Muhammad Awais

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Muhammad Awais

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Just three short decades ago, the research and development team at Motorola created the first cell phone. Now, 6 billion people own mobile handsets all over the world, but even this huge shift in communication is nothing compared to the estimated 25 billion devices communicating with each other by 2015. This figure is expected to double just a few years afterwards.

Right now, there are several organisations considering the ramifications of the Internet of Things (IoT) to try and better understand the huge changes through which our businesses and our lives are about to go. The outcome of a recent conference of industry leaders pointed towards the necessity of preparation if your business is to avoid falling behind.

The Future of Wireless Conference is a not-for-profit forum put together by Cambridge Wireless and this year’s meeting was held at the Muller Centre in Cambridge, UK. Keynote speakers included the likes of Bill McFarland, the Vice President of Technology for Qualcomm Atheros, Prof Christopher Bishop, a Scientist from Microsoft Research, Ronan Dunne, the CEO of O2/Telefonica UK and many more.

Do You Have a Plan for IoT?

Vice president of Telefonica Europe, Mike Short stated that if companies wanted to remain competitive as we shift into a world of connected devices, a switch-over plan would be critical. Factors such as supply chain management, logistics and sales distribution will play big roles and this will be especially true if we see a widespread adoption of driver-less vehicles earlier than expected.

The companies that make such plans will be the ones to pull ahead. Other considerations include social media, customer care and communicating ideas, information and data analysis.

Low-Power Energy Harvesting Devices

For many electronic devices of all types to be constantly connected to the Internet, they’ll need to be switched on. Not all devices typically plug into the mains, so battery power will play a key role. Power consumption for integrated circuits continues on a down trend and energy efficiency is improving in general, but is that enough?

Warren East, CEO of ARM believes that super low-power devices are the way forward and many will utilise energy harvesting technology of some kind. East stated in the conference that he felt energy efficiency will be one key to success in deploying billions of connected and communicating devices.

A Post-transaction Model of Sales

A final noteworthy point was made by a tech specialist from PwC, Rolf Meakin. With so much automation and intercommunication, a shift will be seen in the relationships businesses have with their customers. A transaction will no longer be about merely buying a product or service, but about businesses helping the customer to achieve the goals they bought that product or service for.

It’s proven that people are willing to pay more for good customer care and the shift in digital marketing in the past few years has increasingly put emphasis on businesses leading with value. The Internet of Things will mean these things get taken to a whole new level. The time to make that switch-over plan is now upon us.

The wireless lighting control market has seen a shift in recent years away from bespoke or proprietary lighting solutions, as efficient and low cost solutions have been introduced to the general market based around standards that you may already by familiar with – such as ZigBee – which provide opportunities for greater system standardisation and interoperability.

Whilst consumers increasingly recognise the value of the convenience, flexibility, and comfort that wireless, embedded “Internet-of-Things” devices bring to the home or office, a barrier to widespread adoption of these kinds of home automation systems in the past has been that traditionally, most product manufacturers have not provided a system that allows interoperability among different lighting and home automation vendors.

ZigBee Light Link was created to save time, money and installation labour by standardising simple, easy to install networks of intelligent lighting as well as control devices such as light switches, occupancy sensors, daylight sensors and Wi-Fi connected network gateways which allow the ZigBee Light Link network to be controlled by the consumer from a PC, tablet or smartphone.

As one of many ZigBee application profiles, ZigBee Light Link is a ZigBee application profile aimed at intelligent, wireless control of household lighting. It provides the lighting industry with a global standard for interoperable “smart” consumer lighting and control products that are easy to use, and it allows consumers to achieve wireless control over all their LED fixtures, light bulbs, timers, remotes and switches from their smartphone, PC or tablet. Products using the ZigBee Light Link standard allow consumers to configure their lighting remotely to reflect ambience, task or season, whilst at the same time improving energy efficiency.

The ZigBee Light Link 1.0 application profile is currently published, whilst the ZigBee Light Link 1.1 application profile specification is presently under development. Leading home lighting solution manufacturers who have contributed to the development of the ZigBee Light Link standard include GE, Greenwave, OSRAM Sylvania and Philips.

Products employing the ZigBee Light Link standard, and earning the ZigBee Certified seal, are known to the consumer to be interoperable and as easy to use as a common dimmer switch. Adding or removing devices from the lighting network is quick and easy, making it easy and intuitive for consumers to use every day. Since ZigBee Light Link is a ZigBee standard, ZigBee Light Link-based smart lighting solutions will interoperate effortlessly with consumers’ other devices employing ZigBee standards such as ZigBee Home Automation, ZigBee Input Device and ZigBee Remote Control.

A ZigBee Light Link network is a secure mesh network which allows communication to be safely relayed by multiple individual network nodes, i.e. control devices and lamps. A single light or group of lights can have the user’s favourite lighting state stored in memory and recalled immediately – even for a whole house worth of lights, at the press of a button.

Additional nodes can easily be added to or removed from the network without affecting system functionality or integrity. Adding or removing lamps is very easy and robust. Contrary to other networking solutions, it does not matter which lamp is installed first, or whether other lamps in the network are switched on or off. With ZigBee Light Link, adding a new lamp at a remote location is as easy as adding a new lamp within RF range.

Smartphones, tablets and PCs can control lighting products based on ZigBee Light Link via a ZigBee network gateway connected to ethernet or a Wi-Fi network. Such a connection also allows the ZigBee Light Link network to be controlled via the Internet, via web applications or mobile smartphone apps, for example.

Devices such as ZigBee-networked wireless wall switches and remote controls may also be used to control the lighting network. Functionality such as automatic timer control, “alarm clock” use, or “vacation mode” security use can also be defined in software and configured by the user with a simple software interface on the PC or mobile device.

The ZigBee Light Link profile can be used with ZigBee transceivers and ZigBee-ready system-on-chip microcontrollers from several semiconductor manufacturers – for example, the CC2531 or CC2538 IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee System-on-Chip solutions from Texas Instruments.

Texas Instruments offers the Z-Stack Lighting Software for the CC2530 ZigBee-enabled RF system-on-chip, which is an implementation of ZigBee Light Link and comes with a sample demonstration program for both a wireless “smart light” and “smart switch”, allowing engineers to easily get started in the development of an easy to use lighting control solution based around ZigBee Light Link.

