Embedded comes to the surface on the Freescale i.MX51 and Texas Instruments OMAP4430

I’m on the floor of Embedded World in Germany and it’s never been more apparent how User Experience (UX) and HMI technologies are critical to the success of medical device design. Properly implemented UX can make or break a product launch based on how easy and accessible the device functions are to the end user.

This was underscored a few minutes ago when the Director of Engineering for a major device manufacture stopped by our booth to look at our Telehealth Solution for device manufacturers. The design elements which stood out to him included the performance of the ARM Cortex A8 and A9 devices that we have the solution running on. We’re using Freescale i.MX51 and Texas Instruments OMAP4430 devices for different aspects of the design. They provide high performance with a low power envelop that can run 2D, 3D rendering with OPEN GL. We also support open standards development with QT Graphics, HTML 5, Adobe Flash and AIR technologies as well native C and C++.

QNX Home Health & Telemedicine Solution for Medical Device Manufacturers

He was also impressed by the intuitive UX design flow provided by the UX Experts at Teknision. They describe their philosophy such “that experience design is done with the understanding that the interface is the virtual embodiment of the brand. How an interface looks, its transitions and affordances, the sounds, its speed and functionality must all work together harmoniously to form a rewarding and memorable consumer experience.”

The Teknision team really bridges philosophy of design to living, breathing products that transform the user experience and provide any embedded project a critical competency that accelerates the overall embedded device process.

Finally, what impressed our Director of Engineering the most was the blistering 25 day design schedule in which we delivered this device from conception to production. I’ll post updates to this blog when the videos from the media start to show up.

Production digital instrument clusters

I was at Convergence a while back and Fujitsu was showing a very slick cluster in their booth. This cluster was developed by Visteon using QNX Neutrino RTOS running on the Fujitsu Jade. I am pleased to say that I now have managed to acquire two of these platforms and will be showing Range Rover and Jaguar clusters at our suite at CES in early January. If you want to come see them drop me a line.

RealVNC at the QNX Auto Summit

This week RealVNC joined us at the QNX Automotive Summit in Stuttgart. They demonstrated their VNC® Mobile Solution for Automotive and how it provides remote access and control of virtually any mobile device from the head unit in the car. It is going to be a very welcome addition to QNX CAR.

The VNC solution can automatically detect and control a mobile phone from the vehicle’s touch-screen as well as other input devices like steering wheel switches. It is very, very cool.

You can read the release and check out a video showcasing the solution here http://www.realvnc.com/company/news/realvnc-showcases-automotive-qnx-summit.html

QNX all over Convergence

OK – I am a bit late in posting this but I did want to mention all the places where folks we work closely with were demonstrating QNX. I already mentioned the digital instrument cluster on the new i.MX53 automotive reference board but QNX was in a number of other booths as well.

Elektrobit was showing the Audi A1 infotainment system that combines the best of QNX and Elektrobit technology. Fujitsu managed to get an actual production cluster from Visteon that has QNX running on their Jade SoC. TI had a suite where they were not only showing QNX CAR but also QNX booting on one of their yet to be announced processors.

All this on top of the launch of our new QNX CAR Corvette powered by the Freescale i.MX51 and a demo of the off-board speech recognition capability from Nuance in the QNX booth.

Another fine show!

Crowd sourcing with QNX CAR ala BMW and Freescale

Last week QNX hosted its annual Japan Technology Innovation Conference at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo. It was particularly special this year as we were able to celebrate the 30th anniversary of QNX along with our Japan customers.

We are pleased to report that this full day event which was supported by numerous partners was a resounding success. The conference this year records our largest attendance ever – 125 participants! With another 35 exhibiting partners & distributors, the venue was jam packed – as you can tell by the pictures.

A special mention goes out to the Freescale Japan team for the management and on-time delivery of teh live BMW x5 demo which went from car purchase to demo completion in a record 4 weeks! Even the Canadian Ambassador to Japan came by for a spin!

On behalf of the QNX Japan sales team, to all our partners who participated:

Arigato Gozaimashita!

QNX support for the new Freescale SABRE for Automotive platform

This week at Convergence QNX demonstrated a digital instrument cluster running on the new i.MX53 Smart Application Blueprint for Rapid Engineering platform for Automotive Infotainment. This is the new Freescale platform replaces the EVK and adds a very distinctive automotive flavour. It adds many automotive specific capabilities including multi-channel audio, multiple microphone inputs, a Sirius/XM radio module, camera input capability and a broadcast tuner module connector.

It is a very well thought out system and lays the groundwork for future automotive devices from Freescale. I’m happy to report that right now QNX is the only RTOS available for this new platform so if you want to check out what SABRE can do drop us a line.

Apple iPod out comes to QNX Neutrino on the Texas Instruments OMAP Platform for Automotive

My colleague Paul Leroux has done a great write up on our our new iPod Out solution for Automotive at On Q.

In addition to the great run down on Remote Terminal and Tethering I’d like to add that we’ve completed our initial deployment on an OMAP platform for automotive from Texas Instruments.

Customers and partners can obtain this solution by applying for and participating in the QNX CAR Program. Customers already participating in the QNX CAR program may update their previous platforms to a Texas instruments development environment by contacting their local sales representative.

You can also learn more about iPod out for QNX Neutrino RTOS from Andy Grcy in his presenation:Apple iPod out for QNX Neutrino RTOS

~Kroy

QNX wins Freescale Technology Forum best in show – again!`

I was at FTF India last week. It was quite an experience. We showed QNX CAR (on an i.MX51 EVK and not the Prius), smart meter on the i.MX25 and a demo that shows performance advantages inherent to a properly synchronized multi-threaded application on a multi-core processor (in this case the Freescale P2020).

We didn’t actually register a demo for best in show so imagine my surprise when I was informed that QNX won (as voted by attendees) again. This time, however, we won for the multi-core demo. FTF China is taking place this week in Shanghai. I wonder if we will sweep this year.

Renesas Electronics America and QNX hit the road

Renesas has invited QNX to participate in their Graphics Tech Days targeting a number of Tier 1 suppliers to the automotive industry in and around Detroit.

The events will run towards the end of July. QNX and Renesas will be showcasing the latest joint technology and plans for automotive going forward.

If you’re interested in the latest and greatest from Renesas and QNX let us know and we’ll add your company to the list.

EtherCAT, Power Architecture, real-time control – a picture is worth a thousand words

I mentioned earlier that we were working with Koenig on an industrial reference platform that we unveiled at Freescale Technology Forum. Well, we showed it and it was a very popular exhibit.

It combines EtherCAT master, EtherCAT slave, an inverted pendulum to demonstrate real-time control and QNX adaptive partitioning. The adaptive partitioning portion demonstrates how real-time control can be maintained even when a runaway application consumes all available CPU.

Rather than spend a thousand words describing the demo I thought I could send you to see a video that covers it off nicely.

Go to http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?nodeId=052577903689DC97F9, click on the industrial tab and check out the EtherCAT on Neutrino video.

OK – so technically it is not a picture.