5 challenges of IoT connectivity

At last month’s MIT Technology Review Digital Summit, PubNub CEO Todd Greene discussed the importance of connecting Internet of Things embedded devices on a reliable and secure realtime network. CPU, battery, and bandwidth consumption, as well as security are all paramount considerations that need to be taken into account when connecting low-powered embedded devices.

You’ll find that when developing and networking Internet of Things devices in the lab, connectivity is fairly seamless. You may have a few embedded devices connected to a backend server, so latency isn’t an issue.

However, deploying that IoT app on a global scale, to thousands or even millions of users simultaneously, is a whole other ball game. Unfortunately, the Internet isn’t just one big network, but rather is composed of an infinite amount of heterogeneous networks, including proxy servers, firewalls, cell towers, and WiFi networks, all slower and faster than one another.

As a result, there are 5 major challenges when it comes to Internet of Things connectivity. Keep scrolling down to see them, or watch the video below:

At PubNub, we think a lot about IoT connectivity and how we can make it as reliable, secure, and fast as possible. So to make PubNub the best network for connecting and signaling between Internet of Things devices, we first had to understand the challenges of doing so. Presenting the 5 challenges of IoT connectivity:

1. Signaling

When connecting IoT embedded devices, you need to start with bidirectional signaling to collect and route data between devices. Whether it’s embedded devices talking to a server to collect data, or devices signaling one another, you need to stream IoT signals and data quickly and reliably. You need to be 100% sure that that stream of data or signal is going to arrive at its destination every time.

2. Security

Security is a huge umbrella, but it’s paramount in Internet of Things connectivity and should be forethought, not an afterthought. For example, what good is a smart home if anyone can open your garage door? Here are three considerations for IoT security:

• Authorization: When publishing or subscribing to stream of data or IoT signal, it’s essential to make sure that the IoT device or server has proper authorization to send or receive that stream of data.
• Encryption: You need end-to-end encryption between devices and servers.
• Open ports: An IoT device is dangerously vulnerable when it’s sitting and listening to an open port out to the Internet. You need birectional communication, but you don’t want to have open ports out to the Internet.

3. Presence Detection

Who’s there, (or in terms of IoT, what device is there)? It’s important to immediately know when an IoT device drops off the network and goes offline. And when that device comes back online, you need to know that as well.

Presence detection of IoT devices gives an exact, up to the second state of all devices on a network. This gives you the ability to monitor your IoT devices and fix any problems that may arise with your network.

4. Power consumption

IoT embedded devices are small and expensive, so CPU and power consumption need to be considered. When you have hundreds or even thousands of devices sending data and signaling one another, it takes a toll on power and CPU consumption. You need to maximize efficiency while minimizing power and CPU drain.

5. Bandwidth

In addition to power and CPU, bandwidth consumption is another challenge for IoT connectivity. Bandwidth on a cellular network is expensive, especially with hundreds of thousands of IoT devices on a network sending request/response signals to your server.

That’s a huge server issue and a requires a large scale server farm handling all this data. You need a lightweight network that can seamlessly transfer data between devices and servers.

Connecting IoT Devices with PubNub

Connecting devices in the lab is one thing, but once they’re out in the wild, it’s a whole new ballgame. So where do you start? Having a scalable IoT network to connect embedded devices and servers is especially critical for IoT applications with a large user base.

These are the types of Internet of Things challenges we’ve solved at PubNub. With over two hundred million connected devices connected to our global realtime network in fourteen data centers, we average 50 to 60 thousand transactions per second, peaking at over 3 million. PubNub is used to stream data and signal for hundreds of different IoT uses cases including:

• Automotive: Connected cars need a realtime communication layer to stream data and signal between their fleet, dispatch, and the consumer on the app. Examples: Sidecar, Lyft, Easy Taxi, Gett, Zoomy
• Home Automation: A realtime network can be used to signal and trigger actions for smart devices and home automation solutions. Examples: Insteon, Revolv, Vivint
• Wearables: IoT wearables require a low latent, lightweight network to stream data between the device and a server. Battery, CPU, and bandwidth consumption are all important considerations that must be taken into account. Examples: 3rd Eye

By 2020, it’s estimated that there will be between 20 and 30 billion connected devices on the Earth. As a result, how we connect those devices should take precedence as the IoT field grows exponentially.

