 So we're here with the Technician here at the Computex 2018 and hi. Hi Nicholas, welcome to visit us. Maybe you take a look here. This is the Android Things development kit. So this is a new kit? Actually, this is the kit that we have been promoting together with Google. And it is the official starter kit for Android Things. And Google gave them away at Google IO a couple of months ago. How many people, everybody at Google IO got one, right? Yeah, so Google say there are around 7-8 thousand people joining in Google IO. So they all bought one home. It's a nice carton box setup. And what's this connectors and stuff that's here? So it's actually a camera here. So you can see yourself. Not that anyone is interested to see you. But here, see, there you are man. You get to see. And a touch panel of course. And a Wi-Fi and here some LEDs and some buttons just for development. So how's it going with the Android Things ecosystem? And you like powering all the dev kits, most of the dev kits out there, right? Yeah, so now the preferred dev kit is the iMac 7. And the iMac 8 is joining Android Things as well. So I have here the Android Things iMac 8M Picomacho. And so you see, let me, the 8M SoC with the low power DDR4, the EMMC on the rear. And a Qualcomm QCA9377 worldwide certified Wi-Fi solution. So this is a special Wi-Fi solution? Yes. So first of all, to finish up the Android Things, the Pico iMac 7 and the Pico iMac 8M, they are pin to pin, which means that they are using the same three connectors on the bottom of the PCB. What does the three connectors do? This are bringing all the IO, the interfaces to the carrier board, the base board. So it is carrying the camera signals, the display signals, but also GPIOs and PWMs to the carrier board. So customers can use a simple four-layer PCB, put this on there, have their IoT sensors there, and they are ready with their Android Things. They can use the Android Things software, build their application, and they have their IoT device working with Google Android Things. So maybe we can just jump quickly over here. You have some of the demo right here with all the, with all those, Pico, which is your kind of standard, right? Yes. So Pico modules, here you see many generations. They are all pin to pin compatible. And here you see an overview. We have the iMac 6, which is the previous generation. The iMac 6UL, which is very low cost. And iMac 7, and now also iMac 8. Is this the best way to do IoT, this Pico? They are optimized for low-power mobile applications. Yeah, so they are very suitable for IoT. But Cortex-A class IoT, not just microcontroller stuff. No, not the sensor side. Not the sensor side. The sensor side you will do with a Cortex-M4, Cortex-M7, or the like. This is not on the sensor side, more on the client interface side, where you need some more processing power, where you need smart devices. So smart devices can be a thermostat, can be a smart speaker, can be a smoke alarm that you want to do with sound control. It can be an intelligent sensor, kitchen equipment. There are many, many fields in IoT. Some of the drawings you have here. Yeah, so it is. And the swing pool, what would be in the swing pool with your, like the sensor, the whole smart home? Yeah, this is just a smart home application. So we just want to stress that IoT is everywhere. So that it is from the bus stop to do information to passengers. But also license plate reading for billing customers for how many miles they drive. Smart home applications. I think everyone knows smart light, access control, CCTV cameras, controlling your audio system. But we also have IoT in the factory in the industrial world. And this is the big market that have to enable and drive IoT. We want smart factories. Why we want smart factories? Not because people don't need a job. We want to make factories smarter and safer for the people to work in. So IoT can help us. IoT there. This is like a vending machine? No, she is using her smart phone. Probably she got a message that something was wrong with the devices and she was maybe doing something else. And her attention was drawn to this device to take action. But you can do scanning of devices like this is maybe a warehouse guy or a FedEx guy. But even simple applications like the guy that is washing the windows outside, he might have sensors that he is strapped on the lift to, if he is not strapped, the lift will not work. Like a safety precaution. And there are many things that his IoT application can open the blinds on the windows so that he can clean the windows for safety. We have people working on this, yes. And all these drawings, these concepts is real? Yes. Is not just a dream for the future? So dreaming is what I did when I went to school. These are real world applications. People that really want to solve problems and want to make the world a safer place for all of us. Is this the smart Paris? Yes, this is the Eiffel Tower. It is very skinny. So, yes, this is just a vending that you use your smart phone to buy products. The vending machines then being linked up to the cloud so that the company that owns the vending machine knows we