The latest Atmel | SMART development kit features video decoder and advanced security features.
element14 has debuted the Atmel | SMART SAMA5D4-XUL Xplained board, featuring an ARM Cortex-A5 microprocessor. The newly-announced development kit enables users to evaluate, prototype and create high performance, application-specific designs. The SAMA5D4 Xplained Ultra is packed with 4Gb DDR2 external memory, one Ethernet physical layer transceiver, two SD/MMC interfaces, two host USB ports and one device USB port, one 24-bit RGB LCD and HDMI interface and debug interfaces.
The 720p video decoder and playback at 30fps alongside the LCD controller with graphics accelerator are targeted for consumer and industrial designs, including terminals and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. In addition, the SAMA5D4-XULT leverages the advanced security features found on the board’s microprocessor, like ARM Trust Zone, secure boot, encrypted DDR bus, tamper detection pins and secure data storage.
Seven headers, compatible with both the Arduino Uno and Due and two Xplained headers are available for various shield connections.
“Our partnership with Atmel continues to grow with the latest addition to the Atmel Xplained family of development kits,” explained David Shen, Premier Farnell Group CTO. “The comprehensive security features and display capabilities of the SAMA5D4-XULT are key to the advancement and implementation of IoT applications where the user interface and security information are critical.”
As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, the SAMA5D4 is optimized for control panel/HMI applications requiring video playback and is well suited for other use cases that require high levels of connectivity in the industrial and consumer Internet of Things market. The new ARM-based series is a high-performance, power-efficient Cortex-A5 MPU capable of running up to 528 MHz. Furthermore, the device integrates the ARM NEON SIMD engine for accelerated signal processing, multimedia and graphics as well as a 128 KB L2-Cache for high system performance.
Kaivan Karimi, Atmel VP and GM of Wireless Solutions, provides insight into the Internet of Things and the role of BLE connectivity.
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.
While it might look like an ordinary digital picture frame, it’s so much more.
A digital photo frame that shares memorable moments of your life and saves you money on your electric bill each month? Picture that! That is the premise behind CEIVA Energy’s HomeView digital picture frame, which allows users to keep tabs on home energy use, without the need for another display showing boring information about kilowatt hours.
Founded in 2000 by former Disney executives, the Burbank, California company officially launched in 2011. Since its inception, the infiltration of smart devices throughout the home has led to an assortment of sophisticated thermostats, like the Google Nest and Honeywell Lyric, that can learn a homeowner’s energy consumption habits and automatically adjust the temperature accordingly to mitigate costs and unnecessary use.
While the idea of merging a digital photo display with energy data may seem a bit absurd, the team behind the frame believes it has developed a new, more intuitive alternative to increase customer engagement. And, as the smart home market continues to emerge, some consumers may find connected devices to either be too pricey or unnecessary, or the average consumer may just not be interested in another form of technology. What’s great about CEIVA HomeView is that it simply brings an accessory already found throughout your home into the digital-savvy era.
How it works is pretty simple. The frame displays a montage of photos uploaded by its owner on its 8-inch screen. Meanwhile, the ZigBee-enabled device wirelessly receives energy use data from the home’s smart meter. Once the information has been sent to and processed by CEIVA’s servers, the frame then displays home energy consumption approximately every 90 seconds. The data points are reduced to two or three numbers, not an entire chart or graphical representation that shares a bunch of confusing information. Instead, the gadget reveals useful things like electric rate and an estimated utility bill for that month.
While receiving information about current and historical electricity, water and gas usage is a welcomed addition into any home, users can also invite friends and family to send photos directly to the frame, send pictures to a frame remotely via the web, email, camera phone, tablet and social media channels, as well as insert a memory card and view a camera’s photos in real-time.
One of, if not the, most important feature of the HomeView is its security — an imperative element as the number of smart home hacks are on the rise. Equipped with an Atmel ATECC108 crypto engine, CEIVA notes that the frame never be replicated and all communications to and from frame are uniquely assigned for that specific. In other words, only you can view information and control your devices. This is because the ATECC108 provides a full turnkey Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) engine using key sizes of 256 or 283 bits, which are appropriate for modern security environments without the long computation delay typical of software solutions.