The Z-Stack Lighting development kit from Texas Instruments consists of two “Z-Light” reference design RGB LED lamps based around the CC2531 chip programmed as ZigBee Light Link Colour Lights and a CC2531-based USB gateway dongle programmed as a ZigBee Light Link Colour Scene Remote, which can be operated independently as a remote control with on-board buttons or used as a gateway to interface the lighting network to PC software, for software-based advanced control and functionality.

This development kit contains everything needed to set up a basic ZigBee Light Link network and control the lamps either individually or in groups using either buttons on the controller node or software on the PC. TI’s website contains tools and application examples for free download that can be used to experiment with more advanced features of the ZigBee Light Link lighting control protocol and to develop demonstrators for direct wireless control or control from cloud-based or web services. Schematics and documentation for these hardware reference designs are also fully provided for free download from TI.

Thus the information and hardware is available for you to integrate products into this new standard of wireless lighting control, and if this technology interests your organisation but don’t have the expertise in – or just need to have it taken care of by a team of experts – and you’re not sure how to progress with a reliable implementation, we can partner with you to take care of this either in revisions of existing products or as part of new designs.

With our experience in retail and commercial products we have the ability to target your product’s design to the required end-user market and all the steps required to make it happen.

We can create or tailor just about anything from a wireless temperature sensor to a complete Internet-enabled system for you – within your required time-frame and your budget. For more information or a confidential discussion about your ideas and how we can help bring them to life – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

LX is an award-winning electronics design company based in Sydney, Australia. LX services include full turnkey design, electronics, hardware, software and firmware design. LX specialises in embedded systems and wireless technologies design. https://lx-group.com.au

Published by LX Pty Ltd for itself and the LX Group of companies, including LX Design House, LX Solutions and LX Consulting, LX Innovations.

Next in our series examining emerging power-efficient wireless chipsets, we consider the CC3000 series from Texas Instruments. As you may already understand, 802.11 wireless LAN standards are an attractive technology for building networks of wireless sensors and embedded devices due to industry familiarity and the availability of nearly ubiquitous existing network infrastructure.

The Texas Instruments CC3000 is a self-contained 802.11b/g wireless network processor that lowers the cost and complexity of adding Internet connectivity to an embedded Internet-of-Things network, allowing wireless LAN to be added to just about any existing microcontroller system relatively easily and at very low cost.

The CC3000 integrates the IPv4 TCP/IP stack, all the drivers and the security supplicant in the device, making it easily portable to lightweight microcontrollers without the memory burden of implementing a TCP/IP stack in the host microcontroller – a big advantage where relatively low-power, low-cost platforms such as 8-bit AVR or PIC microcontrollers with minimal memory are used. Furthermore, this compact module measures only 16.5mm x 11.5mm.

As it doesn’t require an external crystal or antenna balun, and in fact requires almost no external components except for an SPI interface to the host microcontroller, a regulated 3.3 volt supply, a few decoupling capacitors and antenna matching components and a 2.4 GHz 50-ohm antenna – and with a low cost of around ten dollars, the CC3000 is easy to design for and can meet many budgetary requirements.

This low cost is a game changer compared to most other embedded 802.11 solutions on the market at present, and allows wireless LAN connectivity to be added to existing embedded designs with relatively low complexity, minimal space, and a low cost. The flexible 2.7-4.8V voltage supply specification of the CC3000 offers great flexibility when combined with battery power or energy harvesting solutions (although 802.11 is not really intended as an ultra-low-power high-efficiency networking standard for battery powered wireless sensor networks and Internet-of-Things networks in the same way that, say, 802.1.4 or Bluetooth Low Energy are).

However, this chip is not a module with a built-in antenna or RF connector and a 50-ohm 2.4 GHz antenna must be added externally, meaning that the designer must have a little familiarity with microwave PCB design, such as microstrip transmission line layout and the choice of the right antenna connector. However, this offers the designer complete flexibility to choose the most appropriate architecture for the size, range and gain requirements of the design – a larger external antenna, a compact chip antenna, or an antenna designed into the PCB layout and fabricated as part of the PCB, with no component assembly required and no bill-of-materials cost.

Whilst development and evaluation boards for the CC3000 are available, this is perhaps one minor downside of the device’s small, ultra-compact package and lack of an integrated RF antenna – the design and fabrication of a custom microwave-capable printed circuit board is almost certainly required to use this device, especially if you decide for whatever reason that the existing evaluation boards are not suitable for your application.

Furthermore, the CC3000 is a relatively new device on the market, meaning that it may not have as much community support, documentation, community open-hardware following and a base of experienced users when compared to other, older wireless LAN chipsets or devices.

CC3000 reference designs available from Texas Instruments demonstrate chip-antenna based reference implementations that are already FCC, IC and CE certified, making it relatively easy to develop an 802.11-connected system that can pass compliance testing for products going into markets where such compliance is needed – provided the reference design is used without modification, with a chip antenna.

Additionally, the CC3000 is provided as a complete platform solution, with resources such as sample applications, API guides, porting guides and other extensive documentation provided and supported by TI.

The CC3000 library provided by TI for their MSP430 microcontroller family has recently been ported to the open-source Arduino platform by the developer community, allowing even a bare-bones Arduino-compatible AVR development board to connect to a wireless LAN using only a handful of components and only consuming about 12k of Flash and 350 bytes of RAM to run the open-source CC3000 library code, meaning that the Arduino still has sufficient resources left over to do many other interesting things.

An extra lightweight version of the library consumes somewhere between 2k and 6k of Flash, meaning that basic Internet connectivity is possible even on very small microcontrollers with very limited resources, such as the Atmel ATtiny series.

If you’re interested in designing around the TI CC3000 chipset but don’t have the expertise in PCB antenna design, embedded networking hardware – or just need to have it taken care of by an team of experts – but you’re not sure how to progress with a reliable implementation, we can partner with you to take care of this either in revisions of existing products or as part of new designs.

With our experience in retail and commercial products we have the ability to target your product’s design to the required end-user market and all the steps required to make it happen.

We can create or tailor just about anything from a wireless temperature sensor to a complete Internet-enabled system for you – within your required time-frame and your budget. For more information or a confidential discussion about your ideas and how we can help bring them to life – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

LX is an award-winning electronics design company based in Sydney, Australia. LX services include full turnkey design, electronics, hardware, software and firmware design. LX specialises in embedded systems and wireless technologies design. https://lx-group.com.au

Published by LX Pty Ltd for itself and the LX Group of companies, including LX Design House, LX Solutions and LX Consulting, LX Innovations.

