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The story all began when I lost my car keys. It was a cold and frosty morning and to keep the story short, my keys fell out of my pocket and disappeared forever, never to be seen again. Consequently my lunch times for the next few days consisted of rummaging through the undergrowth in the car park in the hope that I’d find them. On the plus side, however, this is where my life with the Hipkey began.

The Hipkey is a device that connects to your iphone/ipad by syncing via Bluetooth™ to a free IOS app. It then attaches to the item you don’t want to lose. It can alert you if someone tries to steal your iphone or if you leave the house or reach a certain distance without it. Attach it to your child in busy areas (!) and you will be able to find them and if you lose your iphone your Hipkey will find it instantly (or vice versa) with the simple click of a button.

Since my life with the Hipkey began, my nights have consisted of burying my iphone at the bottom of the laundry cupboard and demanding my boyfriend to track it by sounding the alarm. Unfortunately, this novelty has started to wear slightly thin with him. We have also spent days walking around the local supermarket, tracking each other down or pretending we’ve lost our (non-existent) child by hiding the Hipkey under the bananas. A friend told me they saw my mother and I running away from each other in a field one day last week during one of our daily walks and wanted to check that everything was OK (I’m sure you can guess what we were testing out). I think I’m starting to paint a picture of what a success this new technological device is and how helpful it can be. The Hipkey not only presents endless fun by making me look like a crazy person but is also an exceptionally intelligent and practical device. Something I would say never to be without, in fact, unless you are an extremely over organised individual who’s never left their car keys in the driver’s side door after you’ve sat down and belted yourself up.

Let’s hope that when the Hipkey needs to be put into serious action it proves itself to be as reliable as it’s been so far – I’m positive that it will.

Hetty Mallett
HR Administrator, Cambridge

Lars presenting at the Autotech Council meeting

Lars Boeryd, Director-Automotive Marketing, presented at the Autotech Council meeting on 8th February 2013.  He gave us the following account of the meeting.

This was one of the regularly scheduled Autotech Council meetings and this time around the topic was centered around voice UI, the challenges, and the opportunities of providing a natural language interface in the car. The agenda for event can be found here

Representing CSR, I presented the importance of Bluetooth® technology and associated noise reduction, echo cancellation, and other audio processing technologies for enabling optimum voice quality in support of Hands Free calling, as well the challenges associated with providing the right filtering and pre-processing to optimise machine/speech recognition. I also made the argument that SBC is inadequate for HiFi audio over Bluetooth and that aptX® solves the problem of providing the best in-car HiFi audio experience when playing music from your Smartphone on the Infotainment system over Bluetooth.

The meeting was very attended and we made some great contacts with individuals and organisations which we will be following up on.

Lars Boeryd
Director-Automotive Marketing 

This is a joint blog authored by Art Weeks, CSR Technology, Inc. and Naseem Aslam, Spansion.

One of the ways that CSR earns the loyalty of leading brands such as Canon, Fuji Xerox, HP and Ricoh is by collaborating with like-minded vendors who understand that performance, quality and support are critical components to delivering world-class technologies. One such partner is Flash memory developer Spansion.

Spansion Quad SPI is used for code storage and fast boot. The CSR Quatro® 5300 series of programmable SOC solutions for printers, scanners and all-in-ones (AIOs) supports Spansion Flash to store code for numerous essential features and functions. Programmable features of the Quatro SOC include scanner and printer mechanism control as well as image processing for scanning, copying and printing. These programmable features allow OEMs to truly differentiate their products in a competitive market. It’s crucial that the Flash memory is compatible with the latest CSR chips and that performance and quality meet the highest standards expected by CSR customers.

For printers, scanners and AIOs supported by the CSR Quatro 5300 series SOCs, there is a strong customer demand for the multi-bit serial NOR Flash memory to support fast boot times and thus short first page out times. Unfortunately, some of the larger serial NOR memories, such as 512 Mbit, lack any true industry standard. That’s why it’s so critical for CSR to have the direct support of suppliers like Spansion to ensure our products are capable of working together. The Quatro 5300 Series supports Spansion serial NOR Flash on 1, 2, and 4 bit SPI interfaces.

