselves shopping which, for most of us, means taking advantage of store discount cards and membership clubs.

So, as a public service announcement, I wanted to pass on a tip I read about a while back on Lifehacker. It’s a tip I got to put into action for myself, so I know it works.

A while back, my wife and I were in NJ, attending a marching band competition. We had to stop into a grocery store and pick up some party supplies.  As we were out of state, I didn’t have a rewards card for this particular store, so I asked the checkout clerk to just swipe the store card – which they typically do in places like groceries stores, CVS, etc.

The clerk did not have a card, so I decided to try the “Call Jenny” trick.

I asked him what area code we were in, which he gave me. I then asked him to use 201-867-5309 as the rewards number. And it worked, earning me a discount on snacks, sodas, paper plates, and Solo cups.

Which you may recognize as coming from 867-5309/Jenny, a song that was popular in the early 1980’s.

As it turns out, using the correct area code with the Jenny number will get you a discount in many stores that offer rewards programs, as many programmers use this number as a test or default number.

Programmers aren’t alone. I read on Wikipedia – so it must be right, right? – that 8675309 is the fourth most commonly used 7-digit password. (If you’re wondering the “no surpise” most popular 7-digit password is 1234567.)

So, here’s Critical Link’s Public Service Announcement:

If you want to see if you can get a discount in a store where you’re not a rewards member, try calling Jenny. But if you want to set a default password, please don’t use 8675309. It’s not quite as bad as 1234567, but it’s right up there.

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Anyone who wants to take a stroll down memory lane, there’s a video of “867-5309” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axLRUszuu9I

 

The Internet of Health Care Things

Posted on December 4, 2013 - 5:03 am by

Often when we think of the Internet of Things, we’re thinking about gadgets – cool items that make life easier (like my NEST thermostat), or stuff that’s just plain fun (like my NEST thermostat).

But sometimes, they’re actually money – and even life – saving, as is the case of monitoring equipment that will someday be placed in patients’ homes so that medical personnel can monitor vital signs without requiring patients to make costly visits to the doctors’ office. And in the case of the elderly and chronically ill, this can also help with the logistic difficulties of getting to and from regular appointments that end up being of a pretty trivial nature. But sometimes trivial problems – if not attended to – can end up in high-cost hospital stays.

This came to mind when I saw a recent article in the local news about Syracuse’s St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center, which is applying for a federal grant to set up a remote monitoring system to support Medicare patients.

Over the years, Critical Link SoMs have been embedded in a number of medical instrumentation systems, including systems that characterize pharmaceutical chemistries, determine the purity of a fluid, identify the presence of cancer cells in blood, sequence DNA, or even help the blind to see. These applications have not been direct patient monitoring systems, but have worked behind the scenes to improve health. Most recently, our medical-related customers and prospects have been showing increasing interest in exploring network integration, including WiFi, higher levels of on-board processing, and intuitive user interfaces (such as graphic LCD interfaces). These product features are critical to helping our customers get the types of applications that end up in home health care situations out to the market more quickly.

Developments in the medical arena are one of the areas in which the Internet of Things will turn out to be the most valuable. Gadgets are fun and all, but when technology can be used to both save money and improve lives, now we’re talking!

 

Giving Thanks at Critical Link

Posted on November 27, 2013 - 5:36 am by

Giving Thanks at Critical Link

Thanksgiving is always a good time to take a few minutes to reflect on just what it is that we’re most thankful for. My personal list, of course, includes my family, my friends, my health, my dogs, and the home projects I get to tinker on (including my NEST thermostat and remote control airplanes).

From the Critical Link perspective, here’s my list:

I’m thankful for our customers: You provide us with challenging, interesting work, and trust us with help turning your dreams into a reality. Thank you!

I’m thankful for our partners: By using your technology as building blocks for our products, we’re able to offer our customers best of breed solutions based on the latest technology available. We’re also grateful for the new marketing opportunities you bring us in on. Thank you!

I’m thankful for our distributors: You’re making it easy for our customers to buy our system-on-modules and providing great support. Thank you!

I’m thankful for our sales representatives: By so capably representing us, you’re helping us expand our reach and serve more customers.

And last – but certainly not least:

I’m thankful for our employees: Your work ethic and the can-do attitude you bring to Critical Link enable us to tackle challenging projects, and deliver high-quality products.  We couldn’t do it without you! Many, many thanks!

 

DoorBot drops into the Shark Tank

Posted on November 20, 2013 - 6:17 am by

Don’t know if you’re a fan of Shark Tank, but I am.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, Shark Tank is yet another one of those addictive reality shows – but without the dumb down.

Entrepreneurs come on the show a pitch their business to a group of potential investors, a.k.a., the sharks. (The most well-known shark is probably Mark Cuban, the tech entrepreneur who’s also the owner of the Dallas Mavericks.) The sharks spend some time evaluating the product, then decide whether, as an individual investor, they want to fund it, announcing how much they want to put in, and what they want in return (equity, royalties…) There’s often a bit of back and forth negotiating between the entrepreneur and the shark, and sometimes between the sharks themselves.

I don’t know how many successes the Shark Tank has actually resulted in, but the show’s very interesting, and it’s fun to see the speed-dating version of what entrepreneurs go through as they try to get their products to market.

I especially enjoyed last Friday’s episode, as one of the products being pitched was from one of my favorite arenas, the Internet of Things.

