embedded world 2024: Live Updates from the Show
Thousands of innovative, next-gen embedded solutions were demonstrated this week in Nuremberg, Germany, at embedded world 2024. Check out these reports from the show.
Update: April 11 at 05:00 PM
That’s a wrap for today! Thank you for tuning in to our daily updates. We’ve come across some incredibly innovative booths, and we’re excited to write about them in the next few days. Stay tuned for more, and we look forward to seeing you at electronica 2024!Update: April 11 at 9:20 AM
It is Student Day at embedded world 2024! Attending embedded world today? Visit the Elektor's booth (5-181) to chat with our staff engineers and editors. Pitch your article and product ideas. Bring your technical questions. Grab a magazine. Let's talk!Want to submit an article to Elektor's editorial team? Interested in pitching a book or product? Check out our Submissions page.
Update: April 10 at 6:15 PM — CJ Abate
Following months of competition, the 2024 STM32 Wireless Innovation Design Contest (hosted by STMicroelectronics and Elektor) wrapped up this evening at embedded world 2024. Live at the ST booth, winners were announced and honored: Cédric Jiminez from Chambéry, Alain Romaszewski from Amélie-les-Bains, and Balthazar Deliers from Sequedin. Congratulations to each of them for their dedication and ingenuity!Update: April 10 at 3:45 PM — Jean-François Simon
Here are some highlights from today’s news. First off, my visit to the Batronix booth took me by surprise. I’ve always known them as a distributor of testing and measurement gear, but I was taken aback to discover they’re launching their own oscilloscope, named Magnova. This model introduces a novel approach by reimagining the user interface. It has a large 15-inch Full HD touchscreen display, four rotary encoders and… that’s pretty much it!. Besides those, it includes a power button, a run/stop button, and a single-shot button. This design results in a sleek appearance, especially with the BNC connectors located on the side:
This device made its debut at Embedded World. For more details, check out Batronix’s dedicated webpage. The device is expected to hit the market in the coming weeks. While its commercial success remains to be seen, its very nice to see some innovation there. Batronix emphasizes several key attributes: an entirely new user interface, the large matte touchscreen, silent operation due to passive cooling, advanced software with a wide range of built-in decoders at no additional charge, good analog capabilities, a 12-bit ADC, 4 x 1 GSa/s sampling rate, and three bandwidth options ranging from 100 to 350 MHz.
By the way, I came across a housing and enclosure manufacturer named Daub CNC. Hammond is the go-to for many when it comes to encasing electronics projects, but it's refreshing to see other options out there. Daub specializes in aluminum enclosures, front panels, and 19" rackmount hardware, though they also offer a selection of plastic enclosures. They seem like an intriguing option that could be worth adding to my roster of suppliers…
Moving on, I encountered our partners from Sensepeek, known for selling oscilloscope probes and accessories that simplify the process of taking measurements on electronic boards by holding the probes in place to free your hands. Elektor already carries their line, and I found it amusing that the amiable team at the booth remembered very well a visit from my colleagues last year. It's always pleasant to experience such a welcoming atmosphere at trade shows and to share some camaraderie with the booth neighbors!
Speaking about oscilloscope probes, that leads me to PMK, a german manufacturer which specializes in the manufacturing of a wide range of high-end probing solutions including differential high voltage probes, optically isolated high voltage probes, temperature-resistant probes, and precise broadband AC current transformers. These products are designed for applications in testing, debugging, design validation, and under extreme environmental conditions. That’s great and all, but looking at their pricing, I see that they’re out of my league. Oh well, I’ll find another solution!
I also discovered Toellner, a manufacturer of high-end programmable power supplies. They also make 4-quadrant amplifiers, which can both source and sink current, regardless of polarity; in short, a power supply and DC load integrated into a single instrument. These look to be very good quality and have very professional-looking front panels. I quickly escaped before being tempted (at least, before asking the price), knowing that I already have far too many power supplies in my lab anyway.
