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MAKER FAIRE ROME, Rome, Oct 15 2016
This is a rather special time for our tiny credit card sized UP Board. We celebrate our first anniversary in the very place and space where the UP board was introduced for the first time.Last year we showed UP at the Maker Faire in Rome and asked this question:” Is it possible to have a high performance x86 embedded board for prototypes and ready for mass production, in a tiny form factor and with a reasonable price?”
Exactly one year later we return to the faire with much more than just an answer!

Success via crowd funding
The UP board launched its Kickstarter campaign at Maker Faire Rome in October 2015. It is a tiny credit card sized board aimed at professional makers. UP is powered by an Intel® Atom™ x5-z8300 Quad-Core 1.92Ghz 64 bit CPU (Cherry Trail), with 1GB/2GB/4GB RAM, 16GB/32GB/64GB eMMC, 40 GP-bus expansion, 4 x USB 2.0, USB 3.0 OTG, Ethernet, HDMI, DSI and Intel hardware security features on one board.

During its Kickstarter campaign, it not only exceeded funding but also received substantial orders after the campaign, even though the board was not mass-produced yet. Similar to all Kickstarter projects, the UP board had its fair share of challenges along the way. Together with a brilliant UP team, the hurdles were overcome and orders started being fulfilled from May 2016. To date, the UP board can be shipped to most countries within 7 days after placing an order.

Combination & Collaboration
Since its inception, the UP board has partnered with various companies, such as EnOcean, Altera, Predixion, Pi2 Design and Rex Control. These partnerships were fostered to bring the widest range of applications to its users. Without forgetting to mention our major partnership with the Intel RealSense team to bring forth Robotic development, comprising an UP board and a RealSense camera, to the market.

Bridging the gap
UP offered an option in the market, thus many professional makers embraced it. Schools, start-up, and embedded companies all use UP to build their applications in IoT, digital signage, robots, and much more. Many professional makers love the idea of customization, the kind that the UP board offers, for their ODM projects. This is a great indicator that the UP board meets the market expectation. With this kind of support, the UP team maintains the momentum to continue innovating and moving forward!

Delivering ideas for innovation
Spanning from the success of our live demo’s at the recent New York Maker Faire, our booth in Rome also boasts a variety of live demo’s which features Smart Home, LoRA, KODI and RealSense person-tracking. Our smart home demo house has a range of different sensors installed within, giving the audience a great live demonstration of how a smart home operates. Ranging from motion detection to temperature and lighting control, just to name a few.
Once you open the door of the demo house, you will trigger a contact sensor installed at the door, this will send the signal back to the UP board, after which you can see the real-time status on your smart phone or tablet. Home devices can also be easily controlled directly from your mobile phone.

Besides short range transmission protocol, with a 40-pin GP-bus, the UP board allows for a long range transmission protocol, such as LoRa. We present a LoRa gateway built by UP board at the Maker Faire to celebrate its first release. This will be available at the UP Shop for purchase very soon.
Of course, we did not forget the makers favourite gadget KODI. We show a perfect example of how to integrate your UP board with KODI, a case from one of our user’s. This is placed next to your television.

Last but not the least, the UP team proudly presents the Person Tracking demo with the Intel RealSense Robotic Development Kit. The RealSense camera R200 works perfectly with the UP board whether you use it with Windows or Ubuntu.

Next generation
With a great deal of anticipation, the team showed the prototype of the next generation of UP to some media. A comprehensive specification will be released with the Kickstarter campaign at midnight of 31st October. Watch this space for the next generation UP !