All posts tagged: Internet of things

Reducing the power and physical size of chipsets required for new and existing Internet-of-Things devices is a common goal shared by our customers and engineers – and a new SoC from Redpine Signals fits the bill.

Their RS9113 “M2MCombo” chipset is a system-on-chip which offers the convergence of low-power dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi networking together with dual-mode Bluetooth 4.0 and ZigBee connectivity all in a single chip – offering a powerful and nearly universal wireless communications platform for IoT and machine-to-machine applications.

This is particularly valuable for M2M and Internet-of-Things applications where a compact and cost-effective solution with minimum bill-of-materials cost is desired while also implementing a combination of Bluetooth, ZigBee and Wi-Fi communications – for example in network gateways in home automation or smart energy applications that are aggregating data from a number of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and ZigBee devices around the home.

The Redpine “M2MCombo” platform leverages and improves upon the proven low-power innovations in Redpine’s Lite-Fi products, providing a powerful three-in-one Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and ZigBee convergence solution for integration into mobile and wireless devices.

With the rapid proliferation of different networking protocols in the fast-growing Internet-of-Things and M2M industry, manufacturers of wireless devices need cost-effective wireless connectivity solutions to remain competitive in the market, and bringing together several different wireless communication protocols in a single-chip solution helps to make that possible.

Furthermore the M2MCombo solution from Redpine not only provides a compact and cost-effective solution where these multiple communications protocols are required, but also speeds up the product development lifecycle by taking care of the engineering challenges around the coexistence of multiple different RF platforms in the same 2.4 GHz band.

The difficulty of making three separate radios play nicely close to each other is removed, while reducing size, power consumption and cost at the same time, enabling you to get on with product development without much specialist RF engineering.

The RS9113 M2MCombo chipset integrates a four-threaded processor along with RAM and ROM in a fully self-contained solution, with the capacity to run its TCP/IP stack and the Wi-Fi security supplicant locally on the radio chipset.

This means that the host microcontroller and its resources are not carrying the load of hosting the network stack or any other components, allowing a cheaper and lower-power host microcontroller to be chosen in power-sensitive and cost-sensitive IoT applications.

As a convergence device, the RS9113 supports 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 Enhanced Data Rate, Bluetooth 3.0, Bluetooth 4.0 and ZigBee, and maintains wireless connections on some or all of these interfaces simultaneously – making it ideal for multiple-protocol gateway or network bridge applications.

The SoC provides virtually simultaneous multiple-protocol connectivity across these different radios; a valuable feature for a broadly compatible IoT networking platform, which can be deployed quickly in legacy network environments as well as new network environments.

For example – a network gateway appliance implemented with the RS9113 could communicate with a fitness or medical sensor device that uses single-mode Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, a smartphone with Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity, and a home automation device with ZigBee connectivity – all at the same time, and without the need for multiple different radio modules from different vendors in the gateway unit, all trying to coexist on the same RF spectrum, adding cost, adding size, power consumption and RF coexistence challenges.

And with its highly efficient Power Management Unit, integrated analogue peripherals and support for a variety of digital peripherals – the RS9113 enables very cost-effective solutions for embedded wireless, M2M and Internet-of-Things applications using a combination of Wi-Fi, ZigBee or Bluetooth.

An IoT-enabled product can be designed around the chipset, with relatively few external components needed – generally few or no analog peripherals, power management peripherals, or other RF and wireless connectivity chipsets or modules are required, depending on your exact application.

Development of RS9113 based IoT solutions is made easier by the accompanying OneBox embedded software framework from Redpine. OneBox supports WiFi station or AP, Wi-Fi Direct, ZigBee and dual-mode Bluetooth 4.0 communications – all based around a common API, on a range of host platforms and different embedded operating system options.

The software package includes complete reference firmware builds, reference drivers, application profiles and a configuration GUI that can be used on Linux, Windows or Android operating systems.

Working with external devices to the RS9113 chipset is easy thanks to support for a number of different hardware host interfaces – including USB 2.0, SDIO, SPI and UART. This offers a great deal of flexibility and compatibility to designers and system integrators.

Redpine offers SDIO, SPI, UART, and USB2.0 reference designs along with software for factory-level testing and diagnostics for your product. Along with a development environment and a complete reference framework for creating connected applications using the RS9113, Redpine also offers an easy-to-use USB-interfaced hardware development kit for the chipset.

