At the Smart City Expo '15, Tatung Company announced its full line of embedded modules developed specifically for use in various smart city applications that include electrical vehicle charging, intelligent street lighting, and pervasive sensing & control. The modules have been designed to suit applications requirements where system integration, standards-based communication protocols, reliability, and cost often arise as key considerations in deployment.
According to the 2013 Annual Report from the World Health Organization, 70% of the world population will live in cities by 2050. In addition, the generation of people over the age of 65 will double in this time span. These two basic facts are among the underpinnings for the growth in demand for more efficient and responsive city social services. This is a burgeoning opportunity for Smart City solutions and the next generation of products offered by Tatung can be integral to fulfilling these needs. Tatung's full line of embedded applications modules is designed to enable smart products for Smart Cities. It starts with compact-sized M1 and M3 boards that have built-in power-line communications, and Linux- or Java-based system-processing capabilities. UDK-21, ideal for use as an intelligent gateway, is an expanded version of M3 that includes a stackable C3 board and hosts a wide array of peripheral control devices.
Additionally, Tatung's MEVSE board features a special design for use in smart EV charging stations, while the MGX board conveniently enables pervasive smart city sensing and control. The MGX board can also be used as an intelligent network hub virtually anywhere in a large, wide area deployment.
Tatung's embedded modules for Smart City applications are based on the STMicroelectronics ST2100 STreamPlug that combines a high-performance processing subsystem with Powerline Communication (PLC), security and peripheral features to support hybrid networks utilizing popular wired and wireless standards including HomePlug® AV and HomePlug Green PHY.
At the Smart City Expo, Tatung displayed its full line of modules with software developed with its partners. Arkados has provided software support packages that complete the software release of these modules. The support packages integrate board-level software and provide developers with a complete development environment. In addition, Arkados' device-management software, LinqUSP (TM), has been added as a utility for managing the device lifecycle, a critical task throughout the Smart City application. Specialized software IP, such as the Grid2Home Smart Energy Profile (SEP) 2.0, Prosyst's OSGi, and others have also been integrated, according to application needs.
"We believe that the Smart City is all about dealing with data and processes autonomously to make our lives more efficient and comfortable. However, today we lack pervasive computing devices that can practically and seamlessly weave through the Web for smart cities regardless of communication methods and data-exchange formats," said Dr. Alan Pan, Chief Strategy Officer of Tatung's Consumer Business Group. "Our goal at Tatung is to work with our partners and play an indispensable role in this area. We believe our full-line modules will be among the first in the industry to provide complete building blocks for smart city network-based computing for smart energy management, sensing & control, and remote monitoring. The cooperation with Arkados in developing the software support packages has been an important step of our accomplishment."
"With Arkados' rich experience in PLC technology and expertise in embedded- and application-software development, we are in a strong position to continue contributing to perfecting Tatung's embedded modules for a wide range of smart city applications," said Terrence DeFranco, CEO of Arkados Group, Inc. "Our focus is goes beyond architecting software for these modules at the embedded level. We also support developers in building valuable products on our platform and enabling rapid deployment and lower development costs. Speed and quality of application development is crucial and we are already seeing great traction with large customers."