In this blog I try to simplify what the SHARC is and how it works.

As we approach our sixth hardware iteration, we want to discuss some of the Ethernet and Power Over Ethernet issues we have discovered and are working through. Since our initial design, we have been using a Microchip LAN8720 Ethernet transceiver. This component is responsible for interfacing the ESP32 microcontroller with the RJ45 jack. This seemed to be a good design decision at the time due to its widespread use in consumer and industrial electronics.

Bringing plug-and-play to manufacturing and Industry 4.0 is no easy task. With numerous buzzwords in our market, it’s easy for the SHARC and its simplicity to get lost in the noise. We want to carry over the simplicity and intuitiveness of the SHARC hardware into our user interface. After plugging into the SHARC, users can connect to it over Bluetooth and MQTT for configuration.

Most notably we have updated the features by removing “Direct connection to Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure” and adding “Over-the-Air updates”. It seems obvious which one should take priority for our first release. We could work with a customer to add this feature early based on the volume purchased, but the ability to update the firmware seems obvious to take more priority. Our current Beta customers have not needed the cloud connectivity feature, but OTA updates are critical.

Our use case for the SHARC was mostly generated while implementing a client’s digital transformation strategy. The customer wanted to capture part counts, contextualize and historize the data, and dashboard it for managers and operators. While some of their machines were newer and this information was readily available, there were just as many, if not more, legacy machines that had no connectivity options or part count sensors. With this in mind, we decided on a single solution that would be shared across all machines. However, the process seemed more complex and involved than it should have been. The project was successful, but we took the knowledge gleaned from that experience and began our journey of creating the SHARC.

With so many prospective variations of the SHARC possible over the next few years, we thought we would share our current roadmap and some of the reasoning behind our choices. Keep in mind that the first market version of the SHARC is meant to only support a single input (Discrete or Analog) as we gain feedback from customers and mature our product before branching off into something like multiple inputs.