All posts tagged: Internet of things

Wind River’s Rocket is a free real-time operating system for 32-bit microcontrollers, specifically designed to help you build intelligent embedded devices quickly and easily.

Rocket is a fast, reliable, secure platform designed to help accelerate your development and deployment of Internet-of-Things applications. It’s easy to use, helping to make it possible for users and developers to take advantage of the opportunities of the IoT even if they are new to the complexities of developing smart, connected, embedded IoT systems.

With a robust set of capabilities, the Rocket platform gives IoT developers a best-in-class, scalable, real-time operating system for 32-bit microcontrollers. It’s ideal for building embedded edge-node devices in Internet-of-Things applications, or sensors, wearable technology, industrial controllers and other resource-constrained yet powerful, connected IoT devices.

The technology behind Rocket is commercially proven, based on Wind River’s industry-leading experience with its other real-time operating systems such as VxWorks, and it is optimised for strong efficiency in resource-constrained systems. Rocket is tuned for deployment on small, memory-constrained and power-constrained devices with as little as 4kB of storage.

The Rocket OS kernel provides an extensive suite of services, including advanced power management and interrupt handling, dynamic memory management, and advanced multithreading with inter-thread data communications and synchronisation.

Rocket makes your development of embedded IoT applications and devices easier, simplifying or eliminating many of the common challenges associated with developing embedded device firmware from scratch.

Various hardware types are supported, such as ARM architecture as well as the Intel architecture used by platforms such as Intel’s Quark system-on-chip family. Many popular 32-bit microcontrollers and development platforms are supported by Rocket, including the Intel Quark X1000 system-on-chip and Intel’s Galileo Gen2 development board based on this SoC.

The Freescale Freedom K64F, a low-cost development platform for Freescale Kinetis K64, K63 and K24 microcontrollers is also supported, and Wind River continues to expand support for different hardware platforms.

However you can also get started without any hardware at all – since Wind River provides a free hardware simulator integrated into the App Cloud IDE. This emulation platform is based on QEMU, a generic open-source machine emulator and virtualiser, which can use your PC to run operating systems and applications designed for a different architecture such as an ARM microcontroller.

This hardware simulation capability means you can prototype systems without the need to purchase any hardware, and you can focus your attention on building applications without availability of hardware becoming a bottleneck.

This helps free development teams from the limitations that can traditionally be dictated by hardware-related project dependencies, making it easier to work with Agile development practices in the overlapping hardware-software development industry.

Wind River provides online community support for the Rocket ecosystem in the form of the Rocket Developer Zone and Developer Forum, where you can learn from other experts how to use Rocket and App Cloud to rapidly build embedded and IoT solutions.

You can access documentation for the Rocket platform online to help you develop your application, and use the forum to ask questions, answer questions, or share your experiences of development using Rocket and App Cloud.

Integrated with Wind River’s Helix App Cloud, Rocket enables developers to easily compile and deploy their code, securely building and delivering applications to local devices or to connected devices already deployed in the field.

App Cloud is a cloud-based software development environment which makes it easy and convenient to get started developing applications on the Rocket OS. You can get started developing your Rocket IoT applications in minutes, simply by creating a free App Cloud account and connecting your target hardware, or trying the hardware simulation provided in App Cloud.

The free App Cloud development environment is a new kind of software development platform, an IDE based in the cloud, that removes many of the traditional complexities of building applications for embedded systems. App Cloud makes it easy to start writing and debugging your Rocket IoT applications in minutes from any Web browser, with access to remote device hardware targets and support for C, C++ and Node.js development as well as runtime debugging.

Furthermore, App Cloud greatly simplifies the process of developing software for embedded devices, allowing you to dynamically build and manage SDKs on a variety of hardware platforms, all from a single, secure, cloud-based environment, and it helps makes the development of software for embedded and IoT applications more accessible, without any deep understanding of the underlying OS or hardware required. You don’t have to muck around compiling or installing toolchains and software to support development and code deployment on your embedded hardware, since the cloud takes care of this for you.

Getting started using App Cloud is easy. You simply sign up for free, and you’re able to create a new project, set up your device SDK and download the device image. Then you can write or import code, build, run and debug that code to get started creating your application, all within the cloud. The free version of App Cloud has no time limitations, and it offers up to 250 Mb of storage for your application projects in the cloud, with only predefined SDKs supported.

There is also a paid, premium version of App Cloud available for enterprise users, with greater storage and the ability to add and customise SDKs as needed. This also offers enterprise-level support for Rocket and App Cloud, leveraging Wind River’s deep expertise in embedded devices and operating systems to support commercial customers and their IoT product development.

Wind River’s Rocket is one of many IoT solutions and is worth consideration. However it is only one of many on the market, all of which creates an almost infinite combination of possibilities – and we can help your organisation find the best possible outcome for your situation.

Here at the LX Group we have end-to-end experience and demonstrated results in the entire process of IoT product development, and we’re ready to help bring your existing or new product ideas to life. Getting started is easy – click here to contact us, telephone 1800 810 124, or just keep in the loop by connecting here.

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 IoT embedded systems and wireless technologies design.

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 LoRa Alliance is an open, non-profit, international alliance of companies and industry stakeholders that share the mission of trying to standardise the deployment of the Low-Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) – that are increasingly being deployed around the world to enable Internet-of-Things technology and machine-to-machine communications, “smart cities”, and industrial applications.

