What are the proprietary ST technologies/components available for this segment and give examples
A ST’s offering includes solutions for smart street lighting, smart driving, smart parking, smart metering, smart garbage collection and smart homes. Our platform-ready solutions and ecosystem simplify and accelerate product development and reduce time-to-market. Our broad portfolio is enabling Smart Cities that improve residents’ quality of life by letting them do things while consuming less energy.
An example: unlike traditional streetlights, LED lighting is fully dimmable. So simply by adding, low-cost sensors and controllers, streetlights can automatically adjust their brightness to account for a range of dynamic conditions, including cloud cover, moonlight, vehicular traffic, and even the presence or absence of pedestrians. As the city of Boston found, when it replaced its HID streetlights with smart lighting, the associated energy and cost savings from this sort of “smart lighting” can be dramatic.
A prime example of ST’s commitment to Smart Cities is our STLUX line of digital controllers. These are the industry’s first programmable controllers designed specifically for lighting applications. They combine low-cost with high functionality, and can easily be designed into new lighting products or retrofitted into existing lines. STLUX controllers represented such an advance in energy-efficient lighting that they received the prestigious CES Innovation Award for 2014.
Earlier this year at the Smart City Summit & Expo in Taipei, Tatung, Taiwan’s leading electronics company for smart home, building, and city solutions, showcased its Universal Developer Kit (UDK-21). It is a universal platform for smart home and building applications, such as electric-vehicle charging management, smart LED lighting, smart-grid, and home monitoring. It is powered by ST’s STreamPlug ST2100 system on chip (SoC).
Whom would this system help the most, and who would be the people ready to invest in it? (the people who will have to be influenced.
A The beauty of Smart Things is that they can find value everywhere information can be transmitted and used to make things better. Whether that is in the home, in the car, in the office or factory, on land, on the ocean or in space. We are already involved in multiple farming applications, including a very interesting one to help eliminate the problem of the bee hive collapse.
How have these components improved over the years? (integration, SoCs, comms interfaces, peripherals).
A The Smart City is an application of Internet of Things technologies. The elements that enable the IoT are processing and control, security, sensing, power, and communications. ST is unique in its ability to address all of these areas. We have all the hardware, software and tools that are necessary to make Smart Things, for Smart Cities and for other application areas:
- Sensors and micro-actuators sense and act
- Ultra-low power microcontrollers and security process information
- Ultra-low power communication modules connectivity makes the link
- Analog and mixed signal components translate the information
- Power and energy-management modules keep the system running in the most energy-efficient way
- Our broad portfolio will enable Smart Cities to improve our quality of life by doing smarter things while consuming less energy.
