Digital anonymity: The ultimate luxury item

Data is quickly becoming the currency of the digital society, of which we are all now citizens. Let’s call that “Digitopia.”

In Digitopia, companies and governments just can’t get enough data. There is real data obsession, which is directly leading to an unprecedented loss of privacy. And, that has been going on for a long time — certainly since 9/11. Now a backlash is underway with increasing signs of a groundswell of people wanting their privacy back. This privacy movement is about digital anonymity. It is real, and particularly acute in Europe. However, the extremely powerful forces of governments and corporations will fight the desire for personal privacy revanchism at every turn. What seems likely is that those with financial means (i.e. 1%-ers) will be at the forefront of demanding and retrieving privacy and anonymity; subsequently, anonymity could easily become the new luxury item. Ironically, digital invisibility could be the highest form of status.

Let’s explore what is creating the growing demand for a return to some anonymity. The main driver is the collective realization of just how vulnerable we all are to data breaches and snooping — thanks to Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations, Russian Cyber-Vor hacker gangs stealing passwords, Unit 61318 of the People’s Liberation Army creating all kinds of infrastructure, commercial and military mischief, the Syrian Electronic Army conducting cyber attacks, Anonymous, Heatbleed, Shellshock, Target and Home Depot credit card number breaches among countless other instances of real digital danger.

What all this means is that everyone is a potential victim, and that is the big collective “ah-ha” moment for digital security. (Maybe it’s more of an “oh-no!” moment?) As illustrated by the chart below, the magnitude, types and sheer number of recent attacks should make anyone feel a sense of unease about their own digital exposure. Why is this dangerous to everyone? Well, because data now literally translates into money. And I literally mean literally. Here’s why…

Bitcoin Exposes the Dirty Little Secret About Money 

Bitcoin is a great starting point because it’s the poster child of the data = money equation. Bitcoin currency is nothing more than authenticated data, and completely disposes any pretense of money being physical. It is this ephemeral-by-design nature of Bitcoin that, in fact, exposes the dirty little secret about all money, which is that without gold, silver or other tangible backing, dollars, the Euro, Renmimbi, Yen, Won, Franc, Pound, Kroner, Ruble and everything else is nothing but data. Money is a manmade concept — really just an idea.

How this works can best be described by putting it into cryptographic engineering terms. Governments are the “issuing certification authority” of money. Each country or monetary union (e.g. EU) with a currency of their own is literally an “issuer.” All roads lead back to the issuer’s central bank via a type of authentication process to prove that the transaction is based upon the faith and credit of the issuer.

Banks are the links on that authentication/certification chain back that leads back to the issuer. Each link on the chain (or each bank) is subject to strict rules (i.e. laws) and audits established by the issuer about exactly how to deal with the issuer, with other banks in the system, with the currencies created by other issues (i.e. other countries), with customers, and how to account for transactions. Audits, laws, and rules are therefore an authentication process. Consumers’ bank accounts and credit cards are the end-client systems. Those end-client systems are linked back through the chain of banks via the authentication process (rules, etc.) to the issuer of the money. That linkage is what creates the monetary system.

Bitcoin was built precisely and purposefully upon cryptographic authentication and certification. It is cryptography and nothing more. There is no central issuing authority and it remains peer-to-peer on purpose. Bitcoin bypasses banks precisely so that no overseer can control the value (i.e. create inflation and deflation at their political whim). This also preserves anonymity.

The bottom line is that the modern banking system has been based upon “fiat money” since the Nixon Administration abandoned the gold standard. The Latin word “fiat” means “arbitrary agreement” and that is what money is: an arbitrary agreement that numbers in a ledger have some type of value and can act as a medium of exchange. Note that physical money (paper and coins) is only an extremely small fraction of the world’s money supply. The bulk of the world’s money is comprised of nothing more than accounting entries in the ledgers of the world’s banking system.

See?  Money = Data. Everything else is window dressing to make it appear more than that (e.g. marble columned bank buildings, Fort Knox, Treasury agents with sunglasses and guns, engraved bonds, armored cars, multi-colored paper currency, coins, etc.).

So, if money equals data, then thieves will not rob banks as often; however, those who can will raid data bases instead, despite what Willie Sutton said. Data bases are where the money is now.

By now, the problem should be obvious to anyone who is paying attention — data of any kind is vulnerable to attack by a wide variety of antagonists from hacker groups and cyber-criminals to electronic armies, techno-vandals and other unscrupulous organizations and people. The reason is simple. Yes, you guessed it: It is because data = money. To make it worse, because of the web of interconnections between people, companies, things, institutions and everything else, everyone and everything digital is exposed.

Big Data. Little Freedom.

The 800-pound gorillas of Digitopia are without a doubt governments. Governments mandate that all kinds of data be presented to them at their whim. Tax returns, national health insurance applications, VA and student loan applications, and other things loaded with very sensitive personal data are routinely demanded and handed over. Individuals and corporations cannot refuse to provide data to the government if they want the monopolized “services” governments provide (or to stay out of jail). And, that is just the open side of the governmental data collection machine.

