One of the many vendor briefings that I had to reschedule when I became ill during ESC was one with Lantronix. I finally had the briefing by telephone and WebEx the week after the show. Back when I was building embedded systems twenty-odd years ago, and more recently when I worked on hotel management systems, I learned more than I ever wanted to know about serial communications and UART chips. That stood me in Back when I was building embedded systems twenty-odd years ago, and more recently when I worked on hotel management systems, I learned more than I ever wanted to know about serial communications and UART chips. That stood me in good stead when I talked to Lantronix, since what they typically do is interface with the UART chip on an embedded device and turn it into a Web 2.0 server so that you can easily connect and control your device over a network. Their basic value proposition is that they provide the entire serial-to-LAN application royalty-free. Up until now, they did this at the module level, with external device servers, embedded device servers, and embedded device gateways. What they announced at the show was a new product line, the DSTni XChip, which provides an “XPort on a chip.” If you buy their chips, you get the entire networking stack, the serial-to-LAN application, the Web server, and the Web manager as a binary package that you can load into your flash memory. You also get production-ready Gerber and AVL files that you can merge with your own PCB design. Additional information is here. Software Development