CSR also is looking to Spansion for SLC NAND Flash support. NAND is a different type of Flash memory typically available in larger sizes than NOR Flash. CSR customers can use Spansion SLC NAND as a mass-storage device for printers and copiers. (To store print or copy jobs while the device is busy servicing an earlier request). This is another area where industry standards do not yet exist, and therefore, partnering with companies like Spansion that have a strong commitment to performance, quality and service, becomes a decisive factor in CSR’s ability to deliver the latest in technology.

By Naseem Aslam, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Ecosystem Development at Spansion and Art Weeks, Product Marketing Manager, Document Imaging at CSR Technology

Ringo Starr famously sang how he got by with a little help from his friends. In much the same way that Ringo relied on his friends, CSR relies on our friends to develop and provide products to our end customers. One great friend of CSR’s Quatro® SOC product line over the years has been Taiwan based company, Primax.

Primax is an Original Design Manufacturer “ODM”. What they do is design and manufacture products for another company to brand, label and sell. This is a common development model when the branding company lacks either the resources or required expertise to develop a product within a targeted schedule or for a targeted cost.

Primax is well known in the industry for their mature ADF/Scanner core technology that has been a key reason for their recent success with many MFP programs. Primax has been developing products and building expertise with the CSR Quatro® SOC product line for the past six years. They have brought multiple Quatro® based products to market including mono and color laser printers and All In One (AIO) devices for leading Tier 1 brands. In total they have shipped nearly one million Quatro® units.

Having a partner like Primax has been critical to the overall success of the Quatro® product line. Quatro® not only requires hardware and board design expertise but also entails a great deal of firmware development and operating system expertise as well. Customers need to navigate the confusing world of difficult standards such as Ethernet, Wi-Fi® and FAX protocols. On top of this there are the constantly changing standards related to GREEN manufacturing, Energy Star, EcoDesign and other government regulations and directives. In this partnership, CSR is the SOC provider while Primax is the complete solution provider.

CSR’s relationship with Primax extends beyond the Quatro® product line. Primax over the years has developed products with our IPS page description languages for Ricoh, Sagemcom and Sharp. Primax is now looking to develop products with both our Wi-Fi® and IPS Sky solutions as well.

CSR values and appreciates this win-win relationship with Primax. Moving forward CSR will continue to thrive with a little help from our friends.

Organised by Telematics Wire, Telematics India 2012 was held on 29th and 30th of November in Bangalore.  The event served as a networking and discussion platform aimed at building up the automotive telematics ecosystem in India, which is an area that is quickly picking up pace. Traditionally, the automotive telematics space has been dominated by fleet tracking and security segments.  There has been limited penetration of the passenger vehicle segment for a number of reasons.  These include a largely subdued navigation environment without enablers like traffic data, rapidly changing infrastructure and, most importantly, the average consumer who is highly cost-benefit conscious. But India, with the world’s second largest road network at around 3.4 million kilometers and being the sixth largest automobile producer in the world (with projections of being the third largest by 2020), shows great potential in an upswing in telematics, similar to how telematics picked up in China a few years ago.

The Telematics India event had wide participation from automotive OEMs and ODMs, government agencies, public transport corporations and technology companies, with booths from Harman International, NXP, uBlox, MapmyInda among others. CSR had set-up a booth for this event to showcase our technology strengths in the telematics area. We demonstrated off-board (smartphone-based) telematics using Bluetooth® 4.0 as a cost-effective solution for this market. This demo showed a iPad app receiving simulated tire pressure values and fuel consumption and range from the car-side through a Bluetooth® Smart CSR1000^TM enabled passive keyless entry (PKE) system acting as a secure telematics bridge. We also demonstrated a Bluetooth® Smart steering remote control working with an infotainment unit hosted on our SiRFprimaII^TM SoC platform. The presence of the steering wheel helped increase footfall to our booth and made sure that we were kept busy during exhibition hours. We also gave a demo of our location tracking solution based on our latest LTS platform and an android based client. Sanjeev was a speaker at this event and introduced CSR, the markets we operate in and our solutions especially the LTS platform. Sanjeev also introduced SiRFstarV^TM with its first-of-its-kind Indoor Location capabilities which generated lot of interest in the audience.