Next in our series examining emerging power-efficient wireless chipsets, we examine the ANT technology. It’s a wireless sensor network technology that defines a protocol stack for use with small, embedded system-on-chip radios operating in the 2.4 GHz ISM band. ANT provides power-efficient operation for battery-powered wireless devices, low overhead in the communications link, interference tolerance and worldwide ISM spectrum compatibility.

Similar in some respects to Bluetooth Low Energy and IEEE 802.15.4, ANT is aimed at applications in wireless connected, networked devices for health, sports, home automation and industrial control applications.

Whilst ANT has some similarities to Bluetooth Low Energy and IEEE 802.15.4, there are some differences. For example, the ANT physical layer supports an on-the-air data rate of up to 1 MBit/s, compared to 250 kbit/s for IEEE 802.15.4 operating at 2.4 GHz.

This means that an ANT system needs to stay on the air for a shorter amount of time to transmit a given amount of data as compared to an 802.15.4 system. Another noteworthy difference is that the ANT protocol is proprietary – whilst ANT transceiver chips are available from some manufacturers such as Nordic Semiconductor and Texas Instruments, these ANT-protocol transceivers are basically “black boxes” of proprietary hardware and firmware which are interfaced to an external user application processor over a UART, SPI or USB interface.

Similar to IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth Low Energy systems, ANT systems can be configured to spend long periods in a low-power “sleep” mode with a current consumption on the order of microamps, wake up briefly to communicate, with a peak current consumption on the order of 10 milliamps during active transmission, and then return to sleep mode. At low message rates the average current consumption can be less than 60 microamps on some typical devices.

ANT-based wireless sensor network nodes are capable of acting as either masters or slaves within the network, that is, acting as transmitters, receivers or transceivers as required to route data where it needs to go within the network whilst also minimising the power consumption of each node. For example, the RF transmitter of a given node is powered down if that particular node only needs to receive at given time. Every node is capable of determining when to transmit based on the activity of its neighbours.

Due to the low power requirement the ANT system has been relatively widely adopted in the athletics and sports sector, particularly for fitness and performance monitoring. ANT transceivers are embedded in equipment such as heart rate monitors, speed and cadence sensors for athletics, blood pressure and blood glucose monitors, pulse oximeters and temperature sensors. Examples of existing commercial product lines employing ANT technology include Nike’s performance monitoring products as well as the Garmin Edge range of cycling computers.

Furthermore, ANT+ is an extension of the ANT protocol which adds interoperability between devices – allowing for the standardised networking of different ANT devices to facilitate the collection and interpretation of sensor data from multiple sources. For example, ANT+ enabled fitness devices such as heart rate monitors and pedometers can have all their data collated together and assembled into performance metrics, allowing a more holistic view of the user’s fitness and performance based on multiple data types.

Three types of message transmission can be accommodated by the ANT protocol – broadcast, acknowledged and burst. Broadcast messaging is one-way message communication from one node to another, where the receiving node transmits no acknowledgement. This type of message is suited to sensor-network applications and is the most power-efficient mode of operation.

Acknowledgement of each received data packet can also be transmitted by the receiving node, in acknowledged message mode, although there are no retransmissions. This mode of operation is well suited to control and automation applications where accidental transmission of a duplicate control or actuation message should be avoided. Burst messaging mode may also be employed, where multiple messages are transmitted using the full data bandwidth.

The receiving node acknowledges receipt of each packet, which is sequence numbered for traceability, and informs the transmitting node of any corrupted packets which are then retransmitted. This mode is suited to data transfer where the overall integrity of the data needs to be maintained.

ANT employs a mechanism to ensure RF coexistence in the relatively congested 2.4 GHz ISM spectrum that is different from from the spread spectrum mechanisms employed by 802.11, 802.15.4 and Bluetooth networks. This time-based multiplexing scheme provides the ability for each transmission to occur in an interference-free time slot within the defined band. The radio transmits for less than 150 microseconds for each message, allowing a single channel to be subdivided into hundreds of time slots.

This is an adaptive, isochronous scheme, meaning that it doesn’t require a master clock synchronising every device. Each device starts broadcasting at regular intervals, but then modifies its transmission timing if another device is transmitting in that particular time division. This allows ANT to adapt to a congested RF environment whilst also ensuring that there is no overhead when interference is not present, minimising power consumption whist maintaining a high level of network integrity.

In a very congested RF environment, if this time-division scheme is not sufficient, ANT does have the capability for frequency agility, allowing a frequency hop to an alternative 1 MHz wide channel and then going back to time-sharing coexistence. This frequency-hopping is controlled by the application processor that controls the ANT chip.

Although a broad overview, the ANT system can be thought of as a useful and reliable method of data communication between devices with limited power supply and used in areas of high RF congestion – especially idea for consumer devices. And if this meets your needs but you’re not sure how to progress with a reliable implementation, we can partner with you to take care of this either in revisions of existing products or as part of new designs.

With our experience in retail and commercial products we have the ability to target your product’s design to the required end-user market and all the steps required to make it happen.

We can create or tailor just about anything from a wireless temperature sensor to a complete Internet-enabled system for you – within your required time-frame and your budget. For more information or a confidential discussion about your ideas and how we can help bring them to life – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

LX is an award-winning electronics design company based in Sydney, Australia. LX services include full turnkey design, electronics, hardware, software and firmware design. LX specialises in embedded systems and wireless technologies design. https://lx-group.com.au

Published by LX Pty Ltd for itself and the LX Group of companies, including LX Design House, LX Solutions and LX Consulting, LX Innovations.

Next in our series examining emerging low-power wireless standards, we consider 6LoWPAN, which stands for “IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Network”. This is a set of networking standards and specifications which is designed to address the ideas that the Internet Protocol (IPv6 in particular) can be and should be applied to even the smallest embedded wireless Internet-of-Things connected devices right out to the “end branches” of the network; and that power-efficient embedded devices with limited processing power should be fully able to be a part of the Internet of Things, including the use of IPv6 network connectivity.

