Video: Atmel’s AvantCar demo

Earlier this month, Atmel debuted its AvantCar concept at CES 2014 in Las Vegas. The fully functional console features two large curved touchscreen displays – without mechanical buttons. 

Instead, the touchscreens integrate capacitive touch buttons and sliders, allowing users to navigate general applications typically found within an automotive center console.

This includes global navigation system (GPS), car thermostat, audio controls for a radio or media player, seat controls and more. AvantCar also allows drivers to personalize their in-vehicle environment using advanced touch capabilities and LIN connectivity system to control ambient lighting.

According to Atmel Marketing Director Stephan Thaler, AvantCar successfully demonstrates the future of human machine interface (HMI) in upcoming vehicles. Indeed, next-generation automotive designs will be influenced by a wide range of trends in the consumer market such as slick and curved centerstack designs, as well as customization by appearance, color, navigation and interaction with a smartphone or tablet.

Atmel offers a number of comprehensive platforms and solutions to address the current and future requirements of a modern in-vehicle human-machine interface (HMI). However, the AvantCar Centerstack demo is the company’s first fully functional concept showcasing groundbreaking solutions within the automobile.

 To be sure, AvantCar is powered entirely by Atmel technology, including maXTouch (two touchscreens), XSense (curved panel design), QTouch (touch buttons and sliders), dedicated algorithms running on Atmel touch chips and microcontrollers (proximity detection), as well as LIN-based ambient lighting control.

Interested in learning more about Atmel’s AvantCar demo? You can check out our in-depth article on the subject here.

Phasor: An Atmel-flavored nostalgic demo

The demoscene is a computer art subculture specializing in producing demos, or audio-visual presentations. For the uninitiated, the demoscene first appeared during the 8-bit era, running on systems such as the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Atari 800 and Amstrad CPC. In later years, increasingly sophisticated demos were coded for the Amiga, Atari ST and, yes, even DOS/Windows PCs.

Perhaps one of the most famous demos ever written was Second Reality by Future Crew. Coded for the Assembly ’93 demoparty, Slashdot voted Second Reality one of the “Top 10 Hacks of All Time” in 1999.

Although it is now 2013, some of us can’t help but get nostalgic for the demoscene days of yore. Fortunately, a talented coder named Linus Akesson (aka LFT) was kind enough to pen an old-style demo dubbed “Phasor” which runs off an Atmel ATmega88.

In the demo above, the microcontroller is clocked at 17.73447 MHz, exactly four times the frequency of the color carrier wave.

“In other words, four clock cycles per ‘color pixel,’ and in those four cycles one has to generate a sine wave with controlled amplitude, phase and constant offset,” writes Akesson.

“There is no chance of generating a smooth sine wave, because the CPU is limited to a maximum output resolution of one sample per clock cycle. Even this is not really feasible to do entirely in software, except for very basic visuals, such as a bunch of static color bars. But the effort can be cut in half thanks to a loophole in the PAL encoding scheme.”

Impressive, eh? Oh, and yes, here is Second Reality by Future Crew!