Santa Clara IEEE hosts CES Roundup

January 28, 2014, SV CE Society, Santa Clara, CA—The Silicon Valley consumer electronics chapter of the IEEE held a CES roundup for those unable to attend CES in Las Vegas. Speakers included Gary Sasaki form DigDia, Tom Coughlin from Coughlin Associates, Bill Orner from Imagination Technology, and Lidia Paulinska-Thompson from M & E Technology.

Sasaki opened with megatrends and a world-wide overview. Total CE sales are about $1T, but the total industry is relatively flat in revenue. Next year is forecast to drop about 4 percent, mostly attributed to decreases in ASP. The markets are also changing in structure. In ’10, 60 percent of all CE sales were in the mature markets, North America, Western Europe, Japan, Korea, and Australia. The balance was in developing countries.

This distribution is expected to be even this year, with much of the gains in the rapidly growing countries like China, Brazil, Russia, and India. In that addition, the main products changed from LCD, Mobile PC, Desktop PC and cameras in ’10 to smart phones and tablets taking 43 percent of the market this year.

CE innovation comes in waves, and the product life becomes the basis for the next platform and next wave. Even so, the next generation is not a clip-on, but a real, functional peripheral. The last decade saw the change of most CE products to a digital technology. The next wave will be in innovative peripherals for the existing product types.

One example of this type of change is the move from front projection to a curved 105-inch TV wit a 21:9 aspect ratio. LCD TVs are getting bigger, and OLED is still emerging. The only real change is that Panasonic is leaving plasma.

In other areas, wearables are getting a lot of attention. These devices are mostly in wrist watch configurations for wellness and high-level fitness. One Bluetooth bracelet just lights and buzzes when your phone rings. Xsenr makes a measurement system for skis, and Instabeat makes a heart-rate monitor for swimmers.

3-D printers are making a big splash, but the software issues means that this will remain a geek-related phenomena. Some companies are developing 3-D printers in a photo booth to make the technology more accessible, but this may be a who cares issue. American Pearl makes custom jewelry by creating a custom mold for the metal casting. Gems are hand attached to the casting.

Wheeled vehicles like the Segway are appearing, most at a much lower cost point. Tele-presence robots are showing up in offices, and LIT is making an electric motorcycle that can hit 100 MPH and has an effective operating range of 200 miles for $24K. Panasonic is moving to wellness functions with a tablet form factor device that prompts the user for daily activities.

FinSix is making a iPhone charger that is very small. It uses a 63MHz voltage converter to get a very small size. Other iPhone peripherals include a forward-looking infrared (FLIR) imager that also uses visible light. iFi systems has a LED lightbulb that includes a battery and circuitry to keep the light on if power is lost. The ability to get many low-cost sensors enables a $300 basketball that can track flight parameters to help improve your shooting.

Coughlin, of course noticed new form factors in storage. Kingston has a 1TB USB flash drive. The increases in personal cloud and big storage is seen in Seagate’s and Buffalo’s WiFi plus backup battery plus a hard drive that can provide 10 hours of streaming delivery.

Some of the new drives are helium filled to enable different writing techniques. Now drives are coming equipped with Ethernet ports to facilitate recording and moving content and capture everywhere. This personal recording and faster connections can simplify small network setup.

Drives are getting new form factors. There is a 500GB HDD for tablets and NVM from Sandisk changes the architecture with new NVM. The 1TB device from Samsung uses new 3-D flash in a 15nm process.

In other areas, Nikon is using a 64-camera array for 3-D scanning. The resulting 3-D images take 5 hours to process and can be used as assets for games. Flexible OLED enables a phone that bends.

Orner noted the growth of the Internet of Things and its main transport protocol of TCP/IP and not BlueTooth or Zwave. Home control is moving towards Bluetooth and zwave, so companies are introducing bridges or hubs that also talk to WiFi to operate with phones and tablets. The advent of lots of sensors shows up in a garage door opener that works with WiFi. A wireless oven thermometer is now available.

For other infrastructure, communications and processor modules not can talk to the cloud. These functions will move from industrial to CE and the enabling technologies will address modules, photovoltaic cells, sensors, etc. The modules are adapted to work with tiny linux, beagle, raspberry pi, arduino and other small operating systems and RTOS. Sensors are being packaged in self-powered modules to work with the embedded processors and server software.

Sensors will drive the IoT and most will be on very low duty cycles. This configuration allows for light CPU and communications efforts and opens lots of opportunities to integrate technologies into system at low cost. Some examples of system-level applications include a door camera based on a IP camera, cloud, and a smart phone. Some new apps are using the enabling technologies to implement home medical advisors and wellness prompters. These are alternatives to a doctor visit.

In terms of questionable peripherals, now you can get a stun gun that fits on the back of a iPhone. The gun has its own battery, so the iPhone is just a frame. A robotic window washer is completely untethered, which may be fine for interior windows, but of unknown value on the side of a big building.

After the guys finished playing with their toys, Paulinska-Thompson described the trends for houses, in areas like white goods, security, and convenience. The connected home will have local and remote connections to the cloud for control, monitoring and management. Apps for mobile devices and computers will enable new home capabilities.

One issue is that the connectivity and security have to be stable and configurable over time. For example, in white goods; refrigerators, ovens, washing machines, and other major appliances, there is a choice of wired or wireless connectivity.

Increasingly, these devices will be working for greater energy efficiency, and the connectivity will allow the local power company to advice energy costs by time of day. The form factors will change to allow for connections tot a smart phone and will generate messages when pre-identified limits are exceeded. The premium appliances will get more custom finishes and may be configurable for external and internal form factors.

The changing technologies are adding sensors to the appliances, so induction heating elements on a stove can tell the actual shape of a cooking utensil and shape the magnetic fields to match. This means that you don’t need special, flat-bottomed pans, but any pan will work.

In home security, door locks now interface to viewers and alarms. Convenience functions like lighting controls and window shade automation are controlled along with the garage door with wireless controls through a smart phone.