The Microcosm of IoT and connected cars in Formula 1 (Part 1)

Aerodynamics has always been a primary factor in decision-making and competitiveness in motor sports. For a racer, understanding the car platforms racing characteristics helps tune a competitive racing plan, yielding the advantages and disadvantages to the competitive car. The racer delivers the maximum window of opportunity to gain advantage in a fierce duel [passing], managing wheel tactics, or sharpening telemetry to aggressive drive fitted to the contours of each unique track characteristics.

Source: Yas Marina Circuit Abu Dhabi

The cutting-edge, technology-showcase-of-sports scene found in Formula 1 has dubbed the apex-racing category for motor sports. Inside the renowned world of Formula 1, this motor sport generates worldwide acclaim and accolade for their engineering prowess and technical astute packaged into these aggressively fast-engineered machines. Smartly made machines — but dependent — not to mention keen athletic training and talents bestowed in these rare class of trim, zippy, and binocular vision drivers.

Source: Red Bull Racing Forum

It’s really a wrestle between man and machine. Though, a racer learns early on not to wrestle with the machine, he loses time. Instead, it’s a careful calculative balance of split decisions and engineering, combined with whim. Cut slices toward the fractions of time — take on technology — trigger the right moments to enhance split second timing and on-demand performance. Accumulate these gains over the duration of the race. Enhance these car-passing opportunities with certain speed and handling enhancing technology.

Source: Formula 1 Mclaren Racing

Looking across the grid, there is talent laden in all areas and discipline found across each team, coupled with engineers from all categories including aerodynamic specialist to embedded designers and systems engineers. Quite arguably, some even conjure the idea that the top performers in Formula 1 are overweighed by the countless engineering feats and advantage any team may have between each other. Ideally, it’s really a competitive game of the team’s engineering diligence and driver configuration cleverness that brings about the result of any race (70-80 laps) to the finish. Like in many sports these days, there’s technology all intertwined and designed to ensure maximum results and increase the capacity for performance, achieve the end goal.

In fact, drawn forth purely by engineering or design perspective, one can find parallels to how the Spitfire engines helped win the battle of Britain when the successor aspirating Rolls Royce dual supercharged engines had stronger performance at high altitudes as well as inclined accent and descent during the Battle of Britain where the air defense weighed the tipping point to the turnout of the war countering swarms of ME109s in this western theatre. In every aspect of Formula 1, there is a lot of computing involved. The computing casts are inter-dependent—serve different purposes—but also combined in a beautiful orchestration of “man-machine-driver-media-fans.”

On the one hand, there’s the horsepower required to compute different airspeed dynamics and telemetry over the car’s form, while on the other hand there are massive parallel computing used to analyze the streams of data transmitted by the cars in real time. No doubt, look no further, Formula 1 is thrives with tech and talent, ranging from electronics, electric motors, gas, passion, and atheletic know-how… Even to the point of real-time broadcast, there are the vast amounts of profiled data and video selectively transmitted to individual, teams, and media [airlifted via special 747s from race to race].

MCUs and MPUs help process, decide on game changing speed

Well, let’s fast forward through the world of the F-A-S-T and furious Formula 1. Not only in the motor racing sports, but automotive industry is captivating a growing share of embedded (electronic) devices encompassing a wide range of localized computing, sensors, actuators, and connected devices for telemetry. The sensors streamline real-time—in the case of Formula 1, data to the team’s pit crew garage—transmit to the computer/remote computer—which in turn is primarily based on the received data managed by mechanical or digital processes through actuators. In today’s market, more newly unveiled cars are moving closer to adopting electronic and connected capabilities; ranging from self parking, guidance sensors, auto radar, advance collision avoidance, hybrid powertrain (ERS), advance assisted drive, telemetry reporting, navigation, emergency, recharging, HUDs, brake by wire, skid control, safety, KERS, instant power assist systems, electric drive system, electronic shifters, air induction, turbo, ABS, etc… In fact, many of these are originally given birth in race engineering, evolved out from these pinnacle circuits to mainstream consumer application and vehicle platforms.

The concept of actuators and their influence in IoT nodes

In the embedded world, actuators are like sensors. An actuator is the mechanism, a control system that acts upon an environment. The control system can be simple, a fixed mechanical or electronic system, software-based (e.g. a 3D printer driver, robot control system, security system, electric [EV] motors, manufacturing line automation, medical linear applications), a human, or any other input. Now, let’s think of them in the language of Industrial Internet or Internet of Things — actuators can be digital — labeled as presence sensors, augmented HMI sensors, or filter reality sensors measuring certain keynotes to the external world (accelerometers, magnetometers, gravimeters, gyroscope, tilt, environment, force, thermal, chemical, gases, flow, gravimeter, etc). The computer has become an essential part of the modern car, which certainly makes a huge improvement, but it also requires trained personnel for their service. Of course, this is all coming along now with the next era of the connected car as things move closer to this reality. Let’s consider how we got there: historically to cars today to cars tomorrow — where could we possibly go?