Whilst the Internet Protocol is the workhorse for the Internet and local-area networks, the IEEE 802.15.4 standard defines the networking of wireless mesh devices. Although the two different protocols are inherently different, the 6LoWPAN specification defines encapsulation and header compression mechanisms that allow IPv6 packets to be sent and received over IEEE 802.15.4 wireless networks, essentially allowing the two standards to operate together, efficiently bringing the Internet to small, power-efficient, cheap devices without the relatively high cost, complexity and power consumption required to implement IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN connectivity at every wireless network node.

For example, a typical embedded 802.11 Wi-Fi module may consume 250 mA while it is awake and actively transmitting, and it may well require a separate microcontroller to interface it to the sensors or other electronics required for a particular application. On the other hand, a system-on-chip incorporating a microcontroller combined with an 802.15.4/6LoWPAN-compatible radio transceiver may only consume 25 mA when it is awake and actively transmitting RF data – an order of magnitude less power consumption.

6LoWPAN is well suited to small, compact, relatively low-cost embedded Internet-of-Things appliances that require wireless connectivity to the LAN and to the Internet but can accept connectivity at a relatively low data rate. Examples may include embedded automation, building control systems and wireless sensor networks in home, office and industrial environments, as well as smart energy metering, measurement and control networks. Devices such as smart meters may collate their data via a 802.15.4/6LoWPAN mesh network before sending the data back to the billing system over the IPv6 backbone.

Whilst IP networks are typically designed to optimise speed whilst managing traffic issues such as network congestion, 802.15.4 systems are designed to give a higher priority to efficient low-power operation and optimisation of memory use, maximising their utility on small, cheap, memory-constrained microcontrollers.

There are some complexities involved in interfacing the two systems elegantly – for example, whilst IPv6 requires a maximum transmission unit of at least 1280 bytes, the 802.15.4 physical layer allows a maximum of 127 bytes per packet, including the payload. The management of addresses for devices that communicate across both the dissimilar domains of IPv6 and IEEE 802.15.4 is also cumbersome, as is the routing of packets between the IPv6 domain and the PAN domain.

Since IP-enabled devices may require the formation of ad-hoc networks particularly during initial setup and configuration, the current state of neighbouring devices and the services hosted by such devices will need to be known. This requires a mechanism for device discovery of the neighbouring devices present in the network.

All 802.15.4 networks connected to the Internet, using 6LoWPAN or otherwise, do require the hardware and software of a physical “bridge” or “gateway” at some point or points in the network, in order to connect the 802.15.4 wireless mesh network to an 802.11 wireless LAN or wired Ethernet. Multiple such nodes mitigate the possibility of single-point failure of network connectivity for the mesh network, at the price of increased network complexity and hardware cost.

IPv6 nodes are assigned 128-bit IP addresses in a hierarchical manner, through an arbitrary length network prefix. IEEE 802.15.4 devices may use either 64-bit extended addresses or 16-bit addresses that are unique within a PAN (a Personal Area Network, which is a group of physically colocated 802.15.4 nodes) as long as an association between a node and a particular PAN has occurred. A particular PAN can also be identified by giving it a PAN ID, allowing the devices of that PAN to easily be recognised – for example, a particular PAN may be associated with a particular building or a particular room.

IEEE 802.15.4 is specifically intended for compact, cheap devices with a relatively low power consumption, operating efficiently from power sources such as batteries. After all, for networks of numerous Internet-of-Things appliances to become ubiquitous, individual wireless hardware nodes need to be as compact, unobtrusive and as cheap as possible.

Making each hardware device as small as possible also allows for portability and greater flexibility in how the devices are used – in wearable computing, for example. However, devices that don’t need to be wireless can be kept in the IP domain of the network and wired in to copper Ethernet – and if portability isn’t required, this means more bandwidth is available to the device. In such a case, a wired mains power supply may also be used, meaning that a larger amount of power is available.

In applications where wireless networking is required but device cost and power efficiency does not need to be so tightly constrained, or where more network bandwidth is required, 802.11 wireless networking may be chosen instead of 6LoWPAN over 802.15.4, keeping the device in the IP domain.

As you can imagine the 6LoWPAN standard offers new levels of compatibility with upcoming infrastructure and is perfect for low-power applications. And if this meets your needs but you’re not sure how to progress with a reliable implementation, we can partner with you to take care of this either in revisions of existing products or as part of new designs. With our experience in retail and commercial products we have the ability to target your product’s design to the required end-user market and all the steps required to make it happen.

We can create or tailor just about anything from a wireless temperature sensor to a complete Internet-enabled system for you – within your required time-frame and your budget. For more information or a confidential discussion about your ideas and how we can help bring them to life – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

LX is an award-winning electronics design company based in Sydney, Australia. LX services include full turnkey design, electronics, hardware, software and firmware design. LX specialises in embedded systems and wireless technologies design. https://lx-group.com.au

Published by LX Pty Ltd for itself and the LX Group of companies, including LX Design House, LX Solutions and LX Consulting, LX Innovations.

The Bluetooth wireless data protocol has been in use for over ten years, and in recent time the new low energy standard has been introduced. This gives designers another option for wireless connectivity between devices with an extremely low power consumption. In the following we examine what it is, the benefits and implementation examples.

Bluetooth LE (for “low energy”) is aimed at novel applications of short-range wireless communication in connected Internet-of-Things devices for medical, fitness, sports, security and home entertainment applications, and was merged into the main Bluetooth specification as part of the Bluetooth Core Specification v4.0 in 2010.

Also known as “Bluetooth Smart”, it enables new applications of Bluetooth networking in small, power-efficient Internet-of-Things devices that can operate for months or even years on tiny coin cell batteries or other small-scale energy sources. Bluetooth LE devices offer ultra-low power consumption, particularly in idle or sleep modes, multi-vendor interoperability and low cost, whilst maintaining radio link range that is sufficiently long enough for the intended applications.

The Bluetooth LE protocol is not backwards-compatible with the “classic” Bluetooth – however, the Bluetooth 4.0 specification does allow for dual-mode Bluetooth implementations – where the device can communicate using both classic Bluetooth and Bluetooth LE. Whilst Bluetooth Low Energy uses a simpler modulation system than classic Bluetooth, it employs the same 2.4 GHz ISM band, allowing dual-mode devices to share a common antenna and RF electronics for both Classic and Bluetooth LE communication.

