Home display
Specialised displays for the smart homes
Even if we can control the smart home network with smart phones or tablets, many players are offering a home display. In some cases a home display is an obligation when associated with a Smart Meter in order to inform people about their power consumption. Such Home displays will allow control of the entire smart home incorporating touch screen functions and in the future, low cost gesture recognition. Like consumer tablets, this wall unit could run on a popular operating system such as Android. However, Home Displays or professional tablets of this kind must be available for a period of several years. New FPGA technologies like SoC with the combination of powerful microcontrollers and FPGA will keep the effort and expense involved in development under control. Although the power consumption of such professional, wall-mounted tablets limits their capacity for mobile use, it allows them to interface to a number of systems using different network standards.
Security systems
Protection against intrusion, fire, flood, etc.
The usual meaning of security is to protect the house against external intrusion but more and more insurance companies are requesting systems that can prevent from or alert to accidental fire or flood. Again those sensors will not only warn the people inside the house with an alarm but could also get connected to the network to make sure all relevant services and people are informed. For intrusion detection cameras are required in a large number of security applications. For example, EBV Elektronik helps its customers to swiftly implement more straightforward camera applications by offering not only the relevant microcontrollers and FPGAs but also a complete system with CMOS sensor and communications solutions. Camera modules in which the CMOS sensor and optics are perfectly harmonised and ready-assembled are also offered in specific cases. This can also include wide-angle cameras to be implemented in a passive infrared (PIR) sensor, to confirm the intrusion. The fact that people require increasing security in their individual environments means there is growing demand for security systems. Security cameras in and around the home are a good example of this, as their potential is being expanded by new technology. Security cameras are either connected to a monitoring centre via USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet or another high-speed interface, or they function as so-called 'smart cams', where the data pre-processing takes place in the camera itself. Just like in the field of professional studio technology, these smart cams must have suitable interfaces to the video sensors and monitoring computer, as well as the capacity to encode data at the highest possible compression rates. Many smart cams are also capable of independently analysing the images using classification algorithms. For example, if a person walks into the frame, modern smart cams can classify the person in real time and report the event to the monitoring centre along with the live video data. With their combination of diverse interfaces and high-performance video analysis, for which many software elements are already available in libraries, FPGAs and heterogeneous computing platforms are perfect for use in security camera applications.
Battery power tools
Longer lifetime and lighter devices
Although there are very affordable microcontrollers that are usually used to control a motor, the selection of the right computing platform can make a difference when taking into account the overall system costs of motor control in a rechargeable tool, such as a chainsaw. For example with an FPGA and intelligent algorithms, it is possible to reduce overall cost, e.g. use less magnetic in a motor, reduce cost on power electronics and filters as well as saving on battery cost due to higher efficiency.