Hatteland Display and REC Global will co-exhibit on Nor-Shipping 2013 in Hatteland Display’s showroom.

During the Nor-Shipping 2013 exhibition (Oslo, June 04-07), Hatteland Display and REC Global will present an interactive demo showing the features of Hatteland Display systems empowered with software customized by REC. REC Global has recently been nominated by Hatteland Display as a Software Customization & Development Partner. This partnership has been commented by the CEOs of both groups:

“This partnership with REC Global is based firmly on the professional services experience and high quality deliveries that we’ve obtained during the past few years. We see that our customers really value the additional software customization & development services that we now offer in partnership with REC. This is another important step in the development of our extended product and services offering tailored to the specific needs of each customer” – said Trond K. Johannessen, CEO of Hatteland Display AS.

“We’re very happy to incorporate our experience and knowledge that we built up in quality-demanding industries, such as the German Automotive Industry, into Hatteland Display’s business and Maritime Industry overall. In addition we believe our partners and customers will benefit from the flexible cooperation models we offer that are easily tailored to the exact needs and preferences of our customers.” – said Mr. Kulinski, CEO of REC Global group.

Additionally, REC Global’s experts will be available for discussions with you on the stand of the Trade and Investment Promotion Section of the Polish Embassy in Oslo, which will be located in the Nor-Shipping 2013 exhibition pavilions, stand no. D0624.

For more information please visit Nor-Shipping website: http://www.messe.no/en/nor-shipping/

About Hatteland Display

Hatteland Display is the leading technology provider of specialized display and computer products, delivering high quality, unique and customized solutions to the international maritime and industrial markets. The company represents innovation and quality to the system integrators worldwide. Effective quality assurance and investment in sophisticated in-house manufacturing methods and facilities enable us to deliver Type Approved and Mil tested products. Our customer oriented approach, technical knowledge and dedication to R&D, make us a trusted and preferred supplier of approved solutions, which are backed up by a strong service network.

Media Enquiries from Hatteland Display

Lars Skjelbred-Eriksen
Vice President Sales & Marketing
Tel.: +47 9133 2447
e-mail: lse@hatteland-display.com

About REC Global

REC Global is a software engineering services company that is headquartered in Wroclaw, Poland. The group focuses on delivery of premium quality services for Embedded Systems development and for the area of Web & Mobile Applications.

It’s success comes from perfect deliveries and outstanding performance that is confirmed by trust and references of over 60 customers from around the globe. REC works for quality-demanding industries like Automotive, Industry & Automation, Telematics & M2M, Healthcare, Telecommunications, Energy and Web, Mobile & Enterprise Applications.

REC Global group employs over 360 software professionals and is operating on over 17 markets, mainly in Europe and the USA.

Media Enquiries from REC Global

Wieslaw Blysz

VP Sales Region Nordics
e-mail: wieslaw.blysz@rec-global.com
www.rec-global.com

During the Fair, international automotive experts will discuss the future strategy of CLEAN MOBILITY.  Green Technologies is not the only area of interest of companies operating in the Automotive industry.  REC Global experts, based on their experience, will present on the latest trends in Automotive: Infotainment Systems and Internet of Things in the car, Electronic Control Units, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, Electric vehicles and A­-SIL.

More information about the event: www.autocontact.at

Congratulations to Krzysztof and we look forward to the results at a Final Gala to be held in November!

This year, for the first time, entrants in the European Business Awards submitted a video case study. All case studies were uploaded onto the European Business Awards website and an online voting mechanism was introduced to allow the public to choose their favourite videos in each country. Over 35,000 votes were cast with one company automatically going through to the National Champion round. In addition, an esteemed panel of judges chose another 9 organisations that exhibited innovation, business excellence and sustainability to represent Poland

Krzysztof Kulinski, CEO of REC Group said “We’re proud to be selected to represent Poland as a National Champion. The European Business Awards is widely recognised as the showcase for Europe’s most dynamic companies and we are now looking forward to the next round of the judging process where we can explain in more depth how we are achieving business success in these tough trading conditions.”

Adrian Tripp, CEO of the European Business Awards says, “This year, the video element of the awards has allowed our panel of expert judges to gain a much deeper understanding of the business strategies of all the National Finalists. It is because of this that the judging has been particularly tough and this year, perhaps more than ever before, it is an exceptional accolade to be picked as a National Champion. Together with our sponsors and supporters we’re looking forward to seeing Research & Engineering Center Group in the next round.”

