CES 2013 was held last month and a recurring theme was “connectivity” (aka Smart Home, Smart Grid, HomeConnect, etc...) - spanning connected product categories such as ultra-high definition TVs, hot new smartphones, sleek appliances and other retakes on everyday household products. The revolution of connectivity that has been promised for many years is finally being realized.

We ended the Arrow M2M roadshow at the end of March and just realized we completely forgot to post about it.  The roadshow was very successful and we met a lot of engineers and organizations looking to enable their products using different M2M technologies (cellular, local wireless, ethernet, wifi, the cloud, data and device platforms, etc).  We also had a great time with the other companies at the roadshow.

One of the lasts shows was here in Minneapolis, which turned out to be a great event and there was easily a few hundred people in attendance.  We look forward to participating in the future.

Our one and only Erik Rorvick found himself on the Peggy Smedley Show this week on the subject of making M2M solutions simpler, talking about ways to make accessing and analyzing data as easy as possible.  Erik, our Business Developer Manager, had a great chat with Peggy on her radio show, which is known for being the voice of M2M and Connected Devices.  The show is a weekly radio show (12:00 pm CT Tuesdays) that helps listeners not only understand connected devices but also how to make these devices a part of their everyday lives.

Redpine’s ultra-low-power 802.11n Wi-Fi connectivity on Renesas MCUs coupled with cloudbased services from Exosite form easy-to-deploy M2M solutions.

Boston, MA, Feb 27, 2012 – Redpine Signals, Inc., a leading developer of ultra-low-power, high-performance multi-standard wireless chipsets and modules, and Exosite, a provider of cloud-connectivity solutions for embedded applications, today announced a cloud-connected solution enabled on Renesas RX62N and RX63N microcontrollers. Showcased exclusively at the Arrow Electronics M2M Seminar Series, the partnership solution demonstrates Wi-Fi enabled, cloud-based M2M applications on several Renesas development kits .

We are excited to be participating in Arrowfest 2011 this year at our local Minneapolis branch. If you are in the Minneapolis area, please feel free to stop down and visit. There is always great food and drinks besides getting to chat with so many companies in one place. The best thing, it's in a tent!

A classic issue for people who work at an office is finding out when fresh coffee is brewing.  Do you make a pass by the kitchen area every 20 minutes?  Maybe wait for the aroma?  Take matters into your own hands and fire up a pot? Of course, another common problem is finding what appears to be the remains of a previously brewed pot and debating in your mind on how old it could be and whether or not it is in within the drinkable window.  (What's your rule? 2 hours? 2 days?)

One piece of information that we often take for granted is the temperature. In Minnesota especially where winters are extremely cold while summers can be hot, the temperature is always a talking point, be it on the news or small talk with people you meet on the street. With the temperature on my mind (the temp is 13 degrees Fahrenheit and dropping as I type) I took an Arduino prototyping platform and decided to create a really simple web-enabled temperature device.