Leadership in IoT connectivity with Bluetooth Smart

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Kaivan Karimi, Atmel VP and GM of Wireless Solutions, provides insight into the Internet of Things and the role of BLE connectivity. 

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It has been a year since my last blog at my old gig, and what a year it has been. I am now at Atmel managing the wireless MCUs business unit, and with my team busy building the best in class portfolio of cloud-ready wireless MCUs and MPUs. Last year was a great ride, and things will only get better from here onward, as we now have established a solid IP base, a best-in-class execution engine, and a great ecosystem of partners to collectively offer cost-optimized Internet of Things (IoT) edge-node system solutions.

Six years ago when a few of us in the industry were evangelizing what in those days we called “Industrial Wireless” (and now dubbed IoT), we always talked about role of hierarchical gateways, connecting the “edge nodes” or “things” to the “cloud.” Some of those “things” use your smartphone as their gateway of choice to connect to the cloud, while others will use a new generation of “smart gateways” to manage cloud-based services. Even in the case of the new smart gateways, some of the things connected to them may get “provisioned” using your smartphone. With smartphones almost ubiquitously having integrated Bluetooth Smart Ready, one can see how BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy – aka Bluetooth Smart) plays an important role in the connectivity infrastructure of IoT.

This year’s CES was as amazing as ever with even more attendees, exhibits and technology than in 2014. As usual, a sea of tech gadgets shouting at you while you walking through the halls, “Look at me and remember me because I am the next best things since slice bread and I am here to stay!” And, sometimes that actually happens (HD Television – CES 1998) and sometimes it doesn’t (3D Television- CES 2009).

CES 2015 was a special one for me, and served as a sort of coming out party for our new wireless lineup. There, we announced a pair of products: a standalone Bluetooth Smart SoC and a dual-mode Wi-Fi/Bluetooth platform. (I will spend more time on our combo chip in the near future, but wanted to focus this blog on our BLE chip.)

It started when we met with our engineering team and discussed our target spec for our new BLE SoC. It was simple; last year the small German mixed signal company had the best-in-class BLE solution in the market. Based on the marketing material they had readily available on the web, their solution had the best peak transmit and receive current (less than 5mA), it had the best leakage current of 600 nA (in certain mode), and it was the smallest SoC out there 2.5×2.5mm WLCSP. Furthermore, the solution also listed the usual suspect key applications as smartphone accessories, PC and tablet peripherals, sport and fitness tracking, health monitoring, self-tracking, watches, remote controls, 3D glasses, etc.

As it turned out, by mid-last year the engineering team of the German company forced their marketing team to match their peak active current numbers to the reality of the chip, as well as adjust their leakage current to reality for adequate memory retention. The leakage current listing is related to the amount of memory you need to retain for the modem to go back to the original state after coming back to active mode, and best in class BLE modems need minimum 8K of memory space to retain their state, and anything less than that would require reestablishing the link, which burns a lot more power. Listing your leakage current for anything less than 8K of memory retention is misleading. Needless to say, the spec being advertised for that chip are now different than their original product brief.

In any business best-in-class doesn’t come easy, and is as it is said to be the result of a lot of sweat and tears… So when we told our team that we wanted them to beat those spec by 30%, with samples for March 2015, you can imagine the looks we got in return. The team however took it upon themselves to beat our targets. The result: BTLC1000. Announced at CES, notable features from the press release included:

• Bluetooth Smart solutions set new low-power standards with at least 30% power savings compared to existing solutions on the market in dynamic mode
• Packaged in extremely small 2.1mm x 2.1mm WLCSP package to enable design flexibility for all devices
• Solution can be combined with any Atmel MCU for a complete IoT platform

In the body of the announcement we also mentioned “sub-1µA in standby mode, while delivering the industry’s best dynamic power consumption, increasing battery life by as much as one year for certain applications.” Since this blog is not under NDA, I cannot get into more details on exact numbers, only that they are real, and they do indeed beat the relevant best-in-class BLE product specifications out there by >30%. Like true IoT products, this product is built from the ground up for IoT applications and battery operations, and not a generic modem repurposed and rebranded as an IoT product.

Small footprint such as 2.1mmx2.1mm facilitates innovative form factors for a variety of classes of products, while also enables adding BLE functionality to your existing products using other types of wireless connectivity for provisioning only.

A common misconception for the Internet of Things is that everyone calls IoT the era of “always on” connectivity. However, in reality most of the “things” in IoT spend most of their life in “off” mode, and only based on an event, or predetermined policy at certain intervals of time they wake up, hence leakage current is extremely important. A lot of the BLE-related products use lithium coin cells which are made to work with standard current draws of 1 to 5 mA. There are many factors such as the discharge rate, the discharge profile (constant vs. periodic burst such as burst peak current), operating temperature, humidity, the associated DC/DC converter, etc. that effect the battery life. According to one of our Japanese customers who also was in battery manufacturing business, while these batteries can tolerate peak currents of much higher than 5mA (e.g. the BLE chip from the company in Scandinavia, the one from the Cambridge based company that just changed hands, the one from the company from Texas, etc.), every time that you cross the 5mA threshold, you reduce the life of the battery. That is why less than 5mA peak current matters.

Our BLE solution will be offered using our SmartConnect framework and methodology, which black boxes the complexities associated with using wireless connectivity, and let the MCU programmers focus on their application development, not needing to become wireless connectivity experts to participate in the IoT market.

At Atmel, we are also known for our activities within the Maker community, particularly Arduino users. As a result, we have already started giving access to the Maker community to our wireless products using our Arduino Wi-Fi shield, which was released back in September 2014. Just imagine what kind of innovations can come from tinkerers, hobbyists and developers if you give them access to our BLE Arduino shield. Some of the IoT categories such as wearables, health and fitness, and portable medical electronics, among others, have already chosen BLE as their wireless connectivity of choice to communicate with the smartphones at their gateway of choice. I am sure the Maker community will come up with additional categories.

Video: Andreas Eieland talks Atmel | SMART SAM L21

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Low power just got a whole heck of a lot lower.

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During CES 2015, ARMdevices.net had the chance to catch up with Andreas Eieland, Atmel Senior Product Marketing Manager, to discuss the recently-revealed Atmel | SMART SAM L21.

The SAM L21 not only boasts the performance of an ARM Cortex-M0+ core, it also consumes just one-third the power of comparable products in the market today. The Atmel | SMART MCU delivers ultra-low power running down to 35µA/MHz in active mode, consuming less than 900nA with full 32kB RAM retention. With rapid wake-up times, Event System, Sleepwalking and the innovative picoPower peripherals, the SAM L21 family is ideal for handheld and battery-operated devices for a variety of Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

In Eieland’s video below, the SAM L21 is powered from the heat of a hand through a Peltier Element. This is enough energy to modulate a music file and transmit it with AM modulation at 1MHz to the nearby radio receiver. This demo shows that the latest ARM Cortex-M0+ MCU is truly unique in supporting ultra-low power consumption in active mode without having to limit Flash or SRAM size.