Small, power-efficient devices like wearable athletic and medical sensors are typically based on a single-mode Bluetooth LE system in order to minimise power consumption, size and cost. In devices like notebooks and smart phones, though, dual-mode Bluetooth is typically implemented, allowing communication with both Bluetooth LE and classic Bluetooth devices. When operated in Bluetooth LE mode, the Bluetooth LE stack is used whilst the RF hardware and antenna is usually the same set of hardware as used for classic Bluetooth operation.

Devices using Bluetooth LE typically have a power consumption, for Bluetooth communication, which is a fraction of that of classic Bluetooth devices. In many cases, devices can operate for a year or more on a single coin cell. This potentially makes Bluetooth LE very attractive for Internet-of-Things networks, telemetry and data logging from environmental sensor networks, for example.

Since many modern consumer devices such as mobile phones and notebooks have built-in Bluetooth LE support, data can be delivered directly to the user’s fingertips from the Bluetooth sensor network with no need for an intermediary gateway or router as would be required for an Internet-of-Things network employing other technologies such as 802.15.4 ZigBee. This direct interoperability with a large installed base of smart phones, tablets and notebooks could potentially be a very significant attraction of Bluetooth LE networks in wireless sensor network and Internet-of-Things applications.

An active Bluetooth radio has a peak current consumption on the order of about 10 milliamps, reduced to about 10 nanoamps (ideally) in sleep mode. In a Bluetooth LE system, the objective is to operate the radio with a very low duty cycle on the order of about 0.1-0.5%, resulting in average current consumption on the order of 10 microamps. At an average current consumption of 20 microamps, such a system could be operated off a typical CR2032 lithium coin cell (with a charge capacity of 230 milliamp-hours) for 1.3 years without battery replacement.

The lower power consumption of Bluetooth LE is not achieved by the nature of the radio transceiver itself (since the same RF hardware is typically used, in dual-mode Bluetooth devices), but by the design of the Bluetooth LE stack to allow low duty cycles for the radio and optimisation for transmission in small bursts – a Bluetooth LE device used for continuous data transfer would not have a lower power consumption than a classic Bluetooth device transmitting the same amount of data.

The Bluetooth specifications define many different profiles for Bluetooth LE devices – specifications for how a device works in particular families of applications. Manufacturers are expected to implement the appropriate profiles for their device in order to ensure compatibility between different devices from different vendors. A particular device may implement more than one profile – for example one device may contain both a heart rate monitor and a temperature sensor. Here is a non-exhaustive list of a few different Bluetooth LE profiles in use:

Health Thermometer Profile, for medical temperature measurement devices.
Glucose Monitor Profile, for medical blood glucose measurement and logging.
Proximity Profile, which allows one device to detect whether another device is within proximity, using RF signal strength to provide a rough range estimate. This is intended for security applications as an “electronic leash”, allowing the detection of devices being moved outside a controlled area.
Running Speed and Cadence profile, for monitoring and logging athletic performance.
Heart Rate Profile, for heart-rate measurement in medical and athletic applications.
Phone Alert Status Profile, which allows a client device to receive notifications (such as an incoming call or email message) from a smart phone. As an example, this is employed in the Pebble smart watch.

The Bluetooth LE shows a lot of promise, and with a minimal chip set cost gives the designer another cost-effective wireless protocol. And if this meets your needs but you’re not sure how to progress with a reliable implementation, we can partner with you to take care of this either in revisions of existing products or as part of new designs. With our experience in retail and commercial products we have the ability to target your product’s design to the required end-user market and all the steps required to make it happen.

We can create or tailor just about anything from a wireless temperature sensor to a complete Internet-enabled system for you – within your required time-frame and your budget. For more information or a confidential discussion about your ideas and how we can help bring them to life – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

LX is an award-winning electronics design company based in Sydney, Australia. LX services include full turnkey design, electronics, hardware, software and firmware design. LX specialises in embedded systems and wireless technologies design. https://lx-group.com.au

Making the decision to create a new product or the next generation of an existing product is always an exciting time for design engineers and hopefully the entire organisation. There’s always new features, options and technologies that can be integrated for the perceived benefit of the end user.

However as technology marches on, there is the possibility of going too far. At first that may seem like an odd statement, however considering the complexity of some products you may wonder how they’re comprehended by the end-user, let alone sales staff. This phenomena is also prevalent in the Internet-of-things arena, where “features” and usability can get out of hand.

Let’s consider the potential dangers of over-engineering and feature overcomplexity when bringing an Internet-of-Things automation or embedded sensor appliance to the market. With advancements in available technology, increasing miniaturisation and decreasing costs of sensors and components it’s tempting for more and more features and capabilities to be added to your device or product design, just to make your product “the best” or to satisfy the “because we can” motivation of the engineering team.

However, it can be important to keep this kind of over-engineering or “feature creep” under control in order to deliver a product that is easy for consumers and salespeople to understand and offers simple, sensible, intuitive user experience with a sensible amount of functionality – not too little and not too much – from a hardware system that is small enough and simple enough that it can practically be manufactured and offered to the market at an acceptable price for good consumer uptake.

Sure, your design might be “the best” from a technology standpoint, but what if the “best” hardware is significantly more expensive than the competitor’s not quite as whiz-bang product and your design is not considered financially attractive to consumers relative to the level of functionality that the users actually want?

It’s pointless to try and invent more and more features just because it is technologically possible to do so if those features don’t actually accomplish anything that is actually valuable to consumers. For example, providing a washing machine with Internet-of-Things connectivity and remote access and control via email or a smartphone application is quite pointless since a human operator actually needs to be there to load and unload the clothes from the machine.

The features and user experience should be kept intuitive and usable, without dragging the user down into an insane range of different options that most people are probably never going to use most of the time anyway.

Internet-of-Things sensor networks and appliances targeted at home and building automation should be easy to set up and configure, they should be compatible with existing typical household network infrastructure such as single-band 2.4 GHz 802.11b/g Wi-Fi access points (5 GHz might be technically “better”, for example, but users don’t want to upgrade all their existing access points just to use your gadget), and they need to be compact, visually unobtrusive – and as simple as possible in order to keep the hardware cost at a level that is sufficiently small for market acceptance.

This is particularly true for appliances that are designed for use as a network of many distributed devices – the cost of the total set of all the hardware devices needed for a typical network deployment needs to be kept at a reasonable level so that the entire usable system is available to consumers at an overall price point that they’re willing to pay. For Internet-of-Things networks consisting of meshes of multiple wireless devices to become ubiquitous, each node device needs to be as cheap and as small as possible.

