Hi, community members! 

As I'm sure you can tell, we launched an improved Silicon Labs community experience we are calling The Red Planet. 

But this is more than just a facelift. The community will continue to be a great space for you to ask technical questions, share your ideas, and learn more about our latest solutions; however, we do have some key changes. We now have higher quality search, a product-centric architecture, and improved integration between our technical resource library and the community.

Here are some things to get you started: 

1) Update your profile. 

2) Review the community guidelines. 

3) Read about our new ranking and reputation structure. 

4) Please share your feedback on the new experience. 

Our mission is to help you build something great, and we look forward to hearing from you! 

We are featuring one of the Silicon Labs Community members who is active or new in the community on a monthly basis to help members connect with each other.

Meet our September member of the month: neal_tommy

Q: Congrats on becoming our featured member of the month! Can you introduce yourself to our community members?

I am a Robotics Engineer living in Johannesburg, South Africa. I've always been interested in engineering, perhaps initially from young days dismantling old VCR players. I'd keep all the parts and try to build things from it. I don't do much engineering work as my day to day career, so my hobby keeps the robotics engineering alive.

Q: How did you know about the Silicon Labs Community?

I bought a Thunderboard Sense, and needed some help, and managed to find lots of answers online in the community. They've been a great help in the building of a project using the Thunderboard Sense Board. 

Q: What features, products, services would you like to see in the future from Silicon Labs?

More hobbyist type development boards that open up much of the software and hardware from a sensor, network and perhaps AI point of view. I know you are doing much of this already as the Thunderboard Sense (and software / resources) are already impressive.

Q: What advice would you give to someone new to the community?

Ask the questions you think are too stupid to ask. The community is vast, experienced and helpful. Yes, we were all newbies once upon a time. There are lots of people out there so more than likely there is someone at the same hurdle you are. 

Q: Thanks for answering the questions. Any final comment?

I'm looking forward to incorporating more Silicon Labs products into my upcoming projects and look forward to seeing the new products as they come out.

We are featuring one of the Silicon Labs Community members who is active or new in the community on a monthly basis to help members connect with each other.

Meet our August member of the month: Ivan_Dousa

Q: Congrats on becoming our featured member of the month! Can you introduce yourself to our community members?

My name is Ivan Dousa, I'm an Electrical Engineer at TireCheck company located in Prague, Czech Republic. I'm responsible for the development of new electronic devices intended for tire inspection and tire performance monitoring. The design of electronic devices and embedded programming is also my hobby from the time I have studied at a high school. I really enjoy the creative process of building a new electronic device, breathing a new life into it by writing and embedded software and improving the device performance and capabilities based on the application needs and customer request. It's a great magic.

Q: How did you know about the Silicon Labs Community?

We have discovered the Silicon Labs Community at the time when we were evaluating a Bluetooth solution from different manufacturers for our new products. That time we were also looking for some information about the Silicon Labs solution and we have discovered that Silicon Labs Community could provide us a lot of useful information. We were able to find their answers to most of our questions, information about user experience with the product and also all device documentation. Since that time we use it regularly. It is also the right place where we can report any bug or functionality issue observed on Silicon Labs product and where we can get in touch directly with Silicon Labs employees that are willing to help.

Q: What features, products, services would you like to see in the future from Silicon Labs?

I think that Silicon Labs provides great and well-documented products. In addition there is a large Knowledge base and Forum where you can find a answer to most questions. You can also ask there any question directly to Silicon Labs employees or other community members. I think it works very well. Anyway, sometimes it happens that not all documentation provided by Silicon Labs is up-to-date. This is the point that could be improved.

Q: What advice would you give to someone new to the community?

Silicon Labs Community is a good place to find information about Silicon Labs products and solutions. You can meet many smart people that work with Silicon Labs products, have a lot of experience with them and that are willing to help you. If there is a question you were not able to answer based on the available documentation or any existing forum topic, don't worry to ask. If the question is clearly formulated it will be answered shortly.

Q: Thanks for answering the questions. Any final comment?

I'm looking forward for many new, interesting and innovative products and solutions from Silicon Labs.

We are featuring one of the Silicon Labs Community members who is active or new in the community on a monthly basis to help members connect with each other.

Meet our July member of the month: funkathustra

Q: Congrats on becoming our featured member of the month! Can you introduce yourself to our community members?

