Freescale Semiconductor (News - Alert), a company engaged in designing and manufacturing embedded semiconductors for the automotive, consumer, industrial, networking and wireless markets, has announced the U.S. winners in the first Freescale Technology Forum (FTF) Green Design Challenge conducted by the company. The Digital Sun Distiller developed by Jose Luis Rojas with iluxon S.A. de C. V. from San Luis Potosi, Mexico came out to be the winning design.
The distiller has been designed upon Freescale’s MCF51QE128 microcontroller, MC13203 and MC13213 ZigBee
transceivers, and the MPXV5004 pressure sensor.
The winners were chosen by the attendees of the Freescale Technology Forum. During the closing session, Rich Beyer, chairman and CEO of Freescale, recognized Rojas on stage. As the winner, Rojas will receive $10,000, and will also compete in the Grand FTF Challenge with other first place global winners, and have the chance to take home up to $50,000.
Acoording to Beyer, sustainability is the next challenge in technology development as it places considerations like power consumption and environmental impact at the forefront of embedded design. Beyer expressed delight to see the level of engineering innovation and ingenuity displayed by the top FTF Americas Design Challenge finalists and congratulated Rojas on his success with the Digital Sun Distiller.
Rojas explained how his design will benefit the environment, in a report submitted along with the winning Digital Sun Distiller.
In his paper, Rojas said that as our population grows and water consumption rises, the supply of freshwater is finite and threatened by pollution. Hence, to avoid a crisis, many countries must conserve water, reduce pollution, and manage supply and demand. However, efficient water management requires new knowledge and actionable solutions, as well as synthesis of current experiences from different parts of the world.
Rojas noted that with the Digital Sun Distiller, a person is able to purify and reuse household water, which when multiplied by many households, reduces water consumption in a substantial way.
Rojas thanked Freescale for this exciting opportunity and access to the energy-efficient technologies needed to develop the Digital Sun Distiller, and said that it was rewarding to have his hard work acknowledged at the prestigious Freescale Technology Forum. The first-prize award will enable him to continue to enhance his product and help many countries conserve household water by reusing a percentage of water already used.
The Green FTF Design Challenge finalists were selected from over 65 participants by Freescale, and each entrant was judged on creativity, design efficiency, technical complexity, the number of Freescale devices used, and overall application innovation to improve the environment.
Mark Donkers from OES (News - Alert), London, Canada received second-place in the Green FTF Design Challenge for his Clean Water Diverter, based on Freescale’s MC13211 (ZigBee technology) and MPXV5004 pressure sensor. Donkers will receive $5,000 USD.
Arvind Arora is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Arvind’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Zigbee | X |
Zigbee is an IEEE 802.15.4 standard. Zigbee is designed around low-power consumption allowing batteries to essentially last forever. Key features are:
- Data rates are 20, 40 and 250 KBPS-Kilo Bits...more |