Three Indian techies win Freescale design contest

Three smart Indian techies Tuesday won the design challenge contest leading chip maker Freescale Semiconductor ran this year for the electronics design engineer community, including professional electronics engineers, hobbyists and budding engineers.

Saravana Pandian Annamalai from Madurai in southern Tamil Nadu won the first prize of Rs.100,000 for designing a prototype on a smart home with Internet of Things (IoT) in which objects of everyday use are connected through a network to seamlessly send and receive data.

Kaustubh Digambar Tapke from Mumbai bagged the second prize of Rs.75,000 for designing and developing a prototype on a solar-powered autonomous micro patrol boat for sea-surface inspection.

Ashok R from Bangalore got the third prize of Rs.50,000 for a prototype on sketch drive car he built using Freescale embedded processors.

"Using Freescale embedded technology, I have built an electronic device that can be installed in any house to the mains and switches on or off lights, fans, air-conditioner and home appliances through a remote using sensors and Bluetooth wireless connectivity," Annamalai told IANS at the Freescale technology forum being held here by the $4.2-billion US multinational.

Annamalai has turned into an entrepreneur to set up a start-up - Embien Technologies India Ltd - to build an innovative cloud platform SkyCase for providing a reliable and scalable solution for IoT and M2M (machine-to-machine).

"Skycase is designed for everyone. OEM (original equipment manufacturers) can design their devices or offer gateways to support the cloud interface. Consumers can use these devices and applications to improve their lifestyle," Annamalai said.

Tapke's solar powered unmanned micro patrol boat can be used for search and rescue operations as its sensors can detect floating objects on any water surface spanning from pond to sea.

"Our micro patrol boat, made of carbon fibre, detects floating objects like a wreckage of an aircraft or a ship using ultrasonic sensors, which relay their location by signals to the search and rescue teams using a wireless technology," Tapke told IANS.

The solar powered lithium batteries are connected to sensors fitted in the patrol boat that sails by wind speed in a wide area.

"The patrol boat can also be steered remotely by giving commands to sail in a particular direction or to a specific location to detect even unauthorised boats or ships entering Indian waters and alert the coast guards about the intrusion,a Tapke pointed out.

Tapke also turned into an entrepreneur and has set up Inveneering Electronics & Solutions Ltd in Mumbai. As a director of its research and development centre, his team has designed a micro controller using Freescale processors to regulate speed of ceiling fans remotely without a regulator.

Ashok, a software engineer with Delphi India Automotive Systems Ltd, has built a prototype electronic car for gaming and a virtual test drive for automobile engineers to test speed limits and safety features of cars and utility vehicles.