(And, let us apologize ahead of time for the Rick Astley tune that’ll surely be stuck in your head. You’ll see what we mean around the 2:30 mark.)

CNET talks chipmakers and the Internet of Things

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And who said big things can’t come in tiny packages? 

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As seen throughout the CES 2015 show floor, the Internet of Things (IoT) is more apparent than ever before. From the kitchen to the office to the body, we’re entering a future world where all types of electronic devices are linked to each other via the web. In 2009, there were 2.5 billion connected devices, with a majority of these were smartphones, PCs and tablets. Over the next five years, that number is expected to rise to 33 billion — which is approximately four web-enabled “things” for every person on the planet. Furthermore, analysts project the IoT market to grow on average by 13% year-over-year through 2020, reaching $3.04 trillion.

Writing for CNET, Ben Fox Rubin highlights the ubiquity of IoT at the world’s largest electronics show, noting that it was nearly impossible to come across a booth or press conference without mention of the phrase and how it could change the way people interact with their cars, clothes and coffeemakers.

“There’s still an enormous amount of work to be done to make the concept a reality, but that’s not stopping chip companies from diving into the nascent space to define what a connected world will look like. The stakes are high. Chipmakers that succeed will be able to call the shots in a new and potentially lucrative market, while those that fall behind could be relegated to also-ran status,” Rubin explains.

While the Internet of Things may conjure a number of definitions, the general concept comes down to making just about any conceivable object “smarter.” The idea spans across a number of industries, ranging from smart cities to wireless health to wearable technology.

“We’re in for fun times because we are in the midst of a land grab,” Gartner analyst Alfonso Velosa told CNET. 

Rubin notes that looking at the battle at the chip level is useful because chipmakers are developing the foundation for the entire IoT market and, as a result, provide an early glimpse of the new world to come. He couldn’t be more correct. In fact, Atmel is powering the edge nodes that form the link between individual devices and the gateways that connect to the cloud, supplying Makers and designers with all the basic building blocks – from embedded processing and connectivity to sensors, security and software – and tying it all together with a rich ecosystem of design tools and development partners.

“Many chipmaker executives said that with just a dash of additional R&D, they can sell existing technologies into new industries,” Rubin shares. While larger corporations, such as Intel and Qualcomm, are able to take a multi-faceted approach by going after various targets simultaneously, moderately-sized players are taking a more targeted, strategic approach.

Gartner’s Velosa reveals that some of the leaders in IoT so far are major players in microcontrollers, including Atmel. “These microcontroller players should be able to worm their products into all sorts of new objects — from garage doors to lighting to sprinkler heads — potentially making such companies a much bigger part of consumers’ lives.”

Furthermore, given the fact that MCUs are already being embedded in countless products and places, analysts believe that the companies that build them are experienced in selling to thousands of customers in a variety of industries, making them well-suited for IoT.

“There’s going to be a huge appetite for the tiny things,” stated Forrester analyst Frank Gillett.

“I think the microcontrollers are best positioned, because they can sell to a broad base of products to a broad base of customers,” emphasized Atmel SVP Reza Kazerounian, which puts companies like Atmel in the “sweet spot” for tomorrow’s constantly-connected world.

Want to read more? Continue on over to the entire CNET article here.

Chip Design talks smart Bluetooth, sensors and more

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CES 2015 saw countless Internet of Things (IoT) devices, ranging from Bluetooth gateways and smart sensors to intensive cloud-based data processors and hackathons – all powered by Atmel | SMART ARM-based microcontrollers.

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Writing for Chip Design Magazine, Editorial Director John Blyler recounted the world’s largest electronics show by elaborating upon the underlying the show, which was indeed, connectivity.

“The only difference each year is the way in which the connectivity is express in products. For example, this year’s event showcased an increase in gateway networking devices that permitted Bluetooth Low Energy-equipped gadgets to connect to a Wi-Fi router or other interfaces with the outside world,” Blyler shares.

According to a new IHS report, the global market for low-power, Bluetooth Smart integrated circuits (IC) will see shipments rise nearly tenfold over the next five years. Not only will the worldwide Bluetooth Smart and Smart Ready market be valued at $3.9 billion by 2020, Bluetooth-enabled device shipments will approach the four billion unit mark by next year as well.

This is good news for very low power wireless semiconductor intellectual property (IP) and device manufacturers in the wearable and connected markets, Blyler adds. “One example out of many is Atmel’s BTLC1000 chip, which the company claims will help improve battery life by over 30% of current devices. The chip architecture is based on a ARM Cortex-M0 processor.”

Expanding upon the Atmel SmartConnect wireless portfolio, the BTLC1000 is a Bluetooth Smart link controller integrated circuit that connects as a companion to any Atmel AVR or Atmel | SMART MCU through a UART or SPI API requiring minimal resource on the host side. The ultra-low power solution is capable of achieving sub-1µA in standby mode, while delivering the industry’s best dynamic power consumption and increasing battery life by as much as one year for certain applications.

Giving its unprecedented 2.1mm X 2.1mm Wafer Level Chipscale Package (WLCSP), the Bluetooth Smart controller is ideal for the rapidly growing wearables and IoT realms, not limited to portable medical, activity trackers, human Interface devices, gaming controllers, and beacons and much more.

For those unfamiliar with the technology, Bluetooth Smart is the intelligent, low-power version of traditional Bluetooth wireless technology that works with existing smartphone and tablet applications, and brings connectivity to everyday devices ranging from toothbrushes to heartrate monitors.

“Bluetooth Smart and tiny ultra-low power devices are vital for the wearables market and Atmel have a triple play with their BTLC1000 chip… which has a Cortex-M0 processor on-board and battery life improved 30% over current devices. So here is a perfect example of my point, this device is smaller, uses less power and combines more functionality so after it samples in March it will make its way into new products that simply couldn’t exist before.  What kind of predictions can we make from this you may ask? Things like smart bandages that take your temperature and remind you to take your antibiotics or food packaging that warns of spoilage, the possibilities expand every year. Expect to see more Bluetooth connected ‘things’ at CES 2016. This is an important step in the Internet of Things becoming a reality and that could be an inflection point,” David Blaza recently shared in the ARM Connected Community.

Blyler goes on to note that in order for the IoT to be useful, sensor data at the edge of the connectivity node must be communicated to the cloud for high-performance processing of all the data.

