The newest trends in various phones, phablets, tablets and laptops is the analog writing ability. eWriting is making a major come back with several OEMs offering stylus inputs in their devices. Yet, the true pen-on-paper experience is rarely found when you write on glass based tablets or phones. Kent Displays solves this problem with their cholesteric LCD writing tablets popularly known as the Boogie Board. The electronic writing experience with their solution is akin to writing on paper, you can even hear the pen scratching on the surface and the experience is truly unique. That would partly explain the success of the Boogie Boards which are shipping in millions of units each year. I met up with Dr Asad Khan who is Kent Displays’ CTO, in San Jose this week. He describes the various products including what is expected from their product roadmap.
Author:
IBM Internet of Things Foundation, cloud IoT data analysis from ARM mbed 2.0 MultiTech mdot device
IBM Internet of Things Foundation is a fully managed, cloud-hosted service that makes it simple to derive value from Internet of Things (IoT) devices, be it a sensor, a gateway or something else. Using IBM’s recipes, it can get connected and start sending data securely up to the cloud using the open, lightweight MQTT messaging protocol. From there, setup and managing the IoT devices using online dashboard or IBM’s secure APIs, so that IoT apps can access live and historical data fast. Users can easily start creating applications using device data, within IBM Bluemix platform, another cloud or own servers.
In this video, the dashboard displays an example of some of the analytics which can be calculated using IBM IoT Foundation, such as the impact analysis from the live hits on the hard hat which are then displayed on Bluemix, IBMs cloud infrastructure. This platform allows a “one-stop-shop” for a device developer to get started and make use of the sensor data and connected devices, immediately.
IoT and Wearables Hardware Incubator: Eric Klein of Lemnos Labs
Eric Klein, Partner at Lemnos Labs, a San Francisco based Hardware Incubator, is looking for IoT and Wearables entrepreneurs making new IoT and Wearables designed to change behaviors, to affect change, which he says is the key to unlocking the Internet of Things and really useful Wearables, he encourages startups to have clinical psychologists on staff, like coaches with science degrees, to design devices that can help people grow and get stronger.
faytech industrial PC manufacturer in Shenzhen factory tour
Arne Weber, General Manager at faytech Tech. Co., Ltd., leads us through his factory in Hongmen Technology Park, Shenzhen, China. The tour starts with the presentation of faytech’s 55” capacitive multi-touch solution which can be used as conference table, single POS information display, for industry automation as well as information- and videowall. faytech also presents its new 15.360 x 8.640 pixel interactive information-and videowall with up to 256 simultaneous touch points. Together with the products, Arne presents factory premises with its specialized clean room, and various machines, used in the production and improvement of faytech’s products. Although in the last years faytech has grown significantly, Arne Weber tells the plans of further expansion. Founded in 2010, faytech specializes in Touchscreen Monitors and Touchscreen PCs. Having its roots in Germany the company combines German quality standards with Chinese manufacturing.
You can contact faytech here:
sales@faytech.com
http://www.faytech.com
http://www.facebook.com/faytechtouch
http://www.twitter.com/faytechshenzhen
MediaTek Labs LinkIt One development board demos
MediaTek MT2502 based LinkIt $59 ONE development board demos, including a Weather Station IoT demo which acquires temerature, humidity and pressure data from sensors and then visualizes the data on the MediaTek Cloud Sandbox. A Bike Tracker demo utilizes GNSS features to acquire the position of a bike in real time. The data is then uploaded to the EON real-time dashboard over a GPRS connection using the PubNub LinkIt ONE library support. The EON real-time dashboard provides a visualization of the data on a map.
You can find out more about MediaTek LinkIt here:
Get Started with AWS IoT Services on the LinkIt™ ONE Development Platform: If you have purchased the MediaTek LinkIt™ ONE and Grove IoT Starter Kit Powered by AWS or want to get started with the Amazon IoT cloud using the LinkIt ONE development board, this guide will get you started.
API reference: All the details you need to discover the full range of features you can add to your sketches.
Documentation & Tutorials: In addition to the developer’s guide you can find handy documents such as the LinkIt ONE pin-out diagram, reference design and product briefs on this page. There is also a growing list of tutorials on using specific classes of the API and building full proofs-of-concept.