The surreptitious, snooping side is even larger and involves clandestine scanning of personal conversations, emails, and many other things. However, there is another, non-governmental component to data gathering (I will not use the term “private sector” because it is way too ironic). Companies are now becoming very sophisticated at mining data and tracking people, and getting more so every day. This is the notion of “big data,” and it is getting bigger and bigger all the time.

The Economist recently articulated how advertisers are tracking people to a degree once reserved for fiction. (Think George Orwell’s 1984.) Thousands of firms are now invisibly gathering intelligence. Consumers are being profiled with skills far exceeding that of FBI profilers. When consumers view a website, advertisers compete via a hidden bidding process to show them targeted ads based on the individual’s profile. These ads are extremely well focused due to intensive analytics and extensive data collection. These auctions take milliseconds and the ads are displayed when the website loads. We have all seen these ads targeted at us by now. This brave new advertising world is a sort of a cross between Mad Men and Minority Report with an Orwellian script.

The Personalization Conundrum

There is a certain seductiveness associated with consumer targeting. It is the notion of personalization. People tend to like having a certain level of personalized targeting. It makes sense to have things that you like presented to you without any effort on your part. It is sort of an electronic personal shopping experience. Most people don’t seem to mind the risk of having their preferences and habits collected and used by those they don’t even know. Consumers are complicit and habituated to revealing a great deal about themselves.  Millennials have grown up in a world where the notion of privacy is more of a quaint anachronism from days gone by. But, that is all likely to change as more people get hurt.

Volunteering information is one thing, but much of the content around our digital selves is being collected automatically and used for things we don’t have any idea about. People are increasingly buying products that track their activities, location, physical condition, purchases and other things. Cars are already storing data about our driving habits and downloading that to other parties without the need for consent. So, the question is becoming at point does the risk of sharing too much information outweigh the convenience? It is likely that point has already been reached, if you ask me at least.

The Need for a Digital Switzerland

With the unholy trinity of governmental data gathering, corporate targeting, and cyber-criminality, the need for personal data security should be more than obvious. Yet, the ability to become secure is not something that individuals will be able to make happen on their own. Data collection systems are not accessible, and they are not modifiable by people without PhDs in computer science.

With privacy being compromised every time one views a webpage, uses a credit card, pays taxes, applies for a loan, goes to the doctor, drives on a toll way, buys insurance, gets into a car, or does a collection of other things, it becomes nearly impossible to preserve privacy. The central point here is that privacy is becoming scarce, and scarcity creates value. So, we could be on the verge of privacy and anonymity becoming a valuable commodity that people will pay for. A privacy industry will arise. Think of a digital Pinkerton’s.

It is likely that those who can afford digital anonymity will be the first to take measures to regain it. To paraphrase a concept from a famous American financial radio show host, privacy could replace the BMW as the modern status symbol. The top income earners who want to protect themselves and their companies will be looking for a type of digital Switzerland.

Until now a modicum of privacy had been attainable from careful titling and sequestering of assets (i.e. numbered bank accounts, trusts, shell corporations, etc.). That is not enough anymore. The U.S. Patriot Act, European Cy­bercrime Convention, and EU rules on data retention are the first stirrings concerning a return to the right to anonymity. These acts will apply pressure to the very governmental agencies that are driving privacy away. Dripping irony…

Legal, investigational, and engineering assets will need to be brought to bear to provide privacy services. It will take a team of experts to find where the bits are buried and secure them. Privacy needs do not stop at people either. Engineers will have to get busy to secure things as well.

The Internet of Things

Everything said until this point about the loss of personal privacy also applies to the mini-machines that are proliferating in the environment and communicating with each other about all kinds of things. The notion of the Internet of Things (IoT) is fundamentally about autonomous data collection and communication and it is expected that tens of billions of dispersed objects will be involved in only a few years form now. These numerous and ubiquitous so-called things will typically sense data about their surroundings, and that includes sensing people and what those people are doing. Therefore, these things have to add security to keep personal information out of the hands of interlopers and to keep the data from being tampered with. This is called data integrity in cryptographic parlance.

What Can be Done?

To ensure that things are what they say they are, it is necessary to use authentication. Authentication, in a cryptographic sense, requires that a secret or private key be securely stored somewhere for use by a system. If that secret key is not secret then there is no such thing as security. That is a simple point but of paramount importance.

The most secure way to store a cryptographic key is in secure hardware that is designed to be untamperable and impervious to a range of attacks to get at it. Atmel has created a line of products called CryptoAuthentication precisely for this purpose.  Atmel CryptoAuthentication products — such as ATSHA204A, ATECC108A and ATAES132 — implement hardware-based key storage, which is much stronger then software based storage because of the defense mechanisms that only hardware can provide against attacks. Secure storage in hardware beats storage in software every time.

It is most likely that as we citizens of Digitopia continue to realize how dependent we are on data and how dependent those pieces of data are on real security, there will be a powerful move towards the strongest type of security that can be achieved. (Yes, I mean hardware.)

In the future, the most important question may even become, “Does your system have hardware key storage?” We should all be asking that already and avoiding those systems that do not. Cryptography is, as Edward Snowden has said, the “defense against the dark arts for the digital realm.”  We should all start to take cover.

Vegard Wollan on AVR Freaks and early data books

In the fourth episode of my interview with Vegard Wollan, the co-inventor of the AVR MCU alluded to the passionate following that Atmel and its 8-bit chip have developed.