“Next to connectivity, sensors are the defining component of any IoT technology. Maybe that is why sensor companies have been a growing presence on the CES show floor. This year, sensor-related vendors accounted for over 10% of total exhibitors. Many new IoT sensor technology is implemented using tiny MEMS physical structures.”

Want to read more? You can find the entire write-up here. To explore Atmel’s latest Bluetooth ultra-low power solution for the IoT, you can also do so here.

 

 

Home is where the smart is!

It’s that time of the year again — the exciting rush right after the holidays and fresh on the heels of 2015 International CES in Las Vegas. As we look back at the last few years, the smart home category has always been prominent, particularly in 2013 and 2014.

Room by room, appliance by appliance, it’s becoming clearer than ever that our homes are becoming increasingly more connected. With major backing from corporations like Apple and Google as well as an onset of smart home startups on Kickstarter, it is clear that the market is ready to grow at a rapid pace. From security systems and meters to remote controls and utensils, a new generation of intelligent products is set to power and revolutionize our daily lives.

As we head into 2015, we will undoubtedly see the rise of the connected home and a variety of products infiltrate new markets, not to mention existing ones as well. We will see once ordinary household items become Internet-enabled, which not only converges both our digital and physical worlds, but will usher in a more intuitive and automated home. From the living room to the kitchen to the garage, a multitude of trends were certainly apparent on this year’s CES show floor.

In the living room

Never leave the sofa again. Speakers connected through Wi-Fi, ZigBee-controlled smart light bulbs, motion sensors on windows and universal remotes that command all your entertainment devices, touchscreens on the wall, thermostats that adjust to your preferred temperature…what more could you ask for?

In the bedroom

Not only enhancing your day-to-day functions while awake, there will also be a wide-range of connected devices designed to aid users sleep – these include smart gadgets that monitor and analyze sleep patterns to those that enable you to wake up smoothly at the optimal time of a sleep cycle.

Outside the front door

Smart cameras and burglar deterrents are ushering in an entirely new realm of home security. Cameras won’t only be capable of recognizing faces, but sounds and voices as well. This connected equipment will accurately detect those approaching your home, while also allowing you to see and speak to them using your smartphone. Meanwhile, other devices can learn and replay lighting patterns while you’re out of the house, which give off the impression of a lived-in home. Pretty soon, you’ll have your own smart bellhop and security guard.

In the garage

CES 2014 demonstrated that the futuristic automotive features had indeed arrived. The era of constantly connected vehicles are headed into the fast lane, with a number of carmakers looking to smartphone integration and more dynamic interfaces. Expect to see more capacitive touchscreen, smartphone-like dashboards and enhanced app integration. As we look ahead, we are inching so close to the day of self-driving vehicles, which will most likely be more prevalent in the coming months. Furthermore, keyless entry, passive start and vehicle-to-vehicle communication will all play an integral role in 2015. Soon, Disney won’t be the only place to find talking cars.

In the closet

2014 was a significant year for wearables, particularly wrist technology However, don’t be too surprised over the next 12 months if you see the tremendous growth of smart garments as well as devices that clip and attach. The technology is out there and being quickly adopted. Meanwhile, there will be a number of new devices looking to set the tone for health and fitness technology, while smaller companies will emerge — evident by the sheer volume of recently-launched crowdfunding campaigns. Talk about smarty pants!

Staying ahead of the curve

Back at CES 2014, we saw what the mere beginnings of curved screens through televisions. As we get closer to Jan. 6, you can expect to see a couple curved and bendable smartphones throughout the show floor. Companies are getting closer and closer to developing a truly flexible display that would let a user fold up their phone and contort it into whichever shape to easily slide into a pocket. We’re bringing flexy back! Yep!

DIY at home

Another CES, another year closer to ubiquitous 3D printers, home-brew smart devices, DIY drones in the backyard, and customized robots navigating around the house. In fact, this year’s show will see a much larger presence located inside its Robotics Marketplace. One day, we will have more open-source, programmable and autonomous bots carrying out our daily tasks, capable of observing, listening, feeling and reacting specifically to various environments. Additionally, with the widespread adoption of development platforms like Arduino, expect to see more Makers create their own web-connected projects – from home automation to smart remotes.

Securing the house

A trend that we’ll continue to see when discussing the smart home is the world emerging with security and connectivity. As the Internet of Things continues to emerge throughout our products and appliances, the need for security has never been more important than now due to the rapidly expanding number of IoT devices, which drastically multiplies the potential exposure points of attack.

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This article, written by Atmel VP of Marketing Sander Arts, originally appeared on ECNMag.com on January 2, 2014. Those heading to CES 2015 can discover all the latest innovations around the smart home at #MP25760 in South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, as well as explore next-gen wireless and lighting solutions in the Sands Expo at both the ZigBee Alliance Pavilion located in booth #71023 and the Connected Lighting Alliance in booth #70432.

Scan all your books for a dollar each

I just used 1DollarScan in San Jose to scan a bunch of old yearbooks, text books, and manuals from General Motors I have kept for 35 years. There is no “catch,” it really is a dollar a book, but there are some conditions. To be fair, their definition of a book is 100 pages. So if you have a 101 page book, then its two dollars. If it’s a 199 page book, its still two dollars. A 1001 page book is 11 dollars. It is still the best deal you will ever see. Heck, the Post Office makes more than 1DollarScan if you have to ship the books.

Hiroshi Nakano at 1DollarScan will make high-quality pdf files or jpegs of all your books.

You can use media mail, however, and get a really cheap rate. I like the flat-rate Post Office boxes, and there is always UPS and FedEx ground. If you have a pallet of books maybe freight is the cheapest way. For folks like me that live in Silicon Valley, you can just drop the books off.

Now, if the books are copyrighted, 1DollarScan intends to dispose of them after they scan them, so that there is no copyright issues. You just changed the form of the copyrighted material you already paid for, and the Supreme Court has decided that issue decades ago. If the material is your own, or something like a high-school yearbook, 1DollarScan can return the material, if you pay for the shipping.

I had two big bags of books for 1DollarScan.

Since they count 100 pages as a “set” and every book is at least one “set” it did not take long for me to see that I had over 67 sets. I just stopped counting, since they have a 100-dollar a month platinum deal, where several premium services are included free.

So I want to point out the downsides since you are engineers and analytical. But first, rest easy, because Hiroshi Nakano, the founder of 1DollarScan is also an engineer. He came to Silicon Valley working for a big corporation. After a few years, he returned to Japan. There he noticed similar scanning services growing in popularity, since space is at such a premium in Tokyo. So Nakano returned to Silicon Valley and started 1DollarScan. As you would expect from a fellow engineer, the pricing is rational, the website is clear and it works great, and everything seems too good to be true.

