Monthly Archives: November 2020

What is Edge Computing?

Many IT professionals spend most of their careers within the safe and controlled environments of enterprise data centers. However, managing equipment in the field is a different ball-game altogether.

Pandemics such as the COVID-19 are increasingly transforming the world. The emerging ecosystem is confronting and challenging this transformation. Among this mayhem, edge computing is entering as a key transition phase, with the massive shift towards home-based work. Along with the generation of new opportunities for distributing computing, key players are deploying increasing numbers of edge data centers for navigating the sharp economic downturn.

The major benefit of edge computing is it acts on data at the source. This distributed computing framework works by bringing enterprise applications closer to sensors acting as data sources within the IoT system and connecting them with local edge servers and cloud storage systems. Edge computing can deliver strong business benefits with its better bandwidth availability, improved response times, and faster insights.

Edge computing has the potential to enable new services and technologies with its low-latency wireless connectivity. This could transform global business and society. According to some technologists, edge computing can bring in a new era of powerful mobile devices with no limit on their ability to compute power and data.

Consultants and futurists are projecting a growth of up to US$4.1 trillion for the edge economy by 2030. Linux Foundation, in their report Edge 2020 claim edge investment will take wing after 2024, and the power footprint of the deployed edge IT and data center facilities reaching 102, 000 MW by 2028. They expect the annual capital expenditures to reach US$146 billion by then.

In the technology world, however, there are divided opinions regarding the short-term prospects of edge computing. Although there is no doubt about the usefulness of edge computing, people are skeptical about the time frame for edge computing to become profitable. Therefore, starting with 2020, investors and end-users are looking intently at the economics of edge computing and focusing more on its near-term cost-benefits rather than on its long-term potentials.

There is a huge opportunity in edge data centers, as edge computing plays out over several years, with long deployment horizons and gradual adoption of technologies boosting the market. However, executives do not expect the revolution to go through cheaply, with the build-out of edge computing pressurizing the economics of digital infrastructure. This may create repeatable form factors leading to more affordable deployments. Experts are confident that most edge data facilities will be highly automated, remotely managed, and require no human intervention.

At the present, it is difficult to say which edge projects will succeed. With product segmentation and a fluid ecosystem, even promising ventures can struggle as they try to locate profitable niches. While investors are wary of speculative projects, it is reasonable to expect well-funded platform builders and stronger incumbents will acquire promising edge players, especially those running short of funding.

Tower operators are also influencing the competitive landscape. Their massive real estate holdings and financial strengths are positioning the tower operators as potentially important players in the edge computing ecosystem.

Electronics for Indoor Farming

With global population growth, there is increasing concern over the sustainability of ecologically friendly farming. Farmers are now adopting innovative technologies for improving the overall efficiency of farming. Among them, the Internet of Things or IoT shows a greater promise with real-time, wireless, and remote sensing, monitoring, and control of indoor farming conditions and operations, such as humidity, moisture levels, soil pH, temperature, and lighting.

Most of the functions mentioned involve complex combinations with farmers often struggling to combine LED lighting, wireless communications, actuators, and sensors with control and mobile applications for gathering the optimum information, analyzing it quickly to generate the appropriate response, and acting upon it. Even for the technologically proficient, implementing existing product offerings is a challenge for deploying a low-power, scalable, cost-effective, reliable, and secure system.

Arrow Electronics, in combination with eInfochips and Analog Devices, offers an end-to-end, one-stop solution for the above problems in the form of the Grow House Evaluation Kit. Their starter kit has the best of technologies, including power management, converter, and signal conditioning from Analog Devices. The kit comes with sensors for moisture and pH, wireless connectivity, LED lighting with a dimming facility, along with remote accessibility via a cloud-based dashboard. All these are available on the iOS and Android platforms.

The Grow House Evaluation Kit is a smarter way to set up indoor farming operations. With wireless connectivity from Silicon Labs, LEDs from OSRAM Light Engine with dimming and color control, the cloud-based dashboard provides remote accessibility for moisture and soil pH levels through ruggedized connectors from Amphenol.

The soil-monitoring node included with the Grow House Evaluation Kit uses leading-edge technologies from Analog Devices. Included in this soil-monitoring node are the power and analog solutions for measuring the pH and moisture levels of the soil with high accuracy for maximizing crop yield.

The IoT gateway included with the kit is based on a platform from Qualcomm 96Boards. The LED node in the kit features the ability to control the color output, intensity, and the UV spectrum of the custom light engine.

Pre-certified ZigBee modules from Silicon Labs implemented with the IoT gateway provides custom control of the LED and Soil nodes. Arrow Electronics offers mobile applications compatible with iOS and Android platforms for configuration and control of the LED and Soil nodes. Arrow Electronics also offers a light engine with OSRAM OSLON Square high-power LEDs, along with design files for customization, but the LEDs are only for demonstration.

Those looking for the complete Growhouse Platform need to order three nodes independently for configuration of the Growhouse. These are the LED Node, IoT Gateway, and the Soil Node.

Vertical farming operations benefit extensively from digital transformation solutions from Arrow Electronics, thanks to their advances in technologies involving sensors and connectivity, and easy access to cloud infrastructure providing cost-effective operations. Although timer-controlled pumps, lighting, and fans do help in farming, digital transformations such as those provided by the Growhouse Platforms go far beyond the simple methods. A digital grow house based on the Grow House Evaluation Kit enables this transformation in the easiest way possible.