Want a HomeView frame for your home? Head on over to company’s official page here. In the meantime, watch as CEIVA’s Jack McKee and Jack Brooks provide a hands-on overview of their latest smart device below.
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.)
Shenzhen has emerged on the Maker scene for its shortened development cycles, entrepreneurial spirit and DIY culture.
Sander Arts, Atmel VP of Corporate Marketing, continued his trip through China with a stop in Shenzhen on Wednesday, January 21, where he had the chance to explore the latest and greatest innovations coming out of the city, in particular those being created inside Seeed Studio — a hardware innovation platform designed to enable Makers to grow inspirations into differentiating products.
There, Arts had the opportunity to sit down with the Seeed Studio team, including founder Eric Pan, to discuss the Maker Movement, open-souce hardware as well as Chinese DIY culture. Later on, the Atmel VP participated in a well-attended press event with a number of journalists, tinkerers and entrepreneurs to discuss Atmel’s place at the heart of the rapidly growing global movement, and of course, the Internet of Things.
Recently, 35-year-old Shenzhen — which is located in the southern region of China — has emerged as quite the innovation hub, spurring Makers from all walks of life to delve deep into their imaginations and develop their ideas. Leveraging on its experience in manufacturing goods and access to parts, countless entrepreneurs, tinkerers and hobbyists have been drawn to the city.
The city’s capabilities have aided manufacturers in greatly shortening the production timeline from ‘Maker to market,’ which greatly enhances experimentation and provides a reliable, cost-effective solution for startups. In fact, the last few years have experienced an uptick in new companies coming to Shenzhen to finalize their concepts with notable examples including Pebble and Oculus Rift, Slate reveals. Additionally, hackerspaces and accelerators (like HAXLR8R and Highway1) have had an integral influence on innovators, another surefire sign that the Maker Movement has, indeed, arrived.
“Makerspaces will likely enable a new wave of tech startups in China as in the U.S. To be sure, Makers working with their peers are now able to more easily realize their goals, while bringing products to market with new platforms such as e-commerce sites and crowdfunding. Nevertheless, major companies in China are somewhat cautious about encouraging grass-root innovations, even though some of them are actively involved in a collaborative dialogue with Makers as part of a strategic open innovation strategy,” Eric Pan, founder of Seeed Studio, told in a recent interview.
Developed in 2008, Seeed Studio is a convergence of manufacturing and a true embodiment of the so-called Maker culture. The company designs and produces its own open hardware kits, platforms and custom PCBs, while serving as a distributor for a large number of brands like the Atmel basedArduino. Moreover, it has even played a pivotal role in establishing the hardware incubation project HAXLR8R as well as the very first Maker Faire in Shenzhen.
Just last year, MAKE: Magazine‘s Dale Dougherty announced the inaugural full-scale Maker Faire in China, which successfully recognized the significance of the city as a global capital for DIYers. An estimated 30,000 people walked the tree-lined streets to partake in the event, while 300 Makers manned 120 exhibits.
“Maker Faire Shenzhen shined a light on the externalities and ecosystems of making itself: the political regimes which regulate; the infrastructures which support it; the forms of work that drive it; and the culture and history that shape it,” an earlier Guardian article noted.
“One thing is for certain. The inherent entrepreneurial spirit of the Chinese people will help the Maker culture grow – and vice versa. The biggest hurdle, from what I can tell, may very well come from established educational facilities, simply because Chinese students expect to be trained in traditional methods when specific professional skills are required. However, exposure to multiple academic disciplines will encourage people to people think out of the box and explore different ways of approaching problems and opportunities. In addition, being asked more open-ended practical questions instead of simply memorizing facts would go a long way in encouraging students to try out real-world solutions,” Pan says.
The average person takes their phone out, unlocks it, and checks messages over 150 times a day. Uno says that’s too much.
Seattle-based startup Uno believes that most of us take out our smartphones too many times per day, and has devised a way to solve that issue. Unlike a number of other wearables on the market today, the Noteband is focused primarily on notifications, a feature that caters to today’s on-the-go lifestyle.