Members of the LoRa alliance collaborate with the aim of driving the global success of their LoRaWAN protocol, by sharing knowledge and experience with a view towards interoperability between operators, using a single open global standard for LPWAN connectivity. The Alliance – which is led by IBM, Actility, Semtech and Microchip, formally released the open LoRaWAN R1.0 standard to the public earlier this year.

LoRaWAN is an LPWAN specification intended for wireless, battery-operated IoT “things” with wide-area network connectivity. Its features are specifically aimed at supporting low-cost, secure, mobile and bidirectional communication for wireless IoT applications, with strong energy efficiency and a minimal need for base station deployments.

A LoRa network is already being rolled out by Bouygues Telecom in France, in partnership with Sagemcom, with aims to cover most of the country by the first half of 2016. Some testing and evaluation is already underway with this country-scale LoRaWAN network, and tests are also being conducted locally in Sydney’s North Shore area by the NNN (National Narrowband Network) Company.

LoRaWAN is optimised for strong energy efficiency and support for large networks of up to millions of devices. At the physical layer, the RF hardware is optimised for high efficiency, with data links being maintained over long distances with very low power consumption.

As with some other LPWAN systems such as Taggle, the class-licensed sub-gigahertz ISM bands are used to provide this long-range connectivity – different frequencies depending on which country the technology is deployed in.

This long range and energy efficiency comes at the cost of data rate, though – this technology was never intended for high-bandwidth applications, but it is a perfect fit for lightweight applications such as telemetry from environmental sensors deployed in remote field applications.

LoRaWAN network architecture is typically laid out in a “star-of-stars” topology with multiple endpoints and multiple gateways. In this arrangement each gateway serves as a transparent bridge that relays messages between endpoint devices and a central back-end server. Gateways are connected to the back-end server via familiar IP networks while endpoint “things” use a single-hop lightweight wireless link back to one or more gateway devices.

Wireless communication between the endpoint devices and the gateways is performed in a spread-spectrum manner, employing different frequency channels and data rates. The selection of the data rate is a trade-off between the required transmission range and the acceptable time for the transmission of a message of given size, with typical LoRaWAN data rates ranging from 0.3 kbps to 50 kbps.

This may seem small, but it is sufficient for a lightweight, embedded sensor application that transmits small packets of sensor readings occasionally to the back-end server.

Because of the spread-spectrum approach, communications with different data rates do not interfere with each other, but instead what you have, basically, is a set of “virtual” channels for each transmission at a different data rate. In this manner, the capacity of each gateway is increased, and more endpoint devices are able to be supported by each gateway. This means that the infrastructure cost of rolling out a large-scale LoRaWAN network is reduced.

To maximise both battery life of the endpoint devices and the overall capacity of the network, the LoRaWAN network server is responsible for an adaptive data rate (ADR) scheme that dynamically manages the data rate and the RF power output for each individual endpoint node in the network.

The LoRaWAN standard defines three classes of endpoint nodes – one that allows a small downlink window after each upload, which means that devices don’t have to communicate a scheduled downlink window in cases where the amount of downlink data needed is minimal; or one that allows a scheduled downlink slot at a defined time; or one that listens for downlink messages at any time.

The latter is more flexible, but because it requires the radio receiver to be kept online listening for new downlink messages all the time, this is the most power-inefficient mode compared to the former scenarios where the radio can be powered down. This is another way that the LoRaWAN protocol helps to maintain strong power efficiency in the endpoint devices.

The LoRa Alliance Certified Product program ensures that any LoRa-branded devices on the market are compliant with the standard, are interoperable, and meet regulatory requirements such as the radio frequencies being used. Only LoRa Alliance authorised test houses may perform testing for this program, and the relevant national conformity test reports are supplied by product designers, together with the LoRa Alliance conformity report, to the Alliance’s certification body before the “LoRa Certified Product” status is allowed.

This strict process gives consumers confidence in the LoRa Alliance and in consumer-facing products that carry their brand, meaning that consumers without a technical background can be confident that their products are interoperable, compliant with relevant radio regulations, and can be used in a predictable way alongside other devices and software tools that are built on top of the same open standards.

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

Not content to be the dominant player in the book retail and growing cloud storage market – Amazon have recently announced the newest addition to their popular suite of cloud computing services – the AWS Internet-of-Things platform. AWS IoT is a managed cloud platform for supporting large numbers of devices in Internet-of-Things applications and securely connecting them to each other, as well as to web applications and other AWS services.

AWS IoT can support a huge number of devices and messages, and it can reliably and securely process and route these messages to AWS endpoints and to other devices or services.

It allows networks of IoT devices to maintain responsive connections to the cloud, and makes it easier to develop cloud applications that interact with IoT “things”. It receives messages from things and then filters, records, transforms, or routes these messages as needed.

The AWS IoT service provides an easy-to-use interface that allows applications running in the cloud and on mobile devices to access data sent from IoT devices, and to send data and commands back to those devices. This makes it easy to integrate your IoT devices and data with existing Amazon Web Services components including Amazon Lambda, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon S3, Amazon Machine Learning, and Amazon DynamoDB. Using these services, you can build IoT applications, manage infrastructure and analyse your data.

Connected devices, such as sensors, actuators, wearables, smart appliances, and other embedded devices connect to AWS IoT securely, using either the HTTPS or MQTT protocols. AWS IoT provides authentication and end-to-end encryption throughout the entire platform, and data is never exchanged between devices and AWS IoT without without proper authentication and identity of each server or component in the network.

