All posts tagged: lx

Although many interested readers may have a focus on the hardware side of the Internet of Things, there is much that can be done with the data and software side as well. One interesting new and open-source solution is the Quarks framework from IBM.

Quarks is a framework for implementing and deploying edge analytics on a variety of different data streams and devices. Quarks allows you to push data analysis and machine learning out to “edge” devices in Internet-of-Things applications – for example, routers, gateways, sensors, appliances and machines at the edge of the network, rather than centralised servers.

This new system runs locally on gateways and edge devices, analysing their streams of data. This means these devices can perform analytics or make decisions based on the data they receive locally, resulting in faster responsiveness and reduced communications costs.

Quarks enables continuous streaming analytics on gateways and edge devices which can work together with centralised server-side systems to provide efficient and timely analytics across the whole network and the IoT ecosystem, from the centre out to the edge.

Performing some analysis of data at the network edge where this data is generated means that the amount of data that needs to be transmitted back to a central server is reduced, and the amount of data that needs to be stored is reduced. Quarks was developed to provide an SDK and an embeddable runtime for these kinds of streamable analytics applications on lightweight devices. It provides APIs and a lightweight runtime to allow you to build analytics for streaming data at the network-edge devices in IoT applications.

This means that Quarks enables you to process data locally – in a lightweight device such as an embedded computer in a car engine, an Android phone, or a lightweight platform such as a Raspberry Pi, for example, before data is transmitted over the network. Quarks provides modularity and a micro-kernel runtime which is resource-efficient to allow deployments on these kinds of devices with constraints in hardware resources such as memory, including only the components in the build that are needed for that specific device or application.

Quarks addresses requirements for analytics at the edge in IoT use-cases that are not addressed well by central server-based analytics solutions. Using centralised analytical tools to make interpretations and decisions from IoT data traditionally means that the data must be transmitted over a network – and this can be problematic when using systems such as long-range wireless, satellite or cellular communications where bandwidth is constrained or expensive.

Reducing server-side analytics in favour of edge-device analytics reduces the amount of data that needs to be transmitted. This decision making at the edge-node IoT device also allows for relatively fast “decision making” and control of connected devices, without waiting for communications back from the server.

Quarks uses Apache Common Math to provide simple analytics aimed at device sensors, for example windowing, aggregation and simple filtering. This local processing means that devices can react locally, offload processing from central servers, and reduce bandwidth costs.

Furthermore, Quarks applications use analytics to determine when data needs to be transmitted to a back-end system for further analysis, action or storage. For example, an IoT sensor may determine whether a system is running outside of normal parameters, such as an engine that is running too hot.

If the system is running normally, you probably don’t need to send the data to the back-end system – this means additional load, bandwidth costs, and extra storage that is needed. But if your Quarks-based analytics detect an abnormal condition, you can then decide to log that data, and send the data to the back-end system to determine why this issue is occurring and how to resolve it.

This makes the whole system much more efficient, with reduced bandwidth and reduced storage requirements, while still capturing the important data where it matters. By detecting only the abnormalities and discarding the “normal” data – you shift from sending a continuous flow of data to sending only the essential and meaningful data, locally filtering the interesting from the mundane and reducing these costs.

You can write an edge application on Quarks and connect it to a cloud-computing service such as IBM’s Watson IoT platform. Quarks can also be used for enterprise data collection and analysis, such as log collectors, application data, and data centre analytics, for example.

And Quarks can be integrated with centralised analytics systems such as IBM Streams or Apache Storm to provide edge-to-centre analytics. This means you have the best of both worlds, with the benefits of both edge-device and server-based analytics and tools for decision making.

Quarks supports connectors for MQTT, HTTP, JDBC, Apache Kafka and IBM’s Watson platform, – as well as analytics systems such as IBM Streams and IBM Bluemix streaming analytics or open-source systems such as Apache’s Spark, Storm, Flink and Samza platforms.

And the best thing is that because Quarks is open-source and highly extensible, it’s possible to add support for custom connectors and analytics applications of your choice, if the currently supported systems do not meet your needs.

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

LX is an award-winning electronics design company based in Sydney, Australia. LX services include full turnkey design, electronics, hardware, software and firmware design. LX specialises in IoT embedded systems and wireless technologies design.

