With 1017 exhibitors, embedded world 2017 grew by 8% in terms of both exhibitor numbers and exhibition space. At just over 30,000, visitor numbers remained at the previous year's level. "With these results, the 15th embedded world showed that it is definitely the number 1 in the international embedded industry," summarizes Richard Krowoza, Member of the Management Board at NürnbergMesse.

The 'embedded world Conference' and 'electronic displays Conference', which took place at the same time, were also convincing: 1796 experts from all over the world came to Nuremberg for professional dialog and knowledge transfer - an increase of 8%.

One of the major topics was the IoT: Congatec, for example, presented a best-practice design solution for the simple orchestration of wireless sensor networks. It is based on the new, application-ready cloud API for IoT gateways, which can be used to integrate local sensor networks of all kinds into cloud solutions. The main software components of the best practice solution are the various Cloud API function modules as well as the demo and test modules for operator-independent IoT clouds. "Every intelligent sensor network has its own individual requirements. Heterogeneous sensor networks are often required and there are also many different database implementations in IoT clouds. At the edge of the IoT, we can manage these heterogeneous bidirectional requirements by centrally managing the local smart sensor networks and IoT edge gateways. Our application-ready 'Congatec Cloud API' for IoT gateways fulfills precisely this requirement," explains Christian Eder, Director Marketing at Congatec.

Concrete solutions

The start-up Aconno presented a development board for the development of IoT prototypes. The ACD52832 has a large number of sensors, actuators, switches and an ePaper display. This should enable software developers without hardware knowledge to develop prototypes quickly and quickly to market maturity and then bring them into series production via a modular system with suitable Bluetooth modules.

The cost-optimized SMARC 2.0 modules 'MSC SM2S-AL', which MSC Technologies presented at the trade fair, are designed for energy-efficient applications in the IoT or in automation, for example. The module family in the short-size format of 82 mm × 50 mm integrates the latest Intel Atom processor technology E3900 or alternatively Pentium and Ce-leron processors (Apollo Lake). Individual variants are available for the industrial temperature range from -40 to +85 °C. A development platform and an immediately executable starter kit are available for the evaluation and rapid design-in of the modules.

Chip increases security

A major obstacle for the IoT is the security aspect. Texas Instruments addressed this issue by announcing the Wi-Fi chips SimpleLink Wi-Fi Wireless MCU CC3220 as an extension of the SimpleLink MCU portfolio launched at embedded world. The products are based on a new architecture with two spatially separated processing environments on one chip. Security features such as secure memory, cloning protection, secure boot and network security are embedded in the components. This enables developers to protect IoT devices against the theft of intellectual property and data as well as other risks without having to resort to an external security MCU or a separate security element.