Using MQTT, the AWS IoT platform enables devices to communicate with the service through a publish-subscribe model. This means that a device, such as a smart thermostat, can publish its latest sensor readings and status updates to AWS IoT, and the server will push that data out to any subscribers to the thermostat’s MQTT channel. Any other application or device can be subscribed to the thermostat’s MQTT channel, such as a user-facing smartphone app or a home’s network-connected air conditioner.

Amazon makes it easy for developers to get started with AWS IoT by providing several SDKs. These SDKs help IoT developers to easily and quickly connect their hardware devices, applications and mobile devices to the AWS IoT platform. The Amazon IoT Device SDK makes it easy to set up devices that connect, authenticate and exchange messages with AWS IoT using either MQTT or secure HTTP.

With AWS IoT, you can filter, transform and act upon device data on the fly, based on business rules you define. You can update your rules to implement support for new devices or new application features at any time. The AWS IoT Rules Engine enables you to continuously process data from devices connected to AWS IoT, and filter and transform that data in whatever way you need. Using an intuitive SQL-like syntax, the Rules Engine can process data and deliver messages to your own Web services or third-party services, as well as routing messages to other AWS components including Lambda, Kinesis, S3 and DynamoDB.

For example, a rule may be configured as a trigger to start storing time-series data in DynamoDB when a sensor reading exceeds a certain threshold, or it may invoke Amazon’s Simple Notification Service to deliver push notifications to users.

This integration makes it easy to use the entire AWS ecosystem for further processing, analytics and storage of your IoT data. Furthermore, all internal message transport within the AWS ecosystem is not billed – moving messages between these services is free, regardless of the volume of data involved.

Pricing is based on the number of messages published to AWS IoT as well as the number of messages delivered by AWS IoT to devices or applications. (Traffic is measured in blocks of data, or messages, that are 512 bytes long).

The free AWS account tier allows you to get up and running to evaluate AWS IoT and other AWS components for free, with a limit of up to 250,000 messages published or delivered per month for 12 months.

Hardware support for the new AWS IoT platform is provided thanks to several hardware starter kits from partners including Broadcom, Intel, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments. These starter kits include microcontrollers and sensors that are already tested and documented for easy integration with the AWS IoT platform – allowing you to easily get started prototyping and developing IoT applications.

With prebuilt hardware, the AWS IoT device SDK, and a simple getting-started guide included, you can get up and running quickly to see if the AWS IoT service is a good fit for your IoT needs. If you already have appropriate hardware, you can simply download the IoT Device SDK and programming examples from Amazon to get started.

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

As the year progresses it seems that we are increasingly exposed to new Internet-of-Things platforms, and the latest to take our attention is myDevices – a platform-as-a-Service for Internet-of-Things applications.

The myDevices platform is a device-agnostic ecosystem for the connected world of today. With myDevices you can securely and efficiently connect a wide range of devices while capturing and translating critical business data to support and engage customers more effectively.

This service is a powerful combination of a customisable IoT platform and a professional services ecosystem provided by myDevices to support the platform. Their ecosystem is able to provide tailored solutions to suit the specific needs of businesses that manufacture, support or sell connected devices.

And it is a complete platform – by offering an end-to-end IoT solution, myDevices offers easy integration with a range of existing systems and products across multiple industries. It’s also an agile IoT platform that enables you to bring connected products to market securely and with faster time to market.

Businesses want to take advantage of the IoT, but they don’t necessarily know how to do it, and many are at a loss when it comes to getting started. Enterprise users could build their own IoT solution from the ground up, but such an undertaking involves a large commitment of time and cost, taking time and resources away from core operations.

Many enterprises have questions about how and when to use IoT solutions, where these solutions fit into business operations, and how they can not only collect data but also act on it and generate business value. For many businesses, an IoT technology platform itself isn’t quite enough to deliver a valuable result.

This is the market that myDevices intends to serve with their Internet-of-Things Platform as a Service. The myDevices platform aims to make it easy for businesses to come on board, and to succeed, with the Internet of Things.

Manufacturers of connected products require a solution that not only enables communication from manufacturers to devices but also enables the business to manage relationships with customers and their connected devices. This allows businesses that manufacture, sell and support connected devices and services to efficiently connect products, manage data, and interact with their customers.

The myDevices platform features a customer-facing front-end as well as including data collection, analytics and engagement tools at the back-end. These back-end tools allow businesses to evolve their IoT products and services at the same time they’re improving customer service, improving marketing directly to their customers, and collecting useful and actionable data on their products.

One of the key differentiating features of the myDevices ecosystem is the professional services that are provided in tandem with the IoT technology platform. Before a solution is presented, specific business challenges are identified for each customer.

A secure IoT solution is then created by myDevices, including software, UI design, hardware, tools and analytics, user-facing components and whatever else may be applicable to best meet the customers’ requirements. It is built to scale and evolve as the business grows. This is an IoT solution tailored to suit specific business needs, rather than a “one size fits all” solution.

Customised solutions from myDevices allow companies that manufacture, sell and support connected devices to efficiently connect products, manage data, and interact with their customers. The myDevices platform is the first of its kind to offer both a back-end connected device solution for enterprise users and a connected front-end solution to suit the needs of end users.

This platform is device-agnostic, unlike some other IoT solutions on the market at present, and it can be connected with essentially anything – for example sensors, connected appliances, wearable devices, smartphones, PCs and consumer electronics. You can also use development tools and platforms such as the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi, and easily integrate these with the myDevices platform.

