Arduinoa2z: July 2020

Friday, July 31, 2020

Control the volume of programs running on your Windows PC like a DJ

If you have multiple applications open in Windows, you may want one to be louder than the other, but what if you want to adjust levels with physical sliders like an actual DJ? If that sounds interesting, check out this controller by “Aithorn.” The device uses an Arduino Nano to read signals from each slider and pass this […]

The post Control the volume of programs running on your Windows PC like a DJ appeared first on Open Electronics. The author is Emanuele Signoretta

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Apollo Lake industrial mini-PC supports Linux

Vecow’s Linux-ready, -40 to 75°C tolerant “SPC-4010C” industrial mini-PC is built around a dual-core Apollo Lake SoC with up to 8GB RAM, 2x GbE, SATA, HDMI, 4x USB, and 2x mini-PCIe with SIM card and mSATA. Vecow announced a minor revision to its Apollo Lake based SPC-4010 mini-PC called the SPC-4010C. If you already know […]

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Turning Lead to Gold with FPGA

We have an exciting announcement: SparkFun Electronics is now producing all Alchitry FPGA boards! Two new FPGA options are available, with the Xilinx Artix 7-equipped Au, and the Lattice iCE40 HX-equipped Cu boards. We also have two shield-like boards called "Elements" that support each of the FPGA's inherently strong capabilities and logic cells.

Don't forget that you can get a free SparkFun Qwiic Pro Micro BoogieBoard with any purchase of $75 or more using promo code "BOOGIEBOARD20" (some restrictions apply).

Now onto our new products!

The gold standard of FPGA!

Alchitry Au FPGA Development Board (Xilinx Artix 7)

DEV-16527

$99.95

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The Alchitry Au Development Board is the "gold" standard for FPGA development boards, and it's one of the strongest boards of its type on the market. The Au FPGA features a Xilinx Artix 7 XC7A35T-1C FPGA with over 33,000 logic cells and 256MB of DDR3 RAM. This board is a fantastic starting point into the world of FPGAs as the heart of your next project. Now that this board is built by SparkFun, we added a Qwiic connector for easy I²C integration!

Alchitry Cu FPGA Development Board (Lattice iCE40 HX)

DEV-16526

$49.95

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If you don't need a lot of power to start your FPGA adventure or are looking for a more economical option, the Alchitry Cu FPGA Development Board might be the perfect option for you! The Alchitry Cu is a "lighter" FPGA version than the Alchitry Au but still offers something completely unique. The Alchitry Cu uses the Lattice iCE40 HX FPGA with 7680 logic cells and is supported by the open source tool chain Project IceStorm, as well as the SparkFun Qwiic Connect System. The Cu truly exemplifies the trend of more affordable and increasingly powerful FPGA boards arriving each year.

Alchitry Io Element Board

DEV-16525

$24.95

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The Alchitry Io Element Board is the perfect way to get your feet wet with digital design. The Io features four 7-segment LEDs, five momentary push buttons, 24 basic LEDs, and 24 DIP switches. All these features lend themselves to fantastic beginner tutorials that will walk you through the basics of FPGAs.

Alchitry Br Prototype Element Board

DEV-16524

$14.95

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The Alchitry Br Element Board is a prototyping periphery for the Au or Cu FPGA development boards. The Br breaks out all the signals on the four headers running from your Au or Cu, and has a large prototyping area with a 0.1" pin grid for custom circuits.

There are also female headers (sold separately) available that can be soldered into the prototyping area, turning the Br Element into a breadboard so you can test out new circuits without making them a permanent resident!

RGB LED Clear Lens Common Cathode (5mm)

COM-16911

$2.05

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These 5mm LEDs have four pins - one for each color and a common cathode (the longest pin). Use this LED for three status indicators, or pulse width modulate all three and get mixed colors!

That's it for this week! As always, we can't wait to see what you make! Shoot us a tweet @sparkfun, or let us know on Instagram or Facebook. We’d love to see what projects you’ve made!

Never miss a new product!

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IoT Designers Can Optimise Battery Life Using This New Tool

With the new battery optimisation hardware and software tool, IoT designers can test battery life at ease Has the ability to meet a wide range of power demands for embedded devices Bluebird Labs, a provider of embedded solutions has launched a new design tool called the BattLab-One (Battery Laboratory One) that can capture current consumption […]

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How 16×2 LCDs work | Build a basic 16×2 character LCD

16x2 lcd pinout We come across LCD displays everywhere around us. Computers, calculators, television sets, mobile phones, digital watches use some kind of display to display the time. An LCD is an electronic display module that uses liquid crystal to produce a visible image. The 16×2 LCD display is a very basic module commonly used in DIYs and […]

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Get Set Go with Raspberry Pi Camera

This project describes how to connect a web camera to the Raspberry Pi and make use of it. Raspberry Pi board has an onboard connector which can be used for connecting the camera directly. Connect the camera very carefully, as shown in Fig. 1, and take good grounding measures before touching it. Installation of Raspberry […]

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High Performance Optical and Data Communications for 5G Deployment

The MEMS oscillator by SiTime offers solution for providing low jitter oscillations under tough environmental conditions Due to small device size, more features can be integrated The growth of 5G, AI and cloud computing has subsequently led to a rise of Internet traffic, causing data centres to increase throughput. Optical modules and data communications equipment […]

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International Space Station Tracker | The MagPi 96

Fancy tracking the ISS’s trajectory? All you need is a Raspberry Pi, an e-paper display, an enclosure, and a little Python code. Nicola King looks to the skies

The e-paper display mid-refresh. It takes about three seconds to refresh, but it’s fast enough for this kind of project

Standing on his balcony one sunny evening, the perfect conditions enabled California-based astronomy enthusiast Sridhar Rajagopal to spot the International Space Station speeding by, and the seeds of an idea were duly sown. Having worked on several projects using tri-colour e-paper (aka e-ink) displays, which he likes for their “aesthetics and low-to-no-power consumption”, he thought that developing a way of tracking the ISS using such a display would be a perfect project to undertake.

