For my first post as a part of Octavo Systems, I am pleased to inform you that we have started our journey toward validating our Best-in-Class organization by becoming ISO9001: 2015 certified. The International Standards Organization (ISO) that provides this certification is an independent, non-governmental organization of over 160 standards bodies.
From its inception, Octavo Systems has focused on delivering the highest quality products and services to our customers. We have built a team with deep industry experience and knowledge across every part of the organization, including the Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Applications, Packaging, Operations, and Manufacturing Departments. We are also partnered with Best-in-Class manufacturing organizations from around the world, which are already ISO certified. Octavo Systems does this to provide our customers, suppliers, and partners the best possible experience when working with us (Read More…)
ICASSP 2018 Panel: An Industry Perspective on Emerging Signal Processing Challenges*
I have been attending the IEEE’s premier Signal Processing conference, the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) for over 30 years. While at Texas Instruments, ICASSP was the perfect venue for me to meet with the signal processing research community, our customers (both present and future), the editors/analysts who were following the Digital Signal Processing explosion, and our competitors. It became my platform to influence the industry while at the same time sensing the direction in which it was moving. (Read More…)
The application engineering team at Octavo Systems is always looking for cool ways to showcase the distinct and creative ways our devices can be used. Recently, we built a tweeting Rubik’s cube solver to showcase some of the IoT and industrial control capabilities of the OSD335x Family of System-in-Package(SiP) devices. It was amazing how easy it was to give the robot a voice and allow it to talk to the world via social media. So, we decided to explore more IoT capabilities the OSD335x Family of devices can implement without a lot of development overhead. This time, we wanted to incorporate human interaction into the device. What better opportunity than to explore America’s favorite IoT phenomenon, Alexa. So, we whipped out a BeagleBoard.org® PocketBeagle® and got to work. Though our vision for this IoT project is bigger than just implementing Amazon’s Alexa voice service on the PocketBeagle, this is a good place to take a break and showcase a simple step by step way to get your PocketBeagle to be a “man’s best friend” personal assistant. Check out the Hackster.io page for the steps.(Read More…)
Our engineering team has been hard at work developing some new products that we will be announcing soon. In the meantime I wanted to take some time to explain our product development philosophy and how that influences the products that we currently have and our Roadmap products.
System Integration Company
At our heart, Octavo Systems is a Systems Integration company. We utilize System-In-Package technology to create modular building blocks that help system designers do their jobs. Our products abstract away tedious and complex tasks the designer is forced to spend time on but don’t really add any value to the end system.
Take the DDR3 in our OSD335x device. Routing DDR is a notoriously difficult and time-consuming task that at the end of the day doesn’t differentiate your product from the next one. The OSD335x integrates the DDR3 and takes care of the routing for you. This means you don’t have to waste your time doing something that just needs to work. Designing with the OSD335x allows you to spend more time on the features that make your product unique.
This is the overarching principal behind our products. We integrate the tedious time-consuming parts of system design so you can focus on what differentiates your product.
With the introduction of Siri, Cortana, Alexa and other voice based personal assistants; communicating with computers using voice has become the order of the day. Voice communication also makes things more intuitive and definitely cooler. People have been using various versions of electronic speech synthesis since the 1950’s and it has come a long way since our Founder, Gene Frantz helped develop the Speak & Spell, utilizing the first single-chip voice synthesizer. However, the most famous Text-to-Speech (TTS) synthesizer was used by the great scientist, Stephen Hawking, starting in the late 1980’s as a result of degradation of his natural abilities from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Dr Hawking’s synthesizer went silent this month, and the scientific community for speech synthesis and many other areas are grateful for his tremendous contributions.
Since TTS technology has matured, many resources are available including open source libraries like eSpeak and Flite that can be easily incorporated into projects. This article helps you install and use TTS synthesizers for any board using the OSD335x family.
The Embedded World Conference in Nuremberg, Germany last week provided an opportunity for the Octavo Systems team to engage with dynamic and innovative companies from around the globe. In its 16th year, this leading exhibition for the international embedded community hosted over 32,000 engineers from 78 countries. With more than 2,000 sessions, the technical engagement level was at an all time high.
Embedded World (February 27, 2018) – Octavo Systems LLC (Octavo), the expert in System-In-Package (SiP) for mass-market applications, today announced the smallest system ready for Industrial applications with a temperature rating of -40°C to 85°C case. (Read More…)
Equivalent AM335x designs in SoM versus SiP solutions
When we introduce new customers to our System-In-Package (SiP) solutions they often ask how a SiP is different from a System-On-Module (SoM). Fact is, in functionality, they are very similar. The two solutions address similar design challenges and provide similar value, however, they do this in very different ways. (Read More…)
Biometric Door Opener Project Using BeagleBone Black Wireless with Facial Recognition
Ever since I was a child, I have loved building things and getting my hands dirty. Whether it was fixing my dad’s car, playing with electric motors, or writing code, I enjoy the satisfaction of seeing a problem and working to a solution. Actually building hands-on projects is a stress relief for me. When I was in school I was always looking for ways to take the theory I learned in class and put it into action.
Now that I am at Octavo Systems I like to do the same thing. The tools available to designers have come a long way. I am amazed at how easy it is to take an idea from the drawing board to a functioning prototype. The OSD335x System-In-Package on the BeagleBone® Black Wireless is a perfect example of these tools. (Read More…)
It is Feb 2nd, Groundhog day. Each year I like to watch the 1993 classic Groundhog Day with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. In it, Murray gets stuck reliving the same day over and over again until he finally “gets it right”. The movie will make you laugh and cry. I highly recommend it.
However, this isn’t meant to be a movie review. I bring it up because I see parallels between Murray’s problem, reliving the same day over again, and a common complaint we hear from our customers. No matter how hard they try they always seem to be stuck having to redo the same design tasks over and over again! (Read More…)