As to those downsides? Well, since he uses very light compression on the pdf files, they are huge. My General Motors Institute yearbook came in at 350MB. That was 242 pages of high-res and mostly images. Because I sprung for the 100-dollar a month deal, the file was named with the title of the book and I can use their “tune up” online service to make smaller pdfs suited for phones or tablets, Kindles or other devices. Alternatively I believe they will provide you with the raw jpeg files, and for an extra dollar, they can do 600dpi jpegs. For me, the pdfs just make more sense, and hundreds of separate jpeg files are too unwieldy to handle.

The only other downside is the OCR (optical character recognition) was not perfect. I had 1DollarScan scan in a big 1960s magazine from the Cleveland Plain Dealer called “Cleveland, a city grows to greatness.” The preface has a small biography of the two authors. The type was tiny and the magazine was 50 years old. The page image is perfect, and you can’t see the OCR errors until you highlight and cut-and-paste the text into a notepad or some other editor. Here is what the OCR produced:

George J. Barmann, coculhor of l{ris work, has been on lhe staff of ihe Plain Dealer since epfember, 1942. He came lo the paper {rom the lllinoir State Journal, in Springfield, where he had gone affergraduation from flre University of lllinoir, in !937. On the Plain Dealer, Barmann spent some time in writing about education. After thal, he did general asignmenf reporting. whish meanr covering almoct the whole range of stories that daily come acro3r the City De*. Barmann, in recenl years, has done chiefly feafurer for the Plain Decler, including a greal many inierview with headline peronaliiies and people of the fheafer. Also, he ha; writlen feature stories aboul lhe Civil War. He lraveled through the Deep South, from New Orleans to Charleston, S.C., and wrole a series of arlicle: on whaf Southerners were thinling in tfii: l00th anniver:ary of ilrat wer. A nalive of Chillicolhe, Ohio, Barmann al*ended Miami Univer:ity ai Orford, O. before lramfering to iournalirm ai lhe Universify of lllinois.

Other fonts came out much better, this was the worse OCR of anything that got scanned. But there is a solution to both the big file size and the OCR accuracy. Based on the advice of analog engineer Walt Jung, I had purchased a copy of ABBYY Finereader 11. I am pretty sure it was under 100 dollars. I used ABBYY to scan in all my loose papers and tax records. I find it far better than TextBridge and other OCR programs, which I also own. ABBYY will take in a pdf file, and re-recognize the text, and save it with much higher compression. So I ran the 1DollarScan pdf into ABBYY and made another pdf file. That file of a 64-page ledger-size book was 9MB instead of 120MB. Here is the ABBYY OCR result of the Cleveland book:

G e o r g e J. Barmann, co­author of this work, has been on the staff of the Plain Dealer since September, 1942. H e came to the paper from the Illinois State Journal, in Springfield, where he had gone after gradua­tion from the University of Illinois, in 1937. O n the Plain Dealer, Bar­mann spent some time in writing about education. A fte r that, he did general assignment reporting, which means covering almost the whole range of stories that d a ily come across the C it y Desk. Barmann, in recent years, has done chiefly features for the Plain Dealer, including a great many interviews with headline personalities and people of the theater. Also, he has written feature stories about the C iv il W a r . H e traveled through the Deep South, from New Orlea ns to Charleston, S.C., and wrote a series of articles on what Southerners were thinking in this 100th anniversary of that war. A native of Chillicothe, Ohio, Barmann attended M ia m i University at Oxford, O., before transferring to journalism at the University of Illinois.

You can see ABBYY was much more accurate, but its problem is that it peppers extraneous spaces in the text. If you searched Google for George Barmann, it would find the 1DollarScan pdf but not the ABBYY pdf. This is because it is trying to line up the highlighted hidden OCR to the image of the text on top of the OCR. Since the font is a bit funky, is hand-typeset and has kerning, ABBYY breaks up words when it adds needless spaces. Both OCR results were a bunch of separate lines that I concatenated above so they would fit this post. Where the ABBYY version has hyphens, those are correct, there were line breaks there. Oh, I know, I can take a screen shot of the pdf images, here:

The 120MB 1DollarScan screenshot has way less image compression, if you click on the image you can see the author’s eyes much more clearly that the image below.

The 1DollarScan 120MB pdf run through and re-recognized by ABBYY Finereader 11 is only 9MB, and the text quality is nearly as good. The ABBYY image quality suffers from the higher compression, so you should not erase the original 1DollarScan files.

You can see that the 9MB ABBYY is almost as good for text as the 120MB 1DollarScan pdf, but the image in the 1DollarScan pdf is clearly better. So for things like a yearbook, I definitely will keep the larger 1DollarScan file, and maybe make a ABBYY pdf out of that to send around or post online. I looked into the extraneous spaces in ABBYY and there seems to be no “cure”. I tried making a “tagged” pdf in ABBYY and it is just much bigger and even worse OCR.

OK, so you can see that 1DollarScan is the real deal, here is a photo montage.

Hiroshi Nakano examines the books dropped off for scanning at 1DollarScan.

One side of the warehouse at 1DollarScan is for books waiting to be scanned. Lead times are only a week or two.

Hiroshi Nakano uses this guillotine stack paper cutter to remove the bindings of your books.

Hiroshi Nakano shows the spine of a book that he has cut off with the guillotine stack paper cutter at 1DollarScan.

Here is the workstation where an employee at 1DollarScan feeds several scanners and once, while tending to paper jams and insuring you get the perfect scan.

I should mention that I asked Hiroshi Nakano if I should not show the heart of his operation above with the multiple scanners being fed by his employee. I told him that someone might see it and try to compete with him. Nakano smiled and said, “Nobody can compete with me.” I love the precision and factual nature of my fellow engineers, don’t you? Lets face it, a dollar to scan 100 pages with OCR is pretty remarkable.

Once the books are scanned and the pdfs are posted for your download, 1DollarScan holds your books for two weeks, in case there were any problems. After that, the copyrighted books are recycled, or un-copyrighted materials are sent back to you if you pay shipping.

Hiroshi Nakano from 1DollarScan patiently explained his operation to me and I was assured that it really is true that he can do high-quality scans of your books and magazines for a very low price.

There is real joy in being able to keep all my books in electronic form while dispensing with hundreds, maybe 1000 pounds of paper. Lets see if I can find a picture–

An engineers can collect a lot of paper. There were tax records for my business, project folders for jobs I worked on, letters from college girlfriends, owners manuals, and two big stacks of books you can barely see in the back right corner. The ammo boxes bottom right are full of pictures and negatives.

