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ST widens its product offerings for smart home electronics

Date: 13/09/2013
To serve the interesting market of smart home electronics which includes home automation, home entertainment systems and smart management of home appliances and systems, leading chipmaker STMicroelectronics is offering range of products covering both silicon chips and software. ST has introduced new Smart Home software platform for modern set-top boxes, which can manage home energy, automation and security systems in addition to providing access to digital multimedia content throughout the home.

ST is offering the Smart Home software pre-integrated on set-top box and home-gateway SoCs such as the STiG105 and STiG112, which are dedicated smart home devices, as well as multimedia gateway devices such as the popular STiH416 (‘Orly’) and the newly introduced Monaco family (STiH407, STiH410, STiH412).

ST is encouraging consumer electronics companies to design systems using their products to manage energy, design home surveillance system, and home automation system.

“Adding support for smart-home applications and services is a natural progression for the set-top box, enabling operators to deliver innovative new services and delivering benefits such as a consistent user experience to subscribers,” said Gian Luca Bertino, Executive Vice President, General Manager Digital Convergence Group, STMicroelectronics. “The combination of our Smart Home software platform and our large selection of ICs such as Home Gateway SoCs, connectivity devices, sensors and actuators now provides everything developers need to unleash the potential of this exciting new opportunity.”

The Smart home software is based on open software such as Linux, Java Virtual Machine and the OSGi framework. Smart Home software supports popular digital-home standards such as Home Gateway Initiative (HGi), Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) and Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA). All major wireless connectivity protocols for smart-home applications are also supported, such as ZigBee, including the latest Smart Energy Profile 2.0, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi including IEEE 802.11n, and Near-Field Communications (NFC). The software is also Bluetooth Smart Ready, and features 2G, 3G or LTE cellular support.

A reference implementation is available comprising hardware based on the STiG105 SoC and the Smart Home software is available to help OEMs, operator and application developers begin quickly to develop smart-home applications and services.

STMicroelectronics has also announced that it reached DOCSIS 3.0 certification for its System-on-Chip (SoC) products addressing the cable-data gateway and interactive set-top box markets.

DOCSIS 3.0 is a cable modem specification, where the cable service providers can use IP video distribution for streaming both digital video as well as Internet data on a single cable. The single digital cable can connect Internet, telephone, TV and any such communication terminal equipment as well as broadcast receivers.

STMicroelectronics’ DOCSIS 3.0 solution supports up to 16 downstream and 4 upstream enables data speeds of up to 800Mbps downstream and 108Mbps upstream. A 4000 Dhrystone MIPS processor, together with hardware accelerators, execute high-performance gateway functions including line-rate data switching / routing, PacketCable telephony, LAN / WLAN networking management and home automation.

ST’s DOCSIS 3.0 devices include the STiD128 for 16*4 data gateway, the STiD127 for 16-channel interactive set-top box, and the STiD125 for 12-channel applications, and all these are available to customers for sampling and volume production.

STMicroelectronics' STiH237 satellite set-top box SoC is used by Cyfrowy Polsat, a pay-TV service providers in Europe. STiH237 can be used to design multiple low-cost client set-top boxes which are connected to central home gateway.