My name is Jay Carlson, and I’m an Electrical Engineering PhD student at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln (go Huskers!). I do a lot of freelance electronics engineering on the side. I got interested in engineering after taking apart my dad’s Apple II computer when I was 6 or 7 years old --- it never went together again, but I learned a ton in the process! When I was an undergrad, I started realizing how much creativity and outside-the-box thinking goes into engineering, and I’ve been able to integrate my other passions (design, music, photography … even craft cocktails!) into my work over the years.

Q: How did you know about the Silicon Labs Community?

While there are other places on the internet where smart people talk shop, the Silicon Labs Community is the only place that’s focused on specific Silicon Labs parts; it’s also the best place to snag an opinion from an employee at SiLabs – while I occasionally use the support ticketing mechanism, I find the forums are a little less stiff, and I like that other people who have the same question as I do can find the answers without opening their own support tickets. Saves everyone time!

Q: What features, products, services would you like to see in the future from Silicon Labs?

I was happy to see Silicon Labs commit heavily to the new EFM8 designs when they were introduced a few years ago. These 8-bit MCUs seem to be the perfect choice in so many of the projects I’ve worked on, so I’d love to see them keep innovating. For example, it’s one of the few 8-bit MCUs that has an internally-generated 1.8V core voltage --- a feature more familiar in high-end, modern ARM MCUs. I hope to see SiLabs continue to bring modern MCU design philosophy to their CIP-51 core EFM8s in the years to come!

Q: What advice would you give to someone new to the community?

Be bold, clear, funny, and compassionate – no matter what you’re talking about. There’s a lot of people from all over the world on the forums, with all sorts of different backgrounds. There’s university students who have no idea what a “pull-up resistor” is, and there’s old, crusty EEs that have been around the block once or twice before. When you ask a question, be compassionate toward the people from whom you’re asking for help, and try to frame your post so an outsider to your project would understand. When you’re answering someone’s question, understand that in addition to a knowledge gap, there could be a language or cultural barrier as well. Whatever you do, be bold, and make 'em laugh. We’re all in this together – might as well have fun while we’re at it, right?

Q: Thanks for answering the questions. Any final comment?

I don’t think so – this was fun! Thanks!

We are featuring one of the Silicon Labs Community members who is active or new in the community on a monthly basis to help members connect with each other.

Meet our June member of the month: baarini

Q: Congrats on becoming our featured member of the month! Can you introduce yourself to our community members?

I am an Electrical Engineer based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I started programming since school days & continued through university. I started to show interest to smart lighting without adding extra cables & wires to control the lights (DALI system is an example) & to make the points "online" & controllable anytime anywhere.

Q: How did you know about the Silicon Labs Community?

Through research over the internet & Silabs dev. kits brochures

Q: What features, products, services would you like to see in the future from Silicon Labs?

- More commercial thermostat can be interfaced with other protocols widely used in the market
- Industrial applications solutions (industries, plants ..)
- Street Lighting control solutions

Q: What advice would you give to someone new to the community?

Community is very rich in subjects & solutions to common problems; just read

Q: Thanks for answering the questions. Any final comment?

I'd like to see in the near future more reference designs supporting EFR32MG SoCs especially HA applications.

We are featuring one of the Silicon Labs Community members who is active or new in the community on a monthly basis to help members connect with each other.

Meet our May member of the month: YK

Q: Congrats on becoming our featured member of the month! Can you introduce yourself to our community members?

My name is YiKai Chen from Climax Technology Co., LTD, Taipei, Taiwan. I am dedicated and interested in low power wireless protocols such as Zigbee, Contiki 6LowPan, Thread, BLE, z-Wave, DECT ULE, etc. We have worked on Zigbee products for more than 9 years and are using EM358x and EFR32 for our Zigbee products now.

Q: How did you know about the Silicon Labs Community?

When I start to use EM358x and EFR32, distributor suggests searching Silicon Labs Community when we have any question or problem. I used to work this way on another forum so I do the same thing on Silicon Labs Community.

Q: What features, products, services would you like to see in the future from Silicon Labs?

I would like to see more organized and detail documents about your products and more intelligent search for your products and application notes.

Q: What advice would you give to someone new to the community?

Be patient, search and read if there is any existing answer to your issue on the community. If not, don’t afraid to ask. We are willing to help.

