In emebedded chips and connected car news tips this week are LG, Toyota, u-blox, TomTom, Answer Financial, Autoliv, Toshiba, VOXX, Renasas, Nuance and HARMAN.
We had a few embedded and connected car news tips articles during the week:
- At the Billington CyberSecurity Symposium there were announcements and industry standards announcements.
- The GENIVI Alliance is offering money for code contributors.
- Ford is offering a free emulator for smartphone app developers.
Korean news sources reported that LG will provide telematics services for Toyota.
New u-blox Cellular Tips
u-blox announced the expansion of its product offering with automotive qualified product variants added to their range of positioning and cellular wireless connectivity modules.
- The NEO-M8Q-01A and the NEO-M8L-01A positioning modules provide concurrent reception of GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, and Galileo.
- The SARA-G350-02A is a quad-band GSM/GPRS data and voice connectivity module that is certified for provisioning global connectivity. The LISA-U201-03A also provides global connectivity with 5 HSPA bands, with data rates up to 7.2 Mbps. Both these modules accommodate the automotive operating temperature range of – 40 to + 85 degrees Celsius, have a compact footprint and consume very little powe
Tom Tom City New Cities
TomTom announced that TomTom City – a traffic portal that provides live traffic and travel information – has now extended to 50 cities. The traffic portal showcases the extensive range of traffic information available on a city by city basis and provides a platform to connect traffic authorities, businesses and citizens to jointly manage sustainable and efficient mobility.
CITIES ADDED TO TOMTOM CITY
| Europe: | Frankfurt (DE), Glasgow (UK), Hamburg (DE), Helsinki (FI), Lisbon (PT), Madrid (ESP), Manchester (UK), Namur (BE), Naples (IT), Oslo (NO), Rotterdam (NL), Stockholm (SE), Strasbourg (FR), Turin (IT), Vienna (AT), Warsaw (PL), Zurich (CH) |
| Australia/ Oceania: | Melbourne (AUS), Wellington (NZL) |
| Africa: | Johannesburg (ZAF), Pretoria (ZAF) |
| Asia: | Ankara (TUR), |
| Americas: | Austin (USA), Curitiba (BR), Edmonton (CA) |
Streetwise Drivers Club App
Answer Financial, one of the largest auto and home insurance agencies in the U.S., announced today the launch of Streetwise Drivers Club, the free mobile app that lets smart drivers earn rewards for beating driving challenges. Rewards points are redeemable for deals on popular brands, gift cards and restaurants through the Streetwise RewardsTM program. Points can also be used to bid on daily auctions and enter sweepstakes for high-value prizes. New app users get 10,000 rewards points simply for signing up.
“Streetwise is like a Fitbit for drivers, providing feedback after each trip to help people better understand the way they drive,” said Rob Slingerland, Answer Financial CEO. “Most Americans already think they are excellent drivers. The Streetwise app gives them a chance to prove it and earn rewards along the way.”
Electric Cloud ElectricFlow
Electric Cloud , the leader in DevOps Release Automation, today announced its latest version of ElectricFlow, now the industry’s first and only end-to-end DevOps platform to provide native, push-button support for advanced deployment strategies (such as Blue/Green, Canary, and Rolling Deployments). This enables IT to frequently and reliably deploy mission-critical applications at scale and avoid service interruptions to their end users.
As a significant upgrade to what is otherwise achieved with cumbersome scripting or complex, ad hoc, and environment-specific workflows, the new Rolling Deployment capability in ElectricFlow provides a robust, model-based approach and intuitive GUI, making it easy to configure and re-use Rolling Deployments across many projects and pipelines in the enterprise.
Autoliv @Cadillac Truth + Dare
Autoliv was invited to showcase the company’s Night Vision technology as part of Cadillac’s Truth + Dare driving experience. The event will demonstrate Cadillac vehicles’ luxurious features, agile drive dynamics, and cutting-edge technology. Participants will explore the benefits of Night Vision and its ability to alert drivers of pedestrians and animals in the path of the vehicle.
The first-ever Cadillac CT6 features the industry’s most advanced Night Vision safety technology, developed exclusively by Autoliv. Night Vision uses an infrared camera mounted in the front grille of the vehicle that senses temperature differences, making objects on the road visible to the driver even through darkness, fog and smoke. Autoliv’s custom algorithms detect animals and pedestrians in the path of the vehicle, and enables alerts to the driver through icons in the instrument cluster and head-up display. If the vehicle is in danger of a collision with a pedestrian or animal, a rapid beeping tone or pulsing of the safety alert seat is activated.