It took about six months, just scanning in all these loose papers. The hand-written letters from girlfriends I kept as 300dpi jpegs. Same for my hand-written printed notes, the OCR in ABBYY is pointless on handwriting anyway. For pictures, I scanned them at 600dpi, anything finer I could not see any difference on the 47-inch TV I use as a monitor. For negatives and slides I did 2400dpi, which is the same spatial resolution as doing the printed picture at 600dpi. I used ABBYY to make pdf files of any printed materials, including some booklets that I thought 1DollarScan might not want to do. But all the books, yearbooks, magazines, and manuals, well, it was just so nice to send those two big stacks to 1DollarScan and have it taken care of my by some diligent professionals. Lets face it, disk space is nearly free. I have a 2-Terabyte NAS (network-attached storage) at home that can hold all these files with room to spare.

For scanning all my loose documents, I had a Canon laser MF 4890dw on the right. For 11×17 and oversize, a Brother MFC-J6710DW inkjet on the left. For pictures, slides and negatives a Canon CanoScan 8800F back-lit flatbed in the middle.

A standard desk would hold all three of my scanners, The laptop was driving my two TVs, and a wireless keyboard and mouse did the control. Lots of paper towels and Windex to keep the platens clean. It was a monumental job but now it is done. I will keep all my receipts and records on the NAS now. I back it up onto the laptops, and to a SSD (solid-state drive) I keep in the safety deposit box at the bank. I have auto titles and my birth certificate as paper, everything else is virtual. It is heaven. I gave away the two printer-scanners but kept the flatbed so I can do receipts and such as they come in. No more shoe boxes full of receipts for me.

I made three runs to the Sunnyvale dump with the scanned paper. My pal said some companies will let you put your personal stuff in their shredder boxes. Either way, it is great to have all kinds of room, as long as I resist the temptation to fill it up with old test equipment or Sportster parts. And for getting rid of that stuff, you can use flea markets, Craigslist, and eBay.

Stock-engine-test_1969-Chevrolet-327-cu.in.-V-8-42p_ABBYY

Here is a link to a scan I had done by 1DollarScan and then ran through ABBYY Finereader. It went from 28MB to 2.7MB. The booklet a really cool engine test report I had from my student days at GMI. Since Mary Barra, the CEO of GM went to GMI too, hopefully she won’t sic a bunch of high-tone Detroit lawyers on me. I do note there is no copyright symbol on the document. Now the blocky shading on the title is due to the compression in ABBYY. The 1DollarScan document does not have those artifacts. But it is 10 times bigger. Note how the scan is straight and note how they scanned the both sides of the back cover, even when there was no text. You want the whole booklet scanned, they do it. Now they do charge 2 dollars for magazines, and I am not sure they counted this booklet as a magazine or thin book. In any event, that was why it was worth it to get the premium membership for a month. Hiroshi Nakano thought I was being fair and I thought the same about him. More than fair. Part of the premium service is they give the pdf file the name of the book. In this case they carefully typed: Stock engine test, 1969 chevrolet 327 cu.in.v-8, 42p.pdf. Since I am putting it on a web server, I changed the name to my convention: Stock-engine-test_1969-Chevrolet-327-cu.in.-V-8-42p_ABBYY.pdf. When pals talk trash about GM, I whip out this 45-year-old engine test. General Motors knows more about cars and good engineering than all the congressmen and lawyers put together. I still miss being an auto engineer.

Hardware security is the only real security

I just came across the epic hack that Wired‘s Matt Honan had perpetrated on him. A hacker added a credit card number to his Amazon account. The next day they called Amazon and said they lost the password. “What is the number of the credit card on the account?” asked the helpful Amazon employee. Once they were in the Amazon account they got into his Google accounts, all helpfully linked by Matt himself, and then the Apple accounts. The hacker was some sociopath kid. He was not interested in money; he just wanted to hurt someone, so he wiped out all the pictures and data on Honan’s phone, computer, and yes, the precious precious cloud. Yes, my precious, one cloud to rule them all.

Just like the Ring in The Lord of the Rings, the cloud can be your worst enemy in the hands of a bad person.

Now initially Honan lamented that he lost all the pictures of his new baby and a bunch of other stuff. The next article showed how he got it all back in a couple days. He says he believes in the cloud even more now. Beats me why he thinks that. If he had not inadvertently left his 1Password account password in his Dropbox on his wife’s computer it might have been much more difficult to recover control of his accounts.

As to all the wiped data, well it was lost forever on the precious cloud, but the nice folks at DriveSavers got his SSD (solid-state drive) in his mac mostly recovered at a cost of $1,690. So since the whole thing gave him half a dozen popular articles to write-up, you could argue getting hacked was the best thing that ever happened to his career. It reminds me of when King Louis XIV’s minister Colbert asked a bunch of writers “What can France do for you?” One shouted back—“Throw us in prison.” It would give them something to write about and the time and solitude needed to write it.

DriveSavers have a full cleanroom to save hacked, damaged, or corrupted hard drives. They can also do forensic hardware analysis on solid state drives (SSDs) as in Matt Honan’s case.

What astonishes me is that this hack happened to a technically astute denizen of San Francisco. Maybe he should move to Silicon Valley, we know a lot about security here and Atmel’s group in Colorado knows even more. Not only did Honan misplace his trust in online accounts and the precious cloud, he kept no secure data backup. He courageously accepts the blame, but also tries to deflect some blame onto Apple and Google. Sorry, your data is your responsibility. Apple and Google quickly closed the social-manipulation hacks the sociopath used, but it is not their job to accept responsibility for your data. That is your responsibility.

This is what we keep harping on here at Atmel. Security is a key pillar in the Internet to Things, and the best security, the only real security, is hardware security. You don’t want these malicious hackers changing your thermostat, or running up your electric bill, or stealing your security camera feeds. Atmel has inexpensive tiny chips you can use to secure these gizmos. Some of our chips use symmetrical authentication. The security chip is programmed with your secret key, and you know the secret key. The microcontroller, and it doesn’t have to be an Atmel microcontroller— it can be anyone’s, sends a random number to the Atmel security chip. The Atmel chip does a mathematical operation on the random number using the secret key, and sends that result back to the microcontroller. The host microcontroller has a local Atmel security chip to do the same mathematical operation on the same random number and then it compares the two results. If they don’t match, the code stops executing. That way no-one can put in bogus code and take over your gizmo. It gives you secure boot and secure downloads and upgrades. You can also use Atmel security chips to verify a battery or accessory is genuine and not some knock-off product.

Atmel’s CryptoAuthentication™ system uses hardware and extreme security to protect your system.

