This was my first year at Embedded World 2017 in Nurnberg, Germany, and compared to the intimate educational shows I usually attend, it basically felt like Las Vegas. It was such sensory overload that all I saw the entire first day was basically bright colors and lots of free coffee offered by private waitresses to lure you into various booths (yes, private waitresses). Without a clear mission on day one, I just couldn’t make sense of the onslaught of information.
But after taking the evening to digest my day 1 experience (along with ample German sausages), I returned with a singular focus on day 2. As the Pmod Product Manager, I made it my mission to go on a bit of a Pmod scavenger hunt. How many booths and companies were using Pmods? The answer…a lot! Here are some highlights.
Pmod at the Arrow booth
TE Connectivity specializes in sensors for measuring temperature, humidity, position, pressure, and more. Pmods are a perfect way to evaluate these sensors! This nice display was found at the Arrow Electronics booth, showing TE designed Pmods along with a Pmod compatible ARM Cortex-M3 eval board from Analog Devices. All of these TE Pmods follow the Digilent I2C protocol and have female ports on the back for use in daisy chaining Pmods together. This is a great way to use multiple Pmods when you only have one Pmod Port available, such as on the ADICUP360 pictured here.
Pmod at the Renesas booth
Pictured here is the SK-S7G2 starter kit from Renesas, boasting Pmod and Arduino expansion with Ethernet, Bluetooth and USB connectivity for IoT applications. A game is always a great starter demo for a starter kit and I like what they did here, but with two Pmod ports on board, they could have saved time with the Digilent Pmod JSTK2 instead of rigging up their own adapter! The Pmod JSTK2 even comes with 3D files for printing your own nunchuck case. Nevertheless, we love the demo and the use of Pmod Ports.
Pmod at the Maxim Integrated booth
Maxim Integrated makes many mixed signal and analog Pmods for accelerating FPGA system development. Here they are showcasing the MAX14914 Pmod for evaluating the MAX14914 high-side/push-pull driver that operates as both an industrial digital output (DO) and an industrial digital input (DI). It is being used with one of their USB to Pmod adapter boards that runs with the Munich GUI software for communication. If you’re interested in analog Pmods, check out their Analog Essentials Collection!
Pmod at the Avnet booth
One of my favorite displays of Pmod at Embedded World 2017, Avnet has brought Pmod to their Visible Things platform. Look at all those Pmod Ports! Targeting a wide range of industrial markets, Visible Things is a highly flexible and comprehensive evaluation and development platform for edge-to-enterprise IoT projects. The Pmod itself is showing off reprogrammable flash and secure end-to-end Bluetooth communication, both of which the Avnet folks claim as “world firsts.” They were also showing their LoraWAN Pmod, pictured below.
Pmod at Qualcomm booth
I didn’t exactly expect to see a Pmod on the Qualcomm wall, but there it was! Designed by Longsys and powered by AllJoyn software, this Pmod uses the GT202 “Internet of Everything” module designed to add full-featured Wi-Fi to a wide variety of products. Together, the Renesas board and Longsys Pmod make the Renesas Wi-Fi Cloud Connectivity Kit for sensor based IoT solutions. Many of Digilent’s sensor Pmods would go great with this board!
It was really fun to walk around and see in person how many different places around the world the Digilent Pmod spec is used. What’s listed above are just a few of the many examples that were displayed. From industrial applications, to analog, to reprogrammable flash, to IoT and secure communication (and more), it was great to see the embedded world making use of the utility and flexibility of the Pmod Standard.
For any questions or comments, visit the Digilent Forum or post in the comment section below!
