All posts tagged: iot

Let’s take a brief overview of the web applications and cloud platform available from Exosite – a provider of Internet-of-things cloud services that help you collect, store, visualise and interact with data from your networked devices in the cloud. Exosite provides a cloud platform that can be connected to your Internet-connected sensors and other devices.

Once your device is connected, data is flowing into the cloud and you can set up logical rules to process and act on that data, log timestamped historical data or use Exosite’s built-in scripting language to process and interact with that data. Time-series information can be used to visualise, command or control devices, either in real time or in response to trends over time.

Their platform makes it easy for product developers to create cloud-capable connected products with a range of microcontrollers and RF solutions from different hardware vendors. Exosite’s “One Platform” and “Portal” families of cloud Platform-as-a-Service and web applications provide value to developers and device OEMs, helping to minimise risk and time to market for developers of Internet-of-Things connected products. Exosite can help you to quickly prototype and deploy systems to meet your needs for cloud-based remote access to devices and their data.

Exosite’s data platform is a hosted-served system that removes barriers to market entry and empowers companies to quickly prototype and deploy their own Internet-of-Things solutions using Exosite’s web service APIs. The system is designed with product developers in mind, meaning that it has a built-in framework that eliminates the complexity of infrastructure and simplifies IoT development. Exosite’s “One Platform” makes it easy for product developers to create cloud-capable products.

Furthermore the Exosite developer site provides a wealth of convenient user guides, API documentation, application notes and support information, as well as example source code and reference projects covering a range of different programming languages and architectures. There are libraries for interaction with the Exosite API in a range of different programming languages, allowing you to work with the languages that best suit your needs.

Working and maintaining the software is simplified as Exosite supports over-the-air firmware and software updates from their cloud service, if supported in the particular hardware used. This allows for remote wireless management of your devices, allowing firmware updates, feature enhancements, and other maintenance rolled out without the need for physical on-site service of hardware devices offers great value and convenience, improving user experience and reducing support costs for networks of Internet-of-Things connected devices.

With Exosite you can build pre-configured settings in the cloud for your families of devices, enabling newly manufactured devices to know exactly what version of software to install – right from the cloud, without any local intervention – as soon as they come online on the Internet.

As well as automatic provisioning, Exosite’s built-in device management tools make it easy to manage software installations and updates. When it comes time to update your devices in the field, you can simply upload your new content, select the device model type you would like to update, and hit deploy. Your new firmware is then deployed automatically, from the cloud, to every one of your connected devices of that type out there in the world. If those devices are not always connected to the Internet, they will automatically update themselves with the new software the next time they connect to the Internet.

Gathering data from an Exosite system isn’t difficult at all, and it allows you to aggregate and monitor data from your network of devices in the cloud in real time – as well as run powerful scripts to combine multiple lower-level inputs and build custom dashboards to report on defined metrics in an easily interpretable, visible way.

Exosite is easy to integrate with other systems, allowing you to easily push data out of its cloud platform into existing, external services. Since Exosite is based around cloud infrastructure, you can scale your application without having to worry about infrastructure or server administration.

You can build your own web app, or customise Exosite’s own app. You can get started with an Exosite developer account for free and use their simple but powerful set of APIs to start interacting with your devices in real time over the Internet. When you’re ready to scale up with your commercial solution, you can easily move up to a paid account, giving you an OEM-ready “white label” platform with the features and capabilities needed to build a business around your connected Internet-of-Things application.

For a better end-user experience designers can easily customise the website theme, control the user experience, configure device options and set up pricing plans for your customers, but you can grow at your own pace without worrying about the scalability of the underlying server infrastructure.

Exosite supports a range of open source and proprietary hardware development kits and platforms, reducing the time required to develop and build Internet-of-Things connected hardware solutions. For example, Exosite provides libraries for use with Ethernet-enabled Arduino and Arduino-compatible development boards, as well as support for development kits and development boards with network and Internet connectivity from hardware vendors such as Microchip and Texas Instruments.

Combining these hardware development tools with Exosite’s cloud platform allows you to get online with cloud-connected hardware quickly, getting your sensor data online and getting physical devices interacting with the cloud. Exosite makes it easy to connect, manage, and share your sensor or device data online.

Testing or getting started with Exosite is simple, as the free developer account has everything you need to start interacting with your devices in real time over the Internet. You get a web dashboard account, full access to the API, a cloud scripting environment, and the ability to upgrade features a-la-carte.

This account is aimed at allowing you to build your own Internet-of-Things environment on a one-off basis. If you find value in it and want to deploy it as a business solution for a wider audience then you can easily upgrade to a paid “white label” account in order to do so. Finally the developer account includes two devices and one user, while a paid account gives you support for many more devices, many more users, SMS messaging capability from the cloud and more.

It’s no secret that the Internet-of-things not only holds a lot of promise for connected devices and the possible products you can profit with – however getting started can seem like a maze with literally scores of options, platforms and hardware types.