I can personally attest to this. When one of my pals said he was “going off the reservation” to solve an AVR problem, I thought he meant he was going to use a certain competitor’s microcontroller. Turns out, he was simply referring that he was headed to Atmel’s AVR Freaks forum to get an answer, rather than put in a support ticket or use our knowledge base. What delighted me was when he said, “I would rather jump off a bridge than use a [competitor] part.” Simple as that.

Atmel recently rolled out a redesigned site for the die-hard community, which incorporates both feedback and testing provided by the users themselves. Aside from the new look, the site will utilize a much more robust infrastructure and web technologies to provide users with an enhanced experience. (For those seeking an avid community built around the Atmel | SMART ARM-based products, you can check out AT91.com.)

What I loved about the interview is how Vegard explained it was his college experience that convinced him of the value of a strong user community. We all remember those 3:00am dorm sessions where we would discuss the meaning of life. Vegard noted that Atmel would provide servers and gifts and anything else we could do to support the user community.

The co-inventor also brought along a few copies of the first AVR data book. I was amused to see this post on the AVR Freaks forum, by a user that did not know what a “data book” was. Boy, that makes me feel old! See sonny, back when the Earth was still cooling and dinosaurs roamed the fields, engineers didn’t do everything at their fingertip on the intertube. Companies, much like Atmel, would take all their datasheets and bind them up in this thing called a printed book. I have to admit, it was a great day when I tossed my 500 pounds of databooks in the dumpster. Bless the Internet, it made life so much better.

Vegard Wollan holds up the draft version of the May 1995 AVR databook.

Of course, that draft was only a checkplot for the real book. The video also shows Vegard holding up the final version of the AVR databook that us old-timers so frequently depended on. How we would have killed for the modern microcontroller selector guide!

Here, Vegard Wollan holds up the actual printed data book from May 1995, the first release of the famous AVR microcontroller to the world. They had to make some changes so this databook has parts listed that Atmel never actually produced, and was missing some other parts. Those 4-months printed book lead times were a killer for everybody.

So there you have it, folks. With billions of chips in the wild, a following of over 290,000 AVR Freaks and nearly 100,000 forum posts around the topic annually, it’s safe to say we’ve come a long way since the earliest days of the 8-bit microcontroller. If you’re not already a member of the growing AVR Freaks community, be sure to head on over to the newly-updated site and join today!

Kaivan Karimi talks IoT and wearables at Designers of Things

Designers of Things — a two-day conference dedicated to the explosive and exciting potential of wearable tech, 3D printing and the Internet of Things — kicked off this morning with a session from Kaivan Karimi. During his presentation, the Atmel VP and GM of Wireless Solutions broke down the evolution of technologies necessary for wearable devices to succeed.

Undoubtedly, wearables have emerged as an extremely hot topic within the technology industry with big name enterprises and small startups alike working endlessly to develop the next high-profile device. Wearables, which are not only being integrated into smart fashion and allowing users to access technology hands-free, are now accelerating the self-quantification movement and paving the way for the upcoming always-on healthcare revolution. Using specific examples from the smartwatch and smart fashion realms, Karimi educated event attendees on the underlying hardware, software, sensing, connectivity, and security technologies needed to make wearables happen, and get them integrated into already existing broader networks.

Karimi began the session by making it clear that wearables are a subset of the IoT, which is the wider umbrella of connected things. When explaining the size of this umbrella, Karimi stated, “The Internet of Things is like sunlight, it covers everything.” He emphasized to attendees that the IoT will go on to impact all aspects of industry and commerce, therefore migrating to devices that collect data: “If you can’t track it, you can’t improve it”.

Despite the fact that it is a mere subset in today’s ever-evolving, constantly-connected world, Karimi stressed that the wearable tech space is not a single entity. “Wearables are not a single segment. There are different categories with different requirements,” he urged. High-end or local processing wearables include smartwatches that run standalone systems such as Android Wear, Tizen for the Gear line of devices and the upcoming Apple Watch. Mid-range wearables are more along the lines of smartphone accessories, which use thin client models and rely on applications on the smartphone. The third category, low-end or limited devices, usually boast no display or feature a limited user interface and act more as a sensor aggregator. This category includes devices such as Fitbit, Polar Loop and other fitness trackers.

“Wearables is one of the edge nodes of the IoT infrastructure,” Karimi continued as he put wearables in perspective of the IoT. Karimi then went on to share several reasons as to why wearables have experienced immediate adoption so far — seamless and ability to integrate into our lives; ease-of-use; inexpensiveness; health and fashion-focused; the potential to save lives; and, the quantified self movement. “The value created by IoT is not just dollars and cents but how we live our lives,” he added.

However, as more devices become connected particularly those adorned to bodies, security and privacy concerns will arise. According to Karimi, this can and will inhibit the growth of wearable tech and IoT as a whole; therefore, how we secure the devices will play an integral role in the development of IoT. “Security and privacy are major growth inhibitors of wearables,” explained Karimi.

Karimi then depicted a time in the relatively near future where hackers could open your doors, access your neighborhood’s streetlights, as well as take control of your toaster oven. Creating the necessary hierarchal gateways to protect access to connected devices and its data will be key in a connected tomorrow. “When it comes to security for the Internet of Things, stakes are much more severe,” he told the Designers of Things audience.

