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_posts/2024-10-17-embedded-world-na-2024.md

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+---
+title: Embedded World North America 2024 Recap
+description: A recap of Embedded World 2024
+author: gminn
+tags: [embedded-world, conferences]
+---
+
+Last week, a handful of Memfolks had the opportunity to travel to Austin to
+attend the first ever Embedded World North America[^ew_na]! Embedded World NA
+welcomed 3,500 visitors and 180 vendors across 3 days[^ew_na_pr]. While it was
+surely a smaller showing than Nueremburg's Embedded World, we still wanted to
+quickly touch on our takeaways from the event.
+
+<!-- excerpt start -->
+
+In this post, we will cover what we learned from the first Embedded World North
+America. Our team had the chance to meet with some IoT device makers and
+understand what is top of mind for them.
+
+<!-- excerpt end -->
+
+<p align="center">
+  <img width="700" src="{% img_url embedded-world-na-2024/memfault-booth.jpg %}"/>
+</p>
+
+{% include newsletter.html %}
+
+{% include toc.html %}
+
+Three major themes stood out to us at this conference while perusing the booths
+and talking to developers at our booth: Security, AI, and Zephyr.
+
+## Security regulations heating up
+
+Security regulations have become increasingly part of our conversations with IoT
+companies, and this trend was also apparent at EW. Leaders know that their
+products must comply with regulations like the CRA and PSTI[^psti]. They want to
+stay ahead as best they can and are worried about getting started too late and
+missing deadlines. In fact, last week, the CRA was adopted by the EU[^eu_cra],
+marking an important next step in the official publication of this law.
+
+I would be remiss not to mention that we at Memfault have been thinking a lot
+about security. We have compiled some resources on what to focus on, including
+[IoT Security Best Practices](https://memfault.com/blog/7-iot-security-practices/),
+[Cyber Trust Mark Guide](https://memfault.com/blog/us-cyber-trust-mark/), and
+the [CRA Guide](https://memfault.com/blog/eu-cyber-resilience-act-guide/). We
+hope these references are helpful if your team is thinking about how to comply
+with the new standards!
+
+## More AI at the edge and LLM-based tooling
+
+<p align="center">
+  <img width="500" src="{% img_url embedded-world-na-2024/edge-impulse-cat.jpg %}"/>
+</p>
+
+Unsurprisingly, AI continues to be a hot topic, with nearly every semiconductor
+company showing its own edge AI demos. The
+[Edge Impulse](https://edgeimpulse.com/) booth also really caught our attention.
+They had a demo showing a smart litter tray that could use lightweight ML models
+to learn the habits and track the weight of the cat for better health
+monitoring. See the cute stuffed cat picture above 😸!
+[Driver AI](https://www.driver.ai/) was another highlight - a tool that
+automatically creates technical documentation from source code using LLMs. They
+launched their product publicly this month[^driver_ai_launch]. I, for one, would
+love a tool to help understand complex parts of a software stack better!
+
+## Zephyr continues to gain popularity
+
+As we also noted
+[in our EW recap earlier this year](https://interrupt.memfault.com/blog/embedded-world-2024#zephyr-is-winning-hearts--minds),
+Zephyr continued to come up in conversations with developers across the
+industry. We had a few people ask for advice on selecting the right RTOS,
+particularly asking for comparisons between RTOSs like Zephyr and FreeRTOS. A
+Zephyr community member wrote
+[a blog post last year on their transition to Zephyr from FreeRTOS](https://zephyrproject.org/why-we-moved-from-freertos-to-zephyr-rtos/),
+which you might find helpful if you are considering such a switch. Zephyr was at
+the ADI booth this year with their signature kite flying to mark the spot 🪁
+Zephyr recently hit 100,000 contributions, marking an exciting milestone in its
+trajectory as one of the fastest-growing open source projects[^cncf_report].
+
+## Conclusion
+
+This conference was another great opportunity for us to meet a variety of
+embedded teams at our booth and peek at the latest technology from vendors. No
+time was wasted in the announcement[^ew_na_pr] -- the next Embedded World North
+America will be in Anaheim next November! We can't wait to see what the second
+year of this regional EW will bring. If we didn't see you this year, we hope
+we'll cross paths in 2025.
+
+_Shoutout to Memfolks who attended the conference this year and helped put
+together this post: Chris, Eric, Jon, François, JP and Jesse._
+
+<!-- Interrupt Keep START -->
+
+{% include newsletter.html %}
+
+{% include submit-pr.html %}
+
+<!-- Interrupt Keep END -->
+
+{:.no_toc}
+
+## References
+
+<!-- prettier-ignore-start -->
+[^ew_na]: <https://embedded-world-na.com/>
+[^ew_na_pr]: <https://embedded-world-na.com/press-releases/first-embedded-world-north-america-ends-in-style/>
+[^eu_cra]: <https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2024/10/10/cyber-resilience-act-council-adopts-new-law-on-security-requirements-for-digital-products/>
+[^driver_ai_launch]: <https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/driver-emerges-from-stealth-with-new-way-write-decode-tech-docs/>
+[^cncf_report]: <https://www.cncf.io/blog/2024/07/11/as-we-reach-mid-year-2024-a-look-at-cncf-linux-foundation-and-top-30-open-source-project-velocity/>
+[^psti]: <https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/the-product-security-and-telecommunications-infrastructure-psti-bill-factsheets>
+
+<!-- prettier-ignore-end -->