To make your start in the IoT as smooth and cost-effective as possible, partner with the LX Group. We have experience in all stages of IoT product development – along with every other stage of design to manufacturing. 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.

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.

When your organisation understands that creating new IoT devices is necessary, but you’re not entirely sure about the future of the technology with regards to which platform to settle on – it can be difficult to make an informed decision. The “paradox of choice” can often stall progress, until now. With the Waspmote platform from Libelium, you can use an incredibly wide range of wireless technology and platforms to meet your IoT goals.

Libelium’s Waspmote platform is an open source wireless sensor network platform specifically focussed on the implementation of low-power modes, allowing individual battery-powered nodes (or “motes”) to be completely autonomous and to run for many months or years without maintenance.

Depending on the duty cycle, types of sensors and the radio used, it is possible for a Waspmote node to run for as long as five years on a single battery. The advanced Waspmote “mote” for wireless sensor networks is at the centre of Libelium’s complete ecosystem for Internet-connected wireless sensor networks and Internet-of-Things applications.

Waspmote allows for highly flexible implementation of wireless sensor networks – the connection of almost any type of sensor you can think of to any cloud platform, using many different common wireless networking technologies. Using the waspmote platform is a great way to implement Internet-connected sensor networks for Internet-of-Things and wireless sensor network applications, with a huge range of supported sensor types as well as a range of different options for network and Internet connectivity.

There are many different options for wireless connectivity in a Waspmote system, including 3G, GPRS, 802.15.4/6LoWPAN, 802.11 WiFi and Bluetooth. A combination of multiple different radio interfaces can be chosen if desired. Both 2.4 GHz and 800 MHz ISM 802.15.4/6LoWPAN radio hardware is available for use with Waspmote. With the right choice of radio hardware, radio link distances of up to 12 kilometres are possible.

Waspmote’s hardware architecture has been specifically designed to enable extremely low power consumption. Power to any of the sensor interfaces can be turned on and off under software control, as well as power to the radio transceivers.

Three different sleep modes make Waspmote one of the most power efficient wireless sensor network platforms on the market, with a current consumption claimed as just 70 nanoamps in hibernate mode. There are more than 60 different sensors available to connect to Waspmote – soil moisture, GPS, temperature, humidity, vehicle detection, light, PIR and radiation sensors to name just a few.

The platform also supports over-the-air programming (OTAP), allowing firmware development and update across a network of wireless sensor nodes without the need for physical access to the hardware. It is possible to choose unicast, multicast or broadcast delivery of new firmware updates across the wireless network, controlling which nodes receive the update.

The huge range of different Waspmote sensors available enables a huge spectrum of different application possibilities in industrial monitoring and automation, smart cities, environmental sensing, agriculture and home automation. In a typical network of Waspmote sensors, a number of end nodes are equipped with 802.15.4/6LoWPAN hardware, appropriate sensors for the desired application, and power supplied from a battery or other sources such as solar power.

These nodes send their sensor data over the 802.15.4 mesh network back to the gateway node, which is equipped with an Ethernet interface as well as an 802.15.4 radio. The (IPv4) Ethernet gateway changes the 6LoWPAN IP header to IPv4 while keeping the UDP transport layer, and it sends the data to the IPv4/IPv6 tunnelling machine which changes the header to the proper IPv6 format and sends the information (now using IPv6) to servers on the Internet, and from there to services, and ultimately users, who use the collated sensor data.

The Meshlium gateway reads the sensor frames coming in from the nodes and stores them locally, sending them out to external cloud services on the Internet. The frames coming in from Waspmote nodes are received over the 802.15.4 mesh network and sent out to the Internet via the Ethernet, WiFi or 3G interfaces, if present.

Data is sent from the Internet-connected gateway out to a cloud server on the Internet via HTTPS and/or SSH for security, and the Waspmote ecosystem is compatible with any cloud platform you like.

Notably, there is no lock-in or closed compatibility with any one particular web service, unlike with some alternative products on the market targeted at Internet-connected embedded applications. You can choose your servers, and choose your cloud software platform.

As well as being based around open hardware, the Waspmote IDE is distributed under an open source license. The Waspmote platform provides professional-grade wireless sensor network infrastructure combined with a strong commitment by Libelium to the philosophy of open-source technology.

Waspmote supports encryption libraries, ensuring the authenticity, security and integrity of the information collected from the wireless sensor network. Different encryption algorithms such as AES-256 and RSA-1024 are implemented.

As well as offering cryptology and security, strong mesh-network scalability, support for 802.15.4/6LoWPAN, support for an open, flexible choice of web services and cloud server infrastructure, the Waspmote platform offers easy and fast deployment, over-the-air programming for easy firmware maintenance and an intuitive graphical programming interface.

The highly power-efficient Waspmote hardware platform also lends itself to flexible power solutions, such as battery power, remote power from solar PV, or potentially other types of energy-harvesting power supplies – as well as use in almost any contemporary application.