Major advancemetns in technologies like semiconductors are attributed to growth of wearable tech, Karimi revealed. Semiconductors are getting faster, cheaper, smaller and more powerful yet less power consuming, which make them well-suited for smaller devices that need to be on all-day. But one of wearables biggest allies will be contextual computing, which Karimi revealed “will be the driving force behind the next wave of technology.”

The use of big data, sensor fusion, personal history, GPS and social media will also enable computers to know who we are which in turn will let them better serve us. “The future of data analytics will see a shift from reporting to prediction,” Karimi said. “In the future, your devices will know you better than your spouse knows you or you even know yourself.”

Wearables aren’t limited to smartwatches and fitness trackers; in fact, Karimi teased the audience with new form factors coming down the chain. “New form factors are on the way. It’s like pills you take to authenticate yourself,” he noted.

Karimi went on to conclude with a discussion around wearables and IoT in the healthcare setting. “The future of healthcare with wearables is the always-on revolution,” he told attendees. “In order for IoT and wearables to work in healthcare, you have to link the databases.”

So what does the future have in store for wearables? According to Karimi, over the next four to five years, we can expect that wearables will:

• Be here for the long-haul
• Enable a variety of new services
• Allow medicine to become more personalized
• Revolutionize healthcare
• Focus on prevention vs. disease management

According to analysts at ABI Research, over the next five years businesses will integrate into their wellness plans more than 13 million wearable devices with embedded wireless connectivity. Wearable tech also ties into the rapidly evolving Internet of Things, which refers to a future world where all types of electronic devices link to each other via the Internet. Today, it’s estimated there are nearly 10 billion devices in the world connected to the Internet, a figure expected to triple to nearly 30 billion devices by 2020. The inherent versatility of Atmel’s microcontrollers and radio chips have made our silicon a favorite of Makers and engineers. As allude to in Kaivan Karimi’s presentation, Atmel is smack dab in the middle of the wearable revolution, with a comprehensive portfolio of versatile microcontrollers (MCUs) that power a wide range of platforms and devices.

Home is where the hack is!

Home smart home! While we already know that the smart home market is prepared to take the world by storm in the near future, the underlying concern is whether or not they will be secure. Industry experts are predicting that more than one in 10 of homes will be ‘smart’ by the end of this year — this compared to 17% of households in the U.S. and a global average of 5% — while the smart home trend is expected to double across 7.7 million UK homes by 2019.

Last month, NextMarket Insights forecasted that the U.S. smart home market would grow from the current $1.3 billion to $7.8 billion by 2019. With the market expanding so quickly, just how secure will these connected homes be? Furthermore, Acquity Group predicts that 69% of consumers will own in home IoT connected devices within the next five years. With that many smart devices entering our homes, how can we be so sure the personal data they possess will be kept safe?

According to a new Lowe’s Consumer Study on Smart Homes, half of Americans believe their homes will be more secure with the implementation of smart devices, while 46% of the same individuals polled also feel that the ability to monitor their home while away will improve their own peace of mind. In addition, another 29% think that smart technology in the home will provide them with better protection from fires, floods, and other emergencies.

While these statistics do provide hope for the future and the secure smart home, only 11% of these respondents see security as the deciding factor as to whether or not they would install smart devices in their home. Price, convenience, and the presence of a monthly fee all rank higher when it comes to buying consideration for these individuals.

Yet backdoors and other insecure channels have been found in a number of devices, leaving them susceptible to potential hacks and other cyber attacks. “Although the highly-touted hack of smart refrigerators earlier this year has since been debunked, there’s still no shortage of vulnerabilities in the emerging, so-called Internet of Things,” IEEE Spectrum reminds us.

While the idea of security seems to be on the minds of potential smart home consumers, the actual practicality of the technology seems to be a lesser concern. As evident by HP’s recently conducted study, a shocking 70% of IoT home devices contain security vulnerabilities. This not only impacts home consumers, but they found corporations also widely practiced insecure communications on the Internet and local networks.

With an increase backdoors and other insecure channels have been found in many such devices, opening them to possible hacks, botnets, and other cyber mischief. Although the widely touted hack of smart refrigerators earlier this year has since been debunked, there’s still no shortage of vulnerabilities in the emerging, so-called Internet of Things.

CIO of Prescient Solutions Jerry Irvine tells SecurityInfoWatch that, “Mobile devices have data that are stored on them, so all data is at risk if it is on those devices, whether it is the individual’s personal data or the company’s intellectual property. Additionally, there are user IDs, passwords and server names or addresses that are stored on there within applications.”

These simple security vulnerabilities could prove to be disastrous either in the home, or in the workplace, if exploited. To mitigate some of this risk, Irvine stresses that all connected devices in the home should be connected to a network separate from the user’s PC. “Every single wireless router, wireless access point or cable modem has the ability to do VLANs (virtual local area networks) today. Put all of those home automation systems on a VLAN that does not have direct access to or from the Internet.”

While the public may be ready to welcome IoT home devices into their lives, they may not be readily equipped with the know-how to secure them. With smart homes becoming the norm across the globe, users should educate themselves about potential security risks and ensure their personal data is safe.

