How to make the IoT a reality

ARM will be chairing a symposium on the sidelines of the upcoming Sensors Expo and Conference in Chicago on Jun 24th from 9AM to 5PM. Titled Making the Internet of Things a Reality: A Toolkit for Designing “Smart,” key speakers include Atmel’s Adrian Woolley, ARM’s Zach Shelby and Sensor Platforms CTO Kevin Shaw.

According to ARM’s Will Tu, Kevin Shaw will be kicking off the session with an overview of how IoT devices can evolve to optimize their interaction with humans – ultimately becoming invisible and predictive.

“We can see sensor fusion at work with smartphones, tablets and wearables and today as they apply the concept of contextual awareness of where a user is and what he or she might be doing,” Tu writes in a recent blog post. “From this awareness a device can respond to offer a service, enable features on a device, conserve valuable battery power or delight users in some novel way. Sensor fusion will bring the same type of value to embedded devices and  these software algorithms will be the key to unlocking the commercial value proposition of future IoT device.”

Next up is ARM’s very own Zach Shelby, a thought leader in the industry who has been heavily involved in connectivity from his early days as co-founder of Sensinode. Zach is currently a key contributor at the IETF for IoT standards with contributions in 6LoWPAN, routing, web services and security related standards, ETSI and OMA standardization on M2M and in several top international research programs.

Atmel’s Adrian Woolley will then discuss the hardware side of the IoT. A 25-year veteran of the semiconductor market, Woolley is the Director of Strategy and Business Development at Atmel’s microcontroller business unit. He has an extensive background in mobile and communication markets, along with a considerable amount of embedded experience in microcontrollers.

“When you are talking about hardware building blocks, Atmel can offer more than just MCUs; they also provide radio technologies,” says Shaw.

Interested in learning more? You can access the symposium’s official page here for additional details and registration information. Readers may also want to check out Atmel’s recent IoT SoMa panel on the subject here, Patrick Sullivan’s EELive! 2014 presentation here and our extensive Bits & Pieces IoT article archive here.

Movea’s SmartMotion tech ported to Atmel’s SAM G53

Movea recently ported its flagship SmartMotion technology to Atmel’s SAM G53 microcontroller, a 32-bit MCU based on ARM’s high-performance 32-bit Cortex-M4 RISC processor.

 Targeting mobile consumer devices such as smartphones and tablets, Movea’s SmartMotion technology enhances the user experience by delivering advanced motion driven applications including activity monitoring, context awareness, pedestrian dead-reckoning and mobile gestures – effectively turning sensor data into meaningful, personal information.

“Sensor hub architectures enabling always-on capabilities while maintaining ultra-low power consumption have become vital to deliver the context aware applications consumers are asking for,” explained Movea CEO Sam Guilaumé.

“Adding Atmel to our supported platforms allows industry OEMs to benefit from leading solutions to quickly and easily deploy the next generation of smart apps while offloading the main application processor; saving battery life, which is so precious to mobile users.”

Adrian Woolley, Director of Strategy, Microcontroller Business Unit, Atmel, expressed similar sentiments.

“The combination of our ultra-low power sensor hub microcontroller with Movea’s SmartMotion technology optimized for mobile devices and wearables meets the constraints of low power, high accuracy and flexibility,” he said. “This market-leading solution will feed the need for advanced capabilities and extended battery.”

As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, Atmel’s SAM G53 operates at a maximum speed of 48 MHz and features up to 512 Kbytes of Flash and 96 Kbytes of SRAM. The peripheral set includes one USART, two UARTs, three I2C-bus interfaces (TWI), up to two SPIs, two three-channel general-