Now since the microcontroller is connected to the Atmel security chips by way of a common SPI port, you might fear a hacker could snoop on the communication and learn the random number sent to the Atmel chips or the mathematical result sent from it to the micro. That’s the beautiful part of this. The micro generates a new random number every time. If the host micro is too small and simple to generate a reliable random number, the tiny Atmel security chip has its own true random number generator (TRNG). So the micro can query the Atmel chip for the number, then query for the result, then do the same operation using the same secret key. So snooping on the serial port will only give you the last serial number and the result. You will have no idea of what the operation was that produced the result. Its like snooping and seeing the number 12 transmitted, but you still don’t know if that was based on 2 time 6 or 3 times 4. Now imagine that problem with numbers hundreds of bits long, and you can see how secure this makes your system.

This USB memory stick has a keypad to unlock it. You can store all your passwords or love letters on it and no one can get in without the code.

So it’s great to have services like 1Password, which is a browser extension combined with a remote server that generates and stores different passwords for all your needs. If, however, you need to use two computers, and who doesn’t, now you get to involve Dropbox so that you can store the master password there so you can get your 1Password even if you are at a Kinkos computer. Thing is, I just feel better with hardware security. In this case, it would be using a USB stick with hardware keypad or fingerprint sensor. Those are great since you don’t need a program on the computer of Surface Pro tablet to run it. You swipe your finger or type in a code and the stick unlocks and you can cut-and paste passwords as you need to. Thing is, there I worry about Windows saving some temporary file. I looked into this a few years ago, and sure enough, even a text file seemed to get cloned somewhere once you opened it off a stick. So the real hardware security is two-factor authentication like you get with an RSA dongle or a YubiKey. Once again, the essential element is a real physical piece of hardware that makes the system secure. I love the YubiKey since it emulates a keyboard, so unless someone infected your computer with a keylogger, there is no record that you used it. And, like the RSA SecurID, even if they do keylog it, the same code never works twice. They are just like that Atmel security chip and just as uncrackable.

The YubiKey is a two-factor authentication system accepted by more and more sites for login. The Nano model is as small as the USB contact pins. Pressing a little button on the device makes it send the one-time log-on code as though it was a USB keyboard.

RIOTing with the Internet of Things

RIOT is an open-source operating system (OS) designed to power the rapidly evolving Internet of Things (IoT).

Licensed as LGPL, RIOT was initially developed by FU Berlin, INRIA and the HAW Hamburg. 

Indeed, the origins of RIOT can actually be traced back to FeuerWare, an operating system for fire crews and their wireless sensor networks.

The operating system — which is based on a microkernel architecture — supports both C and C++, as well as full multi-threading and real-time capabilities. RIOT provides utilities like cryptographic libraries, data structures, or a shell, different network stacks, and support for various microcontrollers, radio drivers, sensors, and configurations for entire platforms.

The RIOT runs on both 16-bit and 32-bit hardware, with a native port allowing RIOT to run as a Linux or MacOS process. This helps facilitate the use of standard development and debugging tools such as the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), GNU Debugger, Valgrind and Wireshark. RIOT runs on several platforms including embedded devices as well as common PCs, and supports multiple drivers, which offers out-of-the-box usage. The hardware dependent code is reduced to a minimum and abstracted from the kernel itself.

Among the architectures RIOT supports are ARM Cortex-M0, -M3 and -M4, as well as the ARM7. Subsequently, the IoT operating system is compatible with a number of boards like the Arduino Due (SAM3X8E), the Atmel ATmega2560 and the Nordic nRF51822 (ATSAM3U2C). RIOT also provides multiple network stacks, including IPv6, 6LoWPAN and standard protocols such as RPL, UDP, TCP and CoAP.

Simply put, RIOT is free software, meaning Makers and engineers can redistribute and modify the OS. Software developed by the RIOT community is available under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 2 (LGPLv2).

Interested in learning more? As a community project, you can find RIOT’s source code on GitHub as well as download its latest release here.

What is Ambient Security?

New technology and business buzzwords pop up constantly. Hardly a day goes by that you don’t see or hear words such as “cloud”, “IoT,” or “big data.” Let’s add one more to the list: “Ambient security.”

You’ll notice that big data, the cloud, and the IoT are all connected, literally and figuratively, and that is the point. Billions of things will communicate with each other without human intervention, mainly through the cloud, and will be used to collect phenomenal and unprecedented amounts of data that will ultimately change the universe.

As everything gets connected, each and every thing will also need to be secure. Without security, there is no way to trust that the things are who they say they are (i.e. authentic), and that the data has not been altered (i.e. data integrity). Due to the drive for bigger data, the cloud and smart communicating things are becoming ambient; and, because those things all require security, security itself is becoming ambient as well.  Fortunately, there is a method to easily spread strong security to all the nodes. (Hint: Atmel CryptoAuthentication.)

Big Data

At the moment, big data can be described as the use of inductive statistics and nonlinear system analysis on large amounts of low density (or quickly changing) data to determine correlations, regressions, and causal effects that were not previously possible. Increases in network size, bandwidth, and computing power are among the things enabling this data to get bigger — and this is happening at an exponential rate.

Big data became possible when the PC browser-based Internet first appeared, which paved the way for data being transferred around the globe. The sharp rise in data traffic was driven to a large extent by social media and companies’ desire to track purchasing and browsing habits to find ways to micro-target purchasers. This is the digitally-profiled world that Google, Amazon, Facebook, and other super-disruptors foisted upon us.  Like it or not, we are all being profiled, all the time, and are each complicit in that process. The march to bigger data continues despite the loss of privacy and is, in fact, driving a downfall in privacy. (Yet that’s a topic for another article.)

Biggering

The smart mobile revolution created the next stage of “biggering” (in the parlance of Dr. Seuss). Cell phones metamorphosed from a hybrid of old-fashioned wired telephones and walkie-talkies into full blown hand-held computers, thus releasing herds of new data into the wild. Big data hunters can thank Apple and the Android army for fueling that, with help from the artists formerly known as Nokia, Blackberry, and Motorola. Mobile data has been exploding due to its incredible convenience, utility, and of course, enjoyment factors. Now, the drive for bigger data is continuing beyond humans and into the autonomous realm with the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT).

Bigger Data, Little Things

IoT is clearly looking like the next big thing, which means the next big thing will be literally little things. Those things will be billions of communicating sensors spread across the world like smart dust — dust that talks to the “cloud.”

More Data

The availability of endless data and the capability to effectively process it is creating a snowball effect where big data companies want to collect more data about more things, ad infinitum. You can almost hear chanting in the background: “More data… more data… more data…”

More data means many more potential correlations, and thus more insight to help make profits and propel the missions of non-profit organizations, governments, and other institutions. Big data creates its own appetite, and the data to satisfy that growing appetite will derive from literally everywhere via sensors tied to the Internet. This has already started.