We are featuring one of the Silicon Labs Community members who is active or new in the community on a monthly basis to help members connect with each other.

Meet our April member of the month: menchopez

Q: Congrats on becoming our featured member of the month! Can you introduce yourself to our community members?

Hi guys! My name is Manuel. I come from Santander (Spain) and I work as an Embedded Software Engineer for SAYME.

Growing up, with a father as an engineer, I learned to think differently and love engineering. In other words, I understand how things work. When I was just 9 years-old, my father and I built an electric crane for a school project, this without a doubt began my curiosity for engineering.  

Then I started to carry out small electronic projects at home while I was studying Telecommunication engineering. During my bachelor degree, I was fortunate enough to have a good teacher, who lead me to a job which allowed me to develop my desire to learn and build new things.

Q: How did you know about the Silicon Labs Community?

I started to design devices with your microcontrollers last year. I’ve been reading a lot about your products (EFM8 and EFM32 series) so we tried them and found them very successful. As always when you build things, problems arise and you need to solve them as quickly as possible (under strict deadlines). I find this online community extremely helpful it gives you the opportunity to ask and answer questions.

Q: What features, products, services would you like to see in the future from Silicon Labs?

Personally, I think that the IoT market growth is strongly linked to cost-effective and energy-efficient solutions. Manufacturers and product developers should work together to achieve these goals as soon as possible.

Things have changed a lot in recent years but I believe much remains to be improved. Nowadays, EFM8 and EFM32 series point clearly to these requirements: MCUs designed in terms of performance, size, cost and power consumption.

Q: What advice would you give to someone new to the community?

Be patient, read, read lots, stop, think over, look for and especially don’t be afraid of asking. There is an incredible community behind Silicon Labs, so enjoy it and take care of it, please.

Q: Thanks for answering the questions. Any final comment?

Keep up the great work, guys. It has been a great honor for me to be included among the Member Spotlight, I have a lot to learn and a lot I would like to contribute to this community.

We are featuring one of the Silicon Labs Community members who is active or new in the community on a monthly basis to help members connect with each other.

Meet our March member of the month: nikodean1

Q: Congrats on becoming our featured member of the month! Can you introduce yourself to our community members?

I'm located in Kingston, Jamaica, and run https://www.kompulsa.com. I became interested in engineering when my sister introduced me to electricity via a light bulb project when I was in school.

Q: How did you know about the Silicon Labs Community?

I learned about Silicon Labs when a friend of mine, Davis Foster recommended your MCUs.

Q: You recently posted the EFM8-Powered Plug And Play Solar Concept project in the community. What's the motivation behind building the project?

The motive of the plug and play solar system project was to assess the viability of highly integrated/factory-built solar systems, with the intent to cut the labor (and possibly 'soft costs') costs associated with installation.

Q: What advice would you give to someone new to the community?

No question is stupid. We all had to learn the basics at some point.

Q: Thanks for answering the questions. Any final comment?

The technology at our fingertips today (for example: MCU kits, and highly integrated IoT solutions like the Thunderboard Sense) are providing a tremendous opportunity to address some of the pressing problems the world currently faces. I hope to see more people take advantage of such opportunities.

We are featuring one of the Silicon Labs Community members who is active or new in the community on a monthly basis to help members connect with each other.

Meet our February member of the month: smalldevshack

Q: Congrats on becoming our featured member of the month! Can you introduce yourself to our community members?

Hi, my name is Patrick and I am a Product Developer at a Munich based startup. My background is chemistry and computer science, a rather interesting combination but it turns out as quite useful for prototyping

When i studied computer science I quickly started doing Arduino projects like color scanning lamps or a remote controlled camera slider. I then joined a Start-up where I started working on the ARM-Cortex Chips (M0 and M4) for LED lighting systems control, and I was amazed by their power and compactness.

I joined my current company one year ago. We have to develop a wearable device with strong space and power constraints, so I am currently looking forward to use the new BGM121 SIP for that job. I am fascinated with the low currents we can achieve now and how we are constantly reducing package / chip sizes.

What's still on my bucket list is to develop a cyborg type implantable / wearable which can do energy harvesting from the human body and release pharmaceutical agents or support dysfunctional organs. I am highly interested in all gadgets / devices that combine (bio)chemistry and electronics.

Q: How did you know about the Silicon Labs Community?

