The Embedded Systems Conference has always been a top venue for studying, discussing, and handling the embedded industry’s newest leading-edge technologies. This year in San Jose, CA, I walked the floor looking for the tech Circuit Cellar members would love to get their hands on and implement in novel projects. Here I review some of the hundreds of interesting products and systems at Design West 2012.
RENESAS
Renesas launched the RL78 Design Challenge at Design West. The following novel RL78 applications were particularly intriguing.
- An RL78 L12 MCU powered by a lemon:
A lemon powers the RL78 (Photo: Circuit Cellar)
- An RL78 kit used for motor control:
The RL78 used for motor control (Photo: Circuit Cellar)
- An RL78 demo for home control applications:
The RL78 used for home control (Photo: Circuit Cellar)
TEXAS INSTRUMENTS
Circuit Cellar members have used TI products in countless applications. Below are two interesting TI Cortex-based designs
A Cortex-M3 digital guitar (you can see the Android connection):
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TI’s digital guitar (Photo: Circuit Cellar)
Stellaris fans will be happy to see the Stellaris ARM Cortex -M4F in a small wireless application:
The Stellaris goes wireless (Photo: Circuit Cellar)
NXP mbed
Due to the success of the recent NXP mbed Design Challenge, I stopped at the mbed station to see what exciting technologies our NXP friends were exhibiting. They didn’t disappoint. Check out the mbed-based slingshot developed for playing Angry Birds!
mbed-Based sligshot for going after “Angry Birds” (Photo: Circuit Cellar)
Below is a video of the project on the mbedmicro YouTube page:
FTDI
I was pleased to see the AndroPod hard at work at the FTDI booth. The design enables users to easily control a robotic arm with Android smartphones and tablets.
FTDI demonstrates robot control with Android (Photo: Circuit Cellar)
As you can imagine, the possible applications are endless.
The AndroPod at work! (Photo: Circuit Cellar)
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