It’s truly an amazing, better put, whirlwind time for the electronics community. So many technologies are whipping around in the wind right now that one might need a dedicated embedded system to keep track of them all.
Each one of those technologies is promoted as being the greatest, the next greatest, the future of whatever, the greatest for at least the next twenty minutes, and all the above. This has got to be one of the greatest periods in history for marketing and PR people, never did they had so many straws to grasp and rant about. Augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, wearable electronics, autonomous vehicles, drones, embedded systems, cybersecurity, medical devices, and, the biggie, the Internet of Things (IoT) are ripe for marketers’ promoting, or at least patting their hands together over.
An interesting thing about electronics designers, particularly those who design components like sensors, is that, at least subconsciously, they are in a pretty good position. Sensors are incredibly versatile components. For example, in some instances, a single pressure sensor could be used in quite a few diverse applications. That same sensor might be modified for special applications by extending or narrowing its measurement range, increasing sensitivity, and/or putting the sensor in a more robust housing for use under rugged conditions.
Another example is wireless sensors. Interfacing to a wireless system for a dedicated task, it is just a sensor with wireless capability. Hook that system up to the internet and, hocus pocus, you now have an IoT sensor.
On that note, with all these techno buzzwords blowing in the wind, it’s a good time to sit down with someone in the know who can at least give some perspective as to where we are. To get that perspective we sat down for a brief discussion about the market in general with Justin R. Bessette, Manager of Wireless Systems and Software Engineering at LORD Sensing MicroStrain.
For the rest of the article and Justin's full interview visit SensorsMag.com.