are out of Coca-Cola so we will send a truck there to refill the Coca-Cola. Is this space? No, this is not space. This is another factory. So there is another factory automation? Yes, this is a factory application where the other one was more an office application. And here the last step is agriculture, so farming applications. There is a lot of IoT going on there from things for the machines but also IoT with animals to know how much food they eat on a daily intake when they are fertile to get babies so that you know I need to get the male candidate with the females to reproduce. So that is all farming. We have a lot of customers in agriculture. Yes, correct. Sorry, let me jump right back here. This farm factor is the same as here? Yes, but this is more an SPC board. Just a Raspberry Pi farm factor. So this is as well based on the IMEX 8M and it comes with memory, it comes with Qualcomm, Wi-Fi. And this is a very nice prototype board, very compact. So that is also your, which one do you sell more, the Pico or that one? This is more like developer mode, this is more like industrial finalized put inside the IoT product. Most of our customers they go for the Pico and look them side by side. So it's size. Now it cannot really be compared because here are all the IOs on it. Here is only say the brain, so you still need a baseboard. But price wise they are pretty much the same. So with the module you have more flexibility and you can customize it easier with a baseboard. Here you will need to work with a hat. So both ways have the benefits and the disadvantages. So this is the IMEX 8M, the Quadcore ARM Cortex A53. Yes, correct. In a better world they announced general availability. Yeah, now it starts shipping. So it's now on a very short delivery date for the one Pi. This is the one Pi. The units actually start shipping last week slowly to develop us. So we have a big backlog with pre-orders and people slowly get their kids as they are fully queued and shipping to customers. So there's still some availability constraints there. We think we will fulfill all the orders within the next four to five weeks. And this is the PicoMacho. Currently it is at Google for having this in Android Things. And products will start shipping to customers also. Probably beginning of July, maybe the end of June. So how's the Android Things performance on IMEX 8M compared to IMEX 7? It's a completely different product. So the IMEX 7 has been designed for low-power, fanless, compact devices. Where the 8M is more multimedia. It has a very powerful GPU. It can drive 4K displays. So the power consumption is a little bit higher. But the performance is a magnitude. So compared to the IMEX 7. Maybe more. I have to check the benchmarks on that. But it is a different product for different markets. And then I did a video with NXP at the Better World. They announced another one, a new one called the Mini. Yes, the Mini. This is 28 nanometer and the next one will be 14. Yes, correct. So that is a new process, 8M Mini. We are working with NXP to make a PicoMacho based on the 8M Mini. But that is all in early planning stages. I'm going to bet you it was just announced, only at Embedded World. It is just announced, yes. Probably we can show something next year at Embedded World when you come to visit us. So for the Embedded World industry, NXP is providing very stable, long-term support chipsets, right? Yes, correct. Which is great. So our customers want to have 15 years availability of the products. That is very important. We have customers that work in automation, as I show at the examples earlier. Agriculture, factory automation, even home automation. People don't want to change their house every five years when something breaks down. They want to replace something with the same thing. Also, many companies, they are proud to support products for 15, 20 years in the consumer space. You will not redecorate your house every five years as well, right? You want to buy something, and then you do your painting, you do everything ready, and you don't want then two years later if it breaks down. Unfortunately, it breaks down. You need to buy a replacement, and then the size is smaller, and you have a black hole in your wall. Nobody wants that. So long-lived tea is very important for being successful in the IoT world where you are interfacing to the customer. We did a really cool video last year in your office factory. Yes, correct. I remember. You mentioned, I hope you liked the video, but you mentioned when did you start a company? We started a company back in 2001. So more than 15 years ago. So you already have experience with the 15-year support kind of thing. I'm joking, but it's more than 15 already. We started to build ARM CPU modules back in 2008. So 2008 is 10 years ago. This is still in mass production and will not go EOL until at least 2024-25. So we have contract signed with customers. We need to supply products up to the end of 2024. So there's another six years. It's already in mass production for 10 years. So of all your customers, how many people are using Android? How many people are using other systems? Well, we