Waspmote offers an open, approachable and easy-to-implement platform, which we can integrate with your needs to form a solution in a short time frame and your required budget. Getting started is easy, 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.

When considering methods of adding Internet-of-things connectivity to existing or new ideas, being able to integrate open-source hardware can help reduce hardware target costs, however support and development advice can be lacking due to the distributed nature of open hardware development.

However with the openPicus ecosystem, we have found an inexpensive hardware choice that is also fully supported by the manufacturer and also allows for integration into final, closed products. The openPicus ecosystem provides user-friendly Internet connectivity for the relatively easy development of Internet-of-Things applications.

openPicus is based around the openPicus Flyport family of low-power, network-connected microcontroller modules, which are available in three different versions, with either Wi-Fi, GPRS or Ethernet connectivity but with the same microcontroller and an otherwise equivalent module pinout.

Each Flyport module is pinout-compatible, allowing the same underlying hardware design to be assembled with different Flyport modules to meet changing connectivity needs that your customer may have. All Flyport modules are based around the same Microchip PIC24FJ256 16-bit PIC microcontroller, making firmware development easily portable across the different modules.

openPicus provides an IDE, comprehensive documentation, tutorials and a consumer discussion forum for its products, aimed at enabling developers of cloud services and mobile apps to use the system to prototype and develop Internet-connected hardware solutions relatively easily with minimal electronic engineering expertise.

Flyport is an open platform, providing an embedded webserver (for the Wi-Fi and Ethernet-connected modules), support for both infrastructure and ad-hoc Wi-Fi network modes (for the Wi-Fi version of the module) and sleep and hibernate modes for efficient power use when operating from batteries.

Each of the Flyport modules provide up to 18 digital I/O pins for interfacing to external hardware, four 10-bit ADC input pins, 4 UARTs, SPI and I2C interfaces. The Ethernet and Wi-Fi versions of the Flyport modules include two megabytes of external flash memory on board, and all versions include an internal real-time clock in the microcontroller.

The Flyport modules are all powered by the openPicus framework, which is itself based on the FreeRTOS real-time operating system. An IDE is provided, free, to make it easy to develop your own applications running on top of Flyport technology. Flyport modules are programmed using a C or C++ like programming language, with Flyport making development easy by managing all the required network interfacing, Internet communications protocols and the webserver internally for you.

The API allows management and programming of all the available functionality of the entire family of Flyport hardware modules, allowing the developer to import web pages, create applications, compile and download code to Flyport modules. Unfortunately, the IDE is only available for Windows at this time, although it can be run inside a virtual machine (with Windows installed) on OSX or Linux PCs.

Most of the underlying technology of the openPicus / Flyport system is released as open source software and open hardware, but with licensing choices such that you are not forced to release all your own code under an open-source license if you choose not to when integrating openPicus technology into your own commercial designs.

The openPicus Flyport IDE has its source code released under the GPLv3 license, and the schematics for the Flyport hardware are released under the CC-BY 3.0 Creative Commons license. Using the openPicus core, libraries and code samples in the firmware of your commercial product does not require you to release the source code of your firmware, provided that the core and libraries are used without modification.

If you tweak or modify the openPicus core or libraries then you are required to release the modified code under the LGPL v3.0 license.openPicus provides their code samples, applications, example projects and libraries for open use under the Apache 2.0 license, and the openPicus Framework (including the TCP/IP stack, email and FTP support) under an LGPL v3.0 license.

A number of pre-designed carrier boards for Flyport modules are available, allowing development with easy-to-use hardware “building blocks” with little or no expertise in custom electronic hardware design and construction required.

For example, the Music Nest is a carrier board for Flyport modules which can be used to develop Internet-connected audio applications. A VLSI1053 stereo audio codec IC is onboard, interfaced back to the Flyport module over SPI, along with an SD card for the storage of audio files.

Another example is the “Grove Nest” carrier board is a simple carrier board for Flyport modules that provides 10 ports for sensors and other peripheral modules which are compatible with Seeed Studio’s “Grove” connector standard. openPicus provides example libraries for a large range of sensor and actuator devices from Seeed’s “Grove” family of development modules, allowing the development of Internet-connected, Internet-of-Things devices in an easy “plug and play” fashion with minimal hardware expertise.

As is typical of Arduino and most similar development boards, these Flyport carrier boards can be powered either via an external power supply or via the same USB connector which is used to download firmware to the Flyport module. The Ethernet Flyport module is a programmable system-on-module based around the 16-bit PIC microcontroller common to all Flyport hardware, combined with a fully integrated 10/100 ethernet interface with integrated MAC and physical layer and a unique MAC address pre-configured for each module.