The front-end component is designed to interface with end users, while the back end captures and translates business data. The myDevices platform then uses this data to generate visualisation and real-time insights. The myDevices platform provides a range of customer and enterprise-focused interfaces, including marketing and business intelligence tools for enterprise users, an analytics suite linked to a marketing engine, and a strong emphasis on data visualisation.

myDevices has been designed with security in mind at all layers of the architecture, using secure protocols for all data communications, keeping traffic encrypted as it goes through the network. This includes the use of HTTPS for all network communications.

Through a combination of front-end and back-end features that run on any device, myDevices enables companies to analyse the usage of their connected devices and the behaviour of their consumers so they can then tailor their marketing and improve customer lifecycle management.

At this point we feel that myDevices could be one of many solutions to your Internet-of-Things needs. However this is only one of many options for you to consider.

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

Yaler is a simple, open and scalable relay service that enables secure outside access to Internet-connected embedded systems and IoT devices that are behind a firewall or router.

Firewalls and Network Address Translators (NATs) can cause connectivity issues when deploying Internet-connected embedded systems and IoT products in the real world, especially in corporate environments.

For example, say you want to access something like an Internet-connected temperature sensor connected to your private LAN from anywhere in the outside world.

Traditionally, this would require opening and forwarding ports at the router, which means extra hassle as well as extra security vulnerabilities, and this needs to be repeated for each additional IoT device you add to the network.

Yaler aims to solve this problem in a simple and easy-to-use manner while also maintaining security.

One common solution is to use port forwarding and to assign an external IP address for each device at the router level. However, this requires the end users of these devices to know how to configure port forwarding and to have administrative access to the network infrastructure, which isn’t always possible.

Yaler aims to solve this problem, making it easy to set up secure Web and SSH access to embedded devices and IoT systems from outside the local network, regardless of whether they’re behind a firewall, a NAT or a mobile network router, and without requiring configuration of the network infrastructure. Yaler provides this in the form of an easy-to-use cloud-based connectivity service.

Furthermore, Yaler provides an infrastructure and service that allows your IoT devices to be accessed from the outside Internet with a simple public URL. This is accomplished by using a reverse HTTP protocol, where a service on the Internet acts as a public relay for these devices on the private network behind firewalls or NATs.

You can use almost any network-connected hardware that provides a TCP socket, with guides and tutorials provided by Yaler that make it easy to get started with popular platforms including the Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Intel Edison and BeagleBone. A single Yaler relay server instance can host many devices, such as Arduinos, SheevaPlug style devices, Android phones, or any other connected device with TCP socket connectivity.

Furthermore, remote access to local gateways enables the configuration and control of other devices on the network, even if these are embedded IoT devices that use alternative network stacks like Bluetooth Low Energy or 802.15.4/6LoWPAN. If they can be reached via their gateway from the TCP/IP network infrastructure, then Yaler can be configured to talk to these devices.

Libraries and examples are available for Yaler using the Arduino Ethernet shield, the Arduino Yún, Arduino with the Texas Instruments CC3000, and many other popular low-cost IoT development platforms. Yaler also makes it easy to implement a custom binding for any other device, based on the software examples they provide using C, C#, Java or Python.

The process to get started is simple – after the Yaler library, or YalerTunnel command-line tool, has been installed on the device – end users can just plug in their device and access it from outside the local network via the Yaler relay at a known, stable URL.

Once your devices are accessible and addressable from the Web using the Yaler relay, Yaler makes it fairly easy and straightforward to set up integration with other existing Web applications or third-party services that you use.

Yaler enables secure tunnelling of most TCP-based legacy and proprietary protocols, so for example you can use VNC to monitor a machine, or collect data stored in a local database, without compromising on security. The Yaler service supports SSL/TLS encryption, where an embedded device publishes over a secure connection to the Yaler relay, and a client can then access the data over HTTPS.

Remote access is simplified thanks to the YalerTunnel daemon, enabling remote SSH access to embedded Linux devices via the Yaler relay without the need for port forwarding. This enables you to securely access local embedded computers for administration, monitoring and remote operation.

You can conveniently debug, monitor, reboot or update a device such as a Raspberry Pi, Arduino Yún or any other Linux platform remotely, using standard tools at the command line.

Yaler is based around open-source technology, and it is free to use with a single HTTP relay domain associated with your Yaler account. All Yaler libraries and daemons are freely provided under the Simplified BSD open source license and dual-licensing is possible, to help integrate Yaler into your commercial needs.

This suits hobbyist users, and also makes it easy for enterprise users to get started evaluating the Yaler platform to see how it fits into their IoT needs. You can also move up to paid plans for enterprise users with demanding needs, providing features like a larger number of different domains, HTTPS support, premium support and high amounts of data transfer.

With tools such as Yaler – or many others from around the world – getting your Internet-of-Things product ideas to reality is much simpler than you can imagine. Here at the LX Group we have end-to-end experience and demonstrated results in the entire process, and we’re ready to help bring your existing or new product ideas to life. Getting started is easy – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

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 new JN5169 series of wireless microcontrollers from NXP is a range of low-power, high-performance RF microcontroller devices aimed at home automation and remote control, smart energy management, smart lighting and similar Internet-of-Things applications, particularly in consumer products as well as industrial environments.

These system-on-chip devices incorporate an enhanced 32-bit RISC processor and a comprehensive set of analog and digital peripherals along with an IEEE 802.15.4-compliant 2.4 GHz radio transceiver supporting the JenNet-IP, RF4CE and ZigBee Pro wireless networking standards. The 802.15.4/ZigBee network stack includes support for the ZigBee Light Link, ZigBee Smart Energy and ZigBee Home Automation profiles.

