All posts tagged: lx

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.

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

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

Moving forward from our introduction to the Electric Imp platform, we’ll now consider how it can be integrated into existing or new designs for your commercial products. Using the Electric Imp platform can potentially simplify development complexity and the time-to-market – and doing so is a lot simpler than you can imagine.

Electric Imp integration with your design requires connecting Electric Imp’s backend with the Internet services that you want to use, such as email or Twitter notifications, existing Internet-of-Things data visualisation services like Xively, or your custom application-specific Web services or mobile apps. It also requires interfacing the 802.11b/g/n-connected Electric Imp hardware card with your hardware design.

For relatively easy integration of Internet connectivity into your existing microcontroller-based hardware design, the Electric Imp card can be used simply as a peripheral Wi-Fi gateway that is connected via serial UART to your microcontroller.

Your hardware design simply needs a host microcontroller with a spare 3.3V UART available and a 3.3V power rail with at least 400mA of available current capacity to power the card. A standard SD card socket is used for the Electric Imp, with pin 6 connected to the data line on the ATSHA204 IC which is required by Electric Imp as a unique identifier of each Electric Imp-enabled hardware device.

Note that pin 6 on the card socket must not be connected to ground as with the standard SD card pin-out, and this data line to the cryptography IC must be pulled to +3.3V with a 100k resistor.

A sufficiently large decoupling capacitor (preferably 2.2μF) must also be placed close to the card socket’s Vdd pin. With this simple hardware configuration an existing microcontroller design can be made “Imp-ready” for Internet connectivity (excluding the cost of the Electric Imp itself) at a very low cost – an additional cost of only about one dollar for the SD card socket and ATSHA204 IC in large volume.

Your existing microcontroller can exchange basic messages to and from the Electric Imp card over its serial UART, which can then send them on to the cloud. The Electric Imp IDE allows you to write server-side “agents” which make communication with the Electric Imp hardware easy. “Agent” code runs on Electric Imp’s servers and allows you to execute relatively heavy tasks such as HTTP requests, while “device” code runs on the local Electric Imp silicon.

Electric Imp easily passes messages between the agent and the device, so, for example, you can easily write agent code to allow Electric Imp to communicate with Web services targeted at the Internet of things, such as Xively, and that agent then communicates with the device.

This means, indirectly, that you have a chain of connectivity that is very easy to work with that connects your existing microcontroller to these Internet services. You can push your code down to an Internet-connected Electric Imp remotely, anywhere in the world, from Electric Imp’s web based IDE.

Manufacturers are able to push firmware updates from the cloud out to customer hardware in the field automatically – for example for bug fixes, upgrades or modifications to the APIs they use to talk to their web services.

For new designs built from scratch around Electric Imp, it may make more sense to use the power of the Electric Imp’s built-in microcontroller, and interface your sensors and actuators to the Electric Imp directly. This is likely to result in a reduction in the overall cost and complexity of your hardware system.

Thanks to Electric Imp’s cloud-based approach, your system has benefits like the ability to push firmware updates to customer’s hardware in the field, anywhere in the world, with just a few clicks. Electric Imp development doesn’t require downloading and installing an SDK, or connecting a JTAG probe to your target hardware.

You simply develop your code in Electric Imp’s browser-based IDE and it is pushed down to the Electric Imp over the Internet from Electric Imp’s servers.

For commercial use, where you’re integrating the Electric Imp into a product that you’re marketing commercially and connecting the backend to your own service via a HTTP API, you need to pay service fees to Electric Imp.

As a vendor of a commercial Electric Imp connected product, you can pre-pay for Electric Imp service for many years, or opt to be billed annually for each of your active Electric Imp devices in the field that are enabled and used by customers. This is their model for applications where your product designers are using Electric Imp technology for Internet communications – and with your own app in the Apple iTunes and/or Google Play stores, without Electric Imp branding.

The alternative is that the product designer just incorporates a card socket and ATSHA204 “CryptoAuthentication” IC into their product, which makes the product “Electric Imp Ready”. The user can then plug in their own Electric Imp card and pay a fee to use Electric Imp’s own branded service, allowing many different kinds of devices to be connected to services such as Twitter, SMS and email notifications.

Due to the ATSHA204′s unique serial number, each hardware device can be uniquely detected and thus tell the Electric Imp servers what kind of Imp-enabled device it is when the Imp is plugged into it, and the Imp can then download the appropriate firmware from the cloud for that application. This offers a very simple method of setup and firmware maintenance that can be remotely-controlled and out of the hands of the end-user.