By default the Ethernet Flyport module includes an RJ-45 ethernet jack, but you can also route the Ethernet signals off the module to an RJ-45 jack on the carrier board, providing flexibility in terms of where the bulky RJ-45 connector is located on your board. Using the Flyport Ethernet module provides the embedded system with a powerful “Internet engine” with a small footprint, low power consumption and low cost, allowing real-time control and display of data on a dynamic webpage accessible from a standard web browser, from a PC, tablet or smartphone.

Thanks to the embedded webserver built into Wi-Fi and Ethernet Flyport modules – they can host HTML pages directly, allowing easy access to information such as sensor readings (or a user interface for control of hardware devices) using an internal webpage. Display of dynamic webpage content in the form of Javascript and Ajax is also supported.

Finally the TCP/IP stack and the application layer run on the main microcontroller of the Ethernet and Wi-Fi Flyport modules, meaning that you have full control of the connectivity and the application.

This means you can, for example, process data coming in from sensor hardware and display this data on a webpage served up from the Flyport module, or send the data to a remote location via email or FTP. You can also shut down the Wi-Fi or Ethernet connectivity to reduce power consumption when connectivity is not actively required.

The openPicus system provides a well-documented and easy method of integrating IoT connectivity into existing and new products, and thus helps decrease the time to market for your new and existing products.

With our experience in embedded hardware, IoT-connectivity and complete product design – we can partner with you for every stage of product development to meet your needs. As we say – “LX can take you from the whiteboard to the white box”. So 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.

Choosing an Internet-of-things platform can be a challenge, not only due to the ever-increasing range of options in the marketplace – but also the ease of working with the platform to meet your end goal. With this challenge in mind we introduce the Realtime.io/Iota system from iobridge – a system suited to real time monitoring and control.

Realtime.io is a technology platform that enables easy development of near real-time Internet-of-Things applications for developers and manufacturers. The Realtime.io platform is a complete, end-to-end solution of hardware, firmware and a cloud platform for the Internet of Things which allows developers to integrate Internet connectivity into their product designs relatively easily with minimal effort required for either hardware or software development.

Realtime.io Cloud Server and Iota technology are aimed at making it easy and cost effective for manufacturers to Internet-enable their products, either in new or existing designs. The Realtime.io cloud server technology acts as a bridge between embedded devices or products running Realtime.io Iota software and user software running either in-browser or in the form of smartphone applications – which allows your devices or products to be monitored and controlled conveniently over the Internet.

Despite being easy to use with minimal development effort, Realtime.io also provides some flexibility in how it is integrated for more advanced developers with existing hardware platforms.

You have the flexibility of choosing your own hardware and developing your own user interfaces or letting ioBridge do it for you. The Realtime.io connected Iota hardware modules from ioBridge provide 12 GPIO pins, eight of which are usable as either digital I/O or as ADC inputs. These embedded Iota modules are available with either Wi-Fi or Ethernet hardware for connectivity between the device and your LAN (and hence the Internet).

Although you can use the Iota hardware modules for relatively easy hardware development of a new product, or relatively easy integration into an existing microcontroller-based design (for example with a simple UART connection between the Iota module and the existing microcontroller).

Commercial users who already have their own custom Wi-Fi or Ethernet-enabled hardware have flexible options in how they integrate with the Realtime.io cloud platform, giving Realtime.io an advantage over some competing platforms such as Electric Imp where their hardware card must always be used.

Rather than using an Iota hardware module with its integrated firmware, you have the option of licensing the Iota firmware library for integration into your existing embedded hardware design, if your design includes an appropriate microcontroller along with Ethernet or Wi-Fi connectivity.

In either case, for commercial licensing, Realtime.io collects a royalty fee either per Iota hardware module provided or per unit of customer hardware shipped integrating Iota firmware. Easy to use breakout boards and development kits are available for hardware development and experimentation using either the Ethernet-connected or Wi-Fi connected Iota hardware modules.

No port-forwarding, dynamic DNS or complicated firewall reconfiguration is required for an Iota-connected hardware system to talk to the Realtime.io cloud service via the Internet, and initial setup of Wi-Fi credentials is easy, making installation and initial deployment of Realtime.io-connected hardware relatively easy for any user.

The combined infrastructure of Realtime.io and Iota was created to provide a near-instant communications link between devices and applications, providing near-real-time two-way operation for both monitoring and control with a software latency of typically less than 10 milliseconds.

Typical end-to-end delays are only about 100 milliseconds, most of which is the unavoidable ping time across the Internet to the Realtime.io server. This is very desirable, since high latency can significantly detract from user experience with Internet-of-Things connected hardware solutions in applications such as home automation.

Everything is API driven, and easy to use for both hardware developers and web developers. By providing API abstraction, Realtime.io enables developers to prototype their connected project ideas easily and then transition to production hardware and software designs very quickly, without requiring expertise in both electronic and software engineering.

ioBridge provides a web API that can be used by Realtime.io customers to develop their own custom applications or to integrate with their own or other third-party systems.