Sensors manufacture data. That is their sole purpose. But, they need a life support system including smarts (i.e. controllers) and communications (such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and others). There is one more critical part of that: Security.

No Trust? No IoT! 

There’s no way to create a useful communicating sensor network without node security. To put it a different way, the value of the IoT depends directly on whether those nodes can be trusted. No trust. No IoT.  Without security, the Internet of Things is just a toy.

What exactly is security? It can best be defined by using the three-pillar model, which (ironically) can be referred to as “C.I.A:” Confidentiality, Integrity and Authenticity.

CIA

Confidentiality is ensuring that no one can read the message except its intended receiver. This is typically accomplished through encryption and decryption, which hides the message from all parties but the sender and receiver.

Integrity, which is also known as data integrity, is assuring that the received message was not altered. This is done using cryptographic functions. For symmetric, this is typically done by hashing the data with a secret key and sending the resulting MAC with the data to the other side which does the same functions to create the MAC and compare. Sign-verify is the way that asymmetric mechanisms ensure integrity.

Authenticity refers to verification that the sender of a message is who they say they are — in other words, ensuring that the sender is real. Symmetric authentication mechanisms are usually done with a challenge (often a random number) that are sent to the other side, which is hashed with a secret key to create a MAC response, before getting sent back to run the same calculations. These are then compared to the response MACs from both sides.

(Sometimes people add non-repudiation to the list of pillars, which is preventing the sender from later denying that they sent the message in the first place.)

The pillars of security can be  implemented with devices such as Atmel CryptoAuthentication crypto engines with secure key storage. These tiny devices are designed to make it easy to add robust security to lots of little things – -and big things, too.

So, don’t ever lose sight of the fact that big data, little things and cloud-based IoT are not even possible without ambient security. Creating ambient security is what CryptoAuthentication is all about.

IR reflow oven for your prototype PCBs

When you use solder paste to assemble your prototype PCB (printed circuit board) you need a stencil or hypodermic needle to apply the paste to the pads on the board. Then you use an IR (infra-red) reflow oven to melt the solder. Scott Fritz, an Atmel IC designer on the third floor, found this neat home-made controller that turns a cheap toaster oven into an IR reflow oven. I assume the name Reflowster is a combination of the words “reflow” and “toaster.”

The Reflowster will do closed-loop control of a cheap toaster over so you can do IR reflow soldering on your prototype circuit boards.

The Reflowster is an Arduino-based controller that that gives you predicable and repeatable heating and cooling profiles to melt the solder paste and connect up all the components on your board. They got their start on Kickstarter, and have actually shipped, so all the Kickstarter people are rewarded. Now the Reflowster folks are starting to offer the product to the general public.

The Reflow controller V3 PRO from PCB POOL in Europe is another product meant to work with a toaster oven.

I have mentioned a similar reflow controller made by the fine people at PCB-POOL in Europe. That article also described how my buddy Wayne Yamaguchi was using a toaster oven a decade ago to make his PCBs. Wayne did not use a controller. He just did a whole bunch of tests until he was satisfied he was getting good whetting and solder fillets on his circuit boards.

The great thing about the Reflowster is that it is a closed-loop controller. It is actually measures the temperature of the oven, and then controls the power to it so that the heating and cooling match the profiles recommended by component makers like Atmel (pdf).

Precise temperature control is needed to do quality lead-free soldering.

While I love, admire, and respect my buddy Wayne Yamaguch’s “theory of experiments” approach, you might really need the Reflowster. If you want to use different ovens, or have changing wall voltage, or the boards you are soldering are different sizes or have a different set of components on them, you want a closed-loop controller. If the chips have a big pad on the bottom, the die-attach-paddle, you need reflow. The other big factor is lead-free solder. Many of the crazy analog engineers I hang out with still use tin-lead solder for prototypes. It looks better, it feels better, and lead solder is more reliable. We also pull the solder off the reel by biting it gently and tugging, so we don’t have to set the soldering iron down. Lead poisoning might explain why we are all crazy. But if you are sane and insist on using lead-free solder, the preciseness of reflow control is important.

Solder paste application is like silkscreening T-shirts. Instead of silk the stencil is stainless steel. Instead of ink you use solder paste. Instead of T-shirts you do printed circuit boards.

Solder paste has its own hassles. You should refrigerate open containers so the little solder balls do not oxidize and change the reflow parameters. I am not sure the same caveat applies to when you use a big hypodermic to apply the solder paste. There the hassle is you have to do it one pad a time. A solder stencil is a thin stainless steel sheet where the PCB fab house has etched through all the areas where there is supposed to be solder. Sometimes called the “cream layer” Its not exactly the solder mask art, but it is pretty close, depending on your particular design. I know you can set up OrCAD 9.2 to do it, and I am sure other CAD packages can make it, or the PCB fab house can create one from your solder mask layer art.

Here is a typical solder stencil from Stencils Unlimited. With one swipe of a squeegee you apply solder paste to the pads for your chips and passive components.

The fine folks at Sunstone used to offer a free stencil, now it looks like they charge a little. Most fab houses can supply one. Assembly houses like Screaming Circuits or Advanced Assembly have the relationships with board houses to they can make your stencil when they assemble your boards. If you are really masochistic, and have a high-powered CO2 laser cutter handy, you can make your own stencils. You can also live in a cave and use flint tools, but I prefer to operate a little higher on the food chain. The LPKF laser mill can make your stencils as well.

This solder stencil from Proto-Advantage lets you apply solder paste for a QFN-32 chip.

There are also hybrid approaches. You can buy cheap solder stencils just for high-pin-count chips on your board. You squeegee the solder paste onto the board for each of those parts, Then you can use a hypodermic for the passive components or hand-solder them after you reflow the big chips.

If you are a big-time engineer on a big-budget project then just contact Screaming Circuits or Advanced Assembly or you local board assembly house (not PCB fab, but board assembly). I know Screaming Circuits can do it all since they have teamed up with Sunstone and Digi-Key. Just send Screaming Circuits the fab Gerber and fab files which they send to Sunstone, the assembly drawing and insert file which they use themselves, and the BOM (bill of material) they order the parts with from Digi-Key. They can do quick-turn and they can ship anywhere in the world.

So the prototyping ecosystem is like this:

• If you are a hobbyist use DIP (dual-inline plastic) chips with 0.1 inch lead spacing and through-hole passive components. You might use surface mount chips on DIP breakout boards.
• If you are a pro-hobbyist or low-budget engineer buy a temperature-controlled Weller soldering iron or a Metcal and a good stereo microscope. Now you can hand-solder surface mount boards. For chips with bottom pads you have to either heat the whole chip with a big soldering iron, use a heat gun, or try to wick the solder in from vias you design in on the backside of the board.
• If you are a hobbyist doing low-volume manufacturing or a medium-budget engineer, go to solder stencils and reflow ovens.
• If you are a hobbyist that hit it big or a big-budget engineer, use the board house to order the parts, get the PCB fab, and assemble and maybe even test your board.