Can the typical family car be perceived as a transformative vehicle platform?

It’s all driving this direction. Very soon, the connected car may very well be the most advance platform for any household.  The connected car is a highly efficient vehicle platform, connected to the grid and cloud, while also acting as an energy generating platform, as discussed by James O’Brien. “An industry standard for cars will do the same for autos as the USB cable has done for the computer world,” claims Jake Sigal, CEO at Livio, a company acquired by Ford Motors to help position the automobile platform to facilitate the connected car. Even now, there is much anticipation and support from Formula 1 drivers voicing their support for the connected car. Formula 1 drivers Nico Rosberg, Giedo van der Garde, Timo Glock and Jérôme d’Ambrosio offer their support for connected car technologies. They call it eCall and eco-driving. This common camaraderie demands maturation of this automotive trajectory supports alignment of safe, efficient and connected mobility.

Source: FIA Region @Vimeo Formula One drivers voice support for the connected car

Automotive computing is different. The embedded systems themselves must be adequately protected from extreme vibrations, energy, dust, heat, water, ice, and moisture (all types). Hence, they are truly different inheriting environments that are not even close to the typical personal computer. Embedded computing devices built into the cars must be technologically advanced at high levels and tough standards. Still there are more sophisticated ways to use embedded devices in the car. This sophistication is most evident in the design and construction of racing cars, most notably witnessed in Formula 1…

(Continued in Part 2)

IoT’s 7th layer will facilitate scaling and real-time

The spurring growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) has taken rise in business, with a number of startups stemming from the software alley, Maker Movement and crowdfunded space already contributing to the industry. Within idea making and product baking, various origins ferment the constant demand for transparency and community. This reveals strong elements of Conway’s law.

The Internet of Things cannot evolve into what everyone expects it should without the larger open source component. Let’s go back and take a look at Conway’s law.  In perspective of both systems of the individual and organization, we are trying to create and the organization also creates it. Interoperability, integrations and the ability to share across communities hold the vital keys in the system.

An organization looking to build into IoT will need to help mature an open development organization, where we all have the ability to participate in the decisions, code, wiring, funding, and the ramp up of the work. By removing the attachment of intellectual property and changing the dynamics of the development team helps to keep things engaged and promotes the resolve attained by larger communities in moving forward and solving problems.

Partnerships across the breadth of business and enterprise will eventually surface the need to have wider and more comprehensive APIs; these APIs are agile and act as the seamless building blocks for sharing of data and bridging the real-time events into the symphony of various different devices, which can integrate easily into enterprise solutions. The API is the building block and cementing agent for innovative uses of connected devices — the Internet of Things.

For example, partnerships between two companies can quickly enable the creation of smart energy service, opening up opportunities to integrate energy appliances combined with data analytics showing home heating and air conditioning as well as consumer usage. An output like this not only creates added value chain, but also helps unify the customer-centric view for businesses wanting to grow closer with their customers, allowing them choices in their activity and usage.

The connected home market ― even connected consumer devices to energy harvesting ― will all require partnerships between companies, enabling them to deliver a smart energy service that integrates energy devices and appliances with data analytics around air conditioning and home heating systems designed for a device-agnostic platform. The partnership allows pools of expertise (enterprises, startups, or newly-established IoT services) to draw upon energy efficiency algorithms to enhance customers’ home energy use and automation.

Partnerships have already been used to spark and create new services for U.S. households. A growing number of sensors are emerging into the marketplace as well as threading these aggregate sensor results to end-to-end to products/solutions.

As previously seen on Bits & Pieces, we talk about PubNub. This is a service that is already widely used, distributing traffic to 200 million real-time IoT devices across 14 data centers worldwide, serving 3 millon messages a second all within a ¼ second in latency. That’s close to global real-time one can get with that many tenets/nodes on the cloud. In shear numbers, there are well over 1000s of apps leveraging this solution. In fact, this company has really got big plans for the Internet of Things, as it’s already powering thousands of real-time apps streaming 3 million messages per second to over 100 million devices each month. For example, just take some of their notable customers who are already using their services and technology to scale real-time applications and devices onto their own domain expertise solutions.