Realtime.io allows you to create web applications based on HTML5, CSS and Javascript with interaction with physical devices, social networks, external APIs, and ioBridge web services. The Realtime.io App Builder allows you to build web apps directly on the Realtime.io platform, with an in-browser code editor, JavaScript library, app update tracking, device manager, and single sign on with existing ioBridge user accounts.

The web client API allows you to interact with Iota-enabled devices connected to Realtime.io cloud servers. This API provides access to HTTP streaming from one device or multiple devices, access to GPIO registers on your devices (and therefore hardware interaction and control), and administrative information such as access to the connection state and IP addresses of the network of connected devices.

The Realtime.io system holds much promise, and through a four year development period the system can deliver on the promises of reliable, secure and scalable integration with new and existing products.

If your organisation is considering bring new IoT-enabled products to market, looking to update existing disparate nodes to a contemporary networked environment – or you have some great ideas and not sure how to start, we can help you at any and all stages of the required processes.

We’re ready to offer our experience and know-how on this and every other stage of product development to meet your needs. As we say – “LX can take you from the whiteboard to the white box”. So 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.

Freescale Semiconductor and Oracle announced earlier this year that they are working together to develop the “OneBox”, a gateway platform for secured service delivery for Internet-of-Things applications based on open Java technology and Freescale silicon.

So what is OneBox all about? The aim of OneBox is standardising and consolidating the delivery and management of Internet-of-Things services through one gateway box rather than multiple gateway boxes from different vendors.

The idea is that the gateway appliance and its Java-based software stack can “speak” all of the different protocols being used to connect devices to the network in a context of, say, a home automation application – a single gateway that is interoperable with every networked Internet-of-Things device in the home.

For example, the OneBox gateway will have the ability to connect to multiple different kinds of RF networks such as 802.15.4, 802.11, Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy, providing conversion and interoperability between different connectivity standards.

The “smart home” OneBox reference implementation from Freescale runs Java SE Embedded and is powered by a Freescale i.MX 6 series applications processor built on the ARM Cortex-A9 core. OneBox has enough local processing power to handle some real-time data processing, and can then send the processed data up to the cloud if desired.

There, Oracle’s infrastructure will be happy to crunch those bytes for you although you could use whatever cloud infrastructure you’d like – there is no lock-in. This local processing power is advantageous because it improves responsive interaction by removing the latency of a trip out to the remote server – for example, when you push the button to turn your lights on you want an effectively immediate response, not a delay of many seconds before the lights actually turn on.

The entire secured service delivery infrastructure – from the core of the network through the gateway to the small edge nodes – uses Java technology, pitched by Oracle as a unifying, open platform for the Internet of Things.

The Freescale/Oracle development team used Java SE embedded on the gateway box and Java ME embedded for the microcontrollers in their OneBox reference implementation. With its broad adoption, open source model, huge ecosystem and well-defined roadmap, Java technology is being pitched by Oracle and Freescale as ideally suited for Internet-of-Things requirements.

Due to the Java base, the system will be open throughout, without requiring hoops for programmers or device developers to jump through. OneBox offers a secure, standard and open infrastructure model for the delivery of Internet-of-Things services, combining end-to-end software with a converged gateway design to aim to establish a common, open framework for secured Internet-of-Things service delivery and management from the core of the network right through to low-power wireless sensors and other nodes at the edge of the network.

As part of the collaboration, Freescale will join the Java Community Process and work with Oracle and other JCP members to drive development of technical specifications for Java, particularly focusing on Java on resource-constrained platforms such as the low-cost microcontrollers that provide the embedded intelligence in Internet-of-Things enabled products.

Freescale will also work with Oracle and other JCP members on new and enhanced Java APIs to improve the support for Internet-of-Things protocols and features available on their microcontroller hardware.

The addition of a service layer based on enterprise-grade Java as an open standard, along with full security, on top of the whole system including the smallest resource-constrained microcontrollers takes the OneBox platform beyond a typical converged gateway.

Oracle and Freescale see it as a blueprint for an ideal secured service delivery infrastructure for the Internet of Things, one that will solve some of the common problems perceived as limiting the advancement of the Internet of Things.

OneBox is designed, both in terms of hardware and software, to be very modular, so the appropriate connectivity – ethernet, WiFi, 802.15.4/6LoWPAN, ANT, Bluetooth, whatever – can be “plugged in” and the corresponding software blocks needed for a particular service automatically loaded. This modularity supports future standards and a variety of use cases – from home automation and consumer electronics to industrial automation.

Freescale believes that it’s the small players that will bring the majority of innovation to the table, and they have specifically ensured that the OneBox platform is open and based on readily available software and hardware in order to promote participation by smaller players and decrease barriers to entry.

Freescale’s edge node sensors and devices based on Kinetis ARM microcontrollers are cheaply available, with all of the tools needed. Freescale silicon is distributed openly through small-volume distributors, datasheets and documentation for their processors are openly available to all, and Java is openly available to download and license.