Easy. I just saw it on the main Silabs site and signed up immediately. It's a very active community, I like that!

Q: What features, products, services would you like to see in the future from Silicon Labs?

Well, I really liked the AMAs in the forum, please make more of that. I think a quick support-chat function would be a great addition too. Also we NEED the EDIT button, please guys

Q: What advice would you give to someone new to the community?

Ask anything you want to know if you want to grow better. If you have a problem/bug, always try to minimize the problem as radically as possible, i.e. make a new project where you just have that piece of functionality which causes the problem. Then take out a good old pen, write down all the possible causes you can think of with check boxes next to them and start debugging through the list. Solves 95 % of code problems...

Q: Thanks for answering the questions. Any final comment?

Thanks to all the employees and members on the forum. You are doing a great job!

2016 has been a great year, with lots of exciting news, events, and campaigns to keep us busy. As 2017 approaches we wanted to recap some of the highlights that made the Silicon Labs Community even better this year.

All-Time High Page Views and Registrations 

Did you know that more than 2 million pages were viewed and about 4,000 members registered for the community this year? Both are new records for the community. We want to say thank all of you for making this community friendly to new members and help them find answers!

3 New Wireless Forum Boards

With the rapid growth of the Wireless forum in 2016, we decided to divide it into three sub-forums covering various Wireless solutions: Blutooth/Wi-Fi, Mesh, and Proprietary. Now it’s easier for you to find the right place to ask your questions and get them escalated to the right party faster. 

34 User-Generated Projects

At the heart of development are the design projects that lead to inspiration and creation. Throughout 2016, 34 projects were created by our internal and external community members. Check out some of the projects from the past year to get an idea for your next project:

Creating F1-Style Race Starting Lights with EZR32 Wireless MCUs

EFR32WG Range Test

Blue Gecko Digital Tokens

Portable sensor logger with LCD, Bluetooth LE & cloud connection

Thunderboard Sense kit Sound Alarm and notification in Telegram

IoT demo using Thunderboard

15 IoT Hero Stories 

Since kicking off IoT Hero Series in May 2015, 28 IoT heroes have been interviewed and 15 of them were featured in the community this year as blog posts. These IoT Heroes are the innovators behind creating real-world IoT applications based on Silicon Labs’ parts.

Check out the IoT Hero Series here.

Community Member Spotlight

In addition to the IoT Heroes, we also featured selected community members each month. We started featuring community members who are active or new to the community on a monthly basis to help members connect each other.

Special thanks to, @rev, @sureshjoshi, @Timur, @klangdon79, @operator, @hollie, @spiritonline, @Yuriy, and @Scotty for being featured members of 2016 and sharing your thoughts on Silicon Labs’ products and the community!

If you haven’t met the featured members yet, please follow the link here to read their stories. 

Product Launches

In 2016, exciting new products and software solutions have been added to our portfolio. The multi-protocol Wireless SoC families such as Blue Gecko, Flex Gecko, and Mighty Gecko were launched to help developers create multitude of IoT applications such as connected home, lighting, building automation, wearables, and start metering. Read the announcement here.

The Wizard Gecko was created for applications where leading RF performance, low power consumption and fast time to market are key requirements. Read the announcement here.

To help you bring your IoT product ideas to life, Thunderboard React, the small demo board was introduced as well. Read the announcement here.

Lastly, an upgraded version of Simplicity Studio 4 was announced through the community with a series of useful training videos. You can find the announcement here.

We will continue to update existing product offerings and introduce new solutions in 2017. So please stay tuned for an update!

Community Super Users

As we sum up 2016, we want to take this opportunity to give our sincerest thanks to the active super users who achieved the three highest community ranks (See how our ranking system works here). By the end of 2016, we have 21 Hero members, 2 Master members and 1 Legend member.

A special mention goes to @erikm, our first ever Legend rank holder. He has been an active member of the community for 13 years. Congratulations, Erik, and thanks for your contribution.

The Silicon Labs team wants to let all of you know that we appreciate you for keeping the community active and valuable.

Whether you just visited the community once or became a super user, I want to say thank you to each and every one of you for making the community greater this year. Without your participation and engagement, it was not possible to achieve all the highlights and milestones mentioned above.

Lastly, I wish you a wonderful holiday season and look forward to seeing you in the community in 2017.

Happy holidays!

Nari Shin | Community Manager