This document provides you with detailed information on the LinkIt ONE development board, LinkIt ONE SDK tools and an introduction to the LinkIt ONE API.
Projects: Find inspiration in LinkIt ONE projects created by MediaTek Labs maker and developer community.
FAQ: Get answers to the most common technical and business questions about the LinkIt ONE development platform.
Forums: Discover answers to technical questions and, once you have registered your MediaTek Labs account, pose questions to MediaTek LinkIt technical gurus and exchange views with the Labs community.
Partner Connect: When you’re ready to take your projects beyond a proof-of-concept, check out MediaTek’s suggested partners that can help with everything from product design to cloud service.
AMD Huskyboard 96boards Enterprise Edition explained by Jon Masters of Red Hat
Jon Masters, Chief ARM Architect at Red Hat, talks about the AMD Huskyboard, the first 96boards Enterprise Edition, with an open specification for running a lot of the enterprise software including the software from Red Hat.
AMD Huskyboard 96boards Enterprise Edition, SoftIron Overdrive 3000
AMD Huskyboard 96boards Enterprise Edition available soon and the SoftIron Overdrive 3000 ARMv8 64bit server board. AMD also shows what they are doing for NFV Network Function Virtualization, developing solutions to power advanced networking.
Panasonic AG-DVX200, 60p 4K Camcorder
Panasonic finally has released the DVX200 ($4200 on Amazon) which records “real 4K” 4:2:0 8bit 60fps, it can record 4:2:2 10bit with an Atomos external recorder. Built-in 13x zoom lens with wide-angle 28mm, it can record 4K 4096×2160 at 24p, UHD 4K 3840×2160 (60p/30p/24p) and 1080p at (120fps and 24p). The 4K UHD 60p/50p recording is at 150mbit/s and 30p/25p/24p is at 100mbit/s, it can record both UHD 30p and FHD onto two separate SD cards, approximately 160 minutes of 4K/24p or UHD/25p/30p data can be recorded onto a 128GB SD card, or about 110 minutes of UHD/60p data.
JVC GY-LS300, 4K camcorder Super 35mm Sensor with Micro Four Thirds Lens Mount
JVC GY-LS300 ($3500 at Amazon without the lens) features a JVCKENWOOD AltaSens 4K CMOS Super 35 high sensitivity image sensor combined with an industry standard Micro Four Thirds (MFT) lens mount. The single chip CMOS sensor has approximately 13.5 megapixels and achieves a standard sensitivity of ISO 400 with a total of 12 stops of exposure latitude. Super 35 Cinema lenses may be used and will retain their native angle of view. When the camera is used with MFT, Super 16 and other size lenses, JVC’s proprietary Variable Scan Mapping feature will maintain the lens’s native angle of view. This gives filmmakers the flexibility of using widely available MFT lenses as well as high end cinema lenses. It is also possible to attach the camera to microscopes and other devices using a MFT/C-mount adaptor. The unique combination of the MFT mount, the larger S35 image sensor and Variable Scan Mapping give the camera nearly limitless lens options.
Ikegami SHK-810 8K Hand-held TV Camera System
Ikegami shows what they say is the World’s First Hand-Held 8K TV Camera System, with a Single 33megapixel Super 35 CMOS sensor, 4000 horizontal TV lines, Dual-green SHV Color arrangement, 8K Focus assist, for now to be used by Japanese TV stations, possibly expanding to the whole world, to whomever wants to upgrade to 8K.
8K HDR at 120Hz by NHK
NHK skips 4K and brings Japan directly to 8K with HDR, requiring extra bandwidth for HDR but it’s not double, it’s effective enough to fit the HDR information within the 100mbit/s 8K transmittion bandwidth. See my previous NHK 8K interview
EKT Plug Set-top-box on ALi M3733 Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9
EKT launches their EKT Plug Set-top-box, running on the ALi M3733 Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 with Mali-400MP2 GPU with a performance of 5000DMIPS, video transcoding, playback, running EKT’s special software.