Here at the LX Group we’re really excited about the possibilities of working with Redpine’s RS9113 “M2MCombo” chipset and the resulting products that are possible. Not only do we 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.

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.

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 potential for the Internet of Things to improve our daily lives is almost infinite, and the technology can be applied in areas that you may have never even considered.

Let’s consider the role that Internet-of-Things technologies can play in the food industry, increasing the safety of food for consumers as well as improving efficiency and reducing overheads in the industry.

Furthermore, with the potential to address food safety challenges across the whole supply chain – wireless sensor networks, cloud computing and other IoT technologies offer potential benefits in operational efficiency and logistics across the entire food industry.

From the primary producer’s field (where environmental parameters such as soil temperature may be monitored and data interpreted over time at a central server, for example, with this data being used to improve crop yield) to stock location, tracking and monitoring of the temperatures and the age of stock right through the transport and warehousing chain – the Internet of Things can be harnessed all the way from the farm to the dinner plate.

One of the most important factors ensuring food safety is adequate refrigeration and temperature control during the transport and storage of perishable food. If temperatures aren’t controlled at an optimal level, this greatly increases the chances of bacterial growth, which can be dangerous for consumers as well as contributing to spoilage and waste of stock.

Taking advantage of wireless sensors and Internet-of-Things technologies, food and transport companies can now place networks of data logging devices in warehouses and refrigerated trucks across the supply chain, allowing environmental properties such as humidity and temperature to be continuously monitored and logged.

This data logging can provide awareness immediately if there are any abnormalities such as refrigeration failures along the way which may compromise the quality or safety of the stock. If such a fault is detected action can immediately be taken to correct it, identifying the specific location where repair work is needed in the field or identifying the stock that is affected, allowing stock to be moved to an appropriate environment.

The Internet of Things also offers an unprecedented level of collaboration between multiple different companies and business units in the food industry, handling food from the farm, through processing, manufacturing and transport, until it reaches the consumer.

Networks of connected sensors can be deployed in food factories, confirming that the product has been manufactured and stored under safe environmental conditions right up to the point where it is ready to be transported.

Transport contractors can then ensure that the right temperature and environment is maintained for the food during transit, and retailers or restaurants can use sensor network intelligence to identify and track stock that is on its way – accurately predicting when it is going to arrive at its destination.

This ensures more timely deliveries and allows deliveries to be scheduled at the most efficient times when they’re needed. Once the stock has arrived at its destination, supermarkets, warehouses or restaurants can use the data from these sensors to track the stock they have in storage, the age of the food in stock and the stock level, and environmental properties such as storage temperature.

These different data sources working together all the way through the supply chain help to get the food delivered in a way that is fast and efficient whilst also helping to maintain the highest standards of product quality and food safety.

Improving product quality in the food industry with the Internet of Things goes beyond preventing bacterial growth in improperly stored food, since optimising the storage environment can greatly improve the quality and shelf life of food.

For example, blackberries can lose a full day of their shelf life for every hour they are exposed to room temperature conditions without refrigerated storage – and every day of shelf life lost corresponds to a reduction in the amount of that stock that can be sold without wastage. Through the use of Internet-of-Things sensors, food distributors and vendors can not only improve the quality and safety of the product, they can reduce the amount of food wastage and increase profits by making sure that food stays viable on the shelves for as long as possible.

At this point the use of the Internet-of-Things with the food industry is a welcome and useful function and adds efficiency, safety and helps increase sales throughout the supply chain. And if you’re interested in applying this to your own interests – the team at LX is ready when you are.

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.

Samsung has recently announced their ARTIK Internet-of-Things platform, aimed at enabling faster, simpler development of new enterprise, industrial and consumer-facing IoT applications and products. ARTIK is an open platform that includes a family of powerful integrated hardware modules, advanced software, development boards, drivers, tools, security, cloud and wireless connectivity features designed to help accelerate development of a generation of better, smarter IoT devices, solutions and services.

According to Samsung, in ARTIK they are providing the industry’s most advanced, open and secure platform for developing IoT products. By leveraging Samsung’s established full-stack expertise in embedded mobile hardware and software, RF design, silicon-level component fabrication and packaging, consumer-facing design and high-volume manufacturing. Thus Samsung’s ARTIK is well positioned to allow developers working in the Internet-of-Things space to rapidly turn great ideas into market-leading products and applications.

The platform is based around a series of hardware modules and supporting software optimised for Internet-of-Things products and similar applications, with each building-block module fitting a powerful processor, rich connectivity and robust security inside a very small package.