The JN5169 platform is Thread and ZigBee 3.0 ready, and it features a new toolchain for software development that offers extensive debugging capabilities while also allowing a reduction of up to 15% in compiled code size.

This family of devices have the ability to connect with up to 250 other nodes in a wireless mesh network, allowing them to be used in a variety of different mesh network and Internet-of-Things applications, from home automation and consumer electronics through to large-scale industrial applications.

There’s three chips in the new family, with different memory configurations to suit a range of applications – such as up to 512 kB of embedded Flash memory, up to 32 kB of RAM and 4 kB of on-board EEPROM. With up to 512 kB of flash on board, there is enough memory available to enable wireless over-the-air firmware updates.

This makes it easy to keep devices up-to-date with new features and security updates without the cost of additional external flash and without the need to replace or remove hardware devices in the field as new software updates are released.

The JN5169 is equipped with hardware peripherals to support a wide range of applications, including an I2C interface, an SPI port which can operate as either master or slave, up to 8 ADC channels with a built-in battery voltage monitor, a temperature sensor and support for either a 100-switch keyboard matrix or a 20-key capacitive touch pad.

The device also incorporates up to 20 digital I/O pins, a 128-bit AES security processor and integrated support for an infrared remote control transmitter, allowing remote control of devices such as air conditioners that use an infrared remote control.

Power use is incredibly low – the JN5169 series offers a very low receive current of just 14 milliamps, or as low as 0.6 micro amps in sleep mode – helping to keep standby power consumption low in household products such as smart lighting and to enable extended operation from small batteries in portable, battery-powered applications.

Furthermore, with a programmable clock speed capability – the JN5169 series can minimise power consumption in power-sensitive, battery-powered applications. Despite these strong energy efficiency features, an on-chip +10dBm power amplifier provides the JN5169 series with a transmission range that is double that of NXP’s existing RF home automation solutions, while drawing just 20 milliamps of current in transmit mode.

This is 40% lower than similar products currently on the market, according to NXP. Antenna diversity is also supported, maximising wireless performance and range while minimising energy use. NXP is also offering a series of new reference designs for network-connected smart lighting solutions based around the JN5169, including white, tuneable white and RGBW colour-programmable Internet-of-Things lighting solutions.

These smart lighting reference designs are complemented by a range of other reference designs from NXP such as wireless switches, wall panel controls, smart plugs, IoT sensors and gateways, along with cloud services for controlling them that will be offered by NXP’s partners, making up a complete Internet-of-Things ecosystem.

Along with the use of the highly integrated JN5819 system-on-chip, these reference designs incorporate innovations such as the use of oscillator crystals rated for 85 degrees C rather than more expensive crystals specified for operation up to 125 degrees C.

Innovative hardware and software techniques incorporated in the JN5819 family allow the clock to be stable in high-temperature environments where these cheaper crystals are used. Design innovations such as these mean that NXP’s JN5169-based smart lighting reference designs have a reduction in total hardware cost of up to 25% compared to similar products on the market.

The JN5169 series also offers innovative solutions to the problem of setting up and commissioning IoT products in a user-friendly and secure way. These devices support near-field communications for device commissioning, making it easy and intuitive to provision new devices and set them up on the network with just a tap on an NFC-enabled smartphone or other device.

Using NFC connectivity for device commissioning is convenient and it also offers security benefits, allowing devices to be easily yet securely paired without broadcasting network details over the air.

This new JN5169 chipset from NXP will offer a new dimension in wireless home automation, and here at the LX Group we’re ready to bring your products to life. Getting started is easy – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

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 almost-exponential rise of Internet-of-Things platforms has led many observers and marketplace participants to consider if there are too many disparate or incompatible systems being released, and thus are starting to consider an open-source IoT platform as an option to allow for third-parties to integrate their own products into these new platforms.

Therefore the launch of IoTivity – a new open-source software framework and standards project is of great interest to the IoT community. IoTivity aims to enable seamless device-to-device interoperability to address the needs of the growing Internet of Things industry.

This means promoting and certifying open standards among IoT device manufacturers, allowing billions of IoT consumer products from a wide variety of vendors to be compatible and interoperable with each other.

After launching last year with promises of tackling the problem of device-to-device discovery and communication between consumer IoT products from different vendors, the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) has recently launched the initial version of their IoTivity standard and its open-source reference implementation. IoTivity is sponsored by the OIC and hosted by the Linux Foundation.

The project will be governed by an independent steering group that liaises with the OIC, whose project charter is to develop and maintain an open-source implementation that meets OIC’s specifications and passes their certification process – which everyone can work off as an open-source reference platform.

IoTivity aims to be a way for connected IoT products to share information on what they are and what they can do, enabling interoperability of devices from different manufacturers. For example, a smart IoT lamp that supports IoTivity may be able to tell an IoTivity-enabled TV that it is a lamp and it can turn on and off, and dim or change colours, in response to messages over the network.

The TV might therefore be able to use this information to automatically dim the lights when it is turned on. Devices can use this information to provide notifications or communicate information via “output” devices, to control other devices, or to use information collected from sensors and “input” devices.

IoTivity is intended to play a middleware role, somewhere in between the network or radio hardware in a device and the higher-level user applications that control a device. It’s designed to work smoothly and interconnect IoT products and devices in a way that “just works” for consumers – and without adding a lot of extra burden to software development for device manufacturers.

