Embedded Computing Design

The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) has a significant task in its hands. As a global body encompassing hundreds of companies, its goal is to create and promote open, universal standards in the wireless space, including (in a big way) the IoT. 

The goal sounds great, but having most of the major suppliers contributing and providing products for all corners of the globe can cause the process to become unwieldy. 

To understand how this group works, and how it is moving forward—which it is clearly doing—I spoke to Tobin Richardson, the CSA’s President and CEO, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

AUSTIN, Texas – August 4, 2026 – Silicon Labs announced the BG2B, its next Series 2 Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) wireless SoC designed to help developers build smaller, more secure, and longer-lasting battery-powered IoT devices by providing power efficiency, security, and integrations.

MACTRON GROUP released a new 13.3-inch rugged tablet series that features the black MAA1335 and MAS1337 for industrial applications, and the white MMA1335 and MMS1337 for healthcare environments. The series is offered with Android or Windows operating systems to deliver flexibility for customers to choose what platform is right for them based on software, system integration, and application requirements.

congatec announced its aReady.COM conga-HPC/cRX1, an application ready module powered by up to 16 AMD “Zen 5” CPU cores operating at clock frequencies of up to 5.1 GHz, up to 40 compute units of the integrated AMD Radeon RDNA 3.5 GPU supporting up to four independent 4K displays, and a dedicated NPU.

On this episode of Embedded Insiders, we're discussing the continued evolution of Ambient IoT with Giampaolo Marino, Chief Strategy and Growth Officer at Energous. We're diving into battery dependency, the benefits of continuous, always-on data for AI, and how the company's partnership with e-peas supports battery-free sensor deployments through wireless power and energy harvesting.

DigiKey has added more than 27,000 new products to its portfolio and are available to ship in Q2 2026. All around, the company has added over 373,000 new products, along with 104 new suppliers across its marketplace. The ever-expanding portfolio enables engineers the ability to order prototype quantities for rapid shipping, without placing a special order in factory quantities or waiting for lead or transit time.

We’re seeing new life coming to the Thread standard. If you remember, Thread is part of the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless protocol and operates at very low power. But it doesn’t offer the bandwidth of Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi continues to get better, so I question whether there’s really a need for Thread. 

As system designs grow more complex in mobile, automotive and IoT applications, there’s a need to connect more advanced sensors and peripherals while reducing power, pin count and latency. That’s where MIPI I3C comes in.

The annual State of Industrial IoT Device Lifecycle Management report confirms what most professionals in the embedded space already sense: connected products are becoming more complex, regulations are tightening, and organizations still struggle to launch new products to market on time and fast.

WINSYSTEMS released its rugged 3.5-inch single board computer (SBC), the SBC35-474. The SBC is powered by the Intel Atom x7000RE Series (Amston Lake) processors and engineered for industrial OEMs, system integrators, and critical infrastructure operators. It combines scalable processing performance, extensive I/O, and expansion options, with long-term product availability.