We thank the Bangalore and Noida teams who worked hard on preparing the demo kits and also in demonstrating them, Jimmy Pai for shipping the steering remote control demo kit and the Comms team in Cambridge.

Panel: Location Creation:

Laurie Lamberth, founder and vice president of business development at Laurie Lamberth and Associates, moderated “Location Creation,” a panel about location technologies for smartphones and other mobile devices, including enhancements to satellite-based positioning as well as techniques for high-precision outdoor location and the new varied approaches for indoor positioning.

Panel:  Location Services 2.0:

Steve Augustino, partner at Kelley, Drye and Warren, moderated “Location Services 2.0,” a panel designed to explore the next step in the LBS ecosystem: once position is determined, what can be done with the resulting data, how to manage privacy, how LBS can and should be architected, provisioned and delivered for various use cases, and innovative new applications that can utilise location technology for user satisfaction and business profitability.

RapidFire/FastPitch:

In past years, one of the most popular elements of the Summit has been the Fast-Pitch sessions – this year, called “Rapid Fire” – in which companies present their new location-based offerings. This year’s sessions – five minutes each – was moderated by Paul Asel, managing partner of Nokia Growth Partners. Companies presenting included Urban Airship, Locaid Technologies, InvisiTrak, Pole Star USA, Mosaik Solutions, and Alohar Mobile.  The winner was Locaid Technologies, Inc., the world’s largest mobile location data gateway.  Detailed information is forthcoming in a press release.

Joep van Beurden, CEO of CSR, had a “fireside chat” with Derek Kerton, principal analyst at The Kerton Group, an analyst firm, to discuss the state of CSR and what’s on the drawing board.  Here are excerpts:

Update on the Samsung transaction:   CSR exclusively licensed its handset location and connectivity technology to Samsung earlier this year; it was not a sale, per se.  We did not agree to restrictions on location.

Location is among our top priorities; four other markets of high importance to us are voice, music, imaging, and automotive – segments in which we can occupy a #1 or #2 market share position.

History of location services at CSR:

Outdoor location took a long time to take off.  You needed hardware to get location info; SiRF was the pioneer there (SiRF is now part of CSR).    We now see the explosion in growth will come from indoor location – many applications will be far more useful if there’s a seamless transition from outdoor to indoor – and we feel we have the market-leading platform in SiRFstarV, announced at the Locations & Beyond summit a year ago.

SiRFstarV represents a “hybrid” approach combining GPS and other GNSS signals with WiFi/cellular signals, dead reckoning, sensors, and more.

Andreas Winckler, senior advanced technology engineer, BMW Group Technology Office, delivered the keynote address for the Summit.   He discussed the widespread adoption of advanced driver assistance systems and corresponding factors:  the exploding volume of data generated by vehicle sensors, and how to tap this data to make cars more convenient and safer.  Andreas concurs with Roger Lanctot’s assessment about the smartphone taking over the automotive LBS market.

BMW and other automotive manufacturers are now deploying a wide variety of sensors, GPS technology, gyro, dead reckoning, and others to provide greater availability and accuracy, even in urban canyons and under dense foliage.   There are multiple sensors today in automobiles to gauge air pressure, rain, light, and more; by collecting this data and uploading it to the cloud, many innovative things can be accomplished.

Andreas observed that future location-based applications will be based on self-learning and crowd-sourced data; for example:

• Learning speed limits detected by cameras for efficient speed recommendation
• Learning curvature by wheels sensors, gyros for safe and efficient curve speed recommendation
• Learning driver profile for route prediction and personalized re-fuel recommendation

CSR, in conjunction with the Telecom Council, is today hosting the 6th annual Locations & Beyond Summit at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Palo Alto, California, bringing together leaders in the location ecosystem with the aim of working together to tap the enormous potential for location services.