This includes a variety of hardware configurations tailored to meet the requirements of a wide range of IoT needs, from wearable computing and home automation to smart lighting and industrial applications. With multiple tiers of hardware allowing you to optimise performance, memory, physical footprint and cost as needed, ARTIK can scale to support a variety of applications from small battery-powered devices through to powerful network gateway appliances with storage, local processing and media capability.

Depending on the configuration, the ARTIK family supports all major wireless connectivity technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth (including Bluetooth Low Energy) and 802.15.4/ZigBee. All devices in the ARTIK hardware family include multi-core ARM processors and integrated Bluetooth Low Energy wireless connectivity.

ARTIK 1, the smallest and most power efficient ARTIK module, is the smallest complete network-connected IoT compute module currently on the market, combining Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity and a 9-axis inertial measurement unit with powerful compute capabilities and efficient power consumption all in a tiny 12mm-by-12mm package.

This module is designed specifically for low-power, small-form-factor mobile IoT applications, and can provide weeks of runtime on a single battery charge. According to Samsung, an ARTIK-based smart watch can run for three weeks on a single charge while being kept in always-on mode and paired to a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone.

The next model up, the ARTIK 5 – incorporates a 1 GHz dual-core processor, increased on-board DRAM and Flash memory – delivering a powerful balance of size, power efficiency, price and performance which is pitched by Samsung as being ideal for home automation hubs, high-end wearable computing applications and autonomous vehicles such as UAVs, where greater amounts of computing power and more wireless networking options are required.

The ARTIK 5 module uses Samsung’s ePoP (Embedded Package-on-Package) packaging technology to offer significant computing performance and storage capacity in a very compact form factor, enabling a broad range of size-sensitive devices and applications.

The most powerful device in the ARTIK hardware family, the ARTIK 10, is pitched at applications in home automation servers, embedded multimedia and industrial applications. It delivers high performance for IoT and embedded multimedia applications, with an eight-core ARM processor, full 1080p video encoding and decoding, 5.1 audio, and 2Gb of DRAM with 16Gb of Flash memory for plenty of media storage. It is ideal for applications with heavier local performance and storage requirements or demanding video encoding and playback needs.

The ARTIK 5 and ARTIK 10 models also include Wi-Fi, dual-mode Bluetooth support, 802.15.4/ZigBee and Thread network connectivity, making them potentially very useful as gateways or bridge devices in home automation networks, connecting together many different kinds of wireless IoT devices.

All the hardware platforms in Samsung’s ARTIK family include advanced embedded hardware security technology, on-board storage and strong processing power in an open platform.

Security is a key element of the software integrated into the platform, along with the ability to connect to the Internet for cloud-based data analytics and Web services. The ARTIK platform comes with an extensive IoT software stack and tools to help you accelerate product development.

Developers can go directly to application framework development, instead of spending time building low-level software libraries. Every ARTIK device comes pre-loaded with the Temboo software stack for connected devices, which aims to help ARTIK developers quickly and easily develop connected ARTIK-based IoT applications.

In conjunction with the Temboo website, this lets you quickly generate code for the IoT applications you’re building. To demonstrate how this can be used, Samsung has demonstrated a reference design for a smart IoT water tank monitoring system, based on Temboo and ARTIK.

Rather than spend your time writing low-level libraries, ARTIK enables you to use the ARTIK development tools and open APIs provided by Samsung to bring wearable technology, smart devices and wireless network hubs to market more quickly, cheaply and easily. ARTIK provides a platform for developers who simply want to focus on building and testing their new IoT ideas.

And with the help of our team here at LX, we can bring your IoT device product ideas to life. From the whiteboard to the white box – we’ll partner with you to for your success. 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.

Atmel have announced their new SmartConnect WINC1500 SoC – a wireless network controller system-on-chip platform, specifically aimed at Wi-Fi connectivity in embedded systems and Internet-of-Things applications.

The WINC1500 is part of Atmel’s SmartConnect portfolio aimed at IoT and wireless connectivity applications, which complements their existing line-up of radio-plus-microcontroller RF SoC solutions for wireless connectivity using 802.15.4/6LoWPAN, by now offering 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN connectivity for embedded and IoT applications such as smart-home appliances, home automation, wireless media streaming or industrial applications.

By using an innovative power architecture that delivers very low power consumption along with high performance, the WINC1500 can help optimise your bill of materials, minimising the number of components required to support your design.

