Embedded World 2013

Hello everyone,

since I was visiting Embedded World 2013 his year I just wanted to summarize a little bit what I companies I visited and what looks interesting to me. Moreover I grabbed some development tools from different manufacturers to play around with.

My main goal visiting Embedded World 2013 was to look around for Bluetooth Low Energy solutions and of course meet the support BlueGiga guys to talk to them in person. I was already aware that they there will be another BLE module in their product catalog but I was very surprised after they announced the BLE113 officially on feburary 26th to the public. I was able to see the BLE113 Development board and talk to the BlueGiga guys about availability and new features.

See a picture of the BLE113 Development Board below:

At the Atmel booth I had the opportunity to talk to a guy from Arduino, where I could have a first hands on at the Arduino Esplora. Arduino was showing the latest Arduino boards and Shields on a nice board as you can see on the following picture:

But of course I was visiting the exhibition to see what kind of new parts and dev boards are available for future products I might work on.

An interesting alternative to the temperature sensor I’m using in my BLEtherm prototype (which is not yet part of the hardware section of this blog), it the Si7005 temperature Sensor from Silicon Labs. They gave away the Si7005 USB Dongle Evaluation Board as shown in the picture below:

Before the exhibition Matthias Ringwald @mringwal told me that STMicroelectronics is giving its STM32 development boards away for free. On a webpage you could register/reserve a board of your choice. I’ve choosen the STM32f4-Discovery. Ok, you can by it for $15, but since I was going to visit the exhibition I grabbed one for free.

The last gadget freebee I grabbed from Embedded World 2013 was a Sakura Board http://sakuraboard.net. I still have no idea what to do and what I can do with it, but it has an Arduino formfactor and the headers are Arduino Shield compatible. Maybe I can try to make it work with my BLE-Shield and post some sample apps 🙂 See the image of the board here:

Cheers,

Michael.