In his Analyst Overview, Roger Lanctot of Strategy Analytics provided an Analyst Overview in which he declared that smartphone connectivity is the new frontier in the car.
“The iPod/iPad are transforming the design of the car, much to the consternation of auto manufacturers,” Lanctot said. “But several auto manufacturers are embracing these platforms, and finding that doing so helps sell cars – as contrasted to simply putting modems into cars.”
Who’s doing it right? Lanctot cited BMW, Ford and GM, all of whom have scalable, consistent platforms worldwide.
Other observations:
• Android IS coming into the car, especially in China.
• A plethora of new, location-aware social networking applications are being developed.
• The industry is in transition as players try to figure out how to connect smartphones safely and easily. Manufacturers who focus on this will sell cars.

Held at the heart of Germany’s motor city, Telematics Update Munich is one of the key conferences and exhibitions which attracts participants from leading vehicle manufactures and tier one suppliers. It is also the perfect occasion to showcase CSR’s latest technologies and to generate market traction. For the event this year, CSR prepared a number of demonstrations, all of which can be viewed on our YouTube channel.

The demand for Wi-Fi® connectivity continues apace for in-vehicle infotainment systems (IVI). Wi-Fi® makes it easier to share HD videos, on the internet or stored, amongst IVI systems and enables the assortment of mobile devices people bring into a car.

At Telematics, we demonstrated CSR’s latest automotive Wi-Fi® chipset, CSR6030A11™ hosted on SiRFprimaII™ platform. The new chipset enables the next generation in-vehicle Wi-Fi® use cases such as Wi-Fi® Direct, enabling simple peer-to-peer connection, and concurrent Access Point/Client operation – effectively turning the IVI system into an wireless router sharing internet connection from tethered to mobile phone. Visitors to our booth agreed that, whether it is internet browsing or video streaming, our set-up delivered smooth connection to a tablet PC or a mobile phone.

On the topic of high quality entertainment, we have also set up atpX® audio streaming over Bluetooth®. Different from previous demonstrations, or that of the competition, we showed audio streaming from one SiRFprimaII™ platform to three headsets, each with its own audio stream. The solution offers significant cost advantage to OEMs offering individualised IVI system to all vehicle passengers. Moreover, aptX® offers ultra low latency, enables lip-sync audio watching video and near real-time sound effect when playing games. Participants who tried our solution were thoroughly impressed and immediately saw its value.

Bluetooth® SMART continues to make its way into the automotive market. Prepared by CSR China team, CSR demonstrated the first Tyre Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) – a system which continuously monitors and reports tyre temperature and pressures, and gives a warning to driver when the tyres are flat. The sensor units of the system is based on the CSR1000™ single-mode Bluetooth® SMART chip transmitting sensor data to the monitor unit, which is based on SiRFatlasVI™ platform running on WindowCE. The advantages of the Bluetooth® SMART based system includes the use of global standard 2.4GHZ ISM band radio as well as the very low power consumption. The demonstration that included a pressure chamber and foot pump intrigued our visitors who came to our booth to have a go with the pressure sensors.

Last but not the least, CSR showed off its new SiRFstarV™ chip-set which is capable of tracking, simultaneously, multiple satellite constellations including GPS and GLONASS, as well as Galileo and Compass. SiRFstarV™ is able to improve accuracy, reduce time-to-first-fix (TTFF), and possess superior immunity against interference from LTE, Bluetooth®, or path-loss in an urban jungle. SiRFStarV™ attracted good attention from audience across the board and many people came to our booth for in-depth discussions.

In summary, the interaction with attendees at Telematics was excellent. Our attendance certainly generated strong interest. I am very thankful to the Communications team and CSR’s Ingolstadt team for planning and organising the event. Thank you also to everyone who worked so hard on the demonstration kits to show off the best of CSR.

Kind regards

Jimmy Pai
Technical Marketing Manager