At Embedded World in Nuremberg, Germany, this week, Eurotech demonstrated a complete wireless gateway based on Intel hardware and a software development kit that lets machine-to-machine (M2M) devices, applications and services get to market quicker.
The demo was based on the Intel Atom processor M2M reference platform with a software development kit from Wind River and Eurotech.
Among the M2M examples being shown was a counter totalling the number of people that came onto the stand and live tracking using GPS of a delivery vehicle in Denver, USA.
“When you talk about M2M, it is about taking data from interesting sensors and getting back to something that cares,” said Arlen Nipper, president and CTO for Eurotech in North America. “Embedded systems now encompass a broad range of technical expertise beyond the capabilities of a single customer or service provider.”
Based on Wind River Linux and Eurotech’s Everyware Software Framework, the hardware incorporated the density of a complete appliance with the flexibility of an embedded industrial computer to enable mission critical applications. The Atom-based M2M gateway reference platform demonstrates the disruptive notion of providing dense, flexible hardware platforms that reside on the edges of the network. Visitors to the stand could view that data via a dashboard but Nipper said that normally it would feed direct into an application.
“After the first ten goes, no-one is interested in the dashboard any more,” he said. “They want it to feed into the business application. It is the same thing the other way round. You can publish from the business application into the cloud and then send it to the devices.”
Using the M2M gateway reference platform, developers can start adding their business logic on the first day of the product development cycle.
“Eurotech and Wind River took a complete modular design approach to the software stack for Intel’s M2M smart services development kit, which can significantly shorten hardware and software development for customers,” said Nipper.