“After a bit of searching, I was able to find an open API to get the ISS location at any given point in time,” explains Sridhar. I also knew I wouldn’t have to worry about the data changing several times per second or even per minute. Even though the ISS is wicked fast (16 orbits in a day!), this would still be well within the refresh capabilities of the e-paper display.”

The ISS location data is obtained using the Open Notify API – visit magpi.cc/isslocation to see its current position

Station location

His ISS Tracker works by obtaining the ISS location from the Open Notify API every 30 seconds. It appends this data point to a list, so older data is available. “I don’t currently log the data to file, but it would be very easy to add this functionality,” says Sridhar. “Once I have appended the data to the list, I call the drawISS method of my Display class with the positions array, to render the world map and ISS trajectory and current location. The world map gets rendered to one PIL image, and the ISS location and trajectory get rendered to another PIL image.”

The project code is written in Python and can be found on Sridhar’s GitHub
page: magpi.cc/isstrackercode

Each latitude/longitude position is mapped to the corresponding XY co-ordinate. The last position in the array (the latest position) gets rendered as the ISS icon to show its current position. “Every 30th data point gets rendered as a rectangle, and every other data point gets rendered as a tiny circle,” adds Sridhar.

From there, the images are then simply passed into the e-paper library’s display method; one image is rendered in black, and the other image in red.

Track… star

Little wonder that the response received from friends, family, and the wider maker community has been extremely positive, as Sridhar shares: “The first feedback was from my non-techie wife who love-love-loved the idea of displaying the ISS location and trajectory on the e-paper display. She gave valuable input on the aesthetics of the data visualisation.”

Software engineer turned hardwarehacking enthusiast and entrepreneur, Sridhar Rajagopal is the founder of Upbeat Labs and creator of ProtoStax – a maker-friendly stackable, modular,
and extensible enclosure system.

In addition, he tells us that other makers have contributed suggestions for improvements. “JP, a Hackster community user […] added information to make the Python code a service and have it launch on bootup. I had him contribute his changes to my GitHub repository – I was thrilled about the community involvement!”

Housed in a versatile, transparent ProtoStax enclosure designed by Sridhar, the end result is an elegant way of showing the current position and trajectory of the ISS as it hurtles around the Earth at 7.6 km/s. Why not have a go at making your own display so you know when to look out for the space station whizzing across the night sky? It really is an awesome sight.

Get The MagPi magazine issue 96 — out today

The MagPi magazine is out now, available in print from the Raspberry Pi Press online store, your local newsagents, and the Raspberry Pi Store, Cambridge.

You can also download the directly from PDF from the MagPi magazine website.

Subscribers to the MagPi for 12 months to get a free Adafruit Circuit Playground, or choose from one of our other subscription offers, including this amazing limited-time offer of three issues and a book for only £10!

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International Space Station Tracker | The MagPi 96

Fancy tracking the ISS’s trajectory? All you need is a Raspberry Pi, an e-paper display, an enclosure, and a little Python code. Nicola King looks to the skies

Station location

From there, the images are then simply passed into the e-paper library’s display method; one image is rendered in black, and the other image in red.

Track… star

Get The MagPi magazine issue 96 — out today

The MagPi magazine is out now, available in print from the Raspberry Pi Press online store, your local newsagents, and the Raspberry Pi Store, Cambridge.

You can also download the directly from PDF from the MagPi magazine website.

The post International Space Station Tracker | The MagPi 96 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

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Contactless UI Control For Lifts

Lifts/elevators in buildings, hotels and hospitals are used by many people. If it’s a structure with over more than 100 floors, then using stairs is not a convenient option, especially for physically challenged and old-age people. Furthermore, in the current scenario of COVID-19, the chances of spreading the virus and other germs by touching the […]

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The Importance Of AI And IT In Modern Healthcare

This article covers the importance of AI in healthcare, examples of AI in healthcare, the Indian healthcare industry, telemedicine, digital healthcare and related information technology. It’s not a surprising fact that medical error is the third-largest killer in the US, next to heart disease and cancer. As per some reports, medical errors claim about 400,000 […]

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Turn Your Phone Into IR Contactless Thermometer

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, it has become essential to regularly monitor the human body temperature without coming into contact with the measuring device so that an infected person can be immediately detected without further spreading the disease (due to contact). As per the need of time, a contactless temperature measuring device such as a […]

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60 Watt Industrial/Railway High Performance DC-DC Converter

TRACO POWER’s new converter has an ultra-wide 4:1 input range All models are certified industrial & railway applications TRACO POWER has released a new 60 Watt TEN 60WIR family of high-performance DC-DC converters that offer an ultra-wide 4:1 input range. The TEN 60WIR family consists of 24 models with a choice of three ultra-wide input […]

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RF Transceiver for Mission-Critical Communications Applications

Analog Devices’ new product offering comes with high dynamic range and incorporates digital signal radio correction algorithms The award winning device can correctly decode a signal in heavily congested spectrum Analog Devices has announced the first product in a new series of RF transceivers, the ADRV9002RF that offers a high dynamic range and is suitable […]

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Bring your Mycroft AI voice assistant skill to life with Python

In the first two articles of this series on Mycroft, an open source, privacy-focused digital voice assistant, I covered the background behind voice assistants and some of Mycroft's core tenets.