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

The Third Generation Partnership (3GPP) telecommunications standard-building organisation has recently introduced the new LTE-M, or LTE for Machine-Type Communications, standard.

LTE-M is intended to allow devices that operate on LTE (Long-Term Evolution) cellular networks to be less expensive, both in terms of hardware deployment and bandwidth costs, more power efficient – and generally better suited to the requirements of Internet-of-Things and M2M applications.

With IoT and M2M communications becoming more widespread, there has been a growing need for a version of LTE that meets IoT-oriented requirements of low power consumption and low cost at relatively low data rates, and this is exactly what LTE-M aims to deliver – low power consumption (up to five years for a device running on AA batteries), easy deployment, interoperability, low overall cost, and reliable wide-area coverage.

A key advantage that LTE-M has over alternative technologies for low-power wide-area IoT networks, such as SigFox or LoRA – is that it takes advantage of the existing LTE network infrastructure with no need to deploy new hardware.

Since LTE-M is able to share spectrum with standard LTE devices, this makes it a more attractive option for most mobile network operators compared to alternative LPWA technologies. Telcos only need to upgrade the software on their towers to enable support for LTE-M, without any need for hardware upgrades, which helps to keep transition costs low.

And as LTE-M is just a physical-layer change for operators, all upper-layer cellular features such as global roaming, billing, subscription management and support services can transition seamlessly.

LTE-M is also known as “Category 0” LTE, the lowest of the LTE device bandwidth classes, with a peak speed of 1Mbps. Category 0 is specifically aimed at the requirements of typical IoT and telemetry applications which require low cost and low power consumption, but not large amounts of bandwidth.

As well as reductions in power consumption and hardware cost in these more bandwidth-constrained devices, coverage range and reliability is improved, which is another desirable factor in the IoT market where devices may be used in remote areas on the edge of a network cell. All these improvements, in hardware cost, network coverage and power efficiency, are important to ensure that IoT and M2M applications can be cost-effectively deployed on LTE mobile networks.

These changes are becoming more important as telecommunications network operators look to shut down obsolete 2G GSM – and even 3G, in some cases – network infrastructure. In Australia for example, Telstra has announced plans to have its 2G GSM infrastructure shut down by the end of 2016 – and although this is not a concern for typical consumer voice and data services it is potentially a real problem for some embedded IoT and machine-to-machine infrastructure where 2G modems are used on Telstra’s network.

A practical transition for these systems needs to be available soon, and it needs to be cost-effective and as simple as possible.

Although the standards that define Category 0 LTE-M devices are still a year or two away from widespread use, Category 1 LTE devices are deployable now, and these are viable for many M2M applications.

For example, Sequans has introduced a Category 1 LTE chipset solution named Calliope that is available now and is specifically aimed at the needs of low-cost M2M applications. LTE Category 1, at speeds of up to 10 Mbps, has been part of the 3GPP’s LTE specifications since the earliest days, which means that LTE network operators can support Category 1 devices without any need for network upgrades.

Category 1, and later Category 0, devices provide significant cost and power reductions compared to higher-bandwidth Category 4 or higher LTE devices, but they maintain seamless coexistence with regular LTE networks.

Category 1 LTE chipset solutions like Calliope offer engineers a basis for transitioning their cellular IoT/M2M designs which is available today and is sufficiently low-cost to remain competitive with existing 2G and 3G solutions while still providing all the performance, cost and longevity advantages of LTE connectivity.

Allowing devices that don’t require high throughput, like most M2M/IoT devices, to only access the limited class of bandwidth that they need allows cellular networks to be managed more efficiently, which is another advantage of using these low-bandwidth LTE device classes for IoT applications.

LTE-M includes mechanisms that give service providers the option of designating LTE-M IoT traffic as lower-priority than voice or video traffic from higher-revenue subscribers. This capability benefits both high-bandwidth Internet users and low-bandwidth IoT users as well as the telcos themselves.

Network operators reduce costs by using a single network for latency-tolerant IoT traffic and higher-bandwidth real-time services, while also avoiding the need to carve out spectrum for IoT markets that may take some time to grow in revenue. High-bandwidth users get more reliable services and IoT users get lower-cost subscription options that cost-effectively provide the amount of data and bandwidth they need.

