embedded world 2013 Show Report
embedded world 2013 was (again) bigger than ever. 850 exhibitors from 36 countries presented their solutions in Nuremberg, Germany. "It is the largest event in the world for embedded system technologies and the most professional shop window. We are very pleased about yet more growth in terms of display space, number of new exhibitors and international share of exhibitors, which confirms the importance of the event,” says Alexander Mattausch, Exhibition Manager of the embedded world Exhibition&Conference at NürnbergMesse.
K.I.T.T. from the television series 'Knight Rider' paid a visit to embedded world to see how far the ision of a self driing car has developed.
Focus on safety and security
Safety and security were two of the top themes at the embedded world Conference 2013. Stuart McClure, regarded worldwide as one of the experts and visionaries in the field of information system security, covered this topic in his keynote on ‘Securing Invisible Things’: Why aren’t our information systems secure? How could this happen? What can we do to avert the next cyber catastrophe? And how can the ‘bad guys’ be stopped?
Readers of Industrial Ethernet Book are of course well aware of these issues and we have covered the subject of cyber security in a number of technical articles, e.g. Digital identities: the basis of industrial IT security or Securing Ethernet-based industrial networks.
Ultra-low power
‘Ultra-low power’ was another key issue that was examined from numerous different angles. The conference started with a session that described the principles of ultra-low power solutions, how the targets can be achieved with the lowest possible energy input and the longest possible operating times. New approaches to power saving technologies were also recognized with the embedded systems Awards. A Special Award went to the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS) for their s-net, an energy-saving wireless multi-hop sensor network. IEB readers again have a head start here as we covered this sensor network technology in detail already in IEB issue 70 in May last year.
Congratulations to Fraunhofer IIS for winning the special award with their s-net mesh network technology.
Ethernet at embedded world
Ethernet connectivity obviously is a major component of the 'smarter world' that the exhibition promises. Major Industrial Ethernet protocols like Profinet, Powerlink, EtherCAT or TTEthernet all had their own stands at the show and attracted larger crowds. Also several vendors like Moxa or ORing were present. We had an opportunity for an exclusive interview with ORing CEO Angus Shih about the company's target markets, product portfolio and future direction (see Angus Shih interview).
Texas Instruments EtherCAT module has successfully passed the conformance test. At embedded world Elizabete de Freitas received the certificate from ETG's Martin Rostan.
And semiconductor companies continue to develop new chips that enable faster, more stable Ethernet products at a better price/performance ratio. At embedded world we spoke to Knut Dettmer, Principal Engineer Smart factory at Renesas about the new R-IN32M3 Industrial Ethernet communication chip. A distinctive features of the R-IN32M3 is the high-speed operation with the basic function of the real-time OS in hardware to implement high-speed real-time response and high-precision communication control. Knut Dettmer: "Because the hardware in the new R-IN32M3 series covers heavy load operations for the CPU, the combination of the CPU and integrated real-time OS offload engine result in ultra-high-speed real-time responsiveness five to ten times that of a conventional software real-time OS." The hardware accelerator also frees the ARM Cortex-M3 CPU for other tasks so that certain applications can be run directly on the communication chip. The R-IN32M3 currently comes with CC-Link IE or EtherCAT slave controllers, but further Industrial Ethernet implementations will follow during 2013.
Record size of M2M Area
This year there was such a big demand from the exhibiting companies in the Machine-to-Machine Communication market that the organizers decided to add a second M2M Area. Around 25 exhibitors presented their new products for wireless communication between machines in halls 4 and 5. Also beyond the dedicated M2M area there was an overwhelming number of devices for Machine2Machine, Internet-of-Things, Cyber Physical Systems, or whatever the latest buzzword may be. We have covered some of the many new solutions in the Product Highlights section below.
The exhibition also showed how truly global this market has become. There were exhibitors from Romania, Tunesia, Ukraine, and we even saw an M2M Gateway from Egyptian company Almanar. It consists of a main board with Cortex-M3 processor and various daughter boards for GSM/GPRS, WiFi, serial and USB connectivity, and looked to be a well-engineered product.
The cloud-connected coffee maker, on display at Deutsche Telekom's Developer Garden. The Espresso was actually quite good.
Live News
embedded world Product Highlights
Here are some of the new products and solutions introduced at embedded world 2013.
No Wire, no downtime, no problem
is the claim of Advantech's (Stand 2-110) latest ADAM-2000Z-series, using the IEEE 802.15.4 WPAN standard. The series consists of six modules, including a Modbus/RTU gateway, router node, and I/O and the sensor devices listed below. It features low power consumption, ensured data integrity, Modbus/RTU protocol support, a high degree of accuracy of 16 bits for AI module and a wireless site survey tool in the ADAM Utility. Regarding the lower power consumption, just 2 x AA alkaline batteries are claimed to keep the devices updated at 1-minute intervals for a year.