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Why we open sourced our Python platform

neon sign with head outline and open source why spelled out

The team at Anvil recently open sourced the Anvil App Server, a runtime engine for hosting web apps built entirely in Python.

The community reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, and we, at Anvil, have already incorporated lots of that feedback into our next release. But one of the questions we keep getting asked is, "Why did you choose to open source such a core part of your product?"

read more

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Alchitry Io Element Board (DEV-16525)

The Alchitry Io Element Board is the perfect way to get your feet wet with digital design. The Io features four 7-segment LEDs, five momentary push buttons, 24 basic LEDs, and 24 DIP switches that all lend themselves to fantastic beginner tutorials that will walk you through all the basics of FPGAs.

Alchitry Elements are expansion boards similar to shields for an Arduino or HATs for a Raspberry Pi but these are meant for your Au and Cu FPGA Development Boards. This Element is equipped with four connectors on the underside of the board that snap to an Au or Cu board. Be aware that the Io does not feature any connection points on the top of the board so you won't be able to stack any additional Elements on top of it.

Get Started with our Learning FPGA Tutorials

Features:

4x 7-segment LED digits
5x momentary push buttons
24x LEDs
24x DIP switches

Documents:

Examples:

Videos

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Alchitry Br Prototype Element Board (DEV-16524)

The Alchitry Br Element Board is a prototyping periphery for the Au or Cu FPGA Development Boards. The Br breaks out all the signals on the four headers running from your Au or Cu and has a large prototyping area with a 0.1" pin grid for custom circuits.

Alchitry Elements are expansion boards similar to shields for an Arduino or HATs for a Raspberry Pi but these are meant for your Au and Cu FPGA Development Boards. This Element is equipped with four connectors on top and four on the bottom for maximum stackability that snap to an Au or Cu board. There are also female headers (sold separately) available that can be soldered into the prototyping area turning the Br Element into a breadboard so you can test out new circuits without making them a permanent resident!

Get Started with our Learning FPGA Tutorials

Documents:

Examples:

Videos

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Ubuntu-driven Coffee Lake AI system features Myriad X, FPGA, and PoE add-ons

IEI’s “FLEX AIoT Dev. Kit” runs Ubuntu on a 8th or 9th Gen Coffee Lake with 2x GbE, 2x HDMI, 4x SATA, 3x M.2, PCIe x4, and 2x PCIe x8 slots with optional Mustang cards with Myriad X VPUs and more. IEI Integration has launched high-end edge AI computer that runs a “pre-validated” Ubuntu 18.04 […]

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Thursday, July 30, 2020

Gen-Z to Advance Memory-Driven Interconnect Fabric

Not to be confused with the demographic cohort that succeeds millennials, Gen-Z is a memory-semantic fabric architecture that’s at a point where it must better define how it fits within the greater scheme of specifications and standards, including the somewhat mature NVM Express and the emerging Compute Express Link (CXL) protocol that’s gaining traction in data centers.

Gen-Z uses memory-semantic communications to move data between memories on different components with minimal overhead, not only interconnecting memory devices, but also processors and accelerators, the latter of which are becoming increasingly popular for specific use cases — storage and artificial intelligence, for example — while taking pressure of the CPU. Ultimately, Gen-Z is about more flexibility and responsiveness when it comes to resource provisioning and sharing, allowing systems to be reconfigured as the demands of applications for different resources change.

Like many fabric architectures, Gen-Z is trying to balance the need to support and enhance existing systems while enabling the creation of new architectures. It also cements a need to clear any confusion as to who is doing what, said Thomas Coughlin, president of research firm Coughlin and Associates. “It is getting confusing. There are getting to be so many things that seem like they possibly could be doing some of the same stuff, but it’d be nice if they actually ironed out who’s doing what and how they’re doing it and do it together.”

Interoperability with different types of standardization activity is an important part of Gen-Z becoming mainstream, and proponents of other architectures, such as CXL, have acknowledged the need to work together.

“We’re seeing a much-needed discussion between all these different ways in which people would like to create networks and fabrics of elements like networking and storage and compute, but also accelerators,” said Coughlin. “How do we get all these things to work together? How do we create optimal networks and fabrics that allow them to work both locally and remotely in the most effective way possible?” Differentiating the difference between NVMe over Fabric versus Gen-Z is just one example of the delineations that must be made, he said.

