This past August, Atmel had the opportunity to be an exhibiting sponsor at the Embedded System Conference in São Paulo, Brazil. Aside from showcasing our latest IoT solutions, Atmel | SMART product line and AVR microcontrollers, we were fortunate to also have time to interact with the vibrant Latin American embedded community.
Sander Arts, Atmel VP of Corporate Marketing, shared detailed insight into DIY culture, as well as the integral role Atmel plays in fueling the emerging embedded community. Additionally, Arts addressed the growth of the worldwide Maker Movement, showcasing a variety of startups (e.g. Pebble and MakerBot) who each got their start using versatile a range of Atmel 8- and 32-bit MCUs.
“There are over 217, in this particular moment, based and built around an Arduino (and AVR),” Arts revealed. “Specifically, there are over 160 AVR based projects on Kickstarter, of which 103 successful, collecting $7 million in funding.”
Arts went on to explore the newest addition to the Arduino family, the Arduino Zero — a simple, elegant and powerful 32-bit extension of the platform originally established by the popular ATmega328 based Uno.
Arts added that there are now over 1,000 Makerspaces and communities around the world, including a number of nearby Brazilian hackerspaces.
Shortly thereafter, the Atmel VP of Marketing had the chance to sit down with Garoa Hacker Clube’s Luciano Ramalho to further discuss the Maker Movement throughout the region, the company’s role in the DIY movement, embedded solutions and development environments, and of course, the budding popularity of Arduino.
During his Makers Club interview, Arts hinted at a couple of “additional developments around the Internet of Things for Makers,” which we now know was the Arduino Wi-Fi Shield 101 — a shield which enables rapid prototyping of IoT applications using the highly-popular open-source platform.
Throughout the week, there was a tremendous amount of real buzz and excitement amongst the embedded engineers, developers and hobbyists in attendance. Caminhos de Sucesso Editor Jose Antonio Purcino caught up with Atmel Senior Product Marketing Andreas Eieland and EE Times’ Max Maxfield to explore the latest hot trends and topics in embedded design, IoT and wireless.
“The Internet of Things is nothing new, as we have been connecting MCUs to sensors and analyzing the data for a long time,” Andreas Eieland, Atmel Senior Product Marketing Manager, told EE Times. “But what is new is the technology options available for engineers to develop connected systems without the high degree of complexity of the past.”
Next, the Atmel team will be heading to Electronica 2014. Here’s a quick look at the tech you can expect to see next month in Munich.
Atmel | Bits & Pieces 