Freescale, Atheros demo Smart Energy
It will provide an IP-based energy management solution capable of running on a variety of both wired and wireless communication protocols, including those supported by the HomeGrid Forum, the HomePlug Powerline Alliance, the Wi-Fi Alliance and the ZigBee Alliance.
The technology was demonstrated at the Metering, Billing/CRM Europe event this week in and showed a new powerline communication option, along with the low power Wi-Fi option, for home energy management. The demonstration included Freescale’s Home Energy Manager reference design for monitoring and controlling the electricity consumption of in-home appliances and communicating over Qualcomm Atheros’ PL-14 HPGP board using the Ubilogix implementation of the Smart Energy 2.0 Profile.
Also on show was the Freescale Tower System development platform which includes the Qualcomm Atheros AR4100, an integrated Wi-Fi system-in-package for microcontroller based design. The AR4100 enables long range transmission while minimizing energy consumption. The TWR-WIFI-AR4100 is a peripheral module for the Tower System that allows the AR4100 to be quickly added to tower designs based on select Kinetis and Coldfire processors. The TWR-WIFI-AR4100 package comes with the software to implement an AR4100 design, as well as example designs.
The module is integrated with Freescale’s MQX operating system. "By collaborating with Freescale, we are one step closer to bringing smart energy to the home," said Adam Lapede, senior director, networking business unit, Qualcomm Atheros. "With this solution, we are providing the potential for consumers to save energy and money by controlling their home energy settings from their mobile devices."