The Gen-Z fabric was developed with a focus on accommodating continuous performance increases through the transparent aggregation of next generation devices such as persistent memory, as well as leveraging DRAM through composable memory, and accelerators. (Source: Gen-Z Consortium)

For its part, the key technical advantages of Gen-Z being touted is the ability to mix both DRAM and non-volatile memories, as well as any future persistent-memory technologies, while also reducing solution cost and complexity by using a high-bandwidth, low-latency, efficient protocol that simplifies hardware and software designs. As with any with any new architecture, the aim is for systems to be able to scale up without sacrificing performance for flexibility, while maintaining mechanical compatibility that allows Gen-Z to be integrated into existing platforms and any necessary software compatibility.

In order for any of these architectures to gain traction, everyone must work together, which is a key driver for the Gen-Z Consortium’s memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA). Its chair, Paul Grun, said the collaboration reflects the shared interests of the two groups. Gen-Z is motivated by a requirement to implement memory-like semantics across fabric topologies to support the Gen-Z vision for a distributed memory architecture, while the goal of OFA is to accelerate OFA development and adoption of new generation fabrics for the benefit of the advanced networks ecosystem. “Clearly, Gen-Z is a next-generation fabric.” However, he said, OFA isn’t a standards body, but an enabler. “We are accelerating the development and adoption of fabrics by providing the software that’s needed to make them go.”

Advanced software for fabrics boils down to any high-performance APIs and associated software for current and future high-performance computing, cloud, and enterprise data centers. Target applications and deployments are those that need efficient networking, ultra-low latencies, faster storage connectivity, scalable parallel computing, and the cloud. Grun said OFA is fabric and vendor agnostic, and its current focus areas are user mode APIs — called libfabric APIs — as part of its OpenFabrics Interfaces (OFI) and network management for composable networks that are heterogeneous and require managing through a common management framework.

Gen-Z Consortium president and chairman, Kurtis Bowman, said his organization and the OFA share a mutual interest in advancing high performance interconnects. Gen-Z’s efforts to implement memory-like semantics across fabric topologies as part of a broader vision for a distributed memory architecture requires a sophisticated interconnect and extremely low end-to-end latencies, he said. OFA’s efforts to facilitate development and adoption of new generation fabrics for the benefit of the advanced networks ecosystem includes Gen-Z.

The recently announced MOU will see OFA create a libfabric provider for Gen-Z to enable easy access to Gen-Z features for any libfabric-enabled application or middleware, as well as explore possible enhancements to the libfabric APIs, said Grun. Gen-Z will also be the first target for creating a solution for managing composable networks. The proposed solution will use DMTF’s Redfish standard and consists of a management framework, an “abstract” fabric manager, and fabric specific plug-ins.

Gen-Z can be integrated into a processor without impacting the traditional memory controller. For example, a DDR memory controller would continue independently service a portion of the processor’s address space, and Gen-Z would independently service a different portion. (Source: Gen-Z Consortium)

As a fabric, Bowman said Gen-Z reflects the need for an industry-standard architecture to support things like memory, high-speed GPUs, and other devices that don’t fit well on any of the existing fabrics but need their own high speed, low latency, secure fabric. “What we’ve seen over time is that there are just too many pins associated with a DDR interface,” he said. “We actually want some democratization amongst the devices, so not everything has to go through your host CPU.”

As a memory-semantic protocol, said Bowman, Gen-Z can do simple reads and writes to a memory space and get that information back, and rather than going through the CPU, it can go through an accelerator, such as a GPU, specialty AI device, or FPGA, as well as access local memory and memory that sits out on Gen-Z. “Memory then can be shared among the devices, either allocated to them or actually shared amongst multiple devices.”

So far, the Gen-Z Consortium has demonstrated that it can connect devices and shared memory while obtaining extremely low latency at rates not quite as fast as when directly attached to memory, said Bowman. “One of the demonstrations we did showed five times lower latency going to a Gen-Z connected memory device, then going out to some of the fastest MVME devices.” Right now, he said, there are two ways to connect to Gen-Z; one is to have a native interface in the endpoint device, and the other is using FPGAs that go directly to a Gen-Z interface.

Of course, not only does Gen-Z this need to fit with OFA efforts, but also other efforts such as the fledgling CXL and the maturing NVMe over Fabric. But as Grun notes, it would be too cost prohibitive for a single company to do any of these fabrics. Just as memory and networking can no longer be treated as one thing on their own, all these fabrics need to be threaded together. “I see it kind of as this big tapestry with a lot of important threads.”

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The Future of Linux Security: Securing Linux-Based Systems in 4 Steps

(Circuit Cellar article)The intricacies of maintaining today’s Linux-based platforms make it very challenging for developers to cover every potential entry point. In 2019 there was an average of more than 45 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) logged per day. How does a development organization keep up with that?

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An Arduino Tetris console inside of an NES controller

Tetris was as a perfect complement to Nintendo’s original Game Boy when it came out in 1989, and now “Copper Dragon” has been able to fit an entire system for it — sans monitor or speakers — inside of a faux NES controller. Impressively, this feat was accomplished with an Arduino Nano and a few passive components, […]

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Connected Car Industry: Big Picture

Hard to believe it is over 20 years since the first connected cars appeared in the United States. General Motors is considered the pioneer when it introduced its first telematics system in late 1996. Ford was also in the game, but quickly abandoned its system. The GM OnStar system became the leading telematics system and still retains that title today with cumulative sales of OnStar in the 50 million unit range in the United States. OnStar has been the most influential telematics system and has forced many of GM’s competitors to enter the connected car market.

