ESC - LeCroy

LeCroy, booth 642, had an eye catching display. They have a Nintendo Wii with Guitar Hero playing on it. That's cool on its own, but wouldn't be relevant except that they are probing the I2C with one of their GHz scopes.

It parallels a conference session they did: "How to Debug I2C Devices Using an Oscilloscope". We spoke with Dave, one of the guys who gave the talk. We watched him pay for a bit as he explained that his scope was showing the I2C communications coming from the key presses on the controller. Very nice.

Then he let me and my compatriot, Rocky play. First I tried it and got booed off the stage with only 21% of the notes hit. Then Rocky and I played against each other and he beat me 10,095 to 8,402.

That's me playing/humiliating myself on the guitar in the photo.

ESC - No, We're Not Done Yet

Day two is going okay and keeping us pretty busy. We've talked to a lot of folks and picked out our booth space for next year. We'll be in booth 3912 in the South hall. We'll be just inside the door, one row back.

I'm not sure the show is going well for everyone though. I ran across this booth that has been abandoned already. Myself, my feet are pretty sore and I'd like a nap, but it's still fun to be here.

Duane Benson
Two more hours...

ESC - My Mom Would Say...

She'd say "you're going to electrocute yourself."

Duane Benson
We need more cables!

ESC - Luminary micro

I'm big on the robotic type applications. It fits too because robots are just embedded systems that move. Right?

Luminary Micro designs and manufactures Arm Cortex-M3 processors. I'm not familiar with the specific details for the Cortex-M3 implementation, but I do know that part of Luminary's reputation is good processor at a good price.

At the ESC here, they're showing off the power of their processors with some intelligent manipulator arms using their Arm processors. They're in booth 3010.

Duane Benson

ESC - RadiSys Robot demostration

I found another cool thing over at the RadiSys booth. They use an Intel Dual core processor and run half of it powered by embedded Windows and the other half of powered by with Linux. Dual core and dual OS. Neat.

Thier demo is a little robot that find a sign. You move the sign and it finds it. Find them in booth 1526.

Duane Benson

ESC - National Instruments

I spoke with Jamie at National Instruments, booth 1508, about just about the coolest way to distribute show premiums I've ever seen. They're showcasing a new version of LabView for Arm processors. It brings all of that power down to less expensive computing platforms.

I've used a variant of LabView in the Lego Robot system but this is real stuff. It does a great job of combining visual programming with lower level coding, like C.

I got a Twixt.

Duane Benson

Sunstone is Here Too

The show is on and engineers are starting to come by. We also have two folks here from our board fab partner, Sunstone Circuits. That's Lee and Nolan there. I'm not telling who is who. You have to stop by the booth for that information. (#1944)

Duane Benson
Smile. You're on Screaming Camera

ESC Go time!

We have a booth. We have staff. We're ready to go. The show starts in about ten minutes and we're jazzed up! Well, most of us are. I'm tired and hungry. I've had a chocolate chip cookie for breakfast. That's it.

By the way, it was a really good cookie. The place I got it from is on the back wall in the 1500 column. The might be sold out by the time you get there or maybe they won't be warm an gooey like the one I had was. Very yummy.

In a bit I'll take a walk around and see what's cool. I think there's more than in past years. Luminary Micro had a bunch of little robots. Outside, there was a robotic Giraffe and someone else had an automated system for dispensing booth give-aways.

Duane Benson
Feed me... Feed me...

ESC - Day 0.128

Well, I'm here and unlike in past years (here and here), ALL of my boxes are here too. We've got a bigger booth this year (#1944), at 10x20 instead of a 10x10 and we're also inside the hall for the first time. That's cool. I'll probably be done setting in up twenty minutes or so. Then I have a couple of hours to hang out and do whatever. Maybe I'll go check out the nearby Tech Museum.

Duane Benson
See (some of you) soon

On The Way To San Jose

A scene being repeated all over the West coast... I'm sitting in the airport waiting for my flight to San Jose. I had to get up at 4:00am to get here on time and I'm tired. I'll get down there in a couple of hours, set up the booth and then find a way to occupy myself for the evening.

I always like this show. It's refreshing to be surrounded by so many engineers and cool things going on at the other booth's. I hope to see you there - booth 1944. Read this post, and you can get a free pass to the show.

Duane Benson
I'm going to find some piece of mind...