No matter your level of technical proficiency, the Electric Imp platform offers a level of Internet-of-Things integration to match your product or design requirements. Furthermore, your new product’s time-to-market or the time to integrate Electric Imp into existing products is much smaller than existing embedded Wi-Fi solutions.

Here at the LX Group we’ve already completed a variety of products that embed the Electric Imp platform, and are 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.

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LX Group has been named as a finalist in the GIO Award for Best Small Business in the 2013 ActionCOACH My Business Awards

LX Group is pleased to announce its selection as a finalist in the GIO Award for Best Small Business category of the 2013 ActionCOACH My Business Awards. This is the 13th year that My Business Awards have been running and LX is excited to be a part of this prestigious event.

The GIO Award for Best Small Business assesses businesses on their innovation, growth, and entrepreneurial flair. Companies in this category have up to 19 employees. Based on number of employees LX just slipped in to the Small Business Category and based on current levels of growth, LX looks forward to competing next year in the Award for Best Medium Business.

The winners of this year’s My Business Awards will be announced at a gala presentation at the Marquee at The Star Casino Complex on Thursday, 19th September 2013.

Director and founder of LX, Simon Blyth said the company has been going through a strong growth phase and our focus on the business and customer development has been a major factor in this growth. “Despite the current economy LX just keeps growing. We are strong believers in making sure that no matter how busy we get that we have to spend time each week working on the business and our continuing levels of growth is a clear sign that this strategic growth strategy is working for us.

”This announcement continues a streak of several business awards noting the company’s rapid but sustainable growth, feats the company attributes to its unwavering commitment to business development, client satisfaction and the creation of different revenue streams.

–End–

Contact:
LX Group, Neala Fraser, Operations Manager,
Tel: (02) 9209 4133
Email: [email protected]

More Information:
About LX Group, visit www.lx-group.com.au

About ActionCoach My Business Awards, visit http://www.mybusiness.com.au/news/2013-actioncoach-my-business-awards-finalists-announced

Published by LX Group 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.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – 1 of 1

LX Design House has been named in the Top 10 of Anthill’s SMART 100 Awards for the QuickFire Pyrotechnics Firing System

The winners of Anthill’s SMART 100 (2013) were published on Anthill’s site on 11 June 2013. LX Design House was announced as being in the Top 10 of Anthills SMART 100 index for their design of the QuickFire Pyrotechnics Firing System, which is being developed for Elite Fireworks. LX is an electronics design house based in Sydney at the Australian Technology Park.

Anthill’s SMART 100 recognises not just innovative, and unique products, but also ranks products based on their potential to achieve consumer adoption and commercial success.

“We’re very excited to receive this prestigious award. Awards such as this, which recognise not only the innovative nature of the design but the ability for the product to be successfully commercialised really goes to the heart of what we are striving towards at LX.

We want our clients to be successful and to see their products being sold on a global scale. This affirms that our internal engineering and design standards are world class. In addition to this, we are all particularly excited for our client, Elite Fireworks, as this award really confirms what our client has been working towards for so long, recognition that their product is not just innovative but will be changing the pyrotechnics industry for many years to come” said Simon Blyth, Director and Founder of LX Group upon receiving the award.

The QuickFire Pyrotechnics Firing System is the first firing system in Australia to use ZigBee wireless mesh networking technology and can fire manually, semi-automatically or automatically, either hardwired or wirelessly. Communication between the devices is secure with encrypted data transmitted with at a frequency of 2.4 GHz DSSS and with RF transmission strategies. In addition to allowing control signals to be repeated across multiple wireless firing units, signals can be rerouted the next available firing unit instead of relying on one main transmitter. Some of the safety and continuity features include:

• an intelligent automatic show recovery function that can detect a system error and restart the controllers within three tenths of a second – and then continue, in sync with the show, and the soundtrack;

• enabling firing units to work independently from the master unit, each firing unit holding local copies of the firing instructions – eliminating firing delay and improving the reliability of the show;

• constant heartbeat monitoring and synchronisation – the wireless units remain in constant contact with the firing unit – and will re-establish communications links if this is lost, firing the next due cue, in sync with the show, and the soundtrack; and

• a dead-man switch that must be held in by the operator for a show to continue.

–End–

Contact:

LX Group, Neala Fraser, Operations Manager, Tel: (02) 9209 4133 Email: [email protected]

More Information:

About LX Group, visit www.lx-group.com.au

About Australian Anthill SMART 100 2013 Awards, visithttp://anthillonline.com/quickfire-nsw-2013-anthill-smart-100/

About QuickFire Pyrotechnics Firing System, visit http://www.quick-fire.com.au/

Published by LX Group 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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