Overall the upcoming LTE-M specification offers a win-win for both network operators and end users’ hardware and Internet-of-Things devices. And here at the LX Group we have end-to-end experience and demonstrated results in the entire process of IoT product development, and we’re ready to help bring your existing or new product ideas to life. Getting started is easy – click here to contact us, telephone 1800 810 124, or just keep in the loop by connecting here.

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

In order to continue maintaining wireless standards to meet contemporary and future needs – the Wi-Fi Alliance has announced Wi-Fi HaLow, the Alliance’s branding for their work developing and promoting wireless networking solutions based on the IEEE 802.11ah standard.

The IEEE 802.11ah standard is a new extension of the very popular and widespread IEEE 802.11-2007 wireless networking standard, providing a new physical layer and MAC layer specification for Wi-Fi networks that can operate in the sub-gigahertz bands at around 900 MHz.

Because of the different propagation characteristics of radio waves at this frequency, this change significantly extends the range of existing Wi-Fi networks that currently operate in the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz bands, and allows the radio to propagate through walls and obstructions much more effectively. This allows homes and buildings to be comprehensively covered with reliable Wi-Fi connectivity without using a large number of access points, with a probable need for only one access point per building for seamless, reliable coverage even in large buildings.

Having reliable wireless networking connectivity across a whole home or building with minimal infrastructure is particularly attractive for Internet-of-Things, home automation or building management applications, and these IoT applications are the main application area that 802.11ah networks are aimed at enabling. Wi-Fi HaLow opens up new use-cases for Wi-Fi, such as home automation, smart energy networks, wearables, consumer electronics, low-power sensors, and what the Wi-Fi Alliance refers to as the “Internet of Everything”.

IEEE 802.11ah has rebuilt and optimised the physical layer and the MAC layer from the ground up, although the higher network layers remain more consistent with existing versions of the 802.11 standards.

These changes provide extended range, strong improvements in power efficiency, more scalable operation, and an enhanced link budget compared to 2.4 GHz systems. At the same time, however, 802.11ah aims to leverage the established Wi-Fi and IP networking ecosystem where possible, for easy configuration, easy pairing to access points or mobile devices, and connectivity into existing networks and the Internet.

802.11ah supports 4, 8 or 16 MHz of bandwidth, allowing higher data rates depending on the allocated spectrum that is available in different regions, with the low-bandwidth 1 MHz and 2 MHz modes being mandatory and globally interoperable for all devices where this lower bandwidth is realistic. For example, 26 MHz is available in the 900 MHz band in the United States, making these higher-bandwidth modes accessible.

The standard aims to offer a minimum of 150 kbps of throughput with 1 MHz of bandwidth used, or as much as 40 Mbps with 8 MHz of bandwidth. This is obviously less than what we expect from traditional Wi-Fi networks, but the favourable combination of moderate bandwidth, moderately low power consumption and long-range propagation make 802.11ah an attractive competitor with other technologies such as IEEE 802.15.4/6LoWPAN in building automation and IoT applications.

These lower-bandwidth nodes are well suited to low-cost battery operated sensor devices in IoT applications, where a relatively low data rate is required. No power amplifier is required for “home scale” transmission distances, and the minimum data rate of 150 kbps means that IoT sensors transmitting short, lightweight messages can remain in a sleep state most of the time – and wake up for a short period to transmit a burst of sensor data, lowering average power consumption and offering maximum battery life.

Average power consumption in this type of application is also reduced by using more efficient protocols at the MAC layer, such as smaller frame formats, sensor traffic priority, and beaconless paging mode. The MAC is also optimised to scale to thousands of nodes by using efficient paging and scheduled transmissions.

As with existing 802.11 Wi-Fi devices, the work of the IEEE and the Wi-Fi alliance ensures that 802.11ah devices will be interoperable across all the different hardware vendors, with a strong open standardisation process that brings in participation from many industry representatives and stakeholders.

With its focus on embedded and IoT applications such as home automation, 802.11ah is not intended as a general-purpose high-speed wireless networking solution for the home or office. It is likely to deliver significantly reduced speeds compared to familiar 802.11 networks, with speeds in the low tens of megabits per second. This is perfectly sufficient for the typical kinds of intended applications with an IoT focus, however.