have different applications, different customers. We have a lot of customers. So Android Things is still very new. It's like a baby. So the normal Android is being used by a lot of people. So a majority of customers are using Android. And we think a lot of customers will actually like Android Things. Other customers are spread on Yocto. We have many customers on Yocto as well. Yocto is a very compact platform and you can get by with a lower spec product than an Android. Android really want to have a GPU to show off a multimedia. But for a headless design for something that is just a control box, people are fine with a headless Linux Yocto distribution. So there's not so many headless Androids out there? Not many that I'm aware of. People have to be confident in their Android to make it headless. Usually Android you want to see what's going on. And those people that want to go headless, they go for a free RTOS or a Yocto. And if we are looking more into systems, like this is a system that we are making a waterproof system here. So people like to know as on this like a Ubuntu because it's easy to install packages on it with an Uptcat install command. So different applications, different industries, different operation systems. So IoT is a lot about connection. Yeah, everything is connection, connection, connection. So let me show you. It's very, very small. So I hope you guys can see it. This is only 12 by 16 centimeters. Millimeters, sorry, millimeters. It is a soldered down module. Here as you can see it can be soldered down. This is a Bluetooth plus Wi-Fi combo module. This is a QCA 9379 Wi-Fi solution. But let me show you here. You have an overview. Come follow me. So we have a 9377 with this one by one. 802.11 AC with Bluetooth. And then we have a 2 by 2. This is 6174. Also with Bluetooth 4. And the 9379 is a 2 by 2 also with Bluetooth. Much higher performance than the others. And just to give you a sneak peek next year, we will come out with Bluetooth 5. But connectivity is one thing. We also want to ship around the world. And one big problem that everyone is going to face using Wi-Fi is certification. You need to be certified into the countries that you will sell your IoT product. So everyone know FCC, USA FCC. But that only covers the US. CE, we all have seen it on our products. Which is for Europe. But if you sell a Wi-Fi product, a Wi-Fi enabled product, you need to have Etsy for Europe as well. You need to have RED certification. You need to have IC certification for Canada. You need to have CTIC RTM for Australia and New Zealand. You need TALEX certification for Japan. We did all this certification already in our products. So you don't have to re-certify. This certification will set you back $100,000 per product that you will design. If you work with a certified module, you can save this certification cost and you only need to do EMI, EMC testing. This is only a couple thousand US dollars. So when you're building your next IoT platform, Nikolas, and you need to have Wi-Fi, you either need to factor in $100,000 US dollar certification cost or you need to find a certified Wi-Fi solution that can reduce this certification. Are you the only one to do this? As far as we know, we are the only one that has all the certification. There are some people that have FCC, but that we know there is nobody that has all the certification. But we have more than this. Just go up a little bit. Operation temperature minus 40 degrees Celsius, which is also minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit, up to 85 degrees Celsius grade. Working temperature. So operating temperature of the products. So very small, very versatile, but very, very handy and already prepared and ready for mass production. Now this is the one that soldered down here. I have one that is a little bit bigger because people want to have an easy prototype. So we have this and voila. There we go. We have a board-to-board connector here. And if we now walk a little bit to this side again. Because there we go. I was talking about our one pie. The same connector. You can click it in. So if you have applications where you have different needs for Wi-Fi, where you have different requirements, maybe some applications where you don't need to have Wi-Fi, you have an option that you can easily attach or detach it onto your product. So you have a differentiation for special markets. How do you attach this one? Well, that one has to be soldered. Yeah, need to have a factory for that. And that can be, that's already on here? Yes, here. Side by side, soldered on next to it. Let me just choo-choo-choo. So our module as well is completely, completely satisfied with the same certifications that I just mentioned for our Wi-Fi solution. So it has CE, it has RAT, it has FCC, IC for Canada, CTIC for Australia and TALEC for Japan. So many markets that you can sell with peace of mind and you have no certification, nightmares that set you back a lot of money and will take you six months if you have to do it on your own. And over there in the wall you're showing a little bit more, right? How about this? Yeah, so this is a prototype