ARM Cortex-A35
ARM announces that 50% of the Smartphones sold in 2015 are 64bit already. This is a phenomenal success for ARM’s 64bit deployment. At ARM TechCon 2015, ARM announces ARM Cortex-A35, an upgrade for ARM Cortex-A7 which is currently the most popular ARM Cortex-A core shipping in most of the current low-end to mid-range Smartphones, at 10% lower power consumption, ARM Cortex-A35 brings up to 40% higher performance compared to ARM Cortex-A7! This will bring 64bit to even more Smartphones for the entry-level to mid-range markets starting before the end of 2016. ARM Mali-470 is a good power efficient GPU to use with ARM Cortex-A35, and it can be used in big.LITTLE configurations together with ARM Cortex-A72, ARM Cortex-A57 or ARM Cortex-A53.
James McNiven, General Manager, ARM CPU Group
James McNiven talks about running ARM’s CPU team, managing the engineering, the marketing and operations to deliver the ARM CPUs to ARM’s partners around the world.
ARM IoT Security Strategy in ARMv8-M
Milosch Meriac, ARM IoT Security Engineer, talks about the strategy ARM is working on to make Internet of Things secure. ARM is convinced that many IoT security problems can be solved with standardised building blocks. ARM is developing the uVisor, a self-contained software hypervisor that creates independent secure domains on ARM Cortex-M3 and M4 microcontrollers (M0+ will follow). Its function is to increase resilience against malware and to protect secrets from leaking even among different modules of the same application. The uVisor is one of these basic building blocks – complementary to other important blocks like robust communication stacks, safe firmware updates and secure crypto libraries. The design philosophy of uVisor is to provide hardware-enforced compartments (sandboxes) for individual code blocks by limiting access to memories and peripherals using the existing hardware security features of the Cortex-M microcontrollers. Breaking the established flat security model of microcontrollers into compartmentalised building blocks results in high security levels, as the reach of flaws or external attacks can be limited to less sensitive function blocks. A basic example of uVisor is preventing unauthorised access to flash memory from faulty or compromised code. This not only prevents malware from getting resident on the device, but also enables protection of device secrets like cryptographic keys. Services built on top of ARM’s security layer can safely depend on an unclonable trusted identity, secure access to internet services and benefit from encryption key protection.
https://github.com/ARMmbed/uvisor (uVisor documentation and sources)
https://github.com/ARMmbed/uvisor-lib/blob/master/DOCUMENTATION.md (API docs)
https://github.com/ARMmbed/uvisor-lib (integration in ARMmbed)
Slideshow Milosch Meriac presented at ARM TechCon: Resilient IoT Security The end of flat security models
ARM Mali-470
ARM Mali-470 is the newest Mali-400 family GPU by ARM, it is the most energy efficient GPU from ARM, it supports the latest Android versions, optimized to extend battery life for wearables and Android Wear.
Nathan Brookwood assesses whether 64bit ARM servers can take 25% of the market by 2020
Nathan Brookwood has been following the microprocessor and SoC markets since 1995. He has been involved in the high technology industry since his days at Univac, where he had the opportunity to walk inside the central processor of an early mainframe system. He presently serves as the research fellow at Insight 64, an organization he founded in 1998 to monitor and report on the computer industry’s transition from 32-bit to 64-bit platforms. You can contact Nathan Brookwood at Nathan@Insight64.com
4K content with HDR coming from 20th Century Fox
Danny Kaye of 20th Century Fox talks about how his studio and Hollywood are bringing 4K HDR movie content to people in the near future and it has already started. Talking about the Vidity 4K HDR DRM solution running on ARM TrustZone devices, like TV Boxes, the 4K HDR TVs themselves, running on Western Digital Hard Drives and Sandisk SSDs, soon consumers will be able to watch hundreds of movies on their 4K HDR TVs, using streaming, downloading or plugging the physical hard drives to the USB port of the 4K TV.
Keynote: ARM Cortex-A35, ARMv8-M, Cryptocell, mbed connector announced by ARM CTO Mike Muller
ARM CTO Mike Muller announces ARM Cortex-A35 to power the future of Low to Mid-range Smartphones and is also good for Wearables and Embedded, 20% higher performance and 10% lower power consumption compared to ARM Cortex-A7. ARMv8-M which is the next generation architecture for ARM Cortex-M microcontroller devices shipping into Billions of devices per year. Mike Muller talks about ARM’s big work on security for IoT and to connect IoT with the Cloud, ARM launches the mbed connector service and shows mbed OS 3.0.