Consisting of both a standard that will be implemented in the firmware and software of IoT devices, and a testing and certification process that allows consumers to choose devices with confidence that their IoT products from different vendors can work together.

In the next few months the OIC aims to finalise and release a version 1.0 standard specification, and at the same time as this official release of the specification the IoTivity project will release a full open-source codebase which is a reference implementation of that specification (rather than the preview release previously available).

The founders of the OIC believe that an industry-standard specification, a reference software implementation, and a commitment to open-source are necessary to drive true interoperability across the growing IoT industry.

With this in mind, the IoTivity software framework is open-source under the Apache 2.0 license. The founders also believe that true innovation can happen most effectively when multiple parties come together to develop the source code in an open way, under an open-source governance process, which is why the Linux Foundation is involved.

Interested developers can get started learning about IoTivity today, by downloading and exploring the current IoTivity preview release. IoTivity is open to everyone, and OIC membership is not a requirement to participate in this open-source project. However, interested companies and developers working with IoTivity and interoperable IoT solutions are encouraged by the OIC to consider if membership in the consortium is right for them.

The IoTivity framework consists of four key components – including device and resource discovery, where IoTivity supports multiple discovery mechanisms for devices and resources both in proximity and remotely, and data transmission – where IoTivity supports interoperable information exchange and control between devices based on a messaging and streaming model.

IoTivity’s data management component supports the collection, storage and analytics of data from various resources across the IoT network, and IoTivity device management aims to provide a one-stop-shop that supports the configuration, provisioning and diagnostics of IoT devices on the network.

This allows a vast number of sensors and “things” to be easily configured, set up on the network and connected to each other, in a way that is easy for all users including home consumers.

The IoTivity framework APIs expose the framework to developers, and are available in several languages and for multiple operating systems. These APIs are based on a resource-based, RESTful architecture model, and API references are available for each release along with additional information on the IoTivity website and Wiki.

IoTivity aims to operate across all operating systems and network protocols, eventually, with current APIs, examples and support documentation available for Ubuntu Linux, the Arduino platform and the Linux-based Tizen operating system for consumer appliances.

Over the next few months, the IoTivity will offer great promise for an open-source Internet-of-Things – and success will be predicated on the amount of industry take-up. However IoTivity is only one of many platforms that you can harness for IoT product success.

To meet your IoT goals, the LX Group team can help you take your Internet-of-Things idea from the whiteboard to the white box. Getting started is easy – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

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

Not only here in Australia but in parts of the USA and other countries, cellular providers are closing down their 2G GSM network to reallocate spectrum to their faster UMTS 3G and LTE wireless networks.

This shutdown will have a great effect on existing cellular M2M applications as a large percentage were designed around inexpensive GPRS modules – or before UMTs was available. Soon all these devices will be rendered inoperable and will need to be redesigned or replaced with radio hardware that can access the newer cellular networks.

There are many chipsets and modules to choose from, and one new example is the Colibri LTE Platform from Sequans Communications – a chipset solution for mobile LTE (commonly marketed as 4G LTE) cellular connectivity, specifically aimed at Internet-of-Things and M2M applications.

Colibri LTE is a part of the Sequans Streamlite LTE family of chipset products for 4G connectivity in IoT applications, designed for use in devices such as embedded Internet-connected sensors requiring wireless cellular connectivity, tablets, mobile routers or other portable devices.

Their LTE chipset is designed to support Category 4 LTE user equipment, providing a downlink rate up to 150 Mbps and an uplink rate up to 50 Mbps, providing plenty of bandwidth for current and future applications.

The Colibri platform comprises dedicated ICs for the RF platform and the baseband processor, an integrated IoT applications processor in the baseband IC that runs Sequans’ carrier-proven LTE protocol stack, an IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) client, and a comprehensive software package for over-the-air device management and packet routing.

Colibri have designed their products with optimisations for IoT and M2M applications in mind – providing low power consumption and high performance at a relatively low cost. This enables an affordable connectivity for mass-market IoT and M2M products.

Furthermore, the high-level integration and highly efficient architecture provide a strong balance of features and performance while achieving very low price points for cost-sensitive M2M and IoT applications.

Colibri’s software suite is based on more than a decade of proven field experience. It is running in major 4G deployments around the world and is one of the most mature solutions in the global 4G ecosystem. It includes the entire LTE Release 10 software stack along with the drivers and host applications required for a complete 4G system.

There is much more than just data – as Colibri supports VoLTE (Voice over LTE) and Wi-Fi SoftAP as well as Active Interference Rejection (AIR) technology – which is an innovative and powerful interference mitigation algorithm implemented on all Sequans LTE platforms.

AIR has been tested and proven at both the system and link levels and has been shown to significantly improve user experience and increase network capacity, especially near the cell edge where signal is weak.

For designers of embedded devices in IoT and M2M applications, the Colibri EZ-Link LTE hardware modules offer complete, single-mode LTE solutions based on the Colibri chipset and platform, simplifying integration and shortening the time to market for the development of hardware devices and products with cellular connectivity.

These modules are ideal for adding LTE connectivity to embedded devices and the ever-expanding array of new types of IoT products now going wireless for the first time. EZLink LTE modules come pre-tested, pre-integrated and pre-certified for easy drop-in integration into your design, with IoT-friendly interfaces, LP-DDR SDRAM, embedded boot Flash and power management included.