Future of LEDs

LEDs have much to offer—small size, high efficiency, and incredible versatility—no wonder they are the most popular electronic products in the market today. Their versatility allows us to use them in horticulture, as status indicator lights, and displays with high definition. Although we are so familiar with LEDs that we hardly notice them anymore, new applications keep appearing, and engineers are forever making newer breakthroughs. That is why the LED market is still growing at a stupendous rate, especially in Europe, India, and Southeast Asia. We have listed some new technologies here:

Multicolor LEDs

After several tries, scientists have recently been able to achieve an LED that produces a blue color. This has completed the entire spectrum of LED arrays. Now, scientists have a technique that allows a single LED to produce all three primary colors. So far, rendering a full spectrum required placing three to four tiny LEDs near one another. The new technique has a big implication of making multicolored displays with color-tuned LEDs.

Furthermore, the new process dopes gallium nitride with europium, a rare earth element, and the process is compatible with current technologies involving GaN. Commercial solid-state lighting commonly uses GaN LEDs, which means we will see the new technology working in the commercial sector very soon.

Cooling with Reversed LEDs

LED physics has another significant new development. Running LEDs in reverse creates a cooling effect. A research team has demonstrated that by running LEDs backward, it is possible to achieve a tiny cooling effect of the order of 6W/m2. This is contrary to the situation in a reverse connected diode, where the diode does nothing.

Researchers are of the opinion they can improve the cooling capacity to 1000W/m2. Although the idea is not yet ready for practical implementation, wearables and mobile devices may benefit from the improved performance from using LEDs to remove heat from processors.

Lighting for Horticulture

Horticulture is benefitting from LED temperature effects and color-tuned lighting. Tomato growers in Belgium have used LEDs to stimulate plant growth. Rather than high-pressure sodium vapor (HPSV) lamps, as is the industry standard, the farmers used LED lighting for their entire 13.3-acre indoor tomato farm.

Although the light from the LEDs appears pink to human eyes, it is actually a mix of red, infra-red, blue, and white LED lights, which the farmers have mixed perfectly for stimulating tomato plant growth. Using Hyperion fittings, the farmers have used new LEDs from Cree. Now, farmers in the UK and the Netherlands are also using these new horticultural LED lamps.

The Belgian farmers were initially skeptical about using LEDs, as these have high efficiency and produce greater amounts of light than heat. They felt LED lights will not provide adequate heat during winter to keep the plants warm. However, they did not need their back-up heating system in the first winter. This proves developments in lighting is effectively reducing payback periods.

The future for LEDs looks bright, with new sources of innovation and recent technological development bringing increasingly superior practical use. Expect more new and improved products in our daily lives with these new LEDs, especially those in color tuning.

Improving Context Awareness in Hearables

On-ear devices, also known as hearables, are one of the fastest-growing devices in the consumer electronics market today. Although at present their role only covers hearing aids and a tool for listening, the on-ear devices have progressed to being wireless. Now there is a brand-new way for engaging this technology to the wider world around us.

Qualcomm conducted a survey in 2019 and found that more than half the respondents were interested in hearables that are context-aware. One of the most useful capabilities the respondents were looking for in hearables was background noise reduction, and the other, dynamic volume adjustment.

The interest that users are showing for these features is for the next-generation of hearables. They are looking for a better, more intensive listening experience. With an increasing interest in hearable, users are now expecting these next-generation features that are currently not available.

For instance, traditional hearables may be wireless but controlled by the phone. While jogging or working out at the gym, it is inconvenient for the user to stare at their phones for adjusting the volume of their headphones. Even with buttons available on the headphones, they are likely to be tiny and not visible when the headphones are on the user’s ears. That makes it very difficult to locate and use the buttons.

One way of improving the user interface would be to add gesture control. Simple gestures and motion tracking can provide instructions for specific actions and controls. For instance, a simple tap on the earbud could mean an increase in volume. Tapping the entire headphone is much simpler than finding and pressing a specific button on it.

A gesture for detecting in-ear presence could automatically pause the audio as soon as the user removes the earbuds from their ears. The audio can resume the moment the user inserts the earbuds back in their ears.

As the range of movement of the human head and ears is relatively consistent compared to that of the pocket or the wrist, hearables can be ideal for tracking fitness. However, motion tracking needs to be precise to not generate false positives and negatives. Therefore, with proper fitness algorithms, it is possible for hearables to track whole body movement such as when running, biking, or standing in a queue. Accurate classification is necessary to convert step counts to calorie counts, providing a more complete picture of the user’s day.

Hearables with spatial audio can change the sound as the head turns, and linked with the accurate head tracking, can put the user right in the center of the orchestra, leading to a truly immersive listening experience. However, this also requires the latency to be low, so that the sound changes with the head movement without delay. This can help and elevate the user’s experience with XR or gaming as well.

Today’s headphones cannot provide the user with the above experience. Users may have to turn down the volume or remove at least one earbud when they want to listen to the external world. This is because the design of the hearables blocks most external sounds to enable the listener to focus on the audio.