However, Tesla is now the technology leader with a truly connected car that is far ahead of other auto OEMs. Tesla can update all its software and collects tremendous amount of usage data and leverage this data and analytics for rapid and frequent over-the-air (OTA) software updates. Tesla can do this due to its advanced system architecture. Most OEMs are developing their own version of Tesla’s capabilities but have a long way to go to match Tesla.

Telematics services were developed for the needs of the auto manufacturer and for the car owners. There are other constituents and industries that see value in receiving car data or generating revenue from sending data or content to cars. These forces have already changed the connected car industry dramatically and more changes are on the way.

To give you more perspectives on the current status and future trends of connected car technologies and markets, I will provide answers and perspectives on the following questions. This will take at least two columns and maybe more.

What can be connected? Short answer: hardware, software, data, content, events, people
How is it connected? Short answer: embedded modem, smartphone, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
What is the infrastructure that connects the car data to the customers?
What is the infrastructure that connects outside data and content to car systems and people?
What car data has value to customers in the auto and other industries?
What data and content has value to electronics systems & people in the car?
Are there technology issues that slow down connected car adoption?
What are the business models—current and emerging?
What are the long-term market opportunities for connected cars?
What is the long-term impact of autonomous vehicle technology on connected cars?

The connected car industry is growing in multiple directions with new market segments emerging and resulting in increased structural complexity. I always like to draw a big picture of complex industry segments. In the computer age, a picture is worth 1,024 words, to paraphrase an old saying.

Connected Cars: Big Picture
The next figure is a simplified view of the connected car industry. There are many more interactions and connections today and more links and relations are created on a regular basis.

The left side summarizes the connected elements located in the car. There are essentially two segments—the many car electronics systems or ECUs (electronic control units) and the activities the connected driver performs. The ECUs generate most of the data coming from the car, that are used by a growing number of customers. ECUs are also a growing destination for content going to the car as OTA software updates are being added to many new auto models.

The connected driver is increasing in importance both as a generator of valuable data to multiple industries, but also as a consumer of music and other content, and as an e-commerce user while in the car. Connected passengers are important too as they may connect their mobile devices to the connected car system but are included with the connected driver for simplicity in the figure.

These two connected car segments are linked to the outside world via one more wireless devices as shown in the middle of the left side. The most common connection is the embedded modem, which has been the key to telematics systems for nearly 25 years. Smartphone growth and capabilities have made it important as a core functionality of telematics systems. Most telematics systems can now connect to both a modem and a smartphone. Both Apple and Google are supplying smartphone-integration software that most auto OEMs are now using as part of their telematics or infotainment systems. The driver smartphone may also be used as a standalone connection outside a telematics system. This has more potential for driver distraction, even if it has a hands-free interface.

Short-range wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are also used for car connections—mostly between the telematics system and a smartphone or pad. OTA software updates are often done via the drivers’ home Wi-Fi local area network.

V2X or Vehicle-to-Everything includes communication between vehicles (V2V); communication between vehicles and traffic infrastructure (V2I) and communication between vehicles and pedestrians (V2P). Unfortunately, there is a standard battle between the auto industry and cellular industry. The auto industry developed V2X that uses DSRC technology based on the IEEE 802.11p standards. The cellular industry has developed the C-V2X standard which has some overlap with DSRC, but is based on 4G and 5G technologies. It has become both a technology and political battle with sometimes bitter arguments. It is likely that C-V2X will win this battle since some of the auto OEMs have joined the C-V2X side. China has decided to use C-V2X and is testing deployment with its 5G roll-out.

The data transmission to and from the car are primarily via the cellular network with multiple segments enabling the communication. The telematics service provider segment (TSP) is probably the leading segment and they are associated with one or more specific auto OEMs.

Many smartphone apps from a growing number of companies are sending and receiving lots of content and data to the car. Third party companies and aftermarket firms are also connecting to car systems and/or the driver. The insurance industry was a pioneer in using aftermarket devices that connected to the car’s OBDII to get driving information to better estimate their customers driving risks. This segment is called user-based insurance (UBI) and is growing in popularity.

A picture of how the car data is distributed to their customer via aggregator companies are shown in red. The content going to the car use blue color in the figure. Both segments are greatly simplified in terms of data flow and the number of companies involved. Only a few company examples are listed. A future column or two will explore more details on how these data monetization segments are structured including perspectives on the key companies.

Data from the Car
The data coming from the car was primarily to help the auto OEMs. The monthly or on-demand remote diagnostics has been the most valuable telematics data for the OEM and their Tier 1 suppliers for nearly two decades. The value is primarily from cost saving that lowers warranty cost. It also identifies problems that are fixed early in the production cycle of the car, which often results in better reliability and reputation.

Remote diagnostics has also been the most valuable telematics service for the car buyers for similar reasons. Remote diagnostics identifies early wear-and-tear problems before they become bigger and more expensive repair issues—assuming the car owners get these small problems fixed. The resale value of a connected car with monthly remote diagnostics history usually gets a price boost.

There is much more car data that have potential value to a variety of industries and companies. The auto OEMs did not have the expertise to develop these businesses for a long time. It took car data aggregators such as Otonomo to develop the business models and cloud platforms to do so. Aftermarket aggregators such as Verisk, which covers the insurance industry, have also expanded the reach of car data opportunities.

