The indigenously produced VN8-01 microchip has been successfully integrated into a marine remote supervision and safety control system, scientists announced on September 22.

The IC Design Research & Education Centre (ICDREC) under the National University - HCM City (NU-HCM) said at a press conference that it had cooperated with the Marine Safety Company II (MSC II) to test the system for remotely supervising and controlling Buoy No.1 and a lighthouse in southern coastal Vung Tau City .

The VN8-01 microcontroller is used in the remote system for navigation as the CPU to process collected GSM-GPS data on various aspects related to the actual status of the buoy and /or the lighthouse, according to ICDREC scientists.

These included the rotating period/frequency and operating condition of the lighthouse’s lamps; the buoy’s bearing/coordinates; battery voltage; operating current; charging of solar cells; warning of strong collisions and of the buoy drifting far away from its original position.

All the data was sent by the VN8-01 chip using mobile phone waves in the form of SMS messages to the land control centre at the MSC II’s office in Vung Tau.

The ICDREC has also used the VN8-01 chip in a number of other applications such as washing machine control boards, electric scoreboards and TV remote controls.

The VN8-01 is an advanced version of the ICDREC’s first chip, the SIGMAK3 which was made known in
January, 2008. It is designed to meet industrial standards, having comparative performance and processing speeds with other similar chips widely available in the domestic market.

ICDREC director Ngo Duc Hoang told the press that following the successful test of the VN8-01 and the SIGMAK3, the centre would introduce next year the commercial chip SG8-01.

The 8-bit chip SG8 – 01 was designed under a programme subsidised by the HCM City Department of Science and Technology./.