App developers like CBS Outdoor and Coca-Cola are using these integrations with real-time data aggregation transmitted by the sensors to produce some really powerful results. CBS Outdoor integrates sensors on embedded controllers to sync content on real-life digital billboards with online web displays using PubNub. Another IoT integration is found with Coca-Cola enabling friends to chat and annotate live video in real-time on the red carpet at the American Music Awards. The beverage giant has also introduced live voting (“You Decide the Ending”) and IoT experience synchronization using PubNub during their Cokechase.com campaign.

As demonstrated by both Coca-Cola and CBS Outdoor, companies are using/scaling this real-time device connectivity across their services. With their availability of an SDK kits for both Arduino (AVR-based Microcontrollers) and Rasberry Pi, Pubnub is quickly on their way to establishing a hook into the Maker Movement; a class of hackers, crowdfunded makers, creative tinkers, and app coders who can wield the power of this API to help take their ideas from prototype to a product.

This is all done with open code and idea contribution, building a collective number of APIs.

APIs are core to the expansion of IoT. What an inventor needs are the following:

1. A standard protocol (ie. Restful, CoApp, MQTT, etc)
2. A set of variables with enough data points to create a sophisticated algorithm that maximizes efficiency or augments information or experience
3. Arduino SDK (Development and Coding into AVR based Microcontrollers)

Pubnub is enabling their customers to rapidly develop, more importantly, scale real-time applications. Explore solutions to some of these examples they offer ranging from (1) challenges for IoT building, (2) building real-time dashboards to connected devices, (3) bridging devices across networks from lan to wan, (4) connecting the car, and (5) home automation.

Interested in learning more about the Arduino SDK kit? Please visit the PubNub Developer site and then get to IoT exploring. Get ready to jump start the rapid building and connecting of devices for the Internet of Things.

Drones!

So my buddy Andy Aronson over at honored competitor Texas Instruments mentioned he has a photographer buddy in Australia (check out his pic above) that just bought a new HD camera drone. No footage from it yet, the fellow is still sussing it out.

Andy also sent me a link to a video honoring my dear departed mentor Bob Pease. It must be drone season since that video had an advertisement for yet another HD camera drone, but one not yet in production. They had a video of the commercial as well.

I sent the link to a bunch of friends, noting that Arthur Clarke said “A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” but magic only sells when narcissists can use it for selfies. I also wondered if you had to have the fighter-pilot vision and reflexes of my buddy Bob Dible, who is an RC model racer champion in order to fly them. I guess so. My crack protege Francis Lau wrote back, noting:

My buddy got one and was showing if off to a few friends. He launched it and flew it straight up about 30 meters. It then promptly lost the GPS lock and started tilting forward towards the river. Controls were lost too and it was on its own in a trajectory towards the river. It wasn’t smart enough to just stay still if it lost connection. Alas, it was a short 30 seconds in the air before it hit the side pier wall of a house next to the river. It fell in and the quadcopter was lost forever. At least the thing was a freebie for my friend.

This was the model:

http://www.gizmag.com/dji-phantom-quadcopter/25672/

I’ve heard other stories of similar nature where the control isn’t very good and needs some work. Thousands lost and the promise of having an easy to fly drone not met.

Well the drone website says it will “…land automatically,” and I guess it did. So yeah, before you drop acid and take your new drone to the beach, you might want to work on your RC skills a bit, and make sure you know the limitations of the craft you just spend a few thousand bucks on. Otherwise what starts out like a Pepsi commercial might end up like a Greek tragedy.

Send your hearts fluttering with an ARM-powered wireless platform

A talented Maker by the name of Taylor Alexander, co-founder of Flutter Wireless, has recently gained a large amount of support for the company’s innovative wireless electronics development platform based on Arduino.

No novice to DIY, Taylor has spent a life of hacking, making and transfiguring things to have them do all sorts of different actions than these electronics were originally made to do. At the early age of five, he would break things down and rebuild them to create something entirely different — taking parts from old cameras, stereos and other electronic components, then transforming them into electric cars. From early on, it was evident Taylor was an innovator in the ‘making.’ Now, as everyone has witnessed, there are crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter, a startup incubator platform where individuals like Taylor and his co-founders can create value from their extraordinary talents and early fundamental interest.

