DevCon 2015: A Great Opportunity to Learn New Skills, Techniques and Approaches

When I was speaking recently to a friend about the forthcoming Renesas DevCon and mentioned that I would be blogging from the event, he asked me: “What’s so great about DevCon?.” Having attended previous DevCons and studied up a bit for this one I immediately unleashed a torrent of facts and figures about the hundreds of hours of lectures, panels, demos and hands-on labs, about the solutions- filled exhibit hall, about the social interaction with experts and colleagues….I probably blathered on for a good five minutes while my friend’s eyes were glazing over.

Now that I’ve had a bit more time to ponder the question, however, I think that yes, DevCon has all of these things and more, but beyond that what’s really great about DevCon is that it is a great asset to engineers who, to grow in their jobs and careers, must continually increase their knowledge base. With increasing design demands and decreasing time to market it is mandatory for an engineer to keep current. And it’s tough:  Not only must you be prepared to update what you know on a constant basis, it has to be done while you are working full-time designing circuits and products that meet the cutting edge standard of the moment–which itself might leap forward at any time.

The point is that to succeed engineers must treat their careers as dynamic things which need continuous upkeep and upgrading. One would be uncomfortable visiting a physician who has fallen behind in the practice of medicine. Similarly, an engineer’s skillset is severely diminished without continuing education, especially since the pace of technological change can sometimes make our heads spin–even for those of us positively predisposed to new technology. In short, DevCon is great because it’s a great way for engineers to stay abreast of advances relevant to their current or future job assignments.

DevCon 2015 is organized around the theme “Accelerate, Integrate, Differentiate”. All three elements are very evident in a new Renesas platform called Synergy. Renesas Synergy integrates qualified software with a new family of MCUs and an ecosystem of tools and support options into one scalable and secure platform. It includes all rights and benefits to enable rich software development for an unlimited number of end products. There is no need to purchase a third-party commercial RTOS, communication stacks (TCP/IP, USB), file systems, graphic user interfaces and their associated development tools – all are included in the Renesas Synergy platform. This software-first approach will make developing devices for the IoT, industrial and other markets easier by taking care of the low-level embedded software, real-time event management, secure connectivity, power management, and the GUIs needed.

At DevCon Renesas experts we will teach you how to utilize the Synergy platform and the associated building blocks and tools to shorten the development cycle and reduce the total risk and cost of developing products. DevCon will be first chance engineers will be able to experience this new and innovative design approach for MCUs. You’ll be able to configure and use modules from each layer see how they are integrated, work as a platform and allow application development from the API level.With30 scheduled hands-on labs and 33 informative lectures related to Renesas Synergy, you’ll have ample opportunity to get your hands on this game-changing platform.

There will be a number of interesting (and in some cases entertaining) Synergy demos at DevCon. Let me give you a sneak peek at one. When we are sick and hospitalized we recuperate in bed. Some very clever people have wondered recently why, given the amount of time we are in a hospital bed, that these beds aren’t more “intelligent” and engaged in accurate electronic monitoring of biometric information as a routine part of health care delivery. A company called DeviceLab wondered the same thing and at DevCon they will demonstrate a concept that will feature several Synergy-based technologies including a combination of different wireless (including Bluetooth) and wired communications methods in a connected medical bed that physicians can use. With these capabilities, important patient data can be gathered and provided in real-time, speeding data accessibility and reducing potential data inaccuracies.

In subsequent blogs during the run-up to DevCon we will take a closer look at Synergy, noting the important lectures, demo’s, courses, labs, and exhibits. So stay tuned. In the meantime, you can get more information here.