After this quick summary it appears that this new idea between Freescale and Oracle could provide the backbone for a new, open-source and easily-adapable Internet-of-things platform for almost any situation. As the technology proceeds to mature we’d be more than happy to examine the possibilies available with your organisation for your benefit.

And we’re ready to offer our experience and know-how on this and every other stage of product development to meet your needs. As we say – “LX can take you from the whiteboard to the white box”. So 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.

One of the major hurdles of developing portable (and connected) devices is finding the balance between power consumption and battery storage that allows for a genuinely useful device and experience. Generally most components can be optimised through good design and wise choices, however the main microcontroller or CPU can be a sticking point – until now.

Intel have taken this problem to heart and as a solution, recently announced their “Quark” family of system-on-chip cores. They’re a family of low-power 32-bit CPU cores designed to compete with ARM’s Cortex-M series in modern Internet-of-Things and wearable embedded computing applications.

Quark is a very low-power and compact x86-compatible core designed to be even smaller and lower in power consumption than Intel’s low-power Atom CPU cores, which are targeted at tablets, low-power netbooks and smartphones.

Notably, Quark is the first Intel core that is fully synthesizable and designed for potential integration with third-party IP blocks. This means that a customer could use the Quark core, license it from Intel, and hook it to peripherals on a custom system-on-chip, like for example custom graphics, I/O, storage, 802.11 or 3G networking.

It is claimed that Quark will be one-fifth of the size of the Atom core, and have one-tenth of the power consumption. At this level, Quark is much more powerful – and power hungry – than a lightweight 8-bit microcontroller, but it is also not a competitor to the more powerful ARM Cortex-A family either. It aims to compete with the popular Cortex-M family of 32-bit microcontroller cores from synthesizable microcontroller IP leader ARM.

The Quark core is a single-core, single-thread, low-power, small-footprint CPU core, and it is targeted at “Internet-of-Things” applications, wearable computing devices such as “smart watches”, and low-cost disposable medical devices as well as industrial and building automation control systems.

At this years’s Intel Developers Forum, a prototype “smartwatch” based on Quark technology was displayed as a proof of concept, along with a wearable instrumented patch for medical datalogging. Quark has been demonstrated in a prototype Internet-of-Things enabled HVAC automation application by HVAC leader Daikin. Daikin’s prototype system has WiFi and 3G support, and allows for secure remote control and monitoring.

The Quark product line is designed to slot in below the existing Atom family in terms of cost and power consumption, compatible with the Pentium instruction set architecture but aimed at markets where small form factor and low power consumption take priority, with a power consumption target that is apparently less than 100 milliwatts in some cases.

This power efficiency makes Quark attractive in wearable computing applications such as “smart watches” and Google Glass style wearable displays where battery capacity is very limited due to size constraints. Some bracelet-like wearable devices have been shown at this year’s Intel Developers Forum as a proof-of-concept of a wearable system powered by Quark technology.

Being smaller, lower power, and less powerful than Atom, Intel will be targeting the Quark product line at the Internet-of-Things market in applications where more power than a traditional embedded microcontroller is desirable or required, but less power consumption than an ordinary PC or notebook is desirable.

Quark is synthesizable, which means that customers can add their own IP around the core. ARM, for example, lets companies license its CPU cores and then add their own co-processors or other components to create chips optimised for a wide variety of projects and industries. How this would work in the case of Quark is not exactly clear however, since Intel plans to keep manufacturing of Quark silicon entirely in-house, at least initially.

This is a new move for Intel, but the company intends to retain control over their entire chip fabrication process in-house, bringing in existing customer IP for integration with Quark and in-house fab, although it is possible at least in principle that other foundries could fabricate Quark-based systems for licensees of the IP.

Intel’s decision with Quark means leveraging its own IP in a way that lets it offer customisable hardware to potential customers, without giving up control of either its processor IP or its own fab capabilities. Designers will not be allowed to customise the Quark core, they can only connect third-party IP blocks to its fabric.

Quark’s partially-open fabric appears to be somewhat derivative of ARM’s long-standing and successful policy of licensing its Cortex IP to other chip makers in a synthesizable form. ARM Cortex M3 and M4 cores have been rapidly stealing market share away from other microcontroller platforms in recent years – since the 32-bit architecture offers significant performance gains over 8-bit platforms such as PIC or AVR.

Furthermore their Cortex-M3 is finding its way into smartwatches such as the Sony SmartWatch 2 and the Qualcomm Toq as well as wireless sensor network system-on-chips such as TI’s CC2538 802.15.4/ZigBee/6LoWPAN platform. However as the Quark matures we’re sure it will be a successful player in the portable device and IoT arena.

Technologies such as Intel’s Quark are an example of how technology is constantly improving, and with the right knowledge it can be used to your advantage. However there are also many existing power-saving chipsets on the market your team may not be aware of, or unsure about taking on a new development platform.

