Atmel MCU Applications Manager Bob Martin recently went on camera in Las Vegas to discuss the evolution of CES over the years, with a specific emphasis on the Maker Movement and DIY community.
As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, Atmel’s 8- and 32-bit microcontrollers have been the MCUs of choice for Arduino since the boards first hit the streets for DIY Makers way back in 2005.
Another cool Maker technology to surface in recent years is 3D printing, an industry expected to be worth at least $3 billion by 2016. We are at the center of the 3D printing revolution, as almost every major desktop 3D printer on the market today is based on Atmel silicon.
In addition, Atmel powers a number of wearable tech platforms for Makers and engineers, such as Adafruit’s Gemma, Trinket and FLORA.
Wearable tech also ties into the Internet of Things (IoT), which refers to a future world where all types of electronic devices link to each other via the Internet. Today, it’s estimated that there are nearly 10 billion devices in the world connected to the Internet, a figure expected to triple to nearly 30 billion devices by 2020.
As Gartner notes, 50% of companies expected to help build the rapidly evolving Internet of Things have yet to coalesce. This is precisely why Atmel views the Maker Movement as one of the primary tech incubators for future IoT companies and devices, many of which will undoubtedly use Atmel microcontrollers (MCUs) to power their respective platforms.
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