Toshiba Power Amplifier
Toshiba Electronics Europe has introduced a new, 49W-per-channel power amplifier IC for automotive audio applications. The4-channel TCB501HQ provides high output power and low distortion, and detects output offset voltage.
Similar to high-end hi-fi audio systems the IC integrates a current feedback system. This prevents sound quality degradation at wide bandwidths, improving sound consistency and the listening experience.
Conventional offset detection during sound reproduction is particularly difficult to manage. To address this, the TCB501HQ integrates a newly developed, full-time offset detection circuit. It also detects output DC offset voltage caused by leakage from the input capacitor and other sources, even during sound reproduction. Additional embedded protection circuits include thermal, overvoltage, output to VCC, output to GND, output to output protection and a short circuit detection function.
Housed in a HZIP25-P-1.00F package, the TCB501HQ also features built-in mute and standby functions, a high-side switch driver and 6V operation.
VOXX Launches EVO RSI
VOXX International announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, VOXXHirschmann, will officially launch its next generation Evolution Series (“EVO”) Rear Seat Vehicle Infotainment (“RSI”) solution with an initial OEM contract award by General Motors (“GM”) for forthcoming model 2018, 2019 and 2020 vehicles. This is the first delivery on three contract awards for the new EVO system which is currently undergoing extensive evaluations by multiple domestic and international automotive manufacturers. Contract award details were not disclosed.
The EVO family of products feature:
- Larger (8″, 10.1″ and up), high resolution screens designed for Headrest, Seatback, Center Console and Overhead installations
- Digital Bluetooth connection to the vehicle’s infotainment system for high-quality audio playback
- Traditional “D-Pad” mini remote and mobile smart device app control system facilitating control from a smartphone or directly from the vehicle’s center stack
- Enhanced, intuitive user interface
- Portable device charging
- Smart device connectivity & content sharing
- Simplified vehicle integration with the ability to add EVO to a vehicle independent of its existing CAN network
- Flexible architecture designed for feature expansion and updating to meet the changing mobile environment
- Distributed content playback which allows all screens and smart devices to view the same movie simultaneously
Renesas Electronics New MCUs
Renesas Electronics Europe and SEGGER today announced their collaboration to facilitate expansion of the ecosystem of Renesas’ RX Family of 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) through adoption of SEGGER’s newly-released SystemView software. Forthwith SystemView will support streaming over J-Link, as well as real-time analysis and visualization, in relation to any Renesas RX-based embedded design.
Renesas’ RX Family of 32-bit MCUs are built around Renesas’ proprietary RXv1/RXv2 CPU cores and combine excellent operation performance with superior power efficiency. The RX Family consists of four product series: the flagship RX700 series, with the fastest performance and most advanced functions; the standard RX600 series; the RX200 series, which delivers an optimal balance of power efficiency and high performance; and the entry-level RX100 series, with extremely low power consumption. These four series encompass a range of products for solutions within fields such as industry automation, security, home appliance, healthcare and human interface that provide seamless scalability from small-scale to large-scale applications.
Nuance Buys TouchCommerce
Nuance Communications announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire TouchCommerce, a technology partner and leader in digital customer service and engagement solutions. Used by leading enterprises, TouchCommerce’s customer engagement cloud platform increases eCommerce sales and improves the customer service experience. The addition of TouchCommerce will help accelerate Nuance’s Enterprise business and expand its customer care solutions with a range of new digital engagement offerings, including live chat, customer analytics and personalization solutions.
For large enterprises around the world, customer service interactions are accelerating toward more pervasive digital engagement across web, mobile and social platforms. Consumers today want to choose how they interact or transact, and to move effortlessly between the efficiency of web chat, the connectivity of social media, the independence of self-service, and the convenience of human interaction. In order to acquire and retain customers, enterprises need to be able to provide a customer service experience when and how the customer desires. This is creating a growing market opportunity for Nuance’s Enterprise business, and a combination with TouchCommerce will provide an end-to-end engagement platform that merges intelligent self-service with assisted service to increase customer satisfaction, strengthen customer loyalty and improve business results.
Entrust Datacard Works with HARMAN for IoT
Entrust Datacard announced that the company has entered into a strategic partnership with HARMAN International to bring to market an Internet of Things (IoT) offering. The partnership will allow both companies to leverage the new Entrust Datacard offering with their respective customers while jointly advancing the development of the IoT ecosystem.
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