The 802.11ah standard is intended to be an attractive competitor to Bluetooth in IoT and consumer electronics applications, offering longer communications range than either Bluetooth or existing Wi-Fi, but with a significantly reduced power consumption compared to familiar 802.11 Wi-Fi solutions on the market at present.

As this technology becomes more available in the market, it’s likely that it will begin to supplant Bluetooth in certain consumer electronics applications, as well as supplanting other wireless standards such as existing Wi-Fi and 802.15.4 networks in the Internet-of-Things domain where relatively long-range communication with a large number of low-bandwidth devices is required.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This year the M2M (Machine to Machine) market has exploded with the introduction for various low-power systems, and this includes Taggle Systems’ “Taggle” technology – a low-power, wide-area (LWPA) radio network technology which offers low-cost, power-efficient machine-to-machine communications for embedded systems across a very long range, for many kinds of sensors and applications in different sectors such as utility management and agriculture.

The team behind Taggle identified a gap in the M2M connectivity market which was not being addressed by existing, popular wireless connectivity technologies such as 802.15.4 and WiFi, which is low-power, wide-area networking with small amounts of data, with low bandwidth at a low cost, with minimal deployment of expensive infrastructure.

In many situations it is advantageous to send small amounts of data from field sensors over long distances, and Taggle’s energy-efficient, long-range wireless connectivity operating in the 900 MHz ISM spectrum helps to achieve this.

Today, Taggle is deploying its network of transmitters and receivers all over the country, becoming Australia’s first dedicated M2M network. Using their new technology, Taggle is deploying Australia’s only dedicated machine-to-machine telemetry network, enabling the cost-effective collection of data from thousands of Taggle-enabled devices in networks up to the scale of entire cities.

The Taggle network is made up of both transmitters and base station receivers. Taggle transmitters are commonly integrated into sensor or control devices in the field. For example, Taggle’s Automated Meter Reading (AMR) systems can be retrofitted to common water meters to read water consumption and broadcast the data back at one-hour intervals, for use by the water utility, local government and the individual consumer.

These AMR assemblies for water meters are a typical example of a device built around a Taggle transmitter. The transmitter offers low cost and strong energy efficiency, with the ability to transmit a small data packet once per hour for over ten years without replacement of its internal lithium battery.

Each transmitter module is equipped with four general-purpose I/O ports, making it possible to adapt to different kinds of sensors and applications. These sensor network “tags” are very compact and lightweight, and are able to tolerate the environmental conditions found outdoors in most field installations.

Each base station receiver is able to concurrently process hourly data from thousands of Taggle devices. The high receiver sensitivity of -130dBm means that each base station can receive data from tags up to several kilometres away, depending on local conditions. This strong link budget helps to reduce the number of base stations needed for Taggle connectivity across a wide geographic area, keeping the total system cost to a minimum.

With an initial focus on utility-scale Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) networks for water distribution, Taggle technology is already being used by a number of local councils and water utilities across Australia to gather water use data – which is not only useful for billing but also for leak detection, demand management, network optimisation and planning for future growth. It provides very fine-grained water use data on an hourly basis, as well as removing the need to manually take meter readings.

Taggle’s network offers two major areas of use. The first is data acquisition, where small amounts of data can be collected from a very large number of sensors across a wide geographical area. The second valuable use-case is the location of objects within the area covered by the Taggle network.

Data can be collected from all sorts of sensors and devices and transmitted back to the Taggle network. Taggle’s wireless data acquisition hardware can collect data from electricity, gas and flow meters, rain gauges, and a range of other sensors such as pressure monitoring, sewer overflow, temperature, humidity or soil moisture sensors.

Once data has been collected it is processed by Taggle to produce data feeds for end users. These data feeds, which can be formatted to help meet individual users’ requirements, can be sent by email, secure FTP or web services to be integrated with the users’ chosen database or software interface.

Taggle’s radio network is also very cost effective for the sub-metering of utilities in large buildings such as high-rise apartments. Taggle technology allows a water meter, for example, to be installed for each individual user at low cost, allowing for individual billing. With all the data transmitted wirelessly back to the receiver, there is no need for labour-intensive meter reading.

In areas covered by three or more Taggle receivers, the locations of items fitted with Taggle transmitters can also be triangulated to within a few meters. With each Taggle receiver able to handle communications with thousands of tags concurrently, over distances of kilometres – this application of Taggle’s sensor network technology is very attractive in areas such as monitoring the movement of livestock, high-value goods in warehouses and more.