In addition, the ADAM-2000Z series supports the Modbus/RTU protocol so that it can be connected to other Modbus modules without any additional software or cost. Configuring a reliable wireless network, site survey is an important task; the ADAM-utility includes the site survey tool, “Topology”, for users to get a module’s status and wireless communication quality.
www.advantech.de
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The ADAM-2000Z series can connect up to 32 nodes, including router and end devices.
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Rapid deployment of cloud-based M2M solutions
Digi International (Stand 4-432) launched an enhanced version of its XBee Wi-Fi embedded module. The low-power module enables serial-to-Wi-Fi networking in the popular XBee form factor and now features native iDigi Device Cloud integration, a Soft Access Point (AP) interface and Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) for easydevice provisioning and maintenance. Designed for industrial monitoring, asset tracking, home automation and tank monitoring, the XBee Wi-Fi offers secure 802.11 b/g/n networking. The module featuresUART and Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI),which optimizes integration with embedded micro-controllers. The XBee Wi-Fi is available in both through-hole and surface mount (SMT) form-factors, providing tremendous flexibility in design. Native iDigi Device Cloud connectivity makes device data available for quick application creation or integration and enables remote configuration and firmware downloads.
www.digi.com
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The low-power XBee Wi-Fi embedded module features native iDigi Device Cloud integration, a Soft Access Point (AP) interface and Wi-Fi Protected Setup.
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World’s smallest Serial to Wi-Fi device server?
Lantronix (Stand 1-309) claims to have the world’s smallest and easiest to use Serial to Wi-Fi device server. The xPico Wi-Fi is a pin and form factor compatible member of the xPico family, providing low power, full IP stack, complete device server application and 5-year warranty.
xPico Wi-Fi is an extremely compact networking solution that enables wireless LAN connectivity on virtually any solution with a serial interface. The included Lantronix device server application and full IP stack allows seamless remote access to device data simplifying design integration while providing robust connectivity.
All members of the xPico product family use the same interface, providing flexibility when it comes to choosing the right device for a given application. The xPico Wi-Fi can be utilized in designs typically intended for chip solutions. A key difference with xPico Wi-Fi is that there is virtually no need to write a single line of code, translating to a lower development cost and faster time-to-market. The device features Lantronix SmartRoam Technology, which continually tracks Wi-Fi signal strength within range, along with pre-authentication and caching resulting in smooth and automatic transition to access points without delay.
www.lantronix.com
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The xPico Wi-Fi provides low power, full IP stack, and complete device server application.
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Large M2M portfolio
Machine-to-Machine specialist m2m Germany (Stand 4-345) introduces a whole range of new M2M solutions from its partners. These include Huawei's HSPA+ and LTE modules, telematic solutions from Owasys, and a line of ZigBee products from Italian company 4-noks. The Wireless system-on-module Bluegiga APx4 is a low power module that integrates 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, ARM and Linux. It is based on Freescale's i.MX28 processor family and runs an embedded Linux operating system based on the Yocto Project. In addition to integrating the 454MHz ARM9 processor, the wireless connectivity technologies and Linux operating system, the APx4 also includes several built in applications, such as the 802.11 and Bluetooth 4.0 stacks, Continua v.1.5 compliant IEEE manager and many more. This combination provides an ideal platform for designing multi-radio wireless gateways that enables fast time-to-market and minimum R&D risks.
www.m2mgermany.de
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4-noks offers a variety of ZigBee products, from gateways, repeaters and bridges, through various sensors for temperature, current and electrical power.
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Single port Gigabit Midspan
The PowerDsine 9001GR from Microsemi (Stand 1-652) is a single port solution for remote powering of high power edge devices requiring up to 30W of scalable power-over-Ethernet.
The IEEE 802.at standard PD 9001GR PoE midspan was recently upgraded to a smaller form factor but still comes with the industry leading PowerDsine PoE technology that enables 30W of PoE over standard Cat5 or better cables to easily upgrade IP surveillance devices, WLAN APs and other Ethernet devices. This plug and play device allows easy installation and placement in hard-to-reach places. Combined with a PoE extender, Ethernet devices can easily be powered more than 100M away from network room at gigabit data transfer rates.
www.microsemi.com
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The PD 9001GR PoE midspan enables 30W of PoE over standard Cat5 or better cables.