Not only has Kickstarter offered a new way of doing things, but the platform is reshaping the business and creation cycle for people with talents in technical and creativity. The site has enabled people to get financing, allowing inventors to obtain the investment needed much faster at the early stage of incubation and product development. This money can then be better used to scale faster and prove its concepts early on via social acceptance and crowdfunding with the merits of community and validation.

The powers of the Maker Movement — a fabulous combination of getting the media, bloggers and influencers onboard, riding pre-existing trends, thinking outside the box, conducting frequent demonstrations, all while responding to the ideas and wants of the community. Arguably the most important aspect of the DIY revolution is the validation and acceptance of the community wanting to endorse and witness an idea come to fruition. At an individual level, it’s an exciting and opportunistic time for an inventor or anyone looking to contribute to the landscape of technology or where it is going. These are some of the most compelling reasons as to why Flutter Wireless is able to prove innovative ground, validate their product ideas and infuse the necessary capital to promote more success across communities. As in its Kickstarter’s illustration, the wireless electronics development platform can be communicated from of a large 3,200 ft (1km) usable range. It is packaged with a powerful Atmel ARM-based SAM3S processor, coupled with integrated encryption using Atmel’s ATSHA204 cryptographic chip as the device to secure it’s system.

So, how does this wireless platform work? Well, as the Flutter Wireless site explains:

“Creating Flutter networks are easy, even if it’s just two boards. Specify networks in Arduino code or configure Flutter with our mobile app. Once configured, devices can enter and exit the network seamlessly. This makes it extremely easy to set up a network at home (or anywhere else) where all of your projects can reliably communicate. Flutter is like a second network for your devices.”

In fact, in the landscape of connecting devices and IoT, an individual building out of a wireless project shouldn’t have to be too expensive. “Flutter was built from the ground up with cost in mind, that’s why our boards start at just $20. We’ve worked hard to keep costs as low as possible and deliver you a quality product you can afford to use in as many projects as you’d like,” explains Taylor. The startup extraordinaire Taylor has helped further the ecosystem development by leveraging the concepts of “shields” and designing a handful of various protocol shields for Flutter. It’s really focused on individuals who want to get started quickly and build heterogeneous nodes of connected devices on a network. The Flutter boards come shipped with breakout boards and socket headers, combined with the power of connectivity to various protocols (Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy or conventional Bluetooth 2.1). The Flutter Wireless platform is comprised of the network shield which connects to your home router, creating a bridge between mobile devices (M2M) the Internet and Flutter. For a wireless system, the important factors are range and reliability. According to Flutter Wireless Kickstarter:

“We use WiFi everyday, but take a few steps down the driveway and coverage quickly becomes scarce. Flutter is a different kind of wireless system, completely self-contained with over a half-mile range. This allows for a wireless platform without borders, and no longer being chained to a router means your projects are free to follow you out the front door, through the yard, and down the street.”

As previously discussed in Bits & Pieces, the combined Flutter Wireless Development platform is quite comprehensive, considering it’s Kickstarter and crowdfunding origins. Flutter Wireless comes packaged with Atmel’s ATSHA204 to ensure maximum secure storage and protection of encryption keys. Flutter is designed to address security and wireless in a combined package. The platform is comprised of a design, which encompasses a special cryptographic hardware (Atmel’s ATSHA204) that integrates cryptography into every communication layer of the software. In essence, this gives the user ultimate control over who can and cannot communicate with their devices.

The project is given strengths by making it accessible via the Open Source community – ensuring the possibility of enhancing the roadmap by contribution to improve upon Flutter Wireless foundation though the power of the community. Furthermore, Flutter’s wireless concept seamlessly routes messages across a varied number of connected devices to reach their destination. It’s sort of like a lily pad of daisy chaining across many nodes or protocols. With that said, there is a world of potential in the IoT buildup for a number of reasons. Arduino already has a big open-source following. First, this is already proven (via the Maker Movement and Maker Faire) and it’s one of the easiest ways to bridge the physical and digital worlds together. Flutter Wireless can be a node in a larger mesh network, which could be useful for large public projects. (i.e.  Let’s say, a hobbyist or passionate drone user wants to fly his drone to the next town over, keep it connected across RC and mesh networks all within good range and security).

