Hi welcome to the Eev blog an Electronics engineering video blog of interest to anyone involved in electronics design. I'm your host Dave Jones Hi I'm Dave Jones from the Eev blog and no, as you can see, I'm not in the lab. What I've done is I've flown 13 hours to get to Anaheim in the US and I'm here at the Renaissance Devcon Event 2010 and this is an event reenaers have put on specifically for all their customers and all the Fanboys of their microcontrollers. It's huge.

There's going to be about 500 odd people here, at least it's massive. So I've got my pass. I figure let's go check it out. It's 2: p.m.

on the first day and here's registration. This is the first thing you do. It's all Happening Here Everyone's turned up and they're registering. You get your badge, sign up, you get your little uh conference uh pack which actually has all the um your your itinerary for all the classes everyone's lined up and then you get one of these little social media.

Uh, it's like a little business card and here it is here. it's like a little business card and you it's shaped like a hand. It's a bit wanky, but you put uh, two of these together and when you meet someone you put two of them together and it lights up apparently and exchanges your contact details. So that's instead of handing over business cards, you just do this little social media tag isn't it neat? And then once you got your little social media tag, you head over here and you get the free merch.

Check it out! Renaissance of spared no expense really, they've gone to town. You get this nice little wheelie backpack which goes on the plane Fantastic! And you get your free shirts. It's got one of these funky retractable handles for dragging around. It's got the wheels of course.

it's completely, uh, airport compatible I believe so you can whack it on the plane. Let's check out what we get inside. Fant There's my shirt. There you go.

It's not a t-shirt it looks like a really top quality shirt. We'll have to put that on later That really looks pretty. Schmick I Like it? Fantastic. Uh oh, we got pens.

You always get pens. CDs You always get CDs more pens. Uh, what's this? We've got a Show Guide! Woohoo! Renaissance Devcon Show guide. Check it out! It's got like all the info for all the partners who are actually displaying here and uh, giving lectures and all sorts of things at the Devcon event that's super high quality.

Don't want to know how many trees dyed to make that or how much that cost, but jeez, that's pretty. Schmick uh. we've got another thing which has it. looks like we have a little board.

We've got a little tiny board with, uh, some sort of micro on it? I'm not sure. It's got a little header that looks pretty neat. Um, and what else have we got? Looks like we got another another demo board uh attached this visit. Digi key Booth Digi key are going to be there I guess and this is a microcontroller board.

Check it out. It's a G8c DJ Delori I reckon it's designed by DJ Delori. Here it is there it is. Check it out.

Nice little microcontroller board and Delori software. So I reckon DJ has actually designed that in partners with Renais. It's got an R8 Renaissance microcontroller on it and a USB interfacing. That's it's.

pretty neat. So great. top quality merch for Renaissance I Like it. You know there's one thing I hate about traveling to the US and it's not the 13 hours to get here.

and the crap airline food which may be sick. I'm not feeling that. Well, no, it's this. It's this funny.

US Currency. Check it out. What's this sickly green color? It's just. it's just awful.

What is that? It's crap. Compare it to the good old Aussie dollar which is pretty much the same as the US leag these days us is going down the toilet. But uh, here's this nice beautiful polymer note. You can't beat it.

Compare these two. Look, check them out. No contest whatsoever. These Fantastic Plastic polymer notes are all the rage.

Why don't the US get them this crap boldy paper. Just crap quality print I Don't like it worthless here. I Am in the main hallway of the High Regency Orange County where the conference is being held. And check this out.

It's a wall of P pamplets. Can you believe it? Unbelievable! Every pamphlet you could possibly imagine from Renaissance They got so many products you don't know what to do with them. Uh, the new RX series uh 600, RX micros the new 32-bit ones which they're really pushing for this conference. but check it out.

Pamphlet overload and as you can see people behind the scenes setting up these uh little display lights and let's go into the main conference Hall They haven't finished setting up yet, but let's go check it out. This is maybe we'll get some behind the scenes stuff. Tada Renaissance Devcon 2010 Woo! Complete techno porn For anything you possibly want microcontrollers, this looks like I haven't seen it yet. This looks like the New Renaissance RX uh demo board which will be part of the design contest which they're actually launching here.

This is the first time I've actually touched it. looks fantastic really. and oh look at this. what's this? I don't know.

this looks awesome. There's another development board which has a little spinny motor on it, yet another board with a little motor on it, and there's a whole bunch of other stuff. These are all the Uh partners that have partnered up with Hesis and um, as you can see, we've got uh Sega We've got who we got here, Future Electronics and we've got Cmx Micron RPA Micro Star Everyone's here and this is the Uh exhibition Hall where they're um, showcasing all this stuff to do with Renaissance products, yet more development boards and let's go. What else have they got over here? they've got and oh, what's the car? They've got a car over here which is an electric.

Is it an electric car? I Don't know. no idea. and what's this Jeep thing? Let's have a look at this. This looks great.

It's obviously. uh, showcasing. um, something to do with motor control and uh, actuators and all that sort of stuff. Fantastic.

What does this do guys? any idea. Oh yeah. showing all our different uh, networking technology here in this. Jeep So we've got networks y reflectory networks all interconnected Lin buses all interconnected.

Fantastic. making the car run. How? How much time did it take you to put together this? uh, demo. Is this set up just for Devcon or is it uh, a specific? We've used it at other events before, right? Excellent.