The car data aggregators are changing the business in a win-win way with the auto OEMs. The OEMs now provide the desired car data to many aggregators in return for a share of the aggregators’ revenue. This is expanding the customer potential and reach for car data. I will add more perspectives on the car data market and technology later.

Content to the Car
Content opportunities to the car does not get as much attention as data from the car. However, there is much development and new opportunities are emerging. For the OEMs, the most promising is OTA software updates, which is another cost saving business model. Remote software updates are less costly than updates at car dealers. The percentage of cars that are updated via OTA is much higher than dealer completion rates.

Functional software updates that add capabilities to ECUs is a new revenue generator for the auto industry. Tesla has shown the way and many auto OEMs are working hard to introduce their own systems for functional software updates. Current auto electronic system architecture using CAN-based bus design is not conducive to functional software updates. As Ethernet based system architectures are deployed in large numbers, functional software updates will be much easier to do.

There are many other content opportunities to the car that are emerging—especially to the driver. Music has always been the leading car infotainment, which is now moving to a streaming format via the smartphone. Map updates, traffic information and parking data are growing in importance.

A new service segment to the driver is emerging and is called marketplace service after the name of GM’s pioneering product. It is essentially an advertising and e-commerce platform that is connected via the telematics system to minimize driver distraction issues. Retailer must sign-up to with GM’s Marketplace to participate. This makes it easy for the driver to order goods as part of their daily driving routes. GM gets a commission based on the drivers’ purchases. Promotions and coupons are part of the system.

Goods deliveries is a growing business and is also emerging for connected cars. Since many connected car trunks or doors can be opened by using a one-time code via the telematics system, this allows for delivering packages to a car. E-commerce package deliveries or some grocery deliveries can be done this way.

The next column will continue looking at connected cars and will focus on answering more of the questions that were listed in the beginning of this column.

The post Connected Car Industry: Big Picture appeared first on EE Times Asia.

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NAND Flash Market Weakens Rapidly in 3Q20 with Decline in Wafer Prices

After spot prices have been falling for some time, the NAND Flash market is formally seeing a general decline in contract prices starting from 3Q20, according to TrendForce’s latest investigations. Looking at the extent of the price decline by product type, SSDs have experienced a relatively smaller drop because there is still decent demand for these products. In contrast, NAND Flash wafers have suffered a noticeably larger decrease because this type of product is under the mounting pressure to drive sales by cutting prices.

TrendForce indicates that, regarding the supply/demand dynamics of the whole NAND Flash market, the sufficiency ratio for 3Q20 is currently estimated at 2.6%. This oversupply situation is attributed to the accumulation of inventory caused by the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Since an excessive level of inventory has been carried over to this quarter, contract prices have inevitably turned downward. Looking ahead to 4Q20, TrendForce expects the general decline to become sharper as the sufficiency ratio for the quarter is forecasted to reach 7.8%.

Oversupply in the NAND Flash market becomes a main reason for the widening decline in wafer prices

Major suppliers have been reducing the supply in the wafer market over the past few months in consideration of both gross profit concerns and the flourishing demand for SSD; as well, module makers were unable to effectively clear inventory due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact, resulting in wafer contract prices maintaining a flat to slightly downward trend from April to June. Although demand from the retail end has been recovering in June and July, the demand for PC and server SSDs has weakened as a result of decelerating demand for cloud and remote access services. To avoid a potential inventory surge, the major suppliers are pressured to ramp up their supplies to the wafer market, leading to contract prices closing in on spot prices in the next few months.

On the other hand, YMTC’s capacity expansion this year is expected to continue in 2021. In addition to reaching maximum capacity utilization in its Wuhan fab, YMTC is projected to complete the construction of a second fab in Wuhan. The company aims to start mass producing 128L products in 3Q20 and rapidly raise the shipment allocation of these products next year. Currently, YMTC has expanded the incorporation of 64L 256GB TLC products for its module maker clients; the average quoted price is far lower than contract prices and approaching spot market levels, in turn widening the decline in contract prices and exacerbating the oversupply situation in the market.

TrendForce believes that, despite the traditional peak season for electronics sales and the release of Apple’s new iPhones in 3Q20, the quarterly decline in NAND Flash ASP will likely reach 10%, due to the client end’s excess inventory under the impact of the pandemic. Furthermore, as suppliers continue making improvements in the yield rate of 128L NAND Flash, the oversupply in the NAND Flash market will intensify in 4Q20, further exacerbating the decline in NAND Flash ASP.

The post NAND Flash Market Weakens Rapidly in 3Q20 with Decline in Wafer Prices appeared first on EE Times Asia.

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Kontron debuts hardened OpenWrt stack on new rolling stock computer

Kontron’s fanless EN50155-certified “SR-TRACe-G40x” railway server and router runs a hardened, new hypervisor based on OpenWrt called SEC-Line on a Skylake or Apollo Lake CPU and offers 2x SATA, 2x GbE, LTE, WiFi, and GNSS. Kontron unveiled an “edge data processing router/server gateway” for the rail industry based on 6th Gen Core or Apollo Lake […]

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Defining cloud native, expanding the ecosystem, and more industry trends

Person standing in front of a giant computer screen with numbers, data

As part of my role as a principal communication strategist at an enterprise software company with an open source development model, I publish a regular update about open source community, market, and industry trends for product marketers, managers, and other influencers. Here are three of my and their favorite articles from that update.