Shifting focus back to measurement tools again, I got the opportunity to examine one of Siglent's newest offerings, the SDS824X HD oscilloscope. It features a bandwidth of 200 MHz, a maximum sample rate of 2 GSa/s, 12-bit A/D converters, an impressive array of measurement and math capabilities, options for a 25 MHz arbitrary waveform generator, as well as included multi-protocol decoding. Sounds very good!
There are also new models in the Rigol range that use the same form factor as the DHO800 which has itself been in the news a lot lately. You either love it or hate it (personally, glossy screens tend to irritate me). If you like your DHO800 and don't have much room in your lab, the DM 858 multimeter and DG 852 Pro generator may be options to consider.
Update: April 10 at 2:35 PM — CJ Abate
We recorded Elektor Lab Talk #17 today at embedded world in Nuremberg, Germany. Jens Nickel (Editor in Chief, Elektor) and Brian Tristam Williams (Editor, Elektor) were joined by Saad Imtiaz (Sr Engineer, Elektor), Jean-Francois Simon (Engineer, Elektor), Anant Raj Gupta (Espressif), and Pedro Minatel (Espressif). Watch the recording.Update: April 10 at 9:45 AM — CJ Abate
Day 2 at embedded world 2024 begins! A few items to add to your agenda:- Elektor Lab Talk #17: At 11:00 AM (Berlin), Elektor engineers and editors will stream a live episode of Elektor Lab Talk from embedded world 2024. Watch the episode to see Jens Nickel (Editor in Chief), Brian Tristam Williams (Editor), Saad Imtaiz (Sr Engineer), and Jean-Francois Simon (Engineer) talk about many of the innovative technologies on display at the show. They'll also welcome a few guests, give away some prizes, and talk about interesting projects from recent and upcoming editions of ElektorMag. Register now to add the show to your calendar!
- STM32 Wireless Innovation Contest Winners: Join Elektor at the STMicroelectronics booth (4A-148) at 4:30 today for the announcement of the top three winners of the STM32 Wireless Innovation Contest. €5000 in prizes are up for grabs. Check out all the nominated projects on the Contest page.
- Interviews: Elektor's editorial team will be interviewing engineers and innovators all day from the show floor. Check out the Elektor Industry YouTube channel for all the interviews. We're scheduled to chat with Beagleboard, Sunnyway, Microaware, and more!
Update: April 9 at 17:57 — Brian Tristam Williams
With the first day of Embedded World 2024 almost behind us, there’s been so much to see between chatting to hundreds of visitors to our stand, meeting with other exhibitors, as well as polishing up the next editions of Elektor Mag. I’m starting to worry that there won’t be enough time get to all the exhibitors I want to see. Our friends at Raspberry Pi are here, as are Texas Instruments and Microchip, all upcoming highlights on my “to visit” list. Plus some smaller exhibitors with some pleasantly surprising new gadgets. More on those tomorrow!For video, we’re also trying out the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 gimbal camera, and you will no doubt see some smooth roaming videos from us, from the floor, on our social media channels.
Until tomorrow, stay Elektorized!
Update: April 9 at 16:52 — Jean-François Simon
This year is my first time at the show. This is exciting; of course I had seen lists of exhibitors before attending, but it’s hard to realize the size of it all before being there. It’s HUGE! Seven halls packed with hundreds of booths of all sizes. At first it’s hard to find your way around; fortunately the map turned out to be quite usable. I had to select some companies to meet, as it would be impossible to cover them all. While doing so, I had great conversations, thanks everyone for the great energy there! And there were quite a few very interesting new products shown too. Here is a deliberately reduced selection of what I have seen.
Pico Technology, based in England and famous for their range of USB oscilloscopes and test instruments, were proudly displaying the latest model, the PicoScope 6428-E-D, which is the top of the 6000 range. These instruments feature up to 12 bits of vertical resolution, up to 3 GHz bandwidth, and sampling rates ranging from 5 GS/s to a maximum of 10 GS/s. These oscilloscopes are designed for precision and performance, supporting up to 16 digital MSO channels, advanced triggers, and extensive software and decoding options, making them suitable for detailed signal integrity analysis and a broad array of complex measurement tasks. They were kind enough to show me a little demo, but with a retail price of around €20,000, this is not a scope for the faint of heart. For more general uses though, there are other models with great performance, under €1,000, in the PicoScope 2000 and 3000 ranges.