Furthermore the WINC1500 is a great add-on platform to extend the wireless connectivity of existing microcontroller-based solutions, bringing Wi-Fi networking capability to an existing system through a UART or SPI interface to the Wi-Fi device.

The WINC1500 connects to any Atmel AVR or Atmel SMART microcontroller with minimal requirements for memory or other resources in the host microcontroller, and it supports different 801.11 modes including single-stream 802.11n with throughput up to 72 Mbps.

The WINC1500 provides internal Flash memory as well as multiple interfaces for peripheral devices, including UART, SPI and I2C, and it also includes a fully integrated power amplifier, LNA, RF transmit/receive switch and power management on the RF side, meaning that integration of the WINC1500 into your design is easy, without requiring large amounts of RF design expertise or a high external bill-of-materials cost to support this device.

The ATWINC1500 device can receive wired firmware updates via its UART, or over-the-air firmware updates. The device features 4 MBit of internal Flash memory for storing its firmware, and a provisioning mode for setup, where the device sends beacons as a soft Wi-Fi access point and can transmit or receive data at any time, using a system called Wireless Simple Configuration to make initial setup of your devices simpler.

The device supports Wi-Fi Direct, station mode and Soft-AP support, with support for either WEP or WPA2 Enterprise security modes, and offers an RF transmit power of +19 dBm with a low current consumption of 172 mA – relatively impressive for an 802.11 WiFi device in transmit mode.

A TCP/IP stack is provided on board, without the need for the host microcontroller to support this, along with DHCP/DNS network protocols and TLS (Transport Layer Security) support for secure communications.

The WINC1500 is available in a compact QFN package and requires only one external clock source, from a single crystal or oscillator, with a wide variety of reference clock frequencies between 12-32 MHz supported.

As well as the WINC1500 IC itself, in a 40-pin QFN package for board-level integration into your bespoke designs, Atmel also offers the ATWINC1500-MR210PA module. This module includes an on-board crystal, voltage regulators and other core support components, an RF balun, antenna matching network and an on-board antenna, along with a shielding can.

This module makes it very easy to get started integrating the WINC1500 into your design, with minimal design effort or RF layout expertise required. The ATWINC1500-MR210PA module also offers module-level pre-certification of the RF system for regulatory agencies such as the FCC, making it easier to get your product approved and to market without much RF engineering expertise.

As with Atmel’s other microcontroller products, you can easily get started evaluating and designing with the ATWINC1500 low-cost, low-power WiFi network controller by using Atmel’s starter kit for this device, the ATWINC1500-XSTK Xplained Pro platform.

This kit provides the hardware and software platform you need to get started with easy access to the features of the ATWINC1500 and explains how to integrate the device in a custom design, with an on-board embedded debugger and support in the Atmel Studio integrated development platform, with standardised compatibility with the rest of Atmel’s Xplained Pro ecosystem of development tools.

No extra tools are necessary to program or debug the host microcontroller, but the Xplained Pro development system does offer additional peripherals to extend the features of the board and ease the development of custom designs.

Included in the kit is a SAMD21 Xplained Pro board, as the host microcontroller, along with an ATWINC1500 Xplained Pro extension board, which includes an ATWINC1500-MR210PA, shielded and approved RF module and an Atmel I/01 Xplained Pro board which provides sensor inputs to the host microcontroller along with a micro-SD card.

There is an embedded debugger for programming the SAMD21 host microcontroller, Atmel’s Data Gateway Interface (DGI) for connectivity between the host microcontroller and the WiFi platform over either TWI or SPI, a USB virtual-serial-port interface to the host microcontroller’s UART for debugging, an Atmel CryptoAuthentication device connected to the host microcontroller, and a range of application examples supported through the Atmel Gallery.

Together, this development pack provides a powerful but easy-to-use combination of tools you can use to quickly get started prototyping or developing a WiFi-networked, Internet-connected sensor network device or Internet-of-Things appliance based on the WINC1500.

After the explosion of the Expressif ESP8266 into the marketplace last year, we consider this to be Atmel’s reply to the inexpensive SoC from China – and look forward to further announcements from other manufacturers with their responses. Which leads to more options in the marketplace to choose from = each with their own pros and cons to your specific application.