DoorBot is a “Wi-Fi enabled, video doorbell that allows you to see and talk with visitors through your smartphone from anywhere in the world.” To some extent, this sounds like a solution to a non-problem  – isn’t checking out who’s on your front stoop what peepholes and living room drapes are for? – but it gets more interesting when it’s combined with Lockitron, which is another Internet of Thing thing. (Lockitron lets you use your smartphone to remotely unlock your door.) So, with DoorBot, you could be at work, see that your in-laws had shown up early for the weekend, and let them in.

DoorBot did a little back and forth on a possible deal with one of the sharks, but in the end they walked away empty-handed after flat-out turning down a $700,000 offer. Sometimes I really wonder about some of the people who go on the show!

Not to worry: they’ve been successful at crowdfunding through Christie Street, which is run by the same guys who invented Doorbot. So perhaps they are smarter than this viewer, who is fascinated by both technology and business.  If you’re wondering, Christie Street is both the address for Thomas Edison’s lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey, and the first street that used electric street lights.

Wonder what the sharks would have made of Edison and his light bulb?

If this then that

Posted on November 13, 2013 - 5:34 am by

Don’t know whether, in your travels, you’ve come across IFTTT.

If you program at all, you know “if” statements. Well, IFTTT stands for “If this then that”, and, in their own words:

Is a service that lets you create powerful connections with one simple statement.

It’s a bit on the cutesy side, but it is very easy to use, and is really making a simple form of object oriented programming accessible to “amateurs”. The concept uses what they call “Channels” as building blocks. Channels – and there are dozens of them – include social apps like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tumblr,  as well as tools like Evernote, Dropbox, and Campfire, news sites – NY Times, ESPN, and BuzzFeed – and  online sellers like Craigslist and Etsy.  You create something called a “Recipe” that lays out an action to take in one channel when something specific happens in another of your channels.  There are a lot of shared “Recipes” out there – e.g., one that says that” if there’s breaking NBA news on ESPN, then send me a text message.”

While a lot of the Channels are of the social-tools-news variety, there are a few out there in the Internet of Things (IoT) category: Phillips hue (lighting control) and Belkin’s WeMo home-automation system.  (I’m waiting for the NEST thermostat to become a Channel!)

My view of interoperability in the IoT is that at first the only products that will be interoperable will be those from the same manufacturer. However, IFTTT is perfectly positioned, as it adds IoT “thing” channels, to bridge these IoT things together and make them interoperable without the individual manufacturers having to specifically work with each other.

I don’t see the complex applications that our SoMs work in being “objectified” in this way quite yet, but IFTTT is definitely the type of application that is really going to drive the IoT in the future.

A systems engineering approach to embedded development

Posted on November 6, 2013 - 5:09 am by

One of the main benefits our customers derive from embedding a Critical Link System on Module (SoM) in their application is speeding up time to market.  We’ve been told by some of you that the estimated time savings can be up to 9 months over what would be involved with a ground-up development process.  While we’re accelerating project completion for our customers, we’re also developing products of our own. So we’re always on the lookout for ideas that will help us speed up our own development cycle.

Given this, I was interested in a recent article on embedded.com in which a group of Intel engineers lay out their ideas for “Using system engineering techniques to accelerate your next project.”

While the article – which is by Matthew Torgerson, Paul Durazo, Todd Langley, and Vira Ragavassamy – specifically references the automotive industry, the concepts they raise can, and are applied generally. Because the article is on embedded.com, there’s obviously a focus on embedded systems, which caught my attention. But I was also looking to see whether the authors take a different slant on systems engineering (SE) than we do at Critical Link. They don’t, which is not surprising, as the principles of SE are fairly well known, and they’re principals that we’ve been putting in to practice for years. In fact, our approach with SE is to some degree what distinguishes us from other design services companies.

SE approaches can be applied to embedded systems, since these embedded systems are systems within systems, and “are now reaching the complexity of [the] larger systems” for which SE has generally been used. Today’s embedded systems – like our SoMs – are a subsystem within an overall system. The tools that SE offers can be used “to carefully define subsystems, interfaces and overall integration.”

The authors contrast their suggested SE approach with a waterfall design approach (that we’ve used many times in many of our past lives in the aerospace industry), which the authors believe takes too long by today’s rapid development standards. (They attribute this to “excessive debug iterations.”)

They then lay out the more “holistic” V-Model approach that SE offers, which they categorize as one based on:

  • Crisp product usage definition
  • Rigorous requirements analysis
  • System architecture and subsystem      definition
  • Incorporating cross‐functional and stakeholder feedback throughout the      process

A lot of attention is focused on the importance of that “crisp product usage definition” stage, and you won’t get any argument here about the importance of having detailed and well-thought out definition of what a product is going to be used for. We spend a lot of time with our customers making sure we have this understanding. This lets us determine which SoM variation will provide the best fit from the outset, and require the fewest back-and-forths.

Also, when we’re involved in a more central role in a customer’s product development, we apply our system engineering skills and techniques to make sure that we are on track to build precisely the product that the customer is looking for, and that at the end, the product performs to these expectations (through verification).

As we all know, time to market is getting increasingly more important. The more leisurely and forgiving development cycles of the past are just that: a thing of the past. The system engineering approach described in the article isn’t really any big revelation, but it’s what we’ve learned long ago as the “right” process to develop the product that the customer has envisioned for their company.

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