The device, which is currently live on Indiegogo, displays messages from incoming calls, texts, emails, calendar reminders, as well as social feeds such as Twitter and Facebook. And for the gamers out there, the Noteband is even integrated with Xbox Live, Playstation Network and Steam. Meaning, you’ll no longer need to put down the controller to access a message, game alert or invitations.
Spritz, the speed-reading app, allows wearers to a notifications up to 80% faster at rates ranging from 250 to 1,000 words per minute. This eliminates any need for dual-hand scrolling, which enables users to get through that long email in a single click. When an alert is receives, the wristband vibrates and displays the message upon a tap of the finger. Swipe right to turn notices on, swipe left to get rid of them. It’s as easy as that!
Built around a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 MCU, the Noteband is equipped with an OLED display, Bluetooth Low Energy, and a battery capable of lasting for days on a single charge. The device, which is compatible with both the Android and iOS operating systems, also packs a six-axis gyroscope and accelerometer to let users to keep track and achieve their fitness goals, while syncing with the Apple Health and Google Fit platforms. Interested in learning more? Hurry over to its official Indiegogo page, where the team has already well exceed its $50,000 goal.
Global smartphone shipments totaled 1.167 billion units in 2014.
Chinese companies accounted for nearly 40% of global smartphone sales and represent six of the top 10 smartphone brands worldwide in 2014, according to a new report from TrendForce.
“2014 was definitely an impressive year for Chinese brands as they gained more share of the global market,” explained Avril Wu, TrendForce Global Smartphone Analyst. Total worldwide shipments totaled 1.167 billion units last year, with combined shipments of Chinese brands surpassing 453 million units.
Atop the list of vendors was Samsung who lead the pack with 28% market share, with Apple not far behind at 16.4%. Lenovo, with Motorola under its wing, ranked third after shipping over 90 million smartphone last year. LG, Huawei and Xiaomi followed with 6.0%, 5.9% and 5.2% market share, respectively.
TrendForce notes that Xiaomi has had a particularly strong showing in recent years, having doubled in growth YoY since 2011. “As for the smartphone makers with the best cost-performance products, the title goes to Xiaomi. Its flagship models cost around $300 to $350, but they match their high-end counterparts from international vendors in hardware specs.”
Other notable names rounding out the list included Coolpad, Sony, ZTE and TCL. By 2015, TrendForce projects that three of the top five companies will be Chinese.
Last January, Strawbees made its debut on Kickstarter. At the time, it was a construction kit that enabled Makers of all ages to create toys by simply connecting drinking straws and pieces of cardboard together. Now a year later, a spinoff project has emerged. The team behind the aptly named Quirkbotis working together with Strawbees to explore a whole new world of robotic creatures.
Using the new DIY platform, young Makers will have the ability to build and program quirky robots, blinking outfits and weird sounding “Qreatures” out of ordinary drinking straws, LEDs and hobby servo motors. Quirkbot itself is based on an ATmega32U4 MCU with an Arduino-compatible bootloader that can be made part of a Strawbees creation without any soldering or breadboarding.
The open-source, hackable tool allows Makers to easily program the bot directly from its website via USB. Quirkbot’s unique drag-and-drop components also enable users to connect and upload their toys with just a click of the mouse.
“Any child or grownup can do it. Let your creations express themselves and interact with their environment through sound, light and motion. Standalone or connected to computers, tablets or musical instruments. You’ll quickly see the potential in learning how to program something physical — the magic of connecting online and offline worlds,” the team shares.
At its most basic level, Quirkbot kits include dual-color LEDs, light sensors, a servo and backpack, as well as a USB cable. Meanwhile, more advanced users can obtain backpack extension sets that feature distance and sound sensors, along with speakers and MIDI capabilities. Adding these components to a project are done through what the team calls “squeeze on electronics.” Just like it sounds, Makers effortlessly squeeze the parts onto the toy’s legs using ordinary drinking straws. So, whether it’s devising a bot that hulas, sweeps, crawls, or rocks out, Makers are only limited by their own imagination.
“The Quirkbot has two ways of doing touch sensing already built-in to make almost anything into an interface. Loop touching for bigger things with water in them like humans and other fruits and capacitive sensing for metallic things. When plugged to a computer, the Quirkbot can work like a keyboard or mouse input. This makes it very easy to program the Quirkbot into a controller for any game or application,” its creators add. “The Quirkbot can also act as a MIDI-device, so it can play with music programs and you can even use it with an iPad.”