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 Device Connection Platform from Ericsson is a cloud service for machine-to-machine and Internet-of-Things applications, which is specifically aimed at enabling telecommunications network operators to offer connectivity management to their business customers in the IoT/M2M sector.

This new platform enables mobile network operators to provide support services for a growing variety of IoT and M2M devices, as well as simplifying the process of large-scale IoT network deployment and reducing costs. Ericsson has recently acquired this M2M platform from Telenor Connexion, in an effort to build their technology and know-how in this growing sector. Telenor Connexion will become Ericsson’s first customer for the Device Connection Platform.

Ericsson’s DCP is a dedicated M2M/IoT platform aimed at enterprise IoT users that handles connectivity management, subscription management and integration with Operations Support and Business Support Systems. It also allows for automation of business processes between mobile operators and business enterprises.

The platform is sold as a cloud service, offering users the traditional cloud benefits of a low initial investment and a fast rollout – that can significantly reduce barriers to deployment of IoT/M2M solutions by cellular network operators and their customers, keeping the total cost of ownership down while maximising quality of service.

Ericsson’s platform supports network operators who are expanding their M2M and IoT business sectors by assisting with connectivity management across the whole device lifecycle, as well as assisting with the marketing of DCP-based services. Furthermore, the platform provides valuable functions such as subscription management, device management, and self-service Web-based administration portals for both operators and enterprise users. Ericsson’s offering is comprised of the basic Platform-as-a-Service functionality along with service portals and APIs for users.

By offering a range of APIs, Ericsson allows enterprise customers to integrate their back-end systems and processes with this M2M platform – allowing these back-end systems to access the data and capabilities of M2M/IoT networks.

Through a service portal, available at any time from anywhere, customers can access self-service functionality to manage and control their installed SIM cards, monitor operational status in real time, access analytics data, and perform other management functions.

Ericsson’s platform aims to make it more viable for device manufacturers, enterprises and service providers to deploy large Internet-of-Things solutions across geographical boundaries, and has already been implemented by some telecom providers abroad such as Orange, TeliaSonera and Bell Canada.

Multinational enterprises offering connected M2M/IoT services and devices to an international customer base are faced with a key challenge – how to provide an easily managed and seamless IoT solution for end users as they move between different providers and different mobile networks.

The fragmentation of mobile networks between different countries and different carriers is a major obstacle to global M2M deployments. However with Ericsson’s platform – the goal is for operators and their customers to enjoy a unified experience in large-scale mobile IoT deployments, including global use of a single SIM card, harmonised service levels and harmonised business processes, across multiple countries and multiple network operators.

Ericsson, together with the Global M2M Association – a cooperative effort between six international tier-one operators active in the M2M telecommunications market, have showcased their new Multi-Domestic Service at Mobile World Congress 2015.

The Multi-Domestic Service aims to address this issue of network fragmentation across different carriers and countries by delivering a single, consolidated M2M/IoT management platform, based on Ericsson’s Device Connection Platform. Three of the Global M2M Association’s members (Orange, Telia and Bell) have already started using the Device Connection Platform individually.

Orange Business Services have also recently announced that they have entered into a strategic agreement with Ericsson to use the Device Connectivity Platform. As with Ericsson’s other partners for this platform, their goal is to better serve the growing global M2M market and to respond to the need for multi-domestic connectivity with seamless user experience across different carrier networks in many countries.

As well as the cross-border mobile IoT efforts of the Global M2M association, the Device Connection Platform is also going to be adopted to support connectivity, security and device management by members of the Asia-centric Bridge Alliance of mobile carriers.

The Bridge Alliance aims to use the Device Connectivity Platform to lower the barriers to entry into IoT services for device OEMs and service providers across 36 different countries that are covered by the member companies in the alliance, with the goal of common end-user experience and back-end management.

Furthermore, the Bridge Alliance hopes to remove the need for complicated deals that businesses would otherwise have to negotiate with national telecommunications network carriers in each country they’re operating in, and enable them to create multi-national platforms and processes to support IoT services and devices that can seamlessly “roam” internationally and between different operators.