The winning formula:

ARM + Encryption + Easy Development + New IoT-Based Radio + Mesh + Shields + Open Source + Community + Crowdfunding = Thousands of lines of agile code, mesh support, tagging, and various protocol features required to support IoT buildup

Potential applications for Flutter Wireless include:

• Quadcopters
• Landscape sensors
• Agriculture remote sensor installations
• Remote security implementations
• Crowdsourcing spectrum analyzers
• RC hobbyists

Flutter still finds itself under development and continually evolving. The prototypes were designed with the Sparkfun Arduino Pro Mini for rapid development and proof of concept. Out of this ideated adventure, a new generation of boards are in the process being developed with Atmel SMART™ ARM-based SAM3S, a very affordable, versatile and powerful ARM core processor with a capacity for speed and storage space to suit any designer’s connected device project.

•  Atmel SMART™ SAM3S Cortex™ M3 Flash MCU (ARM based processor at 64MHz)
•  Cryptographic key storage using Atmel’s SHA204 CryptoAuthentication
•  Mesh networking capable
•  1,000+ meter range
•  915 MHz operating frequency
•  1.2 Mbps* max data rate
•  3.3v system voltage
•  10-40mA current draw (normal use)

More details can be found via the Flutter Wireless website. Devices found within this innovative wireless development platform can be found at Atmel’s product ARM processors page and said security components can be located on Atmel’s Cryptography product page.

Vehicle to vehicle communications, or V2V

While perusing my latest copy of American Motorcyclist magazine, I was pleased to see an article on how vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication might make roads safer for motorcyclists. V2V is where vehicles have their own dedicated micro-controller and wireless chip and security chip. Atmel makes all three, both as separate parts and combined into one. The vehicles will have a wireless RF “bubble” that travels with them. When two vehicle’s bubbles “touch”, then they will authenticate it is not some hacker on a bridge embankment. Then the vehicles can exchange information. It is anticipated that the system will have GPS, so each vehicle will know its exact position.

While drunk driving fatalities have plummeted, distracted driving is killing twice as many people.

As a guy with a broken collarbone that got hit from behind while my motorcycle was stopped for a red light, I think this is great. If vehicles can communicate they can warn each other of impending collisions. Auto manufacturers anticipate verbal and “shaker” warning for the cars, or so-called “cages” as we motorcyclists call them.

The AMA publishes the magazine and I am a proud supporter. One thing I disagree with is that the AMA wants motorcycles to be nearly silent. Now I hate open pipes, that is a moron thing to do since you can’t tune the motor because of the reversion pulses coming off the end of pipes. But silent bikes are too far in the other direction. With half the driver’s noses stuck in a smartphone while they drive, a little noise alerts them to my presence.

This V2V technology may make all this moot. I won’t need loud pipes if vehicles actively work to avoid collisions. I touched on this in an earlier blog post—Car-to-car communication.

Arduino Zero in my hot little hand

A buddy just walked by and showed me the new Arduino Zero that will be showcased at the Bay Area Maker Faire 2014 this Saturday and Sunday.

It’s nice working at Atmel Headquarters where stuff like this happens to me. Better yet, one of our brilliant Norwegian marketing engineers walked by and I asked him about the Zero. I said: “OK, it has a SAM D21 ARM Cortex M0+ chip, but what is that other big chip?”

He said: “Its the debugger chip, the same one we use on our Xplained Pro boards.”

I say: “A debugger, like you can use on our Studio 6 integrated development platform?”

He says “yup.”

Now I happened to have the Arduino IDE running on my screen, and I point to it and say “But the Arduino IDE does not have a debugger interface!”

And he just smiled and walked away.

So there you have it, maybe not right away, but one day soon, you will be able to actually watch the guts of an Atmel chip as it executes your code in an Arduino. You can see registers and memory values, and set breakpoints and all the other things a debugger does. I am a big fan of debuggers, as evidenced by two recent videos I did here and here. You can do it now with our debuggers or our SAM D21 Xplained Pro boards, but only in Studio 6.2. If you prefer the Arduino IDE, you might be able to debug soon using that.

A manual milling machine with an Arduino digital readout

A recent Design News magazine featured a neat article about a fellow that built a wood frame for milling machine. It uses a Dremel-type router for the spindle motor. It’s a hand-cranker, as my machinist buddies say, the only motor is for the spindle.

This manual milling machine uses a hand-cranked X- and Y-axis with a Dremel-type spindle.

Cool thing is, the builder, John Duffy used an Atmel-based Arduino board to make a digital readout. This makes the mill much more useful.

This Arduino is used to create a digital read out (DRO).