The low-cost Chinese smartphone maker plans to start testing four new smart home products.
As Xiaomi looks to broaden its range of devices for the Internet of Things, the Chinese smartphone maker has unveiled a new plan for a suite of four new smart home modules that will offer enhanced security features. In a recent GeekPark Innovation Festival presentation, Xiaomi President Bin Lin revealed that the company will begin consumer testing on January 26. Bloomberg notes that the components comprising the Smart Home Suite will be a motion sensor, an open/close sensor, a connected module for home appliances and a hub to connect these devices.
(Source: Tech in Asia)
Each of these modules will be capable of measuring things such as light, sound, temperature, and movement, while relaying information to other smart gadgets throughout the house. For instance, the tiny motion sensor can be placed anywhere and can detect a moving object with a 170-degree angle. Meanwhile, door and window sensors will provide homeowners will real-time, remote monitoring.
(Source: Tech in Asia)
“In the past, motion sensors were very complicated and large in size, so that if you wanted a system you needed professional installation,” Lin told attendees. “For this suite, there is not a single nail or wire. These components are all very simple.”
(Source: Tech in Asia)
The new products will also be equipped with a wireless switching device for appliances, as well as a multi-functional gateway that wirelessly connects the components with other devices, enabling control with the press of a smartphone. The soon-to-be launched lineup will join previously announced home products from the company including an air purifier that sends pollution readings to mobile phones and alerts users when its filter is dirty and a light bulb that can change colors by remote control. Tech in Asia reveals that the devices will communicate using the ZigBee protocol.
(Source: Tech in Asia)
This announcement comes with little surprise, in the wake of a rather “smart” CES 2015 and a number of optimistic IoT reports. One in particular, IDC estimates that the market for Internet-enabled devices will grow to $7.1 trillion by 2020, up from merely $1.9 trillion in 2014.
“Xiaomi is well-positioned to take on this market, as it already has the cloud infrastructure, a hardware background, a huge fan following, and several devices at its disposal,” Tech in Asia concludes.
In the end, the electronics company is hoping that consumers will be able to use their smartphones to link all the smart devices together and control each of their appliances with a Xiaomi developed app on their smartphone — like the highly-popular, mXT641T powered Mi4.
Iconic toy systems like Tinkertoy, LEGO and K’NEX have served as building blocks for the Maker Movement for decades, inspiring young do-it-yourselfers to piece together bricks, interlock rods and connect wheels to whip up some incredible projects. And, it’s clearer than ever before that today’s DIY culture is spurring an appetite for modular tools, as seen with the rise of littleBits and open-source machines.
Embodying many of the same principles, UberBlox is a new high-quality metal construction set for Makers to devise rigid structures and automated machines. The prototyping system features a unique single-connector locking mechanism that uses a common tool to quickly and precisely lock each block to the next. Affixing the components together creates an accurate, strong and rigid frame that can be used for a variety of applications and structures.
Aside from the basic blocks, the set also includes a growing catalog of compatible and reconfigurable parts, such as moving components, sub-assemblies, motors, electronics and controllers based on popular boards like the Atmel basedArduino, for a complete solution. This provides even the most sophisticated Makers the ability to build impressive machines, ranging from 3D printers and CNC machines to various forms of robots as their knowledge and understanding of the UberBlox system increases.
What’s more, UberBlox allows Makers to quickly and easily test out new design concepts for either entire 3D printing systems or portions of them for that matter, without getting bogged down in the fabrication process.
In addition to just 3D printers, the modular system can also come in handy for those seeking to construct various types of robots, including manipulator arms, rovers, and humanoids.
“We believe the time is right to bring a sophisticated high-quality construction system and prototyping set, backed by great support and community engagement, to Makers of all levels,” explained UberBlox founder Alex Pirseyedi.
Indeed, the creative nature of the UberBlox concept makes the innovative system an ideal project for Kickstarter. The company plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign in the coming weeks. In the meantime, you can watch its trailer below!
