Johnson Company

(Apr '21) Knowles Hardware Grant Award Date May 6 2021

Knowles Hardware Grant

Supporting the next generation of audio and IoT products.

Wevolver, in partnership with Knowles, is providing hardware grants to support engineers in the development of the next generation of audio products. 

We are giving away twenty IoT and Home Automation IA611 Xplained Pro Development Kits to help algorithm developers, system designers, audio engineers, and others create voice-activated systems for various applications such as IoT, mobile, and ear-worn devices. 

To apply for the grant, simply submit this brief form, describing how you will use the IoT and Home Automation IA611 Xplained Pro Development Kit. The twenty most innovative responses will receive the kit. In addition to the development kit, the top 5 submissions will be invited to participate in a private group innovation webinar with key Knowles engineers who will share their vision for voice at the edge. 

All submissions will be reviewed by a panel of senior Knowles engineers including Vikram Shrivastava, Senior director PLM, Scott Choi, Senior director of engineering,  and Raj Senguttuvan, Strategic Marketing Director along with CEO and cofounder of Wevolver, Bram Geenan. The review panel will select entries based on innovation, product fit, and scalability. 

About the IA611 Smart Mic Development Kit. 

The IA611-RDI-01 is a reference design based on IA611 SmartMic for IoT applications. It enables ultra-low power acoustic event detection, voice keyword detection, and voice commands to develop a voice UI. To accelerate prototyping the SmartMic into an IoT application, the IA611 has been integrated with the Microchip SAM D21 Xplained Pro MCU board.

Ultra-Low Power Voice Wake and Event Detection

The core of the reference design is the IA611 SmartMic designed for ultra-low power in a digital mic package. IA611 supports Knowles VoiceQ, the world’s first “always listening” voice detector capable to automatically adapt its performance to the acoustic environment and enable voice wake keyword/ command. The reference design also includes a second digital mic for beamforming to improve performance if required by the IoT application.

Highly Integrated, All-in-One Kit

Knowles intelligent mic solutions are integrated with several leading MCU and AP suppliers. The kit supports a Microchip SAM D21 Xplained PRO with full support via Atmel Studio 7. It allows for rapid prototyping of IoT designs that use an MCU processor that is already tested, optimized for BOM, and performance. A downloadable extension provides sample code for a simple application and required libraries to develop a VUI pre-integrated with the SmartMic as a peripheral.

IA611 Details 

DSP Core: Knowles HemiDelta Light

Audio Interfaces: DMIC and I2S/TDM

Control Interfaces: SPI, I2C, UART, available GPIOs

Available Memory: 168 KB (IA611)

Supply Voltage: 1.8v

Hardware Details

  • IA611 SmartMic with 40MHz, 32-bit floating point DSP. It has 168KB memory available for user applications. 
  • SPK0641HT4H-1 DMIC serves as 2nd mic for 2-ch voice input capability. It is ideal to support 2-ch voice recognition enhancing algorithm to improve the detection performance.
  • Level Shifter is included in the hardware in case the MCU does not support 1.8V interface.
  • MCU is an optional part and a low-cost MCU serves as host to control IA611 SmartMic. IA611 firmware will be downloaded from the MCU stored in the flash. Currently, Microchip SAM D21 32-bit MCU is available.

For more detailed information on the IoT and Home Automation IA611 Xplained Pro Development Kit and the full range of Knowles development boards head to the Knowles Portal. 

Key dates

Grant Opens: April 8. Submit your entry here.

Grant Closes: April 29

Grant recipients announced: May 6


Knowles Hardware Grant

Upper & Central Midwest

Our Territory

Johnson Company covers two different ERA/MANA territories. Due to this, we manage and maintain 2 separate line cards for manufacturers represented in each region. However, we are pleased to say that currently about 80% of all manufactures are common to both territories.

4-State Upper Midwest

Our main office is located just north of Minneapolis / St. Paul. We have insides sales, technical sales, engineering, and customer service supported for both territories from this main office.
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5-State Central Midwest

We maintain satellite locations in Kansas City, Cedar Rapids and St. Louis with staff to cover the 5-State Central Midwest market. This allows us easy access to all customers throughout our entire 2 territories.
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