You can check out Duffy’s detailed instructions in this PDF file here.

The turbo encabulator

My buddy Andy Aronson reminded me of this great spoof video;

If only microcontrollers were this simple. This original spawned a whole slew of copies, like this one from the cool folks at Rockwell Automation.

I hope you agree, these videos deserve every one of the hundreds of thousands of views.

IR reflow in your home lab

While at the EELive! conference last week I met up with the PCB-POOL folks. I first heard about this PCB fab house from my buddy Wayne Yamaguchi. Despite their being located in Ireland, Wayne said they were getting the prototype boards to him in a week. Best yet, at that time, they did not charge extra for non-rectangular board shapes, and Wayne’s boards were all round, used to convert a Maglite flashlight to an LED flashlight.

What caught my eye at the PCB-POOL booth at EELive! was a card that had a toaster oven picture and the headline: “Create your own solder reflow station.” Now it was Wayne that tipped me off about doing reflow for prototypes in your garage. He too used a toaster oven. He just did a few experiments on when to turn it on, when to put in the PCB and when to turn it off. He said he decent results, but the problem with this is that it is an essentially uncontrolled process.

This card was from the PCB-POOL booth at the EELive! conference in 2014.

Enter PCB-POOL. Sure, they sell the toaster ovens. The real deal is they sell the third version of a controller so you can create a profile on your toaster oven. Please don’t use the toaster in your kitchen; flux is not the best butter for your English muffins. So like the picture explains, buy the reflow controller from PCB-POOL for $315, get a brand new toaster oven for 80 bucks, and if you order 5 PCBs from PCB-POOL, they cost 30 dollars each, and PCB-POOL gives you a free solderpaste stencil with the order.

A solder stencil is a thin steel sheet that is laser-cut to have the pads of your circuit board. You carefully position it on top of your bare PCB and then you can squeegee solder paste over it, like doing ink on a silkscreen. Only instead of ink, you are deposing a thin coating of solder paste on all the places where surface-mount parts will mount.

This is a solder stencil, with laser or photo-etched cutouts for where you will put solder paste on your prototype PCB.

Now that you have the solder on the pads, the surface mount components will just stick to the board and self-align as the solder melts. Sometimes you can even put parts on both sides and use the solder paste to suspend the parts on the bottom. For heavier parts on the bottom you need a dab of hot-wax or silicon to keep the part in place through the reflow process.

The great thing is that your reflow process has a real temperature profile, like it should. I assume the controller has a SCR or maybe it is just a bang-bang controller that cycles power to achieve a given profile and temperature. The more control you have the more repeatable your process. One nice thing about using the stencil at all is that it proves out your CAD padstacks. If you made some part and forgot to put a solder paste element in the pads for that part, you will realize it really quick when you see there is no solder paste on those pads. This lets you fix your CAD file before it goes into production.

The next level would be to send the whole board to an assembly house like Screaming Circuits in Oregon or Advanced Assembly in Colorado (right down the street from Advanced Circuits, but a different company). Indeed, the first outfit I saw giving out free stencils was Sunstone, which is near Screaming Circuits in Oregon. When you send your fabbed boards to these small-lot assembly houses you are doing more than just sparing yourself the headache of soldering up the board yourself. You are proving out the solder-paste file from your CAD program, as well as the “insert” file as OrCAD 9 calls is, what the pick-and-place machine uses to place your components on the board before reflow soldering. Now you might find that the TO-220 parts have an insert location way off to the side and won’t let the machine vacuum pick them up. So when the nice folks at Screaming Circuits explains this to you, you can fix the CAD files before they go into higher volume production. The real job of an engineer is to make a set of comprehensible coherent documentation that lets the manufacturing world make lots of your design. This is every bit as important as getting the chips to work and the firmware to run.

Most all the fab houses can hook you up with short-run assembly. Some can have your prototypes hand-soldered; many need 3-feet of tape and reel parts so it fits in their machine. That is the cool thing about Screaming circuits, they have adapted their machines so you put in 4 or 5 pieces on some DigiKey cut-tape and make just 5 boards with no parts left over. And don’t forget my pals at Sierra Proto Express. It was Ken Bahl who created the whole short-run prototype concept 20 years ago. These days they specialize in high performance boards, down to a few mills or many ounces of copper along with blind and buried vias. Best yet, they have a partner in China, so when you are ready for high-volume, they can guarantee the partner can make any board you had made at Proto Express.