As electronica returned to Munich, in Germany from 12-15 November, IoT Insider was present on the show floor on day one to learn from companies what they were exhibiting, why they were exhibiting these solutions in particular, and what key trends and talking points they were taking with them into 2025.
Topics ranged from energy harvesting and electronic waste to antenna design considerations, demonstrating the wide variety of technologies on display at the trade fair as well as an understanding of the challenges IoT engineers face in keeping the costs down and their projects working.
Energy harvesting
“We don’t believe that using batteries is sustainable,” said Geoffroy Gosset, CEO and Co-Founder of e-peas, who spoke to IoT Insider about how they are approaching energy harvesting. “We believe that we need to be able to move from non rechargeable batteries to self-sustaining, self-powered devices that don’t require high installation or maintenance costs.”
Operating in predominantly consumer IoT markets but wanting to branch out into industrial markets – an application that was first identified by the company when it was founded almost 10 years ago – e-peas provided examples of how they are integrating their solutions into devices used in the day-to-day on their booth, which included a TV remote and a keyboard, as well as devices for commercial use like electronic shelf labels.
“You have two aspects to an electronic shelf label: you have the connectivity protocol that gives you the price and picture to display,” explained Bruno Damien, Ecosystem Marketing Director, “And the second technical aspect is the size and consumption of the screen. The bigger the screen, the higher the consumption is. We have to manage not only the energy used by the communication protocol but also by the variance of size.”
Antenna design consideration
In showcasing their newly launched antenna integrator tool, AntennaXpert, Taoglas reflected that they are attuned to the pain points of projects, particularly for those that fail due to not enough thought being put towards the antenna design and size requirements.
The tool allows users to customise their antenna design and integration, more specifically enabling them to preview embedded antennas and understand how they perform – all without having to purchase the physical antennas.
“It’s very important to plan antenna selection in advance and not at the end,” stressed Dermot O’Shea, CEO and Co-Founder of Taoglas to IoT Insider. “It didn’t matter so much a few years ago when two antennas were being used … you’re now looking at eight to 12 antennas, or 14 to 16 … Antennas are one of the most common points of failure for hardware design and the main reason is because it wasn’t planned out in advance.”
“We’re hoping the market returns, we’ve been in a market down cycle for the last two years and based on previous graphs … it should return next year.”
Dermot O’Shea, CEO and Co-Founder of Taoglas
Conversations with Taoglas, but also Ignion, showed how these companies are listening to these design pain points and responding accordingly.
Ignion launched its three-port virtual antenna component, OMNIA mXTEND, at electronica, which has the capability to switch between 400MHz and 8,000MHz – which means device manufacturers can pick specific bands without needing to modify the antenna.
In creating a device that can operate between frequencies, the challenges rested in the technical design: “The most critical thing when I was designing was the coupling between ports, because I have cellular, GNSS and Bluetooth [capabilities], so I have to find the best configuration to have isolation between ports. The device also had to be thin and compact and not too big,” said Sondos Mehri, Research and Development Engineer.
“We’re going to open the year with Oxion 2.0, it’s going to be an exciting new version, and we’re going to have new use cases about how our technology is changing the game.”
Valentina De Giorgio, Director of Marketing, Ignion
IoT Insider’s sister publication Electronic Specifier will be at the trade fair for the duration and is inviting attendees to stop by its stand B4.229 and discuss with us how we can support you both editorially and commercially.
There’s plenty of other editorial on our sister site, Electronic Specifier! Or you can always join in the conversation by commenting below or visiting our LinkedIn page.
