Case studies

As part of our trade show giveaways, we ordered several thousand carrier bags. When they arrived, we immediately noticed that instead of a single shade of blue for all the bags, there were actually three or four different ones.

This is where a spectrophotometer such as BYK-Gardner’s spectro2guide could have come in handy for the producer of the carrier bags. The device accurately measures colors using digital standards. To develop this tool, the German company uses various SEGGER libraries and tools.

Home access and security are always a concern. Even if security is not a real issue where you live, there is always the feeling of “What if?”. Sometimes the “What if” is about someone getting into your home. Other times, the “What if” is about not being able to get in there yourself.

There is no room for error on a production line. With a programming process that does not run smoothly and produces faulty devices, a company not only loses time but also money due to delayed project timelines and increased costs for fixing bugs and errors.

OK, who do you think, major auto manufacturer, titan of industrial networking or a household name?

Well, no, it is closer to home, SEGGER itself.

Solaride is an educational program that started from the initiative of two students looking for a way to put their theoretical knowledge into practice. They came up with the adventurous idea to build the first solar-powered car in the Baltics. Quickly the project evolved into a much bigger endeavor, way more than just building a car. At the center of their successful implementation is SEGGER’s embedded software.

SEGGER’s emCompress-ToGo enables on-chip data compression and decompression using virtually no RAM.  This technology has recently been employed by Skylo Technologies. Skylo brings disruptively affordable, always-on IoT connectivity to millions of machines, sensors, and devices, even in the most remote places. Providing a secure, reliable, and cost-effective solution for large-scale deployment of industrial sensors and satellite connectivity, Skylo delivers real-time actionable intelligence to support critical decision-making. emCompress-ToGo plays an important role in transmitting critical communications to and from space.

Process plants are operated across a wide range of industries. This includes producers of food, wood, steel, metal-based products, chemicals and many more. These factories have a typical lifespan of more than 20 years and must be safe for people, product and environment. The vision of Industry 4.0 or Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is to connect all sensors and actuators to a converged Information Technology/Operational Technology (IT/OT) network and control them using a process control system from the outside. As more devices become connected to the network, a wider, real-time view of the plant is available through management systems. Optimization based on the collected data delivers significant productivity gains while reducing operating costs and energy consumption.

To record the presence of its employees, companies rely on a wide variety of products available on the market. SEGGER decided to take a different approach: using a 3D printer for the case, a commercially available development board costing only 50 euros, and SEGGER’s own all-in-one embedded operating system emPower OS, it developed a stylish and functional terminal, integrating already existing infrastructure and offering easy administration and usability.

The StarSign Key Fob is a full-featured biometric identity and authentication device. It allows users the one touch ability for access, approvals, and payments. The key fob allows all use cases and applications to be integrated securely and seamlessly without an increase in costs. It uses a reference design from G+D, in which an SLE78 security chip is paired with a flexible DA14683 system-on-chip (SoC). The software on this design was developed in-house by G+D and uses SEGGER’s emUSB-Device as the foundation of USB communication.

Forze Hydrogen Racing is a student team whose mission is to show the potential of green energy — specifically hydrogen energy — through the design, production and racing of fuel cell powered vehicles. In less than 13 years, the team has evolved from building hydrogen go-karts to full-size LMP3-based hydrogen electric racing cars — supported by hard- and software from SEGGER.

With the increasing complexity of today’s embedded devices, customers expect multiple firmware updates over the life of an embedded device. Generally speaking, firmware upgrades and other static content only grow in size over the life of a device, e.g. the Electronic Control Unit (ECU) installed in modern cars. The larger the firmware image and the slower the data transmission rate, the longer an update takes. SEGGER’s compression software emCompress is an ideal solution for reducing the update time dramatically.

SEGGER continuously advances its products. First, SEGGER uses their own tools, better products mean better output. Second, the R&D departments also value customer feedback and place great ideas onto their to-do lists. In this case, SEGGER’s Embedded Experts identified how they could help VIESSMANN, an existing SEGGER customer, who was aiming to minimize the time to program the QSPI flash used in their products. VIESSMANN designs and manufactures innovative industrial heating and cooling systems. You can read more about them at the end of this article.