2013: A year when technology came out on top

Our top story dates back to May 2013, when element14 announced it was releasing Embedded Pi, and this comes under the category of interesting migration of existing technology. Raspberry Pi has been a phenomenon and good news stories last year included the announcement of the shipping of the two millionth unit, 1million of which have been produced in South Wales following 'onshoring' from China. In fact, four Raspberry Pi related stories made the top 20. One reason could be that engineers are taking electronics back home, possibly to expectant teenagers, and are turning work into a hobby. However, Raspberry Pi has struck a chord with the electronics industry as a whole and its use as a development tool in its own right has exceeded expectations. Embedded Pi is a low cost 'triple play' platform that blends the Raspberry Pi, Arduino and 32bit embedded ARM communities. Asked about the product's impact, Mike Powell, element14's technical development manager, said: "Embedded Pi has been a significant new introduction in a number of ways. It is a complete standalone STM 32bit ARM development platform with CooCox, a free and open source development tool for Windows, which also supports the latest STM32F0 value line; and it acts as an ARM development kit with Arduino form factor to support most Arduino shields which can also be programmed directly from Raspberry Pi." Another crowd pleaser in 2013 was graphene: the subject of four of our top 20 stories. However, it falls into the evolving technology category and related articles typically started with something like 'Researchers have found....' or 'Scientists believe....'. Wonder material it may be, but there is still some way to go before it enters the mainstream. The leading graphene article, based on research at UCLA, outlined using a DVD burner to create graphene supercapacitors. One company further down the graphene commercialisation path is Bluestone Technologies, a supporter of the newly established National Graphene Institute in Manchester. The company's ceo, Dr Chung-Ping Lai, spoke to New Electronics at the end of 2013 about progress, especially for its CVD graphene which is used in touchscreens. He commented: "We are producing more than 10m² a day and have the equipment to produce 200m² a day. We are finding immediate applications for our product in touchscreens and heat sinks. How many other applications depends on technology transfer, but we predict a big increase in demand in 2014." As a rough guide, 200m² a day is equivalent to 1.5million phone touchscreens a month, so this 2013 announcement is heading towards commercial realisation in 2014. For more on graphene in displays, see the next issue of New Electronics Another hot topic that spans the electronics and electrical industries and extends into the consumer market is LED lighting. Despite their attributes of far greater power, thermal and lighting efficiency compared to conventional light bulbs, not all LEDs are the same – one reason why they are so interesting to electronics engineers. In June, we reported on LumiSands (Ref 52180), a spin-off from the University of Washington, that has developed a new material that tackles one of the main problems with LEDs – cost. LEDs use rare earth elements to soften the blue light, but these elements are becoming increasingly expensive. LumiSands has developed a material that reportedly not only does the same thing, but also converts the light to a colour temperature closer to that of natural sunlight. What's more, the material is made from cheap, abundant silicon. Ji Hoo, LumiSands' cofounder, says the product is still not a commercial reality, but progress has been made. "Since the time of the article, we have gotten in touch with many notable firms in the solid state lighting/LED phosphor market and the response is very positive; players in the LED industry are certainly interested in alternatives to conventional phosphor types. "We are seeking collaborative opportunities with these firms and looking for partners to develop the technology. In a very preliminary sense, we have sent out samples of our silicon nanoparticle to our potential partners and have greatly benefited from the reciprocated test reports/suggestions." The beginning of the year has the advantage of a CES-led 'widget fest' to inspire the imagination. Of the stories we covered around the 2013 event in Las Vegas was PaperTab, which became our second most read news story of the year. This prototype, designed by a team from the Human Media Lab, Intel and Plastic Logic, is a paper thin, fully flexible tablet computer. PaperTab behaves like a series of paper thin, low power flexible displays that can interact, not only with your gestures, but also with each other. Two PaperTab displays placed next to one another will align the image automatically and 'tile' to form a larger display. Tapping one on another can move content between the two. Manipulation of the displays themselves – bending a corner for instance – can send an email, scroll through documents or drawing revisions, while objects can be dragged between one and another using a stylus. Ian Reid, marketing director at Plastic Logic, conceded that no products using PaperTab's properties had reached the market by the end of 2013. But he said: "Despite PaperTab's status as a concept, it's done a fantastic job of bringing our technology to the attention of the world, demonstrating the technology works, having been taken from lab to fabrication and generally showing what's possible in the hands of developers who'd like to make their ideas a reality." A final dip into 2013's top 20 stories would not be complete without reference to the Internet of Things. In fact, if 'selfie' hadn't emerged to take the glory, it would have been the buzz word of the year. Given the interconnectivity this requires and the apparent obligation to apply it to anything, many articles were well read if they promised interesting ways of enabling 'things' to be connected wirelessly. One example was the NTAG21xF family of NFC tags from NXP, which made the top 10. This tag promised simple, low cost pairing via NFC between a range of consumer electronics devices and mobile accessories. The tags have an integrated field detection mode which switches on the accessory when it comes into contact with an NFC phone or mobile device, quickly enabling a simple 'tap to pair' connection. In conclusion, it appears the most popular articles are not just about the technology that helps engineers solve their current problems, they also cover the technology innovations that are still round the corner. Interestingly, no business and corporate news stories made it to our top 20 list in 2013. Engineers are more interested in technology, it would seem.