board and development board. So it's the same module that I just showed you now assembled on a PCB. And I think we can pull it up. Yeah, we can. It's a Velcro. So this is an SD card connector. So you can put it into an SD card slot on your development board to test drive the Wi-Fi solution. So how is the Wi-Fi performance compared to like a laptop or something? Well, the Wi-Fi ICs that are used by us are the same ones that are used into Android high-end phones. So 2x2 802 11AC, you can reach hundreds of Mbps speeds. So they are super high-end. So the smart home and the smart factory, you can have a whole bunch of Wi-Fi devices. They'll be stable, connected, very stable. Yes, and if you have more low-speed I.O. that only need to spit some small data, we also have Bluetooth and Thread module. So Thread is an 802.15.4 and here you see that one as well. Again, it is certified. So we do the certification worldwide for our products. So what do you do for maybe LTE or Lora? No, our focus is in the office, in the house, and the last mile, linking up to a telecom is something that we currently don't do. We focus on the gateway, the client interface, and the sensor part. Have this all collected the data into the gateway and the gateway connects with an LTE solution towards the clouds. But when you talk about the agriculture with the cows and stuff, you might want to need more range, right? Well, if it is in the stables, you have Wi-Fi. If you work on the land, you need to have an uplink that is an LTE link. But people can just use this. Everyone has this. And I can put this in hotspot mode. And my hotspot mode, I can connect it to my tractor. And usually, what's the Wi-Fi limit? How many devices maximum? Is it still that kind of 256 kind of devices? Well, this is the client side. So that's another strong point that we can support. The Qualcomm modules that we have, they support client mode, ad hoc mode, access point hotspot mode, but also concurrent mode. So you can do concurrent mode on the Wi-Fi, which means that you are a client and an access point at the same time simultaneously. So by doing that, you can have it as an access point. So with your phone, for example, you can connect to your IoT device and you can configure it. But once you have it configured, it is a client mode to your access point in your house or in your office to upload the data that it will collect and want to process for cloud and data analytics and big data. It could be useful to have Wi-Fi mesh also, right? Yeah, it's supported. So you can just hop and expand the site? Yeah, but if you want to do really, really high performance mesh, you need to go for the access point SOCs from Qualcomm. This is the client mode. So this is the client side, which is the nodes and the access point node side. You're talking about the big gateways. We are working on that, and we are happy to show you that at the next event that we will be participating and at the moment that is still very much in testing and polishing. So on the next show, we can dive into that. What else can you talk about for the next show? For the next show. The next show is in Germany. It's Electronica in November. So we will be showing off probably our next generation panel computing. We have a nice lineup now. We are working on the next generation which we want to introduce next year. And that will be 64-bit. So it's not the same vertical market. It will be a different market. But we are working on the next generation there. And also we are working on a product for vehicle computing. So it's not ARM. It's bigger and heavier, right? Yeah, it's heavy. I think if you compare it with an ARM product, this weight is like 20 times. So what do you have in there? Yeah, this is an Intel Apollo Lake system. I have here the spec card for you. So this is for vehicles. So you have for power, you have a wide range power input. You have ignition control there. So when you press the button in your car to start your car or you use your key, then you get a signal that it will start this system. There's two SIM card slots for connecting to two uplinks. And this is being used in delivery trucks but also, for example, in police and medical ambulances just for data locking and IoT for commercial use. So what does this connect to? Data serial port so you can connect to a serial device. Here's for display on the other side. You saw some network connectors, USBs. How long have you been working in the Intel staff? We are already doing Intel for more than a decade. We have been working on that in the OEM space mostly. And we see a market for Intel-based industrial devices as an extension to our ARM products that we have. They are for different markets. So we have small ones, friendless ones. And this is now for roaming stock and amphiliacals. So we do certification for this but we also do shock vibration testing for this. So even EN 5155 we are doing for roaming stock. So a lot of certification for customers that want to use these products. And lots and lots of boards, that's your company, right? These are development boards so a carrier board for our EDM products. And we have been