But don’t let that get in the way of improving your existing or new designs – if you’re not sure about your options, discuss them with a team that understands the latest technologies, platforms and how to integrate them for your advantage – the team at the LX Group.

Getting started is simple – 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.

Today’s homes are becoming increasingly connected and “smart”, and previously proprietary systems for applications such as energy monitoring, security and home automation are now moving towards increasing compliance with standard, open protocols such as IP to provide interoperability of the network and connectivity out to the Internet.

One interesting system known as Sensinode – part of the ARM organisation – offers a complete software solution for connected home applications, providing end-to-end software products that bring IP connectivity and web services right out to the end nodes in wireless Internet-of-Things networks, combining highly optimised embedded client software with a scalable management and web application platform.

Sensinode’s NanoStack, NanoRouter and NanoService solutions are valuable building blocks for the Internet of Things – mainly targeting large-scale mesh networks that require IP backbone connectivity such as home and building automation systems, sensor mesh networks for industrial control and monitoring, meter-reading systems and “smart” street lighting systems.

For example, Sensinode’s Connected Home Reference App provides a great starting point to rapidly deploy a web service for a connected home application, including a complete graphical web-based application for home automation and monitoring with floor plan import, device monitoring and control, data graphing and configurable notifications and alarms – an ideal starting point for home automation developers.

The intelligent control and monitoring of lighting systems is another area with great potential for reduced energy consumption and reduced maintenance costs through intelligent monitoring and control. NanoStack and NanoRouter provide low-power wireless IP connectivity for radio platforms ideally suited for indoor and outdoor lighting, while NanoService provides an end-to-end solution for the integration of lighting control and monitoring with web services.

Sensinode’s Street Lighting Reference App provides OEMs and system integrators with the tools to rapidly deploy a web-based service. Leveraging the power of the NanoService platform, this Street Lighting app includes Google Maps integration with real-time light monitoring and control, alarms, firmware updates and light group management.

Using Sensinode’s reference apps, complete graphical web applications and example source code provided, developers are able to easily get started developing and deploying machine-to-machine services on Sensinode’s NanoService platform. NanoService provides efficient embedded end-to-end web-service connectivity, integrating with new and existing backend web services.

NanoStack is Sensinode’s advanced 6LoWPAN protocol stack product for 2.4 GHz and sub-gigahertz 802.15.4 RF chipsets, while Sensinode’s NanoRouter software acts as a 6LoWPAN edge router, enabling routing between 6LoWPAN and IPv4/IPv6 networks. NanoRouter integrates with home and mobile 802.15.4 gateways and 802.15.4-enabled devices such as smart meters, providing Internet routing to the 802.15.4/6LoWPAN network.

The NanoStack communications stack for IP-based wireless sensor networks is platform- and radio-independent and gives hardware manufacturers, OEMs and system integrators a fast, easy and cost-effective way to harness Sensinode’s 6LoWPAN low-power mesh technology on inexpensive RF chipsets and microcontroller radio system-on-chips.

As NanoStack features support for both 2.4 GHz and sub-gigahertz 802.15.4 transceivers, robust performance and the ability to support consumer applications on the same system-on-chip as the IP network stack. NanoStack 2.0 fits the power of 6LoWPAN into a footprint of only about 10 kilobytes of flash memory in a low-cost embedded device. Entire wireless sensor firmwares are possible, using NanoStack 2.0, in a footprint of less than 32 kB of flash and 4 kB of RAM.

As NanoStack is designed to run on cheap, low-power, resource-constrained microcontrollers with embedded RF transceivers, such as the Texas Instruments CC2530 and CC430 system-on-chip devices, to name just a couple of examples. Rather than providing any hardware solutions themselves, Sensinode’s products are just software solutions that are used in conjunction with hardware platforms from third-party hardware providers such as Texas Instruments and Atmel.

Atmel has licensed Sensinode’s 6LoWPAN software stack for use with their ultra-low-power wireless hardware platforms. Sensinode’s NanoMesh and NanoService solutions are available on the Atmel Gallery for download, providing developers using Atmel hardware with a valuable starting point for the development of Internet-of-Things solutions using Sensinode technology.

As an example of a combined hardware and software solution implementing Sensinode technology, the Texas Instruments CC1180 6LoWPAN Network Processor is TI’s CC1110F32 low-power sub-gigahertz RF system-on-chip IC pre-loaded with Sensinode’s NanoStack 2.0 Lite 6LoWPAN stack.

The CC1180 handles all the timing-critical and processing-intensive 6LoWPAN protocol tasks in your Internet-of-Things application, leaving the resources of the application microcontroller free to handle the application. The CC1180 makes it easy to add 6LoWPAN functionality to new or existing products, as it provides great flexibility in the choice of the application microcontroller.

The CC1180 IC comes pre-loaded with a bootloader, Sensinode NanoBoot. This bootloader is used to download the Sensinode 6LoWPAN stack, NanoStack 2.0 Lite. The CC1180 offers simple integration of 6LoWPAN with mesh support into any design, running Sensinode’s mature and stable 6LoWPAN mesh stack.