Between now  and January 2013, National Champions will be reassessed by a third panel of judges made up of Europe-wide business leaders, academics and entrepreneurs who will award the top organisations the coveted Ruban d’Honneur status. Finally, after face-to-face presentations, the Ruban d’Honneur recipients will be honoured and the names of the overall winners will be revealed at a Gala awards ceremony in April 2013.

RALF provides a proof of concept and a working solution, which allows the Android application to control a washer or dryer. Functions such as turning the machine on and off, selecting and starting a washing/drying program or doing it in a predefined cycle (a testing sequence) without the need for a human operator to control it.You can also control the actions by using a graphical interface  with the potentially to operate the washer or dryer from a remote location.

Goal

The project goal was to get knowledge and experience in the construction of a device, deeper knowledge of the Android operating system and project management. Despite being a team of software engineers and testers we were very happy to learn about hardware as well, so it was a great chance for us to gain knowledge about the mechanics of device construction. The RALF experience allows us to discover new ideas and work on innovative solutions that can be later applied in our everyday work.

Realization

The project was developed by a team of 9 people. The whole effort was done in our spare time and each team member decided how many hours he wanted to spend and which part of the project was interesting for him. A person assigned to the project manager (PM) role was not an experienced project manager, but was full of enthusiasm.  People were not forced to stick to their professional profiles. Testers were encouraged to act as software or hardware developers, developers performed tests and PM took part in various tasks. Thus, the team members understood the  problems of their colleagues better. New roles let people develop new skills, learn about their strong and weak points and even discover hidden talents.

We have several hardware experts in our company who were very helpful and shared their knowledge about the mechanical part with the team. We are experienced in manual testing of washers and dryers, so our motivation was to develop a tool that allows automatic test execution. RALF can replace a human, especially in long lasting stress or bug hunting tests. Using an intuitive user interface, a tester can control each element of a tested device and, with the support of test progress logs, compare received results with expected ones.

The hardware part of RALF is able to control the program selector and push the buttons of a home appliance’s operating unit. A USB interface is used to connect an Android-powered tablet with the  hardware actuators. The device is divided into several modules. Each module is controlled with a relay card. A stepper motor is responsible for actuation of the program selector. A motor controller, supplied with a ready to use software, was used. Buttons are controlled by electromagnets via the relay card. The card is connected to the tablet with an isolated USB hub. The system is powered by a power supply developed by the team and has 3V, 5V and 12V outputs.

The housing is made of Plexiglas and metal brackets. Safety was an important  aspect of the project. The user is protected from electric shocks. The robot has been made aesthetically and contains elements of lighting. A working actuator is illuminated with the LED backlight.

The software part of RALF consists of a Java application developed for the Android OS that is able to control the device with a USB interface, using native Android drivers. Thanks to this the application can be executed on various Android devices, without the need to write hardware-specific drivers. The application is also able to detect connected devices. The user can manually control the program selector and buttons. A simple time-controlled automatic test has also been implemented. The application was originally developed on a PC. It had a well-defined interface that enabled exchange of the device on which it worked. Therefore, the first version developed on Windows XP, was removed and developed further on Android. The application’s GUI is prepared in REC Global’s colors to link it to our company. Furthermore, the application has been tested on Archos 8.0 G9 with Android 4.0.3.

Further developments

Every project has its own schedule and not every idea can be implemented in the limited time frames. Therefore we have prepared a TODO list with new features which hopefully will appear in the next versions of oursolution:

• complex configurable algorithms
• recording of display status
• scripting, automated test execution in test suites
• remote control
• easily adjustable actuators and sensors mounting

Conclusion

Even though a project created ina  team’s spare time is difficult to coordinate, it is always a great catalyst for building a good team spirit. Being in a different role than usual allows understanding of each other better. Each member of the team gretaly enjoyed working onthe project, gaining a lot of experience and knowledge. No less important is the RALF system itself will speed up many aspects of our daily work. Project goals: accomplished!

Marian Baran – CTO

The current member of the Supervisory Board of REC takes over the responsibilities of Chief Technology Officer at REC Global.

Before taking up the position in REC Global, Marian Baran was in the last five years in several functions – Chief Technology Officer, Vice President Technology, IPR Director – member of Management Team of Cinterion Wireless Modules Germany. At that time Cinterion Wireless Modules developed from the level of a start-up company to the number one position in the European market, dominant position in the U.S. and, additionally, gaining a significant share of the Chinese market.

Before Cinterion he was Vice President Wireless Modules and headed Research & Development at Siemens Wireless Modules. After nine years with the German telecommunication company DeTeWe Berlin, where he headed Product Development, he returned to Siemens in 1998 to head R&D department in the Digital Products business unit. Marian Baran launched his carrier at Siemens in 1985 as a development engineer and project manager, steering various project in the Private Network business unit.