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Steady as a rock
Moxa (Stand 2-415) shows its new product RNAS-1200 series, a rugged, industrial-grade network attached storage (NAS) system, which the company claims is 'steady as a rock'. It is designed for environments demanding a compact industrial storage device with high performance, high reliability, and high capacity. Many video surveillance and media storage applications must operate in harsh environments unsuitable for commercial NAS hardware. Data storage in vehicular, outdoor, and heavy industrial installations requires especially rugged designs to guarantee data won’t be affected by high temperatures or rough vibrations and shocks. The RNAS-1200 offers EN 50155 TX compliance, with a fanless design and innovative Intelligent Heating Solution for frigid environments, as well as Data XPro memory technology that protects against data corruption from strong vibration and drive failures from too much heat. Dual PoE+ Gigabit LAN ports for power and data redundancy on a draw of less than 25W and 15 second RAID 1 synchronizations on RNAS crashes represent reliability. User-friendly design and easy management are ensured by SNMP for convenient network management and a web-based UI for configuring disk arrays.
www.moxa.com
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The RNAS-1200 is designed for data storage in vehicular, outdoor, and heavy industrial installations.
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PCIe Gigabit PoE Ethernet switch card
ORing (Stand 4A-412) shows a number of new industrial network products, including the IGPCS-E140. The IGPCS-E140 is a PCI-Express unmanaged Gigabit PoE Ethernet switch card with P.S.E. function, and supports 4x10/100/1000Base-T(X) P.S.E. (Power Sourcing Equipment) ports. P.S.E. is a device (switch or hub for instance) that will provide power in a PoE port. The IGPCS-E140 can be installed on any IPC motherboard with PCIe socket to enable an IPC/embedded system to communicate with other Ethernet devices. The 4x10/100/1000Base-T(X) PoE (P.S.E.) ports can provide up to 15.4 Watts per port based on IEEE 802.3af standard. The PoE power is sourced from 12VDC with ATX power.
http://www.oring-networking.com
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ORing's IGPCS-E140 is designed to provide Ethernet connectivity in IPCs and embedded systems. The four ports each provide up to 15.4 Watts Power-over-Ethernet based on IEEE 802.3af standard.
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Bluetooth 4.0 Dual Mode Module
'BlueMod+SR' is an extremely small embedded dual mode Bluetooth module from Stollmann (Stand 2-531). It supports classic Bluetooth basic rate (BR) and enhanced data rate (EDR) operations as well as the new low energy (LE) standard. For basic rate operations it offers simple Serial Port Profile (SPP) connections with full Secure Simple Pairing. For low energy operations the module offers a generic GATT interface. In addition to that it comes with the Terminal IO profile. Terminal IO allows transparent UART data and GPIO state transfer in low energy mode similar to SPP in basic rate mode. The module is very small (17x10x2.5 mm), has a wireless range of 100m (in line of sight) and allows low energy consumption and/or high data throughput.
www.stollmann.de
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BlueMod+SR supports Bluetooth basic rate (BR), enhanced data rate (EDR), and the low energy (LE) standard.
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Ruggedized SIL Switch for Deterministic Ethernet
TTTech (Stand 4-401) demonstrates their solutions for high-availability applicationsand also also one of their latest developments, the Ruggedized SIL Switch for Deterministic Ethernet. TTTech claims that the key benefit of this switch is to support network partitioning with functional safety. The fail-silent switch architecture addresses IEC 61508 SIL 2, while the unique deterministic Ethernet features provide guaranteed timing properties of critical network traffic. The switch is intended for use in industrial applications with high availability and safety requirements.
This 24-port switch is part of a family of rugged and certified switches that support the deterministic Ethernet technology TTEthernet. TTEthernet enables hard real-time operation in distributed systems based on Ethernet networks. The technology provides full scalability for real-time architectures. Certifiable partitioning allows for changes in one application without the need for recertification of other applications.
www.tttech.com
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The TTEthernet switch offers 18 ports with 100 Mbit/s and 6 ports with 1 Gbit/s with SFP slots for flexible choice of the transmission medium in standard 19-inch rack format.
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Ultra Low Power serial to WiFi
WIZnet (Stand 2-302), a a private fabless semiconductor company from Korea, shows their latest range of WizFi modules. The WizFi210 enables WiFi connectivity via Serial Host Interface, and features an Ultra Low Power design through Dynamic Power Management with a claimed 34μA at standby, 125.0 mA in receive, and 135.0 mA in transmit mode. It operates with standard 802.11b/g/n access point at speed up to11Mbps (802.11b). Supported security protocols include WEP, WPA/WPA2-PSK, Enterprise (EAP-FAST, EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS, PEAP. One highlight of this wireless module is a quick boot time of under 20 msec.
www.wiznet.co.kr
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Evaluation board for the WizFi210 which claims only 34μA current consumption in standby.
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