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Enginursday: Building a Wireless Custom Keyboard

A little over three years ago I made a custom keyboard to help speed up the process of laying out a PCB in Eagle. Truth be told, I only ended up using the keyboard for a short amount of time. It wasn't that the keyboard wasn't useful; the main issue was the case wasn't complete. It sat flat on the desk, and I was using pieces of thermal gap filler as feet to keep it from sliding.

Combined with the fact that it used a frequently needed micro USB cable, and the next closest cable was ~~miles~~ ten feet away from my desk, it became a tool that spent most of its time in my desk drawer. What I was missing was a little bit of inspiration to invest the time to do it right.

A few months ago I saw a library for the ESP32 that used the Bluetooth radio and turned the ESP32 into a Human Interface Device, or HID. The original keyboard didn't have enough space to easily fit the ESP32 Thing Plus I wanted to use, so it forced me to fully enclose it like I originally intended:

The new box I made had more of an ergonomic pitch that matched my keyboard, starting at around an inch high in the back and thinning down to around half an inch in the front (making sure to leave room for the Cherry MX key body). I used CA glue to hold five of the six sides in place, and black electrical tape to keep the top in place. I was pretty happy with the shape and feel, and I reclaimed some of the functions the previous keyboard had, plus a few new ones:

Left Knob: Volume Up/Down and Mute
Right Knob: Eagle Grid Spacing +/- and switch between Imperial/Metic
LED Indicator: BLE connection status and battery indicator
16 Cherry MX keys for:
- Play/Pause
- Skip Forward
- Skip Backward
- Launch Calculator (really useful for footprint creation from a datasheet)
- 12 frequently used Eagle shortcut keys

Making the keyboard wireless gave me the flexibility to move it wherever I needed. It also, however, gave me more challenges to think about - mainly power management.

To start, I checked to see how large a battery I could physically fit, and settled on a 2000mAh battery. While the library uses Bluetooth Low Energy, it was not exactly what you would call low energy. After pairing to my computer, the ESP32 was drawing around 83mA, which means it would barely run for a full 24 hours.

Quite a few years ago when I had a wireless mouse, the number one thing that drove me crazy was that I had to charge it every few days. Often I just left the USB cable connected to keep the battery charged and went wireless only when I had to. Having that still in my mind, I wanted to make sure I didn’t run into the same issue again. By putting the ESP32 to deep sleep you can power down parts of the chip you don’t need to use, like the radio, analog to digital converter, etc., to significantly cut down on power and extend the battery life.

Every time the board wakes up, the time it takes to reconnect to the computer can vary, so I needed a way to tell when it was trying to connect, and whether it was awake or asleep. I also needed to know when it was time to charge the battery. The library has a function to send the battery percentage to the computer (shown in the image above), but it wasn’t updating on the computer reliably enough to count on. I solved all of these issues with a single red/green led between the two encoders:

Alternating red and green when pairing (which looks better in person than on camera):

Double green blink when it’s connected and active:

Gif of keyboard connected over bluetooth

Double red blink when it’s awake and needs charging:

gif of led indicator to charge the battery

The LEDs draw less than a couple milliamps of current, but if you only flash the LEDs periodically, especially for when the battery needs to be charged, you can get the most out of the battery. To decide when to go to sleep, I monitor any key presses and reset a timer, so that if after 20 minutes the keyboard hasn’t been used, it will put itself to sleep. The biggest downside admittedly is that because I used a voltage divider on the keys, I can’t use them to wake up from sleep. I did try to leave the ADC powered on, but I measured 20mA of current was still being used because it was constantly polling the ADC to see if a key was pressed to wake up.

The other power management solution I came up with was adding a switch to pull the enable pin of the 3.3V regulator down to ground, which cuts power to the ESP32, but will still allow the battery to charge if power is connected.

Speaking of charging the battery, I used a USB-C Breakout along with some wire wrap to provide not only power for charging, but the USB data pins as well so that I can reprogram the board without having to open up the case and stress the wires connecting the keys to the ESP32.

Aside from that, it behaves exactly like the wired version. I’m not exactly sure what the normal use battery life is quite yet. I’ve had the board running for about a week now without charging, aside from making a few quick tweaks to the code.

If you’re interested in making your own, you can check out the wishlist for the parts used, and the GitHub repo, which has the files for the box, code used, and schematic for the hardware and images for the keycaps I used.

Two parts not on the wishlist are the common anode red/green LED and the switch, which were parts I had laying around in my parts bin, but you should be able to easily edit the size of the holes to match your parts.

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Amazing science from the winners of Astro Pi Mission Space Lab 2019–20

The team at Raspberry Pi and our partner ESA Education are pleased to announce the winning and highly commended Mission Space Lab teams of the 2019–20 European Astro Pi Challenge!

Mission Space Lab sees teams of young people across Europe design, create, and deploy experiments running on Astro Pi computers aboard the International Space Station. Their final task: analysing the experiments’ results and sending us scientific reports highlighting their methods, results, and conclusions.

One of the Astro Pi computers aboard the International Space Station

The science teams performed was truly impressive, and the reports teams sent us were of outstanding quality. A special round of applause to the teams for making the effort to coordinate writing their reports socially distant!