If your team is looking for help moving forward with your own Wi-Fi or IoT-based devices – we invite you to join us for an obligation-free and confidential discussion about your ideas and how we can help bring them 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 Bluetooth Special Interest Group has recently announced the publication of the Bluetooth 4.1 Specification with some interesting improvements to the standard, which greatly increase the usability of this wireless technology in devices for the “Internet of Things”, which offers new applications that allow such devices to serve as both hub and peripheral devices.

This paves the way for Bluetooth 4.1-enabled devices such as sensors to connect directly to the Internet. It also allows devices such as fitness dataloggers and headsets to collate data from sensors such as temperature sensors and heart rate monitors over Bluetooth networks then report back to a smartphone or tablet with their collected data. In turn, those devices could be used as sensors that other devices can communicate with and pull data from.

This new profile is the first major update of the Bluetooth specification since version 4.0 was released in 2010, including the Low Energy specification, a subset of version 4.0. The version 4.1 updates are all software related, so it is possible for over-the-air firmware updates to upgrade existing Bluetooth 4.0 systems with new firmware, with no hardware changes or replacement, to make them Bluetooth 4.1 compatible.

Bluetooth 4.1 adds support for bulk data transfers at higher data rates, so that information collected from sensors over a period of time can be downloaded in bulk from multiple sensors. Bluetooth is still a low data-rate protocol compared to, say, Wi-Fi or Ethernet, but as Bluetooth is expected to handle ever-larger streams of data from embedded sensors this is a useful improvement – downloading data from sensors to a datalogging appliance might take, say, a few seconds instead of 10 or 20 for existing systems.

Bluetooth 4.1 allows Bluetooth devices to act as both a peripheral device and a hub at the same time, allowing a Bluetooth device that may have previously been networked with a smartphone or tablet to itself act as hub for other Bluetooth peripheral devices.

For example, your Bluetooth 4.1 enabled smart watch might be able to grab weight information logged from a Bluetooth-enabled scale and display it for you as well as being able to pass that data along to a smartphone. Bluetooth 4.1 also adds improvements to the sleep-wake cycle of the Bluetooth radio, allowing Bluetooth devices to automatically connect more easily (if allowed) without manual intervention.

Another example could be a bathroom scale that can automatically connect and download the distance walked from your Bluetooth-enabled pedometer or exercise tracker when you walk into the bathroom.

Bluetooth 4.1 improves coexistence between Bluetooth devices and 4G Long Term Evolution (4G LTE) cellular devices, to prevent potential interference. Although this is not a significant problem for Bluetooth 4.0 devices today this was considered to be a potential problem in future as more and more Bluetooth 4.0 devices are in use, talking to 4G connected smart-phones or tablets.

The new specification also increases the time-out period between devices, so that removing a Bluetooth device (such as your phone, for example) outside the proximity of another Bluetooth device it is connected to for a short moment and then back again may not mean that the Bluetooth connection has to be reconnected, improving user experience.

Furthermore it also lays the groundwork for IP-based connections between Bluetooth devices, in the same way a Wi-Fi router connects to multiple Wi-Fi devices, giving Bluetooth devices a way to talk directly to the Internet. Plus version 4.1 adds a standardised way to create a dedicated channel which could be used for IPv6 communications over Bluetooth in the future, enabling the possibility of native IPv6 networking from the Internet down to the LAN right down to wireless sensor nodes, in a similar way to how 6LoWPAN enables this type of connectivity for 802.15.4 wireless networks.

However, adding IPv6 connectivity to Bluetooth devices may substantially increase the power budget of battery-operated devices, especially Bluetooth Low Energy devices designed for extreme power efficiency, so this may not be an appropriate choice in all cases.

Such Internet connectivity directly to Bluetooth devices opens up interesting potential for the future development of Bluetooth, for example phone calls made over VoIP directly to a person’s Bluetooth headset, or the remote viewing of health data from medical sensor devices by healthcare professionals.

These improvements to the Bluetooth standard, such as IPv6 support, the ability to act as a hub instead of only as a peripheral, better radio sleep-wake cycles, timeout changes and improved data rates make Bluetooth 4.1 easier to use in the development of networks of wireless, power-efficient networked devices that aren’t intended to always be paired directly to a single Bluetooth enabled smartphone or tablet – in other words, Internet-of-Things networks and devices.

As you have just read, the new Bluetooth profile offers a great amount of promise in terms of functionality and convenience for the end user. Here at the LX Group our engineers have an excellent understanding of many wireless platforms – including Bluetooth – and are ready to integrate it with your new and existing products.

To get started, join us for 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.

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