talking about our Pico modules. I have here one and here another one. Here is a base board and we can just click that in, simple like that. Nice. Let's sit over here for one second. Maybe we can finish up the video. How is it going in the factory? The factory is good. Since last year, have you changed? Not much changed on the SMT side. But we have been nicely busy. Also for Android things, the development kits, we had to ship many to Google I.O. and many people showing interest in the Google kits. So it's nice busy at the facility. So your interview last year was very nice. We get a lot of comments from customers that are happy to see our factory and actually... Impressed, they're impressed though. I thought it was impressive. Yeah, they are impressed. It's nice. Yeah, so we got many, many customers that come to us and they saw your movie and they only have problems with number one, your accent. And number two, your accent. I think both of us. But they like the messiness of your interview. You don't follow my rules. You follow your rules. And last year we did the interview and you were not even asking for what are we going to do in the movie. You just go in and you were out of control. You were over all the machines and you were checking things out. And that's nice because people see the real thing. And I think people come to you to see your movies because they want to see the real thing. But for us, we don't care that you see the real thing because we have nothing to hide. So we really welcomed that and we actually... We want you to come back to do an interview and to have a depth interview in the factory. So maybe on your next visit, we can do a couple of hour movie in subsections so people don't go to see it for a couple of hours. But maybe we can do half an hour movies. How do you do reliability testing? How do you do stress testing on devices to make your product mass market ready? And I think we can discuss that with our devices. And we can come up with a couple of tutorials and learning courses for people that are shot by you as the real world explorer and just educate your visitors to the gems to design and develop a real product. I think it's really awesome. There were lots of good comments on YouTube. Since last year, you have new employees, new R&D. That's actually a funny thing about your movie because we actually now when we do a job interview we just let people first watch the movie before we accept them to come for a job interview. So it's helping a lot because they really understand what we are doing. They understand the company. They understand the culture. They understand the vision of the company. So it really give job applicants the information that they need to prepare for a good job interview and to have a satisfaction that both parties are happy and don't waste time. So you have new employees working in the R&D software style? We hired a lot of R&D engineers in the last year so we added like 20 people in R&D. How about expanding the SMT? You have plans too? Yeah, but our factory, we didn't cover this on the movie but they are doing some road works outside and our machines have to come in by crane to the 8th floor and that means that when the city government rounds up their road works by the end of the year we are allowed to close the road by us to get the machines on because it's a busy road in front of the factory and half of the road is now construction work for the subway the other half of the road nobody is allowed to close for this kind of activities. Did you say end of the year? So end of the year they will close the road because they finished the constructions and then we can hopefully get the third line up. So at the moment we are a little bit struggling so we are extending our work shifts and efficiency to satisfy the demand of customers. I have too many customers. Not too many customers, but big customers. We have nice sized customers, yes. And what I'm guessing also is that maybe it's a good thing to wait because maybe you get the latest Panasonic machines. No, Panasonic is still the same generation. Exactly the same. Exactly the same. Because every line has to be the same. When we set up this factory we did our homework, Nicolas. So we did our homework and we bought the best of the best we can buy and now the factory is running for three years and if we need to buy the best of the best equipment today it's still the same equipment as we bought three years ago. I didn't discuss the pricing but you can buy many nice cars for the money we have to spend to set up one SMT line. That's okay because there's Uber in Taiwan. Yeah, I know. Well, you can buy like 100 Uber cars to own. That is probably cheaper than an SMT line. Nice. Alright, so looking forward to the future. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's talk about that. Yeah, we're always looking forward to see you. I think we should do director's cut. Three hour long video, movie. Uncut. People can watch it in the cinema. Oh, we can do that. And people that watch it after they watch it if they still want to talk to me that means I really want to buy my brothers, right? Yeah, so okay.