“Our premise is that it’s not that easy to do embedded security right, and that essentially has been confirmed,” researcher Christoph Paar reveals. “There are very few systems we looked at that we couldn’t break. The shocking thing is the technology is there to get the security right. If you use state of the art technology, you can build systems that are very secure for practical applications.”

And while there will always be hackers out, Paar says smart engineering and present-day technology can stop most of them in their tracks. That’s why when it comes to securing our constantly-connected and smarter world, look no further than Atmel’s CryptoAuthentication family. These solutions not only provide home and building automation designers an extremely cost-effective hardware authentication capability, but will help offer you a peace of mind in your next-gen home.

Hardware key storage beats software key storage every time, which is one of the “key” lessons of the recent vulnerability revelations. But how does an embedded system manufacturer ensure their products are secure and protected from attack? Fortunately, the solution is simple, available, and cost effective, and that is to use hardware key storage devices such as Atmel’s ATSHA204A, ATECC108A and ATAES132.

Smart homes can provide unprecedented convenience and entertainment, but as our culture moves forward with this new technology, we should make sure we know how to utilize it best.

Watch out for those snake robots!

Every engineer loves robots, it’s one of the few disciplines that mechanical, electrical, and software engineers all admire. There is a class of robots called snake robots due to their means of locomotion resembling the way a snake works. One such robot , Wheeko, was recently unveiled by the folks at NTNU, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the self-same place that Vegard Wollen, the inventor of the AVR microcontroller chip, attended before starting at Atmel.

Wheeko, a snake robot developed at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

When I asked a Norwegian co-worker if Wheeko might have Atmel microcontrollers in it, he was not sure about Wheeko, but pointed out and earlier robot at NTNU, the Anna Konda was run by eleven mega128 AVR chips.

The Anna Konda was intended as a fire-fighting robot that could crawl through burning or collapsed buildings. There are other applications as well, anywhere that a robot has to work in confined spaces.

So whether Wheeko goes to Mars or his little sister crawls through your veins, you can bet there will be a snake robot in your future.

SMART MCUs for low power, smarter designs in Internet of Things, wearables, and the Industrial Internet

According to analysts at ABI Research, over the next five years businesses will integrate into their wellness plans more than 13 million wearable devices with embedded wireless connectivity. Wearable tech also ties into the rapidly evolving Internet of Things (IoT), which refers to a future world where all types of electronic devices link to each other via the Internet. Today, it’s estimated there are nearly 10 billion devices in the world connected to the Internet, a figure expected to triple to nearly 30 billion devices by 2020. The inherent versatility of Atmel | SMART microcontrollers and Atmel radio chips have made our silicon a favorite of Makers and engineers.

Along with this setting stage, the design aspects for low power are becoming more and more important in the next embedded design products. Atmel is right in the middle of the industrial and wearable tech revolution, with a comprehensive portfolio of versatile microcontrollers (MCUs) that power a wide range of platforms and devices.

Blood glucose meters, sport watches, game controllers and accessories, guess what they are all in common? In fact, many of these today are going to shift and evolve into new form factors and application use case as connectivity and clever interacting interfaces become designed. Yes, like a lot of other industrial and consumer devices, they are all battery powered and demanding a long or extended battery life. Translating it into an engineer’s challenge designing an embedded computing system, you will need a central heart, in this case a microcontroller, consuming as low power as possible in both active and static modes without sacrificing the performance. And, Atmel SMART | ARM Cortex-M4 based SAM4L series is designed with this in mind.

The SAM4L microcontrollers redefine the low power, delivering the lowest power in the same class in active mode (90uZ/MHz) as well as static mode with full RAM retention running and with the shortest wake-up time (1.5us). And they are the most efficient microcontrollers available today, achieving up to 28 CoreMark/mA. In this video, you’ll get an overview of Atmel | SMART SAM4L low-power microcontrollers (MCU), based on the ARM Cortex-M4 core. SAM4L MCUs operate at 90uA/MHz and achieve an efficiency rating of 28 CoreMark/mA. The devices feature an array of power-saving technologies, including Atmel’s proprietary picoPower technology. You’ll see a demo using the SAM4L-EK evaluation kit.

The SAM4L series integrates Atmel’s proprietary picoPower technology, which ensures the devices are developed from the ground up, from transistor design to clocking options, to consume as little power as possible. In addition, Atmel’s SleepWalking technology allows the peripherals to make intelligent decisions and wake up the system upon qualifying events at the peripheral level.

In this video, you will see how SAM4L microcontrollers support multiple power configurations to allow the engineer to optimize its power consumption in different use cases. You will also see another good feature of the SAM4L series, power scaling, which is a technique to adjust the internal regulator output voltage to further reduce power consumption provided by the integrated backup power manager module. Additionally, the SAM4L series comes with 2 regulators options to supply system power based on the application requirement. While the buck/switching regulator delivers much higher efficiency and is operational from 2 to 3.6V, the linear regulator has higher noise immunity and operates from 1.68 to 3.6V.

It’s all about system intelligence and conserving energy. Simply put, the SAM4L microcontroller (See SAM4L Starter Kit) is your choice if you are designing a product with long battery life but without sacrificing the performance — as demonstrated in this walkthrough of the Xplained Pro SAM4L Starter Kit.