These compact hardware modules, available in either the M.2 PC card form factor or an ultra-small surface-mountable LGA form factor, are based on the Colibri LTE chipset platform and include all the other elements necessary for a complete LTE modem system – allowing for a simplified, cost-effective, all-in-one solution for adding LTE connectivity to numerous types of IoT, M2M, consumer electronics and mobile computing devices.

These modules incorporate the Colibri LTE platform along with all the other elements required for a complete LTE modem system, including an LTE-optimised transceiver, a complete dual-band RF front-end for LTE bands 4 and 13, and key peripheral interfaces, all in a single compact package.

Voice and data are supported – including Voice over LTE, Wi-Fi SoftAP, and all major operating systems such as Windows, Android, ChromeOS, Linux and MacOS. Interfacing with hardware is easy thanks to support for a wide variety of hardware interfaces – including USB 2.0, HSIC, SDIO, SPI and high-speed UART.

According to Sequans, the availability of these powerful and compact yet low-cost chipset solutions for 4G LTE, already certified for use with Verizon Wireless in the United States, the world’s leading LTE network, will accelerate adoption of single-mode LTE across the whole spectrum of IoT and M2M applications.

Game-changing efficiencies built into the Colibri platform mean that the costs of embedded LTE modules are now at or below 3G costs for the first time, making the move from 3G to the high bandwidth of 4G/LTE connectivity very attractive in a range of embedded mobile, M2M and IoT applications where the appropriate Telco network infrastructure exists.

Colibri is just one of many UMTS and LTE wireless options available for your new or existing Internet of Things application, and here at the LX Group our team can help you move past the 2G shutdown and enable longevity for your products. Getting started is easy – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

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 exponential growth of the Internet-of-Things marketplace is encouraged by new platforms to host prospective products and data – and new player to the scene is Cloudplugs – an end-to-end platform that provides cloud computing services for Internet-of-Things applications – with features including a trigger management engine, geolocation engine, database and storage engine and a billing engine.

Their new SmartPlug Apps cloud-based IDE allows the development of CloudPlugs IoT applications from the cloud, along with cloud-based automation that enables the remote deployment, configuration, update and management of devices.

IoT applications can be developed in JavaScript using the SmartPlug cloud based IDE, or with your favourite JavaScript development tool, anywhere, any time, on any browser. Whether you are a home user, an appliance manufacturer or a service provider, the CloudPlugs cloud service allows you to develop, deploy and manage as many as thousands of Internet-connected devices quickly without the need to develop and manage your own IT infrastructure to support them.

CloudPlugs offers the SmartPlug agent as the backbone of their IoT platform, which they claim is the most powerful and secure agent available for IoT devices. It is a secure, robust and lightweight yet powerful software agent with full lifecycle management capabilities for IoT gateways and other devices – enabling secure and efficient communications with the CloudPlugs IoT platform through their PlugNet protocol.

The platform supports local communications through multiple interfaces and protocols simultaneously, enabling devices with different physical interfaces and protocols to communicate. Devices and gateways powered by SmartPlug can easily exchange data with and control other devices, and scripts can be developed in the cloud and deployed to thousands of SmartPlugs with one click.

CloudPlugs offers maximum flexibility by delivering its end-to-end IoT connectivity platform as a subscription service as well as for in-house deployments. There is no limit on the number of prototype virtual devices that you can create and test in CloudPlugs, even with a free account.

The free account allows you to get started with free evaluation or hobbyist use of CloudPlugs, with up to 10 physical devices, up to 100Mb of storage and 100Mb of bandwidth per month. This is designed to allow individuals or small businesses to use the CloudPlugs platform to manage IoT devices as well as providing a free evaluation platform for larger users.

Moving up to a paid business subscription allows you to use as many devices as you want, with as much storage and bandwidth as your devices need, and a pay-as-you-use elastic pricing model which scales as your IoT business grows – where you’re only paying for the bandwidth and resources you’re actually using.

You can also choose a white-label CloudPlugs deployment in order to deliver IoT services, devices and management dashboards to customers under your own brand, along with in-house deployment on your own servers if desired for security or compliance reasons.

CloudPlugs uses a flexible and powerful MQTT-based publish-and-subscribe architecture, where things and applications subscribe to channels to publish their information and to read or issue control commands. Channels are data structures that allow things and applications to publish and to read data. Things or applications publish data into channels, or subscribe to channels to read data.

Channels can be created manually through the platform, or created dynamically. This dynamic management of channels means that they will automatically disappear if all the data published to that channel is deleted and will be created on-the-fly as data gets published to a newly specified channel by devices, removing the need for manual and inflexible configuration of channels.

Your devices and applications communicate with each other by subscribing to the same channels through MQTT, REST, WebSockets or the PlugNet protocol. Devices or “things” that use MQTT can connect and exchange data with other things that use the MQTT or WebSockets protocols, and if you’ve already developed existing products or devices that communicate using MQTT then it’s easy to get started connecting them to the CloudPlugs platform by modifying the MQTT logic to communicate to the CloudPlugs backend service.

To get started connecting your IoT things to the CloudPlugs platform, you need a CloudPlugs account – along with an appropriate hardware platform such as an Android device, an Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Libelium Waspmote or many others. Next you’ll need a software library that will be integrated with your controller firmware, and these are supplied for free download from CloudPlugs to cover a range of supported devices.

A wide range of different hardware and software platforms can easily and quickly be connected to the CloudPlugs platform using a lightweight REST API, which allows for almost any contemporary or future hardware platform to be integrated into the system.