Marian Baran moved from Poland to Germany in year 1983. He graduated as an engineer at the Technical University in Opole (1974 – WSI Opole), where he also served as a research assistant. He has also gathered a wide range of professional experience working in Poland as a journalist and engineer.

Dr. Radomir Grucza – EVP for Sales & Marketing

Since 1995 Radomir worked for Siemens in several managerial positions in Milan, Munich and Warsaw with responsibility for sales, mobile networks division and then for whole telecommunication business of Siemens Networks in Poland. After the merger with Nokia Networks he continued with Nokia Siemens Networks from the outset.

Born in 1967, Radomir Grucza graduated at the Warsaw Technical University, Poland, and later at the University of Saarland, Germany with a PhD in 1995.

From 1 January 2009 he headed Nokia Siemens Networks in Poland. At the same time he was responsible for the sub-regional business of Central and Eastern Europe for the Global Account of Deutsche Telekom.

On 1 September 2012 he joined the REC Group (www.rec-global.com) as EVP for Marketing & Sales.

What hit me is that what I observe every day in my work now seems to be a European-wide trend. Particularly:

- the article mentions just two cities, London and Berlin, but “coincidentally” we (REC) are quite active in those two cities and have customers there; and the reasons are exactly as in the article: those companies just couldn’t get enough smart people for doing their project (we could help them).

- the article quotes some West-European entrepreneur that getting talent from Eastern Europe is not working well anymore because of exaggerated salary expectations. Frankly, no surprise here: when you are moving with your wife and children to, for example, Germany and neither you nor your family speak German, then it really has to make sense financially for you to move (been there, done that).

- as one of the commentators stated: “one possible solution is to hire people from Eastern Europe, but let them stay there; this way their expenses (and salary expectations) will be much lower, while still high above the local norms. That’s what successful local startups have been doing for a long time – check GISCloud, Farmeron, activeCollab or Nordeus – and there is no reason for others to follow suit, which has been proven successful by the likes of Skype. I’m especially pointing towards the “newest” Europe, i.e. the countries which recently joined or about to join the EU but still have a strong population of (undervalued) developers, particularly Poland, Slovakia and Croatia (joining in 2013).” Did I mention that REC has development centers in Poland, Slovakia and Croatia?

Read the entire article as it makes for an interesting read. And remember: if your start-up needs talented people, think about REC.

Date: 30.06.2012

Event: The biggest (and the best!!!) free conference about Java technology

Cast:

• around 850 (not only) Java enthusiast,
• about 25 speakers,
• 30 partners
• 20 volunteers,
• organizers!!!

Characters from the play:

• Attendee (A)
• Bad Journalist (BJ)

Remark

At the very beginning the author wants to put a remark that all complaints, which were said by the characters in this play, should not spoil the general impression that Confitura 2012 was definitely an event worth repeating. There were no reasons to complain about any aspects of the organization – from the presentations and catering through to the retro games room (great idea) to tons of gadgets and prizes from the partners. The “only” thing which wasn’t organized well was the weather – it was simply too hot. Author believes that it was SUN’s fault, as they have sold themselves to Oracle and the only way to be present on the conference was through open windows.

Prolog

Bad Journalist runs into Attendee

BJ – Excuse me! May I ask you a question?

A – Yes?? How can I help you??

BJ – Do you know who these people are?? What are they doing at Warsaw University on Saturday morning during the summer break??

A – The biggest free Java conference is about to start… Go inside and see how strong Polish Java community is, and what is interesting in the Java (and not only Java) world.

Act I

Scene I – Performance in the Cloud by Akamai

BJ – What do you think about this keynote?? Why on earth were they talking about the internet traffic on Java conference??

A – Hmm I will answer “y!” ??. In my first Java project we had used Akamai CDN solutions… It’s good to hear that Akamai is opening their office in Poland. I will contact their office to see their new products and prices. I also liked the style of the presentation maybe it wasn’t the best presentation I have ever seen but many presenters may learn the light American style of presentation.

Scene II – Clojure in practice. Clojure as a tool for rendering HTML templates by Lukasz Baran

BJ – Functional language used in practice?? Do you really believe in that….

A – I’m very impressed that company from Poland uses Clojure in their commercial projects… I hope my company one day will give a chance to such technology… This lecture finally convinced me to try Clojure or other functional programming language in practice. Regarding the presentation it was a little bit too stiff and presenter tried to show too much technical details… But as I already said it was good to hear that Clojure can be successfully applied in commercial project.