The SAM4LC Cortex-M4 processor-based Flash microcontrollers offer the industry’s lowest power consumption and fastest wake-up. On top of what’s mentioned, this sub family of Atmel | SMART microcontrollers [labeled as ATASAM4L] devices are ideal for a wide range of industrial, healthcare and consumer applications.

Get a jump-start on your design with dedicated evaluation kits and software packages.  You can also easily catch up on some of the recent and past articles we posted related to Atmel | SMART SAM4L Microcontrollers.

Security, the essential pillar in the Internet of Things

The three hardware pillars of the Internet of Things (IoT) are microcontrollers, wireless chips, and security chips. What is cool about Atmel is that we make all three types of hardware. Atmel is on the ground floor of the Internet of Things (IoT).

I was a pretty natural evolution, since the “Things” are really embedded systems. Atmel has made the chips driving embedded systems ever since the AVR series came out in 1995. So having a really strong position in microcontrollers is essential to any IoT company.

Another pillar of IoT is wireless. Sure, some embedded systems plug in with an RJ45 connector. Indeed, the SAM4E chip has an “E” in the name that stands for its on-board Ethernet controller. But many of these clever new “Things” will connect wirelessly. For that Atmel has Wi-Fi chips, Bluetooth chips, Zigbee chips, and even the chips used in car access key fobs you can use to communicate wirelessly to a hub or base station.

What is not obvious to a lot of people is that security is an equally important pillar in the Internet of Things. Think of the medical privacy laws. Those laws may well apply to any data you are sending to the cloud. At the recent Internet of Things Privacy Summit held here in Silicon Valley, Michelle Dennedy, chief privacy officer at McAfee noted:

 “There has to be a layer of security from the (computer) chip outward. Sure, you want your health information going to your doctor. But you need to help people feel confident that it’s not going elsewhere.”

What is great about Atmel is that we also have a complete line of security chips. You can use these chips to make sure that your “Thing” is the actual and genuine thing it is supposed to be. You can use our chips to make sure that it’s the right thing to be plugged into some other system. You can use security chips to make sure the code you are executing is the genuine code and not some hijack attempt. What I love is that many of the security chips have several kilobytes of undedicated non-volatile memory. So along with security, you have a place to store setup or user information that will persist even when power is cycled to your device.

Back in 1994 my programmer buddy John Haggis showed me the World Wide Web on his computer. It was Mosaic browser looking at a few academic websites. John was really excited. I didn’t get it.”What’s the big deal about that?” I asked. It just seemed like a fancy version of the dial-up bulletin boards I was using to get datasheets and CAD models. I won’t make that clueless mistake with IoT. This is going to be huge. The Internet of Things has all the network effects of the Internet combined with the convenience and utility of the embedded systems that have been making our lives better for the past few decades. Our automotive group tells me that we can look at future cars as just another thing in the Internet of Things. I have written up how IoT will help farmers. You can bet IoT will be a big thing in industrial automation. And there will be a major impact in consumer electronics, from thermostats to toasters. We haven’t even dreamed up some of the “killer apps” for the Internet of Things. Fasten your seat belt, it’s going to be a wild ride.

Secure at any IoT deed

In his classic book, “Unsafe at Any Speed,” Ralph Nader assailed the auto industry and their approach to styling and cost efficiency at the expense of safety during the 1960s. He squared up on perceived defects in the Chevrolet Corvair, but extended his view to wider issues such as tire inflation ratings favoring passenger comfort over handling characteristics.

History has not treated Nader’s work kindly, possibly because of his politics including a crusade on environmental issues which spurred creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Sharp criticism of Nader’s automotive fault-finding came from Thomas Sowell in a book “The Vision of the Anointed”. He targeted “Teflon prophets,” Nader foremost among them, who foretell of impending calamity using questionable data, unless government intervenes as regulatory savior.

Sowell’s most scathing indictment of Nader was for failing to understand the trade-off between safety and affordability. Others targeted Nader’s logic by suggesting some non-zero level of risk and injury is acceptable if society progresses, supported by data the Corvair was actually no worse in terms of safety among its contemporaries on the automotive market at the time.

Yet, almost five decades later, we have Toyota sudden acceleration damage awards, GM ignition switches and massive recalls in progress, and the prospect that someday soon an autonomous car may go haywire. The problem seems to be not errors of commission, but errors of omission; complex engineering requirements, design, and test are becoming increasingly difficult. Getting all that done at volumes and prices needed to drive model year expectations and consumer market share is a big ask.

In an industrial context of the IoT, “safety critical” design is a science, with standards, and certification, and independent testing. In application segments such as aerospace and defense, medical, industrial automation, and others – even the automotive industry, which has made huge strides in electronics and software development – safety and risk are proactively managed.

Security of consumers on the IoT is another matter. Devices are inexpensive, often created by teams with little to no security experience. Worse yet, there is a stigma around many security features as unnecessary overkill that would slow down performance, get in the way of usability, or increase costs beyond competitiveness. This is an accident waiting to happen.

Or perhaps, one already in progress, if we believe the recent study on firmware in a sampling of consumer devices. A lot of folks think benevolent hackers are also polytetrafluoroethylene-coated, but it is hard to dispute there is cause for concern among embedded devices when it comes to security — especially when those devices connect to networks.