And we' got something spinning here. What do we got here? I Don't know. Simulating the brake. Oh, it's a brake.

It it is. It's a Brak Okay, the fully electronic. Come on. Give it a go.

Give it a go. Give it a go. No, it's not breaking there. You go there.

you go it, break, try it again. F Let's try it again. Let's see if this thing breaks here. we go.

We've got some brakes. There's some motor racing game over here night. We're having a two. A few technical glitches.

It happens at these trade shows like half an hour before it's supposed to open. I've been there, trust me. I've been there like uh, up in the hotel room, soldering stuff together like 20 minutes before the show opens. That's what happens at these conferences.

So yeah, they're uh, doing a few technical touches. but thanks guys! And as you can see, there's a whole bunch of LCD technology and it's got everything here. so that's a little behind the scenes. uh tour of the setting up of the Devcon uh showcase Hall And this is where it's all going to happen during the event.

This is the main conference Hall and lecture theater for the Renaissance Devcon event. It's where the Keynotes going to be held. James Ms The editor of Popular Mechanics magazine is giving the keynote and I think I have to say a couple of words or something like that so it's huge. It's going to seat 500 odd people.

Should be a great event. and I found Kurt Ibson who's pretty much in charge of everything here at Renaissance Is that right? Corporate Communication corporate? Communications The evil side of Renaissance There you go. They do have an evil side as all companies do I'm sure. and we're going to try out these little pokon devices to see if they work, see if we can transfer our information.

Let's give it a try. Hold them together. And oh the green. There you go green.

They work technology. I Love it. Thanks K Thank you. Okay now I'm feeling pretty inadequate.

Totally inadequate. Look at that. Look at that steady can. that's just awesome.

Why can't I get a bit of Kit like that? Ah woohoo there. Fantastic! Okay I'm totally ashamed and he's even got an extended LCD panel on there. Look at that. Awesome! Stu It's 6:00 p.m.

at night and the Nerds have invaded. Check it out. It's just crazy. This place is exploded.

It's nerd ner. V The best thing about these events is the free. Grog Got a bar inside and out. What do you got? got? a red wine cabernet? Merlo Shard beer right there.

It's a shame I don't drink I'll have a water. thanks water you like a bottle or a glass of a bottle? Thanks bottle of water Beauty I Finally found a camera person. It's my pretty wife Nicole Say hi hi oh there she is there. My wife isn't she pretty? doesn't she look pretty? Thanks! The thing that strikes me about the Renaissance here is how it really is.

totally different to a lot of the other, uh, more generic events industry events put on. because well, it's just got more class. It's a bit more personal and it's much better. Quality food, better quality beer, better quality exhibits.

It's fantastic. I Love it! I Will tell you this and the other thing they do really well here at Renaissance is the food. Check it out. The spread they've put on make your own stir fry.

Fantastic. Beautiful! Thank you very much. It's dinner time and this is when everyone comes out of the woodwork and hangs around at the tables and it's meet the experts theme. So this is where everyone does their Network in and get to know people and even after dinner the Nerds are still out here.

They just can't get enough of this techno porn. It's just everywhere, it's still hanging around, it's late at night and nobody wants to go home. Everyone just wants to play with the techn porn. Eat the food, drink the beer.

There's five bars in this place. it's just remarkable. And check out this wank they've got. Global Distributors They've got these lights displaying all this stuff all over the walls, the carpets and everything.

Here at Devcon and this is the Mckam stand and it's still giving away oldfashioned hard cover paperbook manuals. This is the uh, micro see real time embedded operating system. Thousand odd Pages How many trees died to make that sucker? They still give away the books I Love it! Well that was one hell of a day. In fact it was only like half a day.

It started about 2:00 p.m. and well, it's only started getting kicking at about 5:00 When the Grog came out five bars. they had five bars set up I think I lost lost count at five actually five bars set up. The food was awesome, and the catering it's just fantastic, the organization awesome, and uh, well, I'm just blowing away really.

I'm very surprised because these industry usually when you get the generic industry events, they're just like a total wank because well, they're just a whole bunch of rabble of companies trying to flog your. That's basically what it is. and sure, Renais want to, uh, want to flog their new RX series micros and everything's catered around that. but uh, it's just.

it's got a more intimate feel than just the generic trade show with you know, all sorts of Rabel of companies in there, at least everything at Devcon because it's a private event just for Renaissance and their partners and their Forum users and their supporters. All the all the stuff you find on the trade show stand or on the stands is dedicated specifically to Renaissance products which you're using. So I just find these much better than those generic uh trade shows, especially if you're interested in one particular device. So thumbs up to Renaissance It was one hell of a first day and there's 3 days left of uh, just lecture upon lecture.

There's all these uh, technical seminars you can go to. They're running like five or six concurrently throughout the day, so you couldn't go to all of them if you wanted to. You got to pick and choose all these different events. It's just man my hats off to Renaissance It's one hell of in an event and the organization behind it.

Phenomenal. So very impressed. I'm bugged cuz I'm still trying to get over the crap airline food I have which knocked me around I'm like not a happy little camper. but yeah, it's a great event and that's the first day and I'm up here in the hotel room I'm going to be doing some uh, editing and well, hopefully it'll upload tonight so we'll see how it goes.

I'll see you tomorrow.