Who? What? Why? Where? When? and How?
Football, motor racing and a famous throne
Steve Rogerson’s round-up of last month’s news and events, including some that may have slipped under the radar
E
mbedded World in Nuremberg was as usual a mix of a busy schedule with good German beer. There was also a fair bit of unintentional humour, as can be seen from the two pictures on this page. I though was smiling at the Mitsubishi Electric press conference when Masaki
Kakizaki was very quick to stress how much the company’s new displays were aimed at industrial and medical applications rather than for consumers, and then spent time explaining how good their motion improvement technology was for watching football matches. Football
fans in factories and hospitals all over the world will be happy.
The other big event for me in the past month was Olympus, the title of this year’s annual British science-fiction convention, which was held over the Easter weekend at a hotel near Heathrow. This was a pretty exhausting event for me, as I was on the committee and we had nearly 1400 people to look after, but most people seemed to have a good time and I got a moment of geeky pleasure when I got to sit in the Iron Throne from the TV series Game of Thrones. The throne had been lent to us by Sky.
Now, I know some people think science-fiction fans a little sad, but many of you, like me, are also fans of football, and I think a new level of sadness dropped into my inbox from American tasteless lager Budweiser (not to be confused with the Czech version Budvar, which is actually a nice beer). There is now a mobile phone app that is activated from special Budweiser beer mats and sends a 3D image of the FA Cup to your phone, not the match but the cup itself. According to Budweiser’s European marketing director Ian Newell, this will “bring the famous trophy closer to the fans”. Well, actually it won’t.
Lynuxworks was not really going for the minimalist approach when it came to stand decoration at Embedded World, though visitors on the first day could have been forgiven for thinking so. Apparently, the graphics that had been planned took a little longer than expected, though they did make an appearance later. Meanwhile, the company was enjoying stand traffic from those just curious to know what it actually was they were doing as they couldn’t tell from a casual glance. Maybe they have hit on a good idea, though I am not sure that a hall full of blank displays would create the necessary ambience for such an event.
For those not into football, a holiday in May to avoid the FA Cup Final might be a good plan, and can I suggest San Francisco as a destination, in particular the famous Golden Gate Bridge, which is set to be wired up with accelerometers by composer Bill Fontana? The electronic devices will be measuring the structure’s vibrations to create a novel musical sound. For those planning on imitating the idea on a building closer to home, then you should know he recommends Bruel & Kjaer’s type 2635 charge amplifiers.
Sports fans are also probably enjoying the new Grand Prix season, but one automotive team already has a cup in the bag. Stand up the Spark team from the
The sight of a real Indy Car was proving an attraction at Embedded World for Mouser as delegates gathered to see the technology, not, of course, the two women handing out leaflets. “The women are just to make sure people’s eyes are looking in the right direction,” explained Mouser’s Graham Maggs. This didn’t seem to work on the guy in the background, who seemed more interested in doing a bit of filing – obviously not a motor sport fan. The leaflet was plugging a competition to win a trip to see an Indy Car race in the USA; I entered, but have not heard anything. Sigh! As to why, Maggs explained: “Our CEO and president is a racing enthusiast. He races Porsches in Texas.” I bet he doesn’t beat them.
Technical University of Iasi in Romania. They have won the EMEA Freescale Cup Challenge, a global competition for students to build, programme and race an intelligent car. More than 30 teams participated in the finals in Prague in early April. They, of course, had to use one of Freescale’s Qorriva microcontrollers to power it. The victors now head for Texas in June to compete against winners from other regions. I’ll try to remember to let you know who triumphs later in the year.
Open VPX to be highlight of military electronics conference T
he advantages of Open VPX in military systems will be highlighted in one of the main talks at the upcoming MAE military and aerospace electronics conference. To be held in Reading on 22 May 2012, MAE is the UK's only dedicated event on embedded computing and integrated electronics for military, defence and aerospace applications.
The talk by Philip Morris, director and chief technologist of Mercury Computer
42 April 2012
Systems, will explain how Open VPX architectures support multiple planes of very high bandwidth data communications across a range of switch fabrics and protocols. This level of bandwidth can support, in a balanced and efficient fashion, very high levels of processing power.
The Open VPX standard also
incorporates support for advanced cooling techniques for the electronics within a subsystem. This allows implementations
Components in Electronics
with new generations of powerful, but heat intensive, processor technologies to be used in subsystems sized for deployment on military platforms. The conference will be opened by Merfyn Lloyd, science advisor to the chief of materiel (land) at the MoD DE&S, who will talk in his keynote presentation about the open systems architecture for the land domain.
The one-day event will contain a two- stream technical conference and associated
exhibition. It will be held at the Royal Berkshire Conference Centre, part of the Madejski Stadium, home of Championship football club Reading.
Delegates attending MAE will be able to view demonstrations of the very latest software and hardware products on the market as well as meet and network with industry peers and VIPs. Anyone wishing to register for the event should visit
www.mae-show.com to register online
www.cieonline.co.uk
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