One of the areas cited in the study is encryption, and some rather sloppy handling of keys when it is used. Across the industry, embedded software is wildly inconsistent in approaches to encryption. As the study points out, developers are prone to stamp out copies of aged, flawed solutions because they are comfortable with and invested in a particular approach.

Regulation is the last thing we need here. Engineers need a lot more education, starting from the basics of including and using hardware encryption units on MCUs and SoCs, through the state-of-the-art knowledge in cryptography and certificate management, and up to IT-style approaches such as over-the-air software updates and two-factor authentication.

We also need some deeper thought on encryption implementations, beyond just NIST recommendations. In a web context, we have Transport Layer Security (TLS), but that protocol requires a full IP stack and a lot more horsepower than many small embedded devices can afford. On top of that, hardware encryption is currently very vendor-dependent. Vendors like Atmel are working with ARM on TrustZone technology to create newer implementations based on Trusted Exectuion Environment APIs, tuned for IoT devices instead of data center use.

Historically, encryption has been applied to securing closed systems – the IoT presents a paradox. If it devolves into a myriad of smaller, effectively closed systems that only intermittently share data, we may gain some benefit, but will never reach the vision.

The best case scenario is an effective set of industry practices emerge for encryption in consumer IoT devices before problems become widespread, defeating the very purpose of sharing data with the cloud. We need developers to not avoid encryption, but for that to happen it has to be cost- and implementation-effective for easier use.

This post has been republished with permission from SemiWiki.com, where Don Dingee is a featured blogger. It first appeared there on August 25, 2014.

RF Modules: A low risk path to wireless success

It is rare for a day to go by without having at least one conversation with an embedded developer, project manager, Maker / hacker or hobbyist where the subject of the Internet of Things (IoT) and/or wireless connectivity does not come up in discussion.

Today, IoT is certainly a major focus in product development and wireless is a major component of that solution. Usually, my conversation centers around comments from product developers regarding how difficult it is to develop a production ready wireless product on the first pass; it is especially difficult for the growing number of product developers or Makers that are just getting their feet wet in wireless design and development.

Only the very experienced RF designers are willing to start from scratch when beginning a new wireless product design. For the rest of us, we look for proven reference designs and more recently, the first thing we browse for is an off-the-shelf certified module.

In comes Atmel! The company has recognized for a while that RF modules provide a low risk path to success, for those seeking to add wireless connectivity to their product. And, it is this realization that has led to a growing family of RF modules to meet one’s wireless needs in Wi-Fi, 802.15.4, and BLE coming soon.

The certified wireless module approach turns a complicated RF design task into an easier, more manageable digital peripheral interface task. Don’t misunderstand me, one still must be careful and adhere to best practices in your embedded PCB design to support an RF module; however, it is a much easier to be successful on the first go-around when using an RF module than it would be starting from a chipset or IC layout and design.

A typical wireless module with on board “chip” antenna (white rectangle shown in image).

For the most part, the layout of impedance controlled traces, and antenna layout and matching are all taken care of for you when using a module. Usually, the most difficult thing you have to consider is placement of the module on your target or carrier board, such that your placement does not adversely affect the radiation pattern or tuning of the antenna.

Not only does the design become simpler, but the costs associated with getting a wireless device to market becomes lower.  Because in general, all of the fees and time associated with governmental certification testing for agencies like the FCC, CE and IC (Industry Canada), are already taken care of for you. Also in most cases, the modules are shipped with a unique IEEE MAC address pre-programmed into the module’s non-volatile memory, so that each unit has a world wide unique address. By using a module that contains this pre-programmed assigned address, you can avoid the costs of obtaining a block of IEEE addresses assigned to your company.

At first glance, the cost of using a complete pre-certified RF module in a production design, as compared to implementing one’s own chip set design may appear more expensive. However, for those doing this for the first time with a staff that does not have a lot of RF design and certification experience, the hidden costs and time required to achieve the performance your application requires and to get the product into the market, leads to a lot of unwanted surprises requiring multiple attempts to achieve the final goal. Starting with a module helps get the product into the market faster with less risk, and provides a way to get product acceptance, before having to deal with cost reduction activity’s that may require moving from a module solution to a chip set solution.

For those that get to the position where the use of a pre-certified module on a proven product requires a cost reduction, Atmel has a solution ready for you. Each of the Atmel Zigbit modules have complete Altium design files and Gerber files available for free download via the Atmel website. This will enable you to take the exact design files that were used to create the module you were using or considering, and to use these files to devise your own version of that design. You can then have your new chip based layout manufactured by your own contract manufacturer; thus, you do not have to start over from the beginning and you already know that this RF design works well and can be easily certified. Governmental certification of your own board layout would be required, and in the case of the United States, you would be given your own FCC ID assigned to your company for this product.

For those product designers that are experienced in RF layout and design, a module can allow you to create a proof-of-concept product prototype very quickly and with little effort. Once the concepts have been proven and features have been decided upon, you can migrate from module to chip set design for high volume production.

Software developers, Makers, and hobbyists can eliminate a lot of the issues often found when trying to create low volume wireless products by obtaining one of the many Atmel evaluation boards that contain a wireless module.