CloudPlugs libraries are designed to give developers maximum flexibility and choice for the development and integration of applications to monitor and manage their IoT devices, and libraries are available that enable the development of software for integration with CloudPlugs using a range of different programming languages and environments – including Node.js, JavaScript, C, PHP, Android, Arduino and Objective-C.

These supported platforms cover a wide range of applications, including networking, development on embedded platforms such as the Arduino, Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone, and the Objective-C development of iOS apps.

Getting started with Cloudplugs can be easily achieved – for any purpose from initial experimenting with the Internet-of-Things to a full system. Here at the LX Group we’re ready to partner with you to meet your Internet-of-Things product goals, and can work with your ideas and more to bring them to reality. Getting started is easy – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

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 Experiential Living Lab for the Internet of Things (ELLIOT) project is a European research project that aims to develop an experiential platform for Internet of Things research, where users and the public are directly involved in co-creating, exploring and experimenting with new ideas, technologies, potential market opportunities and concepts related to IoT applications and services – particularly where UX and user interaction design is concerned.

The ELLIOT program is designed to support research into the potential impact of the IoT and other emerging information technologies in the context of what the ELLIOT consortium calls the “Open User Centred Innovation” paradigm and the “Living Lab” approach.

Established by a consortium of European universities, institutions and private industries – ELLIOT is a three-year research program built around four main aims – firstly, to study and develop a set of “KSB” (Knowledge, Social and Business) Experience Models integrating social, technical, economic, legal and ethical dimensions related to the use of emerging IoT technologies and services into a single, holistic meta model.

Secondly, the project aims to design and develop an “Experiential Platform” where these KSB Experience Models will be implemented to allow people to explore and experience socially-enabled IoT technology and other information technology including the validation of this technology and evaluation of its impact. This experiential platform will operate as a knowledge and experience-gathering testbed environment in the context of the IoT.

Thirdly, the project aims to explore the potential of collaborative UI design techniques and tools such as serious gaming, participative requirements engineering and requirements validation in the context of the IoT.

Finally, one of the core objectives of the ELLIOT research program is to experiment within a series of “Living Labs”, each composed of a physical space, a information space architecture and a social community of users of that space. The project is expected to facilitate increased adoption of IoT technologies in Europe and to enhance the potential of collaborative industry, academic and public-sector innovation for the discovery of novel IoT applications, services and business opportunities which bridge the gap between these emerging technologies, industry stakeholders and the public.

The ELLIOT project’s “experiential” approach has been explored and its technology platform experimented with in different use-cases belonging to six different sectors, namely Wellbeing, Logistics, Environment, Retail, Remote Medical Assistance, and Energy-Efficient Offices, in order to validate the capacity for users and the public to co-create innovative and useful IoT-based services in these domains.

Starting from these use-cases, it is expected that the ELLIOT project will contribute to a new, user-centric approach to novel product and service development with IoT technologies, while also being applicable to IT products and services more generally, through the use of this “Experiential Platform” and the progressive extension of the use of this platform into other use-cases and industrial sectors.

The engagement of users in the research and innovation process behind new products and services is attracting more attention in technology design today, across many industrial sectors. This is especially true in business domains where users and citizens have a crucial role in the adoption of new services that they collaboratively create on top of new information and communication technologies.

This is particularly relevant when it comes to the Internet of Things, finding use-cases for IoT technologies, along with researching the markets for new IoT products and services. Examples of business domains that ELLIOT has identified as important, where the project aims to contribute valuable research, include “eHealth”, “eInclusion”, “eManufacturing”, “eParticipation” and ICT for Environment as well as ICT for Energy.

To explore, to experiment with, and validate the experiential research and innovation approach that ELLIOT applies, several scenarios have been conducted in different “Living Labs”, each implementing different kinds of IoT experiences. These Living Labs are composed of a physical space such as a building, a civil architecture, a laboratory, an urban or rural zone, equipped with advanced ICT infrastructure for communication and collaboration such as wired networks, wireless terrestrial networks or wireless satellite networks.

The need for this user-participative approach is increasingly being recognised, and the “Living Lab” model is becoming more popular. A “Living Lab” is an open innovation environment in a real-life setting in which experiential research and innovation is supported by the availability of a technology platform for designing innovative applications and services.

The European Network of Living Labs comprises 274 diverse and mature “Living Labs” covering a wide range of application domains. Most of them are already operational in different domains spanning from eHealth to Energy Optimisation and Efficiency, from Intelligent Mobility to Inclusion of the elderly and disadvantaged people and Rural Development.

The project also aims to identify, experiment with and explore IoT-oriented user co-creation tools and techniques. Co-creation, as it’s defined by ELLIOT, in an IoT-oriented environment is akin to the co-creation processes of software development which is very common, for example, in the open-source software development community.

Transferring the experience of the open-source software movement into an IoT-oriented “user co-creation” process through practices such as gamification and “serious gaming” is another approach that ELLIOT is investigating with the potential to enhance IoT-relevant collaborative development capabilities and to accelerate take-up and adoption of these practices.

We look forward to the results and news from the ELLIOT program, however here at the LX Group we’re always working on current and new IoT-based products for a wide range of clients. If your organisation is considering new product design, or reviewing an existing version – your next step is to contact the team at the LX Group where we not only share your passion for embedded hardware and the Internet-of-Things – our team of solutions architects, engineers and specialists is ready to partner with you for your success in the IoT marketplace. Getting started is easy – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

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