TQM Solutions knows that total quality management means you not only have a mountain of documentation, but that you organize that mountain.

Note that last item. See, as an engineer, your real job is to make a set of documentation so the design can get manufactured by non-engineers and non-technicians and non-hobbyists. Its nice you are a hands-on person. Heck, its critical you are a hands-on person to be a good engineer. But your real responsibility is making sure the CAD files are correct. it might speed things up if you make a first-spin board yourself, and its neat if you make the board on an LPKF mill and you can get parts from the factory floor or Radio Shack or a salvage yard.

I used to design products with parts I found cheap at places like Weird Stuff Warehouse in Silicon Valley. Then one of my designs went to production but Weird Stuff had sold off all the parts I had used. Now I select parts from distributors.

The great thing about using Screaming Circuits and Sunstone and a distributor like Mouser or Arrow or Newark or DigiKey is that you are proving out your documentation. You make it clear to Screaming Circuits that if your pick-and-place insert file has mistakes they tell you, you fix them and they use that file. This way, when they see that the part origin for a DPAK is at the pad and not the part center, they know the vacuum picker cannot pick it up, so you catch that AND FIX IT. If your Gerbers have problems you make sure Sunstone tells you, or you use the free DFM (Design for manufacturing) check offered by Advanced Circuits. Then you FIX THE FILES. Same deal for any BOM mistakes. Make sure somebody tells you so you can FIX THE FILE, and not the text file, you fix the CAD file in OrCAD or Altium or whatever, so it spits out a perfect BOM.

Now when you send the CAD files to China to get assembled on the cheap, you know the files are correct. Anything less and you are not an engineer, you are an amateur. Proto Express even works with a Chinese partner to ensure you can get cheap-high volume boards that work as well at the Proto-Express boards made right here in Silicon Valley.

The oqo Model 2 used a Via processor. The third model with an Intel Atom never got built since they ran out of money (courtesy Engadget).

This level of diligence and exactness is critical. I worked at oqo, a San Francisco start-up that made the first palm-top computer that ran real Windows OS. The first model was based on the Transmeta “emulated” x86 processor. The second model used a Via chip. Lesson there is never base a business plan on being smarter than Intel. The third prototype never went into production. I had left the company for National Semiconductor, but pals there told me they used an Intel Atom processor and it was a real product that could really work good. But they were running out of money. So I assume in a big rush, they sent the design to the Chinese contract manufacturer. A pal familiar with the company told me oqo had to fly out an engineer to China and there were 1000 ECOs (engineering change orders) to get the design ready for high-volume manufacturing. One thousand mistakes. Now it probably didn’t matter, but its nice to think that if they had scrubbed the CAD files, the fab, the assembly, and the rework documentation through a US quick-turn prototype manufacturer, and fixed most of those mistakes, then maybe they could have gotten that product to market and saved the company.

This is a perfect example of the asymmetric respect problem in engineering. The Chinese manufacturing engineers respected those high-tone former Apple designers at oqo. But the oqo engineers may have thought manufacturing was some triviality and beneath them. Perhaps they thought any idiot should be able to do it. Sorry. Wrong. Dead wrong. Dead just like oqo is today. You need to be every bit as smart, clever, and creative to do manufacturing and test as to do design work. When you take a product all the way to production, you will learn to respect everybody involved. Respect the planners, the clerks, the assemblers, and ALL the engineers. So be a good and respectful design engineer and make sure your CAD files are a good as they can be before you send them out for production. That is your responsibility, not a Flextronics responsibility.

The cover of my mentor Bob Pease’s book Troubleshooting Analog Circuits has one of his “airball” prototypes on the cover. Application engineers like Bob can do proof-of-concept, but don’t try sending this out for high-volume manufacturing.

So like all things, prototyping has an analog continuum to it, There is a place for quick-and dirty hacks. There is place for super-diligence. And there is a whole spectrum of tradeoffs for an appropriate design effort in between those poles. Just don’t do some rush-job today that you just know will bite you a few months later.

[Update] I showed this post to Wayne Yamaguchi and he had this great comment:

“One of the major drawbacks to solder paste is the shelf life.  No matter how you buy it, the container and contents will go bad in about 6 months time, even in the refrigerator.  It’s the flux that ages and slowly solidifies making the reflow consistency different over time.  It’s just a real pain to dispense the paste with a tiny-tip syringe when it it’s fresh, and even worse when it has aged a bit. If I recall correctly, the smallest syringe runs about $50.00.  You can solder a lot with that but if you only make one proto this is an expensive proposition.

“Mine tends to absorb water over time and this makes it pop when reflowing, blowing off chunks of solderpaste in all directions. I can hand-solder 0402 and DFN parts with the soldering iron.  I only need the hot-air station for pads that are not exposed, like power pads and some SMT inductors. I would recommend a really good soldering iron or two, and a general-purpose hot air station if you want to hand-solder small runs of boards. You will need one with a 0.2mm tip or smaller for the leadless and 0402 parts.

“I prefer to still use leaded solder.  It solders at a lower temp and the chemicals are less caustic, unlike the solder flux used for leadless solder.  Unless I have to, I try to use “no clean” flux and occasionally will use Kester 331 (IIRC) for gold-plated pads.

“Good stencils are cut non-vertical.  The edges are beveled so the bottomside is slightly larger than the top, making the solderpaste less resistant to sticking to the stencil.  Hopefully, when you lift the stencil the solderpaste adheres to the PCB and not the stencil.  I’ve never actually seen the process, but, I always imagined  that the paste would not all tranfer.  I guess it works.  Just doesn’t work in my mind.  The bevel is only 5-10 degrees.  Hardly noticeable by the eye, but, I guess it makes a difference.

“Another gotcha will come when you doing rework.  You remove the part in question and/or use solderwick to clean the pads.  If you try and apply solderpaste right away the residual heat will outflow the flux from the syringe tip which is most frustrating as now the tip is full of paste with no flux.  When this occurs it is like concrete and won’t flow.  It is possible to drain more than the tip into the larger part of the syringe tube rendering the whole syringe load bad.  You can unscrew the tip and plunge out the bad material, but, who knows if you now have the right ratio of flux to solder anymore?  If this is the tube from the vendor you can kiss $50.00 down the drain.  If you transferred solderpaste to a smaller syringe the loss is less than $50.00.”

I guess all those years at HP and Agilent, and then being in business for himself gave Wayne a valuable perspective on prototyping. Many thanks to him, and add you own comments below.