For example, suppose that you release a smart email-controlled Internet-of-Things light bulb onto the market and it costs $100. Will customers replace their existing light bulb, which costs say $5, with your new $100 light bulb with the added convenience of control from your PC? Well, some consumers might try a single light bulb or two just to experience the relatively novel idea of a consumer-focussed household Internet-of-Things appliance.

However very few customers are likely to consider it worthwhile to set up a network of a dozen hundred-dollar bulbs to replace every bulb in the home. Such a system might pick up a few customers – the relatively wealthy technology fans who want to be early adopters of advanced, relatively complicated home automation and Internet-of-Things technologies, even if the price is high. But isn’t it better to have a product that is desirable for a broader market beyond just those who are willing to pay lots of money for the most powerful, advanced technology on the market?

Furthermore, realistic testing of your product’s usability and user experience is vital during the development process. Adding too many features can befuddle customers as well as befuddling salespeople whose job it is to help convince customers to buy your product and to demonstrate its user experience with consumers. Over-engineering and feature creep, even if it’s possible to integrate lots and lots of features from a technical engineering standpoint, can negatively affect sales as well as affecting your brand reputation.

The best user interface is “no user interface” – a user interface design that approaches the theoretical ideal of being completely transparent and natural in its interaction with the user. Similarly – although I know it might sound risky – the best documentation design is “no documentation”, or something approaching it. The ideal product is so intuitive and natural in its user experience that it just kind of “documents itself”, with little or no documentation really required. This means that the amount of documentation that the customer needs to read is minimised as well as minimising the amount and the cost of documentation that the manufacturer needs to print for every unit shipped.

With hindsight you can examine your own existing products and that of your competitor’s, and with a fresh perspective perhaps consider how things can be simpler for the end user without sacrificing usability. This is a simple step to initiate, however it can require a total redesign or approach from a fresh set of minds.

As part of our complete product design service, here at the LX Group we can partner with you to work on revisions of existing products or bring new ideas to life. With out experience in retail and commercial products we have the experience to target your product’s design to the required end-user market and all the steps required to make it happen.

We can create or tailor just about anything from a wireless temperature sensor to a complete Internet-enabled system for you – within your required time-frame and your budget. For more information or a confidential discussion about your ideas and how we can help bring them to life – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

LX is an award-winning electronics design company based in Sydney, Australia. LX services include full turnkey design, electronics, hardware, software and firmware design. LX specialises in embedded systems and wireless technologies design. https://lx-group.com.au

Published by LX Pty Ltd for itself and the LX Group of companies, including LX Design House, LX Solutions and LX Consulting, LX Innovations.

After the initial excitement of generating an idea for a new Internet of Things device, there’s still countless design considerations to take into account – some of which you may not have even heard of. And a fair amount of these will be generated by the needs of specific markets around the world. So let’s consider some of the challenges involved in designing an Internet-of-Things device or appliance and bringing it to the global market.

What are some of the different factors that need to be taken into account when bringing a hardware device to market internationally? The need for multi-voltage off-line power supplies and multi-lingual product manuals are well-known things we’re used to with all our technology products – but with modern Internet-of-Things gadgets employing Internet connectivity, cloud computing and wireless radio-frequency mesh networks, there are some increasingly important factors to consider which may not be as familiar to the design team.

For mains-powered systems, international differences in mains voltage and frequency are an obvious factor to start with to ensure compatibility with the worldwide market. Modern switch-mode power supplies can easily be designed to span the possible worldwide voltage range between 100 V AC and 240 V AC without manual switching or configuration, at grid frequencies between 50 and 60 Hz. However, it should be remembered that the mains voltage is only assured within a tolerance of around plus or minus 10 percent, so an example of a good input voltage specification for a well-designed modern SMPS might be 85-265 V RMS AC at a grid frequency of 50-60 Hz. Extra attention is needed in systems where a clock or timebase is derived from the frequency of the AC grid – in systems of this sort, manual specification of the frequency may be required even if the power supply itself does not care about the AC frequency.

When designing and deploying wireless sensor networks, Internet-of-Things networks and similar modern technologies where radio communication is used, attention also needs to be paid to differing international allocations of RF spectrum and licensing requirements for the use of the RF spectrum. Spectrum allocations and licensing requirements for Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) bands differ between countries – for example, the 915 MHz band should not be used in countries outside ITU Region 2 except those countries that specifically allow it, such as Australia and Israel.

A device that operates with a certain frequency spectrum and power level that requires no license, or falls into a class license, in one country may not be able to be legally operated in another country without specific operator licensing. For example, some devices operating in the 70 cm (433 MHz) spectrum that fall within the Low Interference Potential Device (LIPD) class license in Australia and hence can be freely operated cannot be used in the United States except by licensed amateur radio operators. The European Union’s Reduction of Hazardous Substances (ROHS) directive took effect in 2006, restricting the use of certain substances considered harmful to health and the environment, such as lead and cadmium, except in technological applications where elimination of these elements is not viable.

While RoHS compliance is not required for all electronic equipment sold throughout the world and is only strictly required for devices sold into the EU market, it is achieving widespread acceptance throughout the electronic manufacturing industry worldwide. However, in some specialised applications where extremely high reliability and resilience against factors such as tin-whisker formation is required, such as space and defence technology, these factors may take precedence over ROHS compliance and the use of lead-containing solder alloys and platings may be specified.

Different testing organisations are responsible for setting and enforcing the standards for electrical safety and RF spectrum usage in different countries, and it can be challenging to keep track of the different testing requirements needed before bringing your product to market in every market country.

For example, Underwriters Laboratories is well known in the United States for their role in drafting safety standards and providing compliance testing procedures for safety-related factors, whilst approval from the FCC is required to recognise compliance with RF spectrum and electromagnetic interference requirements – a completely separate thing to safety certification. And for another example, the TUV provides a similar role in the verification of safety-related standard compliance in the German market.

Other social and socio-economic factors that might not be as obvious can affect the user experience your product provides in different customer markets – for example, a device that constantly needs to “phone home” to an Internet-connected service may not function effectively in a country without widely available, or reliable, Internet access. In a situation like this, it may be beneficial to have a system designed to store and buffer its collected data locally on a storage device and only synchronise with an Internet service occasionally when connectivity may be available.