These boards typically come with a bootloader and with some form of pre-loaded firmware to get you started immediately. You can explore that topic in more detail in an earlier Bits & Pieces post that describes the wireless composer and the Performance Analyzer firmware.

The Performance Analyzer firmware is what typically comes pre-installed on a Zigbit module “evaluation” board. Otherwise, the module itself would come with only a pre-programmed bootloader.

You can learn more and download user guides / datasheets for the Atmel Zigbit modules via this link.

With the Internet of Things becoming such a focus at this time, you may want to get started with a pair of low-cost wireless module evaluation boards and use this platform to learn wireless connectivity techniques that can be used in your current or future job.  Demand for those with knowledge and experience in wireless connectivity and embedded systems is growing greater everyday.

Whether you’re a Maker or an engineer that wants to create a home project that requires a microcontroller and some type of wireless connectivity, you might want to take a look at the ATZB-256RFR2-XPRO evaluation board that includes the ATZB-S1-256-3-0-C module already mounted on it. This module is based upon the megaAVR microcontroller core and includes an 802.15.4 2.4ghz radio as a peripheral/.You may recognize the megaAVR core as being the same MCU core as used in the well-known and incredibly popular Arduino Uno board. You can use the familiar Arduino IDE for development and many of the Arduino libraries available on the internet will run directly on this module. Additionally, you can also find a bootloader and sample Lwmesh (Light Weight Mesh wireless networking) applications for this module here. (Search for for “ATmega256RFR2 Arduino Solution.”)

Look to our friends at Adafruit and Sparkfun to obtain various sensor breakout boards to complete your wireless connectivity projects.

Do you have big ideas? You can feel confident that with the 256k of flash program memory and the 32k of data sram available with the ATZB-S1-256-3-0-C module, as you will be able to create any Arduino application that comes to mind. And don’t forget, you have an onboard 802.15.4 2.4Ghz radio for your wireless connectivity needs. If you find you need additional features in your development and debug tools, you can simply move to Atmel Studio with its rich set of features.

Calling all Radio Amateurs CQ CQ CQ de NS1C… 

Are you now, or have you been in the past, involved in Amateur Radio? Have you been dreaming about QRP low power radios that are very small, battery operated, a complete radio solution, and cost in the $29 to $39 dollar range? You’re in luck — boards and modules are available that operate in the 915mhz or 2.4ghz radio bands! As a HAM radio operator, you are allowed to take the capabilities of these 802.15.4 radio modules even further than an engineer who is required to create a license free ISM radio solution. You can experiment with additional RF output power and experiment with high gain directional antennas (use the modules with u.FL RF connectors).

Maybe a nice field day project for next year would be to use a low power 15.4 radio from the top of a mountain or high hill and use mesh networking to see how many hops a group of participants can communicate over. Voice communication certainly could be implemented using external analog circuitry and some additional software; however, when getting started, you could stick to digital data communications or use the wireless microcontrollers to control or monitor other components of your Amateur radio station.

Parents teach your children…. or maybe, children teach your parents!

I am sure that everyone can think of many home or science fair projects where a parent and child can work together (hardware / software / documentation) and everyone can learn something new. Heck, in the end, you may actually invent the next great product that your family can introduce to the world!

Your possibilities are endless.

Exploring smart meters in the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) isn’t a single homogenous market but splits up into different segments with very different requirements. A lot of IoT markets are still in our future: next generation wearable medical devices, autonomous cars and more. One area where IoT has been going strong, long enough that it probably pre-dates the catchy buzzword IoT, is smart power meters.

Atmel recent announced their latest power line communications SoC specifically designed for this market. The SAM4CP16B is an extension of Atmel’s SAM4Cx smart energy platform built on a dual-core 32-bit ARM Cortex-M4 architecture. It is fully compatible with Atmel’s ATPL230A OFDM physical layer device compliant with PRIME standard specification. The flexible solution addresses OEM’s requirements for various system partitioning, BOM reduction and time-to-market requirements by incorporating independent application, protocol stack and physical layer processing functions within the same device. Key features of the SoC include integrated low-power driver, advanced cryptography, 1MB of embedded Flash, 152KB of SRAM, low-power real-time clock, and an LCD display controller.

I think that as various submarkets of the Internet of Things develop, we will see a lot of devices like this; SoCs that integrate everything that is required for a particular application, leaving the system company to customize the hardware, add their own software and so on. IoT will not be a market like mobile, with huge chips being done in the latest process generation. Many IoT designs will include analog, RF and sensors, all of which are best designed in older processes like 65nm or even 130nm.

The system volumes for many designs will be relatively low and so designing a specific chip for each application will be unattractive. Even in mobile where the volumes are much higher, only Apple and Samsung design their own application processors, as far as I know. Everyone else licenses one from Qualcomm, Mediatek or others… Even Apple gets the modem (radio) from Qualcomm. The aggregate volumes will end up being large (there will be a lot of things) so the prize goes to the semiconductor companies that do the best job of designing chips that match what the system companies require.

Interested in learning more? The data sheet for the part can be found here. (Warning: It’s 1,000 pages!)

This post has been republished with permission from SemiWiki.com, where Paul McLellan is a featured blogger. It first appeared there on August 13, 2014.