Atmel and Hillcrest Labs recently expanded their collaboration in the context of Atmel’s Partner Program to deliver turn-key sensor hub solutions. As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, sensor hubs are increasingly being used to offload sensor management from a main processor.
Essentially, the combination of Hillcrest’s SH-1 sensor hub software and Atmel’s ultra-low power microcontrollers provides ‘always on’ features such as context awareness and gesture recognition, all while minimizing system power consumption.
In related news, Hillcrest also debuted a SH-1 sensor hub product designed to efficiently manage inertial, magnetic and environmental sensors using Atmel’s versatile SAM D20 ARM-powered Cortex M0+ based microcontroller (MCU). According to Chad Lucien, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Hillcrest Labs, the SH-1 sensor hub is targeted at smartphones, tablets, wearable electronic devices and the Internet of Things (Iot).
“The SH-1 sensor hub is a complete software package that includes high performance, low power sensor fusion, context awareness and gesture recognition algorithms, optimized sensor drivers, and the hub/host interface which communicates with an application processor,” Lucien explained.
“The software transforms data from up to six different types of sensors—including inertial, magnetic and environmental sensors—into application-ready information and is designed to perform consistently regardless of the sensor supplier used. The combination of the low power sensor hub microcontroller and Hillcrest’s software is available for Android smartphones and tablets, wearable devices and a variety of other sensor-enabled devices.”
Meanwhile, Espen Krangnes, Senior Product Marketing Manager, MCU Product Marketing, Atmel Corporation, noted that the harmonization of software and hardware was critical to ensure advanced functionality and extended battery life for next-gen devices.
“Hillcrest’s heritage in developing cutting-edge motion processing software and our past experiences with the team made them an essential partner for our new program, and we look forward to working with them to develop products to address this rapidly growing market,” Krangnes added.
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