Considering the effort Ericsson has expended into the platform, along with the efforts of the Global M2M association – this new platform could be the solution to your M2M and IoT device needs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Lightweight Machine-to-Machine Enabler (LWM2M) is a new standard for the management of devices in machine-to-machine and Internet-of-Things applications. LWM2M is particularly aimed at resource-constrained end-node devices in applications such as Wireless Sensor Networks as well as Machine-to-Machine applications where bandwidth is constrained – for example where cellular connectivity is used to network remote devices.

Many devices in the growing industrial and commercial M2M and Internet-of-Things markets require some device management – devices need to be remotely switched on and off, woken up and put to sleep, sent remote requests for sensor data transmission, configured, provisioned, or remotely updated with new firmware.

In short, these devices call for protocols and services to effectively support them with device management, service enablement and application management. The design goal of LWM2M was to create a mechanism that is not only suitable for relatively powerful devices like smartphones or Wi-Fi routers, but also caters to the needs of more constrained devices – end-node IoT devices with low-cost hardware, with very limited memory or CPU capability, or devices that run off batteries with very low power budgets.

LWM2M is being developed by the Open Mobile Alliance – a collaboration of many companies working in the M2M service provider, software, hardware and system vendor space. For example ARM and Sensinode are just a couple of the companies involved in the Alliance.

As LWM2M is built on top of open standards defined by groups such as the Internet Engineering Task Force, it allows for interoperability between different devices and manufacturers, avoiding lock-in to proprietary standards.

For example, the LWM2M protocol stack is built on top of the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP), which is an open IETF standard, as the underlying transfer protocol that is carried over UDP or SMS. CoAP is optimised for communications in resource-constrained or bandwidth-constrained network environments, which makes it well suited to Internet-of-Things applications, enabling the use of low-cost microcontrollers in prolific network-connected devices.

The decoupling of machine-to-machine products from their proprietary, vendor-specific management systems through the adoption of open interfaces and open standards can, theoretically at least, also accelerate innovation in the M2M/IoT markets both on the device side and on the server side.

In essence, LWM2M is a communications protocol running between LWM2M software clients running on all sorts of embedded end-node devices and LWM2M servers running on the M2M management platforms for these devices. The LWM2M protocol includes robust security of all communications between the client and the server using Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS), which provides a secure channel between the LWM2M client and the server for all messages interchanged.

The DTLS security modes supported by LWM2M include both pre-shared-key and public-key modes, providing support for robust security across both more capable embedded devices as well as very resource-constrained devices where public-key authentication is not practical.

LWM2M supports UDP binding with both CoAP and SMS, meaning that communication between the LWM2M server and the client can happen over SMS or CoAP, and low-cost basic cellular modems that can communicate over SMS without Internet connectivity can be used to build LWM2M networks.

This also means that LWM2M-equipped networks can be deployed almost anywhere in the field, without the need for modern Internet-capable telco mobile network infrastructure – the network only needs to be able to support SMS messaging.

LWM2M provides an extensible object model that enables application data exchanges in addition to the core device management features such as firmware updates and connectivity monitoring.

A RESTful style of architecture is applied to this, where the items to be managed on a remote device are considered “resources”. Uniform Resource Identifiers, or URIs addresses these resources on the network, which are much like the familiar URLs used on the Web.

Built-in resource discovery is supported using the CoRE Link Format standard, making the discovery of new resources on the network relatively easy. Related resources are grouped together into Objects, and this helps to cut down on processing overhead as the M2M client and the server on the platform side have a common understanding of what a certain resource actually is, by understanding the properties of an object that it is a part of – for example the manufacturer’s name, the type of network the device is currently connected to, the signal strengths of the cellular connection it uses, or other relevant properties.

Though the LWM2M specification comes with a set of predefined objects and resources, the set of objects is extensible. This means that other organisations and users can define new objects that are most suitable for their products and services in their particular corners of the M2M market.

The Open Mobile Alliance provides their LWM2M DevKit in the form of an add-on plugin for the Mozilla Firefox Web browser, which is an implementation of the Lightweight M2M protocol, which enables you to directly interact with a LWM2M server from the Web browser on your PC.

This allows developers and users to easily get started, to interactively explore and comprehend this new protocol for machine-to-machine communication.

However if you are interested in upgrading existing products or developing new M2M-capable devices that could benefit from this new lightweight M2M initiative, getting started is easy. 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 – 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.