The transfer and storage of physical parameters have increasingly become a part of instrumentation and measurement technology and added to local logging and preprocessing. In recent years several wireless and wired transmission protocols that meet the individual requirements of the specifi c application have been developed for this purpose. Here objectives are technical parameters such as data rate, stability, security, real-time capability, scalability, energy effi ciency, autonomy and adaptivity of the network management as well as commercial parameters like costs, strategic long-term availability and standardization. In the past few years especially different wireless transmission protocols have entered the market. These transmission protocols allow a handling that is fl exible and as far as possible installationfree, i. e. ad-hoc. Today these protocols have already been applied in many areas of consumer electronics, but also in industrial and process automation. In this context the management with effi cient and user-friendly operating units, like smart phones and tablets, has become increasingly signifi cant.
In response to this, the PHYWE System GmbH & Co. KG decided to use these technologies also for their application area of didactical measurement technology and establish it as an integral part of their solutions for the scientifi c and technical training at schools and universities. For 100 years PHYWE has developed devices, experiments and solution systems for schools and universities of science and applied sciences (materials science, medicine …) and for applications preparatory to research or close to research. The company has a leading position in this area around the world. This position was consolidated with the implementation of the Cobra4 product family and PHYWE succeeded in connecting this modern kind of data logging that is refl ecting the zeitgeist with curricular contents world-wide and thus strengthened the interest of scientifi c study contents, especially the interplay with real experiments, of the teachers and learners.
The Steinbeis Transfer Center Embedded Design and Networking (stzedn) has implemented several developments on the so called Embedded Connectivity in its fi rst ten years since Prof. Dr.-Ing. Axel Sikora founded it with its strong and professional development team. In the framework of several subprojects the stzedn has successfully designed and implemented signifi cant elements of the system development of the new Cobra4 product family for PHYWE. Besides a completely new micro-controller- and wireless transceiver platform on the basis of the IEEE802.15.4 standards, a fl exible, stable and user-friendly complete system had been developed. The system succeeds in combining low cost and high energy effi ciency with a very high performance.
Currently the partners are working on a second product generation.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Axel Sikora
Steinbeis Transfer Center Embedded Design and Networking (Heitersheim)