The Astro Pi jury has now selected the ten winning teams, as well as eight highly commended teams:

And our winners are…

Vidhya’s code from the UK aimed to answer the question of how a compass works on the ISS, using the Astro Pi computer’s magnetometer and data from the World Magnetic Model (WMM).

Unknown from Externato Cooperativo da Benedita, Portugal, aptly investigated whether influenza is transmissible on a spacecraft such as the ISS, using the Astro Pi hardware alongside a deep literature review.

Space Wombats from Institut d’Altafulla, Spain, used normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) analysis to identify burn scars from forest fires. They even managed to get results over Chernobyl!

Liberté from Catmose College, UK, set out to prove the Coriolis Effect by using Sobel filtering methods to identify the movement and direction of clouds.

Pardubice Pi from SPŠE a VOŠ Pardubice, Czech Republic, found areas of enormous vegetation loss by performing NDVI analysis on images taken from the Astro Pi and comparing this with historic images of the location.

NDVI conversion image by Pardubice Pi team – Astro Pi Mission Space Lab experiment — NDVI conversion image by Pardubice Pi team

Reforesting Entrepreneurs from Canterbury School of Gran Canaria, Spain, want to help solve the climate crisis by using NDVI analysis to identify locations where reforestation is possible.

1G5-Boys from Lycée Raynouard, France, innovatively conducted spectral analysis using Fast Fourier Transforms to study low-frequency vibrations of the ISS.

Cloud4 from Escola Secundária de Maria, Portugal, masterfully used a simplified static model and Fourier Analysis to detect atmospheric gravity waves (AGWs).

Cloud Wizzards from Primary School no. 48, Poland, scanned the sky to determine what percentage of the seas and oceans are covered by clouds.

Aguere Team 1 from IES Marina Cebrián, Spain, probed the behaviour of the magnetic field, acceleration, and temperature on the ISS by investigating disturbances, variations with latitude, and temporal changes.

Highly commended teams

Creative Coders, from the UK, decided to see how much of the Earth’s water is stored in clouds by analysing the pixels of each image of Earth their experiment collected.

Astro Jaslo from I Liceum Ogólnokształcące króla Stanisława Leszczyńskiego w Jaśle, Poland, used Reimann geometry to determine the angle between light from the sun that is perpendicular to the Astro Pi camera, and the line segment from the ISS to Earth’s centre.

Jesto from S.M.S Arduino I.C.Ivrea1, Italy, used a multitude of the Astro Pi computers’ capabilities to study NDVI, magnetic fields, and aerosol mapping.

BLOOMERS from Tudor Vianu National Highschool of Computer Science, Romania, investigated how algae blooms are affected by eutrophication in polluted areas.

AstroLorenzini from Liceo Statale C. Lorenzini, Italy used Kepler’s third law to determine the eccentricity, apogee, perigee, and mean tangential velocity of the ISS.

Photo of Italy, Calabria and Sicilia by AstroLorenzi team — Astro Pi Mission Space Lab experiment — Photo of Italy, Calabria and Sicilia (notice volcano Etna on the top right-hand corner) captured by the AstroLorenzi team

EasyPeasyCoding Verdala FutureAstronauts from Verdala International School & EasyPeasyCoding, Malta, utilised machine learning to differentiate between cloud types.

BHTeamEL from Branksome Hall, Canada, processed images using Y of YCbCr colour mode data to investigate the relationship between cloud type and luminescence.

Space Kludgers from Technology Club of Thrace, STETH, Greece, identified how atmospheric emissions correlate to population density, as well as using NDVI, ECCAD, and SEDAC to analyse the correlation of vegetation health and abundance with anthropogenic emissions.

The teams get a Q&A with astronaut Luca Parmitano

The prize for the winners and highly commended teams is the chance to pose their questions to ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano! The teams have been asked to record a question on video, which Luca will answer during a live stream on 3 September.

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano aboard the International Space Station

This Q&A event for the finalists will conclude this year’s European Astro Pi Challenge. Everyone on the Raspberry Pi and ESA Education teams congratulates this year’s participants on all their efforts.

It’s been a phenomenal year for the Astro Pi challenge: team performed some great science, and across Mission Space Lab and Mission Zero, an astronomical 16998 young people took part, from all ESA member states as well as Slovenia, Canada, and Malta.

Congratulations to everyone who took part!

Get excited for your next challenge!

This year’s European Astro Pi Challenge is almost over, and the next edition is just around the corner!

Compilation of photographs of Earth, taken by Astro Pi Izzy aboard the ISS — Compilation of photographs of Earth taken by an Astro Pi computer

So we invite school teachers, educators, students, and all young people who love coding and space science to join us from September onwards.

Follow our updates on astro-pi.org and social media to make sure you don’t miss any announcements. We will see you for next year’s European Astro Pi Challenge!

The post Amazing science from the winners of Astro Pi Mission Space Lab 2019–20 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

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Friday, July 31, 2020

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Get The MagPi magazine issue 96 — out today

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Get The MagPi magazine issue 96 — out today

Thursday, July 30, 2020

And our winners are…

Highly commended teams

The teams get a Q&A with astronaut Luca Parmitano

Get excited for your next challenge!

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