Moving along, I asked Lattice if they had new affordable and interesting dongles for evaluation purposes, such as the ICEStick that they’ve been producing for a few years now. In fact, they told me that at the moment they mostly focused on the development of higher-end products, such as the Lattice Avant. They had a very nice demo which was aggregating data from several sensors: a camera for on-board image recognition, a LiDAR, a RADAR, etc., as you can see below
At the same booth, I met a German company called Citrobits, which specializes in providing FPGA-based modules and software solutions for embedded systems. Their focus on low-level optimizations allows them to extract maximum performance from devices. They use, of course, Lattice FPGAs for that! In the example shown, they were able to stitch together, in real time, four HD video streams coming from four cameras, to provide a full 360° field of view. Their modules can be used for a variety of applications and they also provide electronic design consulting services.
I also had a chance to have a chat with Mike Engelhardt from Qorvo, it was really nice to meet him in person! He is a very kind and interesting man and I was lucky that he was available for a few minutes. He explained how QSPICE compares with the world-famous LTSPICE that Mike is known to have designed many years ago. In short, QSPICE is much faster, uses modern CPU optimizations and is all in all a better tool for all use cases, including for beginners. I really should give it a try when I’m back at my lab.
Finally, I met with Cologne Chip, known for being one of the few EU-based FPGA manufacturers. I was surprised to learn that the silicon die itself is made in a German “fab”! One of the interesting features of the GateMate family is scalability. The GateMate A1 and A2 are available now, and the A4 will be available shortly. They are all pin compatible with each other, that means you can prototype your project with a GateMate A1 or A2 and then move to the A4 when it becomes available, with no modifications to your layout. They offer a good performance-price ratio and the software toolchain is open-source, too. There are a few dev-boards available, including an affordable one at Olimex.
Of course I also met many other companies, but I will leave them aside to report on them later! That was an intense first day, see you tomorrow!
Update: April 9 at 3:55 PM — CJ Abate
With hundreds of booths and tons of new solutions on display at embedded world 2024, I can't possibly cover everything. But here are a few interesting things that caught my attention today.- I visited our friends at Espressif. The Espressif Guest-Edited edition of ElektorMag is front and center. Grab a copy at their booth or ours. A few Espressif engineers will join our live Lab Talk from the show on April 10 at 11 AM (Berlin). You can register for free and add it to your calendar.
- Arm announced a new NPU for the edge, the Ethos-U85, which is said to achieve a fourfold increase in performance and a 20% improvement in power efficiency over its predecessor, expanding its capabilities from 128 to 2048 MAC units (4 TOPs at 1GHz). "It provides support for AI frameworks such as TensorFlow Lite and PyTorch," Arm notes.
- Embedded tech for the automotive industry is, once again, a hot topic at the embedded world show. This week, our team will take a close look at many of the demos at the show, and we'll investigate some of the various embedded automotive applications on display. Microchip Technology has a few interfering demos on hand, including a two-wheeler instrument cluster touchscreen, an EV charging station, and a hands-off-detection steering wheel with heating.
Update: April 9 at 9:08 AM — CJ Abate
Elektor engineers and editors are working at the booth. Here's Senior Editor Roberto Armani constructing an Elektor Sand Clock Kit. Stop by to check it out. In addition to the Sand Clock, we've got several other products on display, such as Elektor Dual DC LISN (150 kHz - 200 MHz) and the Elektor One-Armed Bandit classic circuit.Update: April 9 at 6:39 AM — CJ Abate
Good morning! Elektor's booth (5-181) is ready to go. We look forward to seeing everyone at the show today. Stop by to chat with our engineers and editors and to check out some of our magazines, books, and kits.We cover the following topics and much more:
- programming ESP32-CAM
- an introduction to sound processing
- a smart object counter
- development boards for industrial apps
More to come!
