The Internet of Things is still nowhere near its full potential, but there are already a number of smart, connected home products available on the market which interact and engage with our smart mobile devices to enhance quality of life with convenient features, remote safety measures, and other useful functions. As these connected products can power our daily lives from smart washing machines to a connected fridge just to name a couple of possible products, those items too need something to power them, and that’s where companies like MediaTek come in. Known for their rise in the world of processors, at CES 2016 today, MediaTek has unveiled a new system on chip to help power smart home products.
The new chip, labeled as the MT7697, will be MediaTek’s new SoC joining the existing lineup of chips to help “bridge the Internet of Things for the home,” allowing integration of a range of connected appliances, smart home bridges and more. Like the other chips in MediaTek’s portfolio, the MT7697 will have a strong focus on low power consumption, and will power the Bluetooth Low Energy (for short range) and WiFi (for long range) connections for smart gadgets and wearables which consumers use to interact with connected smart home products.
Alongside this new system on chip, MediaTek has also announced that they will offer a second model of the same chip which supports dual-band WiFi, meaning the chip will support networks which are able to work off of 2.4GHz and 5GHz network connections, labeled as the MT7697D chip. MediaTek states that the MT7697 SoC will be ready and available sometime in the first half of 2016, although they did not mention any specific dates. With this new chip on the market though, manufacturers and developers will be able to help push the advancements of the Internet of Things even further with improvements to both the hardware and software fronts which collectively power the smart home eco system. In addition to the new SoC aimed at the smart home market, MediaTek has also announced new series chips focused on smartwatches called the MT2523 series, also slated for release later on in 2016.