This platform offers a simple UART interface to the host microcontroller, and the 6LoWPAN stack can be updated using the Sensinode NanoBoot API. Over-The-Air firmware updates are supported, provided that the host microcontroller has enough memory to store the new stack image.

With our existing experience in producing a wide range of devices incorporating embedded wireless technology our engineers can take your ideas for home or other types of automation to the final product stage using Sensinode or almost any other platform.

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.

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

Home automation is an emerging field with great potential, however without the appropriate standardisation of devices it can become a minefield of incompatibilities and frustrated customers. However there’s a standard we’re excited about – Zigbee Home Automation – that is quite promising.

ZigBee Home Automation is an application profile for Networked devices for home automation use – a global standard helping to create smarter homes that enhance comfort, convenience, security and energy management in the home environment. This standard for ZigBee wireless mesh-networked home automation applications can help make every home a smarter, safer and more energy efficient environment for consumers and families.

The standard gives your customers a way to gain greater control of the functionality of their home. By offering a global standard for interoperable products you it enables the secure and reliable monitoring and control of technologies in the home environment with robust, energy-efficient and easy to install wireless networks. Almost anything can be connected, such as appliances, home entertainment, environmental control and sensing, HVAC and security systems – providing convenience and energy efficiency benefits to the resident.

Smarter homes allow consumers to save money, be more environmentally aware, feel more secure and enjoy a variety of conveniences that make homes easier and less expensive to maintain. ZigBee Home Automation supports the needs of a diverse global ecosystem of stakeholders including home owners or tenants, product manufacturers, designers and architects, offering a standard that provides a reliable, consistent way to wirelessly monitor, control and automate household appliances and technologies to create innovative, functional and liveable home environments.

Typical application areas for ZigBee Home Automation can include smart lighting, access control, temperature and environmental sensing and control, intruder detection, smoke or fire detection, automated occupancy sensing and automated lighting or appliance control. The use of wireless radio networks eliminates the cost and effort of cable installation throughout the home, whilst the ZigBee standard provides certified interoperability and global 2.4 GHz ISM spectrum allocation, allowing manufacturers to take their ZigBee-based solutions to the global market relatively easily with relatively simple installation and operation.

Devices will have a typical RF range of up to 70 meters indoors or 400 meters outdoors, offering a flexibility to cover homes of all sizes. As with all ZigBee solutions, ZigBee Home Automation systems are built on top of an open and freely available specification based on international standards and represent a highly scalable solution with the ability to potentially network thousands of devices.

The devices are easy to install, even allowing for do-it-yourself installation in most cases. Employing wireless radio networks as well as battery power in many cases means that ZigBee Home Automation devices require little or no cable installation, making them ideal for easy retrofitting to existing homes and buildings as well as remodelling and new construction. Self-organising networks with easy device discovery simplify the setup and maintenance of networks consisting of many nodes, and the proven interference avoidance mechanisms in ZigBee networks ensure worry-free operation even in environments where coexistence with other 2.4 GHz radios such as 802.11 WiFi and Bluetooth is required.

The ZigBee Home Automation standard is designed for full coexistence with 2.4 GHz IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs and Bluetooth, as with all ZigBee technologies. Thus all devices based on these standards are designed to operate effectively in the same environment as WiFi networks, employing proven interference avoidance techniques such as channel agility.

Internet connectivity to the ZigBee network allows ZigBee Home Automation devices to be controlled via the Internet from anywhere in the world, as well as allowing WiFi-connected smartphones to be used as compact, powerful control and user-interface appliances to control the network of ZigBee appliances around the home.

Furthermore the standard is secure – employing AES128 encryption and device authentication to secure personal information, prevent unauthorised control of or access to the network, and to prevent interference or unauthorised access between independent neighbouring networks.

ZigBee Home Automation devices can be used to monitor household energy use, and to turn on and off devices remotely. Since ZigBee Home Automation is a ZigBee standard, ZigBee Home Automation devices will interoperate effortlessly with other products already in consumers’ homes using other ZigBee application profiles, such as ZigBee Light Link, ZigBee Remote Control, ZigBee Smart Energy or ZigBee Building Automation.

Finally – the standard is interoperable – integrating control and monitoring devices for lighting, security, home access and home appliances, allowing the customer to select from a variety of different products to meet her needs. All ZigBee-certified products are interoperable with each other and with other ZigBee networks, regardless of their manufacturer. All certified ZigBee devices, including but not limited to ZigBee Home Automation devices, from different vendors all use the same standards and are tested and certified to be fully interoperable with each other, allowing the consumer to purchase new devices with confidence.

With our existing experience in producing a wide range of devices incorporating Zigbee-based wireless technology our engineers can take your ideas for home automation to the final product stage.

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.

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.