A Day in the Life: Embedded World 2024
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of attending Embedded World in Nuremberg for the first time. Folks from across our company had been busy leading into the event, making final touches on our booth and practicing their speaking sessions. Beyond that, even more of us were involved in preparations for the announcement of our xG26 family of Wireless SoCs and MCUs. Seeing everything come together as we approached the booth in the Nuremberg Convention Center was very exciting. In this blog, I’ll share a few highlights from my perspective as a first-timer.
Ann Olivo, Jacey Zuniga, Alisha Perkins, and John Dixon. Day 1, entering the show.
The entire Silabs team ready for the week!
Daniel Cooley, Garrett Burnett, and John Dixon huddle during Day 1 to review media interviews and customer meetings
Day 1 kicked off with a flurry of interest in our five in-booth demo stations. Our Machine Learning demo showcased our ultra-low power solution for data, audio, and vision applications. We showed off a few neat applications, like box drop detection, audio keyword detection, and our very-popular Pac-Man game. Our team also delivered four presentations during the conference programming. Embedded and edge AI dominated across the show floor and in the conference programing as well. Javier Elenes, Distinguished Engineer, delivered an exciting case study, which looked at enabling voice control on battery-powered appliances using an embedded, cloud-free ML solution. Later on, Tamas Daranyi, Senior Product Manager – AI/ML, spoke about wireless sensing and how to develop motion detection applications on the edge. As leaders in the wireless connectivity space, we also shared our expertise in these areas during the conference. In the morning, Julien Tiron, Applications Engineering Manager, presented a deep dive on the Matter bridge architecture and in the afternoon, Lucie Labadie, Applications Engineer, delivered an analysis of Amazon Sidewalk performance.
Marton Komancsik and Lucie Labadie with our popular Machine Learning demo.
The second day was all about Bluetooth – Silicon Labs delivered more day-two sessions on Bluetooth than any other company. Mikko Savolainen, Marketing Director – I&C, spoke about the new Bluetooth Mesh enhancements, including OTA firmware updates and remote provisioning, and the new industrial and commercial applications these features enable. Petteri Paatsila, Senior Product Marketing Manager, discussed Bluetooth LE PAwR (periodic advertising with responses) and how it enables large-scale, low-power, bi-directional networks—an essential technology for applications like electronic shelf labels, asset monitoring, manufacturing, and logistics. And finally, Parker Dorris, Staff Product Manager – Bluetooth, gave us invaluable insight into distance estimation using Bluetooth’s Channel Sounding feature. We also had a live Channel Sounding demo in our booth – it was really impressive to see its capabilities in action!
Parker Dorris and Priyanka Sukumar were excited to tell everyone about Bluetooth Channel Sounding with our live demo.
And I’d be remiss not to mention how much Matter mattered at Embedded World. We showcased our solutions for both Matter over Thread and Matter over Wi-Fi and Matt Maupin, Senior Product Marketing Manager, delivered an insightful session on his experience with Matter from a user’s perspective.
Matt Maupin and Lasse Madsen, ready to answer all the questions about Matter.
Matter was also a highlight in our Partner Zone, where we showcased our partnership with Arduino. We’ve joined forces to better enable seamless development of Matter over Thread applications for Arduino’s 33 million-strong developer community by combining Arduino’s software libraries on our best-in-class hardware. It’s a win/win for developers around the world.
Sam Machin of the Connectivity Standards Alliance speaking with Bela Varga and Tamas Jozsi about our partnership with Arduino.
Playing Doom at our Partner Zone on this custom devkit featuring the SparkFun Thing+ Matter board with our xG24 module. Learn more by visiting our Community page.
We wrapped up Day 2 with a strong presence during the #women4ew networking event. It was obvious from the show floor that women in our field are still a minority. It was refreshing to share experiences with other women in the embedded space and learn more about how we can combat biases in technology. Personally, I feel fortunate to work for a company that is committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and provides access to Employee Resource Groups like Women @ Silicon Labs.
As with any trade show, things started to slow down on Day 3, but honestly, not quite as much as I expected. The conference programming continued with Marton Komancsik, Applications Engineer, delivering a report on his research into a new PCB design that could drastically lower production costs for applications like smart lighting.
Beyond our booth in Hall 4A, it was inspiring to see Silicon Labs’ logo across many different booths, from partners to customers. Our engineers, product managers, and marketers were an integral part of the conference programming and our booth demos did a great job at showcasing our latest and greatest advancements in wireless technology.
To learn more about AI/ML at the edge, you can access our entire AI/ML curriculum of materials from Works With 2023. We also have ongoing Tech Talks covering topics like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Matter, LPWAN, and more. By signing up for the series, you can access live sessions with opportunities for Q&A as well as the sessions on-demand after the livestream.