Act II

Scene I – The Java Platform and the Future by Terrence Barr

BJ – Did you hear that guy… he said that Java FX is back and they want to work on embedded Java… who uses it these days?? Java for Android base devices – this is the future…

A – You don’t understand the Java world at all if you think that only Android is the future… There are billions of devices on which embedded Java works, half of my company works in this area… It is not so fancy and spectacular as Android application but it can be applied to almost every area of our life… Here you can see the power of Java technology – it can run on small device with 2kB of memory as well as on huge cluster with terabytes of RAM. I didn’t use Java FX earlier and I even don’t know what was wrong with the first version, but Terence claimed that they were able to run JavaFX on every mobile platform including iOS (on some developer’s configuration). If they manage to persuade Apple to include it on regular version of the iOS, I guess there is a bright future for Java FX.

Scene II – Agile estimation by Piotr Burdyło

BJ – Estimation. Is it a formal name for fortune telling which in the end often has nothing to do with reality?

A – This time (hopefully last time) I totally agree with you… Estimation is the process which I try to avoid the most during my everyday work. Piotr tried to present his best practice related to this topic and many of them may make estimation process more friendly and accurate. Fortunately for him and his colleagues, their company is more flexible and many good approaches can be applied. Sadly, my company doesn’t want to spend too much time on estimation and they tend to stick to a restricted and time limited process. Anyway I will try to sneak some new techniques into my organization. The one thing which I didn’t like during this presentation were the questions. Questions usually are a good aspect of each presentation, but this time there were too many questions like “did you use [TECHNIQE NAME]” and almost all of Piotr’s answer were: “No”. I’m sure that Piotr has more interesting examples to present but he wasted too much time on answering “did you use” kinds of questions.

Act III

Scene I –Bad tests, good tests by Tomek Kaczanowski

BJ – To test, or not to test: that is the question.

A – Of Course the answer is “to test”, but Tomek, during his presentation, mainly showed how not to test… to be honest, I expected more good practice than bad and ugly tests. But Tomek’s presentation was really good and I am sure more good practice can be found in Tomek’s book which I hope to read during this summer.

Scene II – CoffeeScript one-page-apps with MVC, AOP, DCI and TDD. Buzzwords heaven by Andrzej Krzywda

BJ – Whole application written in JavaScript… I thought JavaScript is used just for simple form validation…

A – For me it was the best presentation I have seen so far – very investing topic and a well prepared presenter combined into the excellent final result. I believe JavaScript is one of the most underestimated languages in the computer science world. Lately, things are changing a little bit but still there is so much to be done… Maybe languages like CoffeeScript will give JavaScript another life. The presentation also showed me how many Single Page Application we use every day… Definitely during lazy summer day I have to think about creating SPA using CoffeeScript.

Act IV

Scene I – Continuous delivery by Andrzej Grzesik

BJ – How long does it take you to publish your change into production?? What do you think about this presentation…

A – First question… It depends :-) … I totally agree with presenter but my feeling that in many cases it was about ideal world… We all know that convincing clients and bosses for some extra time (=money), which will make our life easier in the future, is not so easy (I just don’t want to say impossible in many cases). But if you are so lucky that you start a new project or you have clever client/boss you should go back to Andrzej’s presentation.

BJ – anything else you will remember from this presentation?

A – Yes, probably some Japanese saying “If it hurts, do it more often” ;-)

Scene II – How to be awesome at a Java developer job interview by Wojciech Seliga

Bad Journalist laughs at the Attendee

BJ – Do you think you know Java?? How far you are from the A-level developer?? Maybe you should change your job and become a gardener??

A – I am Java developer and this kind of keynote won’t change it. If you had observed the audience during this presentation you would have noticed that most of us hadn’t agreed with Wojtek. He pointed a lot of weak sides of many Java developers, but IMHO in practice not all of these aspects are crucial for everyday work, most of them are good to have and only some of them are MUST HAVE attributes of good Java developer. Another question is how many A (A+) level developers should work on the same project…

BJ – The more the better

A – Really?? You know the saying “Too many cooks spoil the broth”. But, my second thought that it was a very good presentation may be a little bit too emotional, but it pointed to our weak sides which should make us better people – I mean Java developers… My guess is that there will be a lot of comments about this presentation after Confitura 2012.

Epilog

Sad Attendee

BJ – Why you are so sad?

A – Confitura is over….and I didn’t win any prize….

BJ – Don’t worry there will be another one next year, and I see that you have bunch of gadgets in your bag ….