In conclusion, there’s a myriad of not only standards but also operational considerations to take in account when designing your next product for the global market. However don’t let that put you off – the greater the challenge, the greater the possible success. But if you’re not sure about testing, standards, compliance, markets abroad or any other factor – parter with an organisation that does: the LX Group.

Here at the LX Group we have the experience and team to make things happen. With our experience with connected devices, embedded and wireless hardware/software design, and ability to transfer ideas from the whiteboard to the white box – we can partner with you for your success.

We can create or tailor just about anything from a wireless temperature sensor to a complete Internet-enabled system for you – within your required time-frame and your budget. For more information or a confidential discussion about your ideas and how we can help bring them to life – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

LX is an award-winning electronics design company based in Sydney, Australia. LX services include full turnkey design, electronics, hardware, software and firmware design. LX specialises in embedded systems and wireless technologies design. https://lx-group.com.au

Published by LX Pty Ltd for itself and the LX Group of companies, including LX Design House, LX Solutions and LX Consulting, LX Innovations.

The Internet of Things holds great potential, and much has been written about the final applications and the possibilities – however one major factor of any device is how it will be powered. It’s all very well to have the latest sensors or interactive devices, if they don’t have a suitable power supply. It’s easy to consider a battery – however there’s many more options that can increase lifespan, reduce maintenance calls and therefore the running costs. Let’s review a few options that can provide a portable power supply for your IoT nodes where mains power or cabled-in power supplies are not available.

First, consider solar photovoltaic – a common choice for sensing, control or measurement devices that are located outdoors where sunlight is available, and that consume a relatively small amount of power. For a small, low-power embedded device that receives a reasonable amount of sun each day, a moderately small solar panel is perfectly capable of supplying sufficient power – on average – to run a small, basic wireless network node consisting of a microcontroller, some sensors and an embedded low-power Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or 802.15.4/ZigBee radio transceiver. However this is assuming that the overall system is designed for a reasonable degree of power efficiency.

However, solar power is intrinsically intermittent and is only available on average for a fraction of the day. To allow the system to have access to the current it needs to function when needed, solar-powered wireless devices almost always need to incorporate a small amount of energy storage in the form of a battery or supercapacitor in conjunction with the solar cell. Furthermore, solar cells or solar panels typically have a relatively low output voltage if a small number of cells are used, and their non-linear V-I curve makes it desirable to employ Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) where practical.

This is necessary to keep the system operating near the maximum power point so that the limited energy available is harvested most efficiently. A solar power supply for a remote wireless system ideally tracks the maximum power point of the cell along the V-I curve and is able to charge a small battery or supercapacitor to fill in the demand when sufficient sunlight is not available.

As an example of a controller IC one may use for the power supply in a small solar powered system, the Linear Technology LTC3105 is a high efficiency step-up DC/DC converter that can operate from input voltages as low as 225 millivolts, with a built-in maximum power point controller (MPPC). As well as solar cells, this device is well suited to other low voltage, high impedance energy harvesting transducers such as thermoelectric generators and fuel cells.

Whilst it is not a true maximum power point tracker, the user-programmable maximum power point setting helps to optimise the efficiency of energy extraction from any energy source, such as a thermoelectric pile or a solar cell, where the voltage across the transducer may vary with changing environmental conditions as well as with the load current. The LTC3105 is capable of supplying 70 mA of output current at 3.3V from an input voltage of 1 volt – this is sufficient power to run a small, well designed basic sensor node consisting of a microcontroller, RF transceiver and a sensor or two.

Another type of power supply is known as energy harvesting, made possible by parts such as the Linear LTC3108, which is designed to accommodate energy harvesting from transducers with extremely low output voltages, as low as 20 millivolts. This makes it particularly well suited for use with thermopiles and thermoelectric generators which can generate a very low potential difference from a realistic temperature difference – a potentially convenient energy source for remote sensing in industrial automation or process monitoring in high-temperature systems where wired communications and power are not convenient.

Energy can also be derived from vibration, and using a part such as the Linear LTC3588 – a piezoelectric energy harvesting power supply controller which connects to a piezoelectric crystal to harvest mechanical energy in the form of vibrations from the ambient environment. This IC incorporates a low-loss, full-wave bridge rectifier and is capable of accommodating the rapidly changing AC voltage output and high source impedance of a piezoelectric crystal subject to mechanical stress and converting this energy into a DC current with relatively high efficiency.

Output voltage selections between 1.8V and 3.6V are available with a continuous output current capability of up to 100 milliamps, compatible with a range of modern power-efficient microcontrollers and RF mesh systems-on-chip.

An electromechanical energy harvester of this sort can be employed to provide a continuous source of a small amount of “free” energy for a small, efficient wireless network mote, particularly in applications such as vehicles and industrial machinery where plenty of vibrational energy is available to be harvested in the environment.

Finally, for some systems it is also practical to use just batteries – for example, lithium-ion, lithium-polymer or nickel-metal hydride batteries – and rely on user intervention to simply
recharge and replace the batteries where needed. The batteries may be left internally, inside the device, with the system being plugged into a power supply via a charging port
– perhaps using a low-power standard power-supplying interface such as USB – when the device requires a recharge, as opposed to the traditional method of removing and swapping the batteries.

In this sort of application, battery management and charging ICs such as the Microchip MCP73833 Li-polymer / Li-ion charge management controller can be of use to control the recharge of a Li-ion cell, as can buck/boost converters such as the Texas Instruments TPS63031. A buck/boost converter like this allows a regulated output voltage to be generated from input voltages both higher and lower than the desired output voltage – an output of 500mA at 3.3V, in this case, from an input voltage anywhere from 2.4 to 5.5 volts. This allows a battery such as a two-cell NiMH, three-cell NiMH, or single-cell Li-ion / Li-polymer to be used efficiently and charged and discharged across the entire usable part of its discharge curve without hitting the minimum input voltage of a LDO or buck regulator.

No matter what your device or where it will be located, finding an appropriate source of power is possible, and easier than you realise. It just takes a little research and a team of dedicated engineers with the experience and knowledge to understand your requirements. Here at the LX Group we have the experience and team to make things happen. With our experience with connected devices, embedded and wireless hardware/software design, and ability to transfer ideas from the whiteboard to the white box – we can partner with you for your success.

We can create or tailor just about anything from a wireless temperature sensor to a complete Internet-enabled system for you – within your required time-frame and your budget. For more information or a confidential discussion about your ideas and how we can help bring them to life – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

LX is an award-winning electronics design company based in Sydney, Australia. LX services include full turnkey design, electronics, hardware, software and firmware design. LX specialises in embedded systems and wireless technologies design. https://lx-group.com.au

Published by LX Pty Ltd for itself and the LX Group of companies, including LX Design House, LX Solutions and LX Consulting, LX Innovations.

The fact that the Internet of Things shows a lot of promise both now and in the future is certain – and your customers, designers and the public will have an almost limitless amount of ideas with regards to new products and their implementation. However when the time comes to select the hardware to drive these innovations, choosing from one of the wireless chipsets can be a minefield – and more so when WiFi is involved.

802.11 wireless LAN is an attractive technology for building networks of wireless sensors and embedded devices due to its widespread use and the availability of nearly ubiquitous existing network infrastructure. Let’s take a look at a few existing chipsets on the market today that can be used to add wireless networking to existing embedded designs with relatively low complexity and cost.

First there’s the RN131 802.11b/g WiFi module by Roving Networks – a complete low-power embedded networking solution. It incorporates a 2.4 GHz radio, processor, TCP/IP stack, real-time clock, crypto accelerator, power management and analogue sensor interfaces into a single, relatively power-efficient module. In the most simple configuration, the hardware requires only 3.3V power, ground, and a pair of serial UART lines for connection to an existing microcontroller, allowing wireless networking to easily be added to an existing embedded system.

The module incorporates a U.FL connector for connection of an external antenna, without any microwave layout or design needed to use the module. This module has a current consumption of 40mA when awake and receiving, 200mA when actively transmitting, and 4µA when asleep, and the device can wake up, connect to a WiFi network, send data, and return to sleep mode in less than 100 milliseconds. This makes it possible to achieve a runtime on the order of years from a pair of standard AA batteries – an ideal solution for power-efficient, battery powered wireless sensor network and Internet-of-Things solutions.

Next there’s the Texas Instruments CC3000 Wireless Network Processor – which allows WiFi to be added to any existing microcontroller system relatively easily, and at a low cost. The CC3000 integrates an entire IPv4 TCP/IP stack, WiFi driver and security supplicant on the chip, making it easily portable to lightweight microcontrollers without the memory burden of implementing a TCP/IP stack in the host microcontroller where relatively low-power, low-cost microcontrollers such as 8-bit AVR or PIC devices are used. And this compact module measures only 16.3mm x 13.5mm.

CC3000 reference designs available from TI demonstrate chip-antenna based designs that are already FCC, IC and CE certified, which can make it easier to develop bespoke solutions that can pass compliance testing for products going into markets where such compliance is needed. The CC3000 requires no external crystal or antenna balun, and in fact requires almost no external components at all except for an SPI interface to the host microcontroller and an antenna – and the device costs less than $10.

The flexible 2.7-4.8V power supply requirement offers great flexibility when combined with battery power or energy harvesting solutions. However, this chip is not a PCB-based module, meaning that a 50 ohm 2.4 GHz antenna must be added externally – so the designer must have a little familiarity with microwave design, such as microstrip transmission line layout and the choice of the right antenna connector. However, this offers the designer complete flexibility to choose the most appropriate antenna type for the size, range and gain requirements of the design – a larger external antenna, a compact chip antenna, or a microstrip antenna fabricated on the PCB with no bill-of-materials cost.

Our final subject is the Redpine Signals’ Connect-IO-n series of modules which allow 802.11 wireless LAN connectivity to be added relatively easily to an embedded microcontroller system. In collaboration with Atmel these modules have been optimised for use with Atmel microcontrollers, particularly the Atmel AVR XMEGA and AVR UC3 series microcontrollers.

Some modules in this family provide 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi connectivity, whilst all modules provide the TCP/IP stack on board and are FCC certified, making RF compliance certification of your entire design easier. These modules are aimed at providing the ability to add 802.11 wireless connectivity to 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers with low integration effort and low memory footprint required in the host microcontroller to support the WiFi device, especially where 802.11n support is desired.

Like the other chipsets we’ve discussed, the modules in this series can be interfaced to the host microcontroller over a UART or SPI interface, and similarly to their competitors, a standby current consumption of only a few microamps potentially allows for years of battery life with no external energy source as long as the radio is only briefly enabled when it is needed.

The RedPine RS9110-N-11-28 module from the Connect-IO-n family in particular is relatively unusual in that it provides dual-band 2.4GHz/5GHz 802.11 a/b/g/n connectivity for your embedded device – supporting connection to any WiFi device or network and potentially avoiding congestion in the 2.4 GHz band as used with 802.11b/g devices.

Whilst 802.11n offers a significant increase in the maximum net data rate from the 54 MBit/s of 802.11b/g to 600 Mbit/s, do you really need 600 Mbit/s of data to your wireless sensor network or embedded appliance? I doubt it. However, one case where you might want an 802.11n radio supporting operation in the 5 GHz spectrum for your wireless sensor network device is if your wireless LAN infrastructure is a pure 5 GHz 802.11n network – whilst this breaks compatibility with legacy devices, it delivers maximum network performance.

As you can see the possibilities for low-power connected devices are plentiful and the hardware is available on the open market. It’s then up to your team to turn great ideas into great products. Furthermore modifying existing products to become connected is also a possibility. However if wireless or Internet-connectivity is new to your team – and you’re in a hurry, have a reduced R&D budget, need guidance or want to outsource the entire project – it can be done with the right technology partner.

Here at the LX Group we have the experience and team to make things happen. With our experience with connected devices, embedded and wireless hardware/software design, and ability to transfer ideas from the whiteboard to the white box – we can partner with you for your success.

We can create or tailor just about anything from a wireless temperature sensor to a complete Internet-enabled system for you – within your required time-frame and your budget. For more information or a confidential discussion about your ideas and how we can help bring them to life – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

LX is an award-winning electronics design company based in Sydney, Australia. LX services include full turnkey design, electronics, hardware, software and firmware design. LX specialises in embedded systems and wireless technologies design. https://lx-group.com.au

Published by LX Pty Ltd for itself and the LX Group of companies, including LX Design House, LX Solutions and LX Consulting, LX Innovations.