Beer and chocolates on offer at Embedded World

The majority of the demos portray connecting different devices using different methods of connectivity. The interactive demos of ‘SILICA’s Embedded experience’ will provide an interesting, fun and informative display that will incorporate boards and solutions from Analog Devices, Freescale, Infineon, Maxim Integrated, Microchip, NXP, ON Semiconductor, Renesas, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Xilinx.

One of the interactive demos implements a food machine that provides visitors with pieces of chocolate and is built around a delta-robot. Showcasing parts from several SILICA vendors including Analog Devices, Infineon, NXP, ON Semiconductor, Texas Instruments and Xilinx, visitors can order different chocolate types via NFC tags or via a SILICA smartphone app. The demo covers typical industrial applications such as motor control, robotics, machine vision, and near field communication. The heart of the demo will be a Xilinx Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC on Avnet's popular ZedBoard.

An interactive demo from ArchiTech enables flagging visitors to order a welcome cup of coffee. In the demo, ArchiTech provides a solutions-oriented development ecosystem including a portfolio of boards created in collaboration with key vendors together with Board Support Packages (BSPs), software drivers and training. Tablets access a web application across a private 3G link to a Tibidabo board.

This board acts as both a web server and barista display showing that, for example, a cappuccino has been ordered. The refreshment is then duly served to the visitor by the barista. This demo will also feature NFC sensor tags from Texas Instruments that will allow visitors to monitor the temperature of their drinks through a dedicated App.

Maxim Integrated’s beer mug factory demo showcases the principles behind the Industry 4.0 initiative. The idea with Industry 4.0 is that custom components are produced in a fully automated fashion. Production from inception to delivery will be based on communications between the parts to be created, the sensors, and the local controllers of that assembly line.

Maxim uses nine of its reference designs to create a custom beer mug factory that starts with a stock of plain Bavarian beer mugs customised with a beer coupon, a Maxim memento token, and the option to print an individual message or signature to provide visitors with a unique souvenir.

The Micro PLC platform is the brains of the beer mug factory and sequences the entire production based on inputs received by the different sensor systems embedded within the assembly line. Based on a standard 32-bit microprocessor, it can process and interface with a total of 25 I/O channels.