Embedded Systems Conference 2015 Schedule – May 6-7, 2015

The Embedded Systems Conference took the name “Design West” for a couple of years, but this year, there’s no mention of Design West, and the Embedded System Conference 2015 will take place in Boston, MA, US on May 6-7, 2015. The 2-day event will have a demo hall, and well as sessions divided into 8 tracks:

• Connected Devices and the IoT
• Embedded Software Design
• Hardware: Design, I/O and Interfacing
• Prototyping
• Embedded Systems Design
• Software: Design, Languages, & Quality
• Fantastical Theater
• Teardowns

The full schedule has now been posted, and I’ll build a virtual schedule with some of the sessions provided.

Wednesday May 6, 2015

• 8:00 – 8:45 – Understanding Google/Nest Thread by Michael Anderson, Chief Scientist, The PTR Group, Inc.

The IoT will live or die based on its connectivity. In examining existing wireless protocols, Google/Nest found most of them lacking. In order to address the needs for low-power wireless communications in the home, Thread was created. Thread is an implementation of an IEEE 802.15.4 mesh-based network that provides IP connectivity using existing radio silicon. Come to this session to get the latest information on Thread, its capabilities and characteristics and how you can use Thread in your next IoT device.

• 9:00 – 9:45 – Best Practices for Designing Hardware APIs by Matt Haines, Communications Manager, Electric Imp

We are rapidly heading toward a world in which most of the objects we interact with on a daily basis will be connected to the Internet. What does this world look like, and how do we design Connected Things that will live in this world? This presentation will address the issue of API design; a topic often talked about in web development but just as often overlooked in conversations about the IoT. What should we be thinking about when we’re designing an API for a connected product? Why do our connected products even need APIs? What strategies and best practices can we apply from web API design?

• 10:00 – 10:45 – Choosing Between Multicore CPU, GPU & FPGA Technology for Vision Applications by Julianne Kline, Systems Engineer, National Instruments

FPGA, GPU, and multi-core CPU processing will be compared and contrasted. Examples will be highlighted on when customers may want to use one technology over the other. A heavier focus will be placed on FPGA technology. This presentation will discuss recommendations for when to integrate FPGA technology into vision applications, such as for image pre-processing, high-speed control, or processing parallelism. Types of algorithms well-suited to FPGA technology will also be discussed, and resources for accessing existing FPGA IP will be provided.

• 11:00 – 11:45 – Mob Programming for Embedded Systems Software by Nancy Van Schooenderwoert, President, Lean-Agile Partners, Inc.

Mob Programming is a practice where a whole software team works together, at one computer, one line of code at a time, outperforming their previous work significantly in both quality and volume. Impossible? Maybe except for the teams actually doing it now. One team in California began in 2011, and it’s been spreading since. This session tells the story of the first embedded systems teams to use MobProgramming.This session is a double experience report plus a demo: Speaker Simon Clements-Hawes gives his observations as an embedded systems team member starting to use MobProgramming, and Nancy describes how to get a team started in MobProgramming. Thru video clips, the team’s coding of a LeanKit interrogator in C# will be shown using Mob Programming of course!

• 14:00 – 14:45 – Is There an Arduino Debugger in the House? by Guido Bonelli, President, Innovative Electronic Solutions LLC

Arduino development and the hardware debugging landscape OR THE LACK THEREOF! In this session you will delve into the Arduino developer’s tool chain from a hardware perspective. What hardware debugging solutions are currently available and how Dr.Duino the Arduino hardware debugger can reduce your debugging pain. We shall discuss the blissful highs of easy firmware development on a standard platform while then exploring the lowliest of lows when debugging the hardware/firmware interactions.

• 15:00 – 15:45 – ARMv8 Kernel Internals by Arun Thomas, Senior Principal Engineer, BAE Systems

This talk is meant to be a quick start guide for embedded developers who are new to the ARMv8 architecture. I will discuss how operating systems interface with the 64-bit ARMv8 architecture and will cover the ARMv8 specific kernel internals of Linux and FreeBSD. I will discuss how booting, memory management, exceptions, and interrupts work using examples drawn from the kernel source.

Thursday May 7, 2015

• 08:00 – 08:45 – Open Source Software: Tips for Avoiding Licensing Surprises by Jason Kunze, Attorney, Nixon Peabody LLP

A practical, quick hitting summary of the key considerations that anyone developing, purchasing or licensing software should consider. After a brief discussion of legal basics, practical concerns relating to open source software will be explained through the lens of actual cases in this developing area of law. The participant will gain a general understanding of:

1. The intellectual property rights that may attach to software
2. The competing ideologies behind open source software and how this drives licensing terms
3. Some of the leading open source software licenses and their relative level of restrictions
4. Pitfalls to recognize and avoid in relation to open source software

• 09:00 – 09:45 – How NOT To Do Embedded Development! Practical Lessons From Real Projects That Almost Went Off A Cliff by Dave Nadler, President, Nadler & Associates

In an interactive (Socratic) discussion, we’ll review some real-world projects in trouble and how they were sorted. Projects include an automated toll-collection system, an aircraft collision-avoidance system (cool movie!), a manufacturing instrumentation product, and an integrated flight computer. We’ll cover a variety of coding and testing techniques used to get these projects on track.

• 10:00 – 10:45 – Designing for the IoT with Lower Power and Way More Intelligence by Dana Myers, Channel Marketing Manager, Wireless Connectivity Solutions, Texas Instruments

As the Internet of Things (IoT) has changed the way we live, do business and make decisions, it has also impacted engineers’ designs. This presentation will address the benefits and challenges of designing for the IoT in regards to low-power, integration and performance. This will let engineers weigh the tradeoffs of each connectivity architecture and provide a quick pathway to begin designing their products for the fast-growing IoT.

• 11:00 – 11:45 – Squeezing the Most Out of Battery Life using ARM Cortex-M Processors by Jacob Beningo, Principal Consultant, Beningo Engineering

The proliferation of mobile devices has led to the need of squeezing every last micro-amp-hour out of batteries. Minimizing the energy profile of a micro-controller is not always straight forward. A combination of sleep modes, peripheral control and other techniques can be used to maximize battery life. In this session, strategies for optimizing micro-controller energy profiles will be examined which will extend battery life while maintaining the integrity of the system. The techniques will be demonstrated on an ARM Cortex-M processor.

• 14:00 – 14:45 – Network Insecurity: Simple Hacks of ARM Cortex-M Devices by Jonny Doin, CEO, Grid Vortex Systems

The IoT is a very new domain of a very old activity: Embedded Systems Design, with a twist: connection to the most toxic of environments, the Internet. One of the main concerns of the IoT is how to cope with the massive amount of unanticipated network traffic and problems. Malformed packets, corrupted messages, specifically targeted attacks, buffer overflow exploits, spoofing, stuxnet emulation messages, denial of service, fake OTAP, and other exploits and attacks can transform your IoT devices into something you did not design for. This situation demands several good practices and programming concerns regarding network safety and security into even the smallest of things. Buffer integrity checks, full parameters domain verification, message authentication, data path integrity verification, and crypto security are among the needed elements of a safe and secure IoT system, and can be implemented on nearly any Embedded System. Examples of simple attacks on ARM Cortex-M devices will be presented, including RET2ZP and buffer attacks.

• 15:00 – 15:45 – RTOS Smackdown: 7 RTOSes in 45 Minutes! by 7 speakers

There are a lot of Real Time Operating System (RTOS) options out there. Which one is right for your embedded system? Do you even need an RTOS at all? In this feisty presentation, one industry expert will argue that an RTOS is superfluous to requirements, while another will contend that an RTOS is an invaluable, “must-have” asset, even if your embedded application performs only a handful of tasks. After the dust dies down, proponents of seven of the leanest, meanest, coolest, hottest contenders in the RTOS multi-universe will take it in turns to explain why their RTOS is the bestest of the best.

If you’d like to attend the conference you can register online. Access to the demo hall is free, unless you come without registration, in which case you’d have to pay $75 for entry. A pass is required for the full conference and access to sessions with the following pricing:

• SUPER EARLY BIRD (Ends January 30) – $799
• EARLY BIRD (Ends March 6) – $949
• ADVANCED (Ends May 1) – $1,149
• REGULAR/ONSITE – $1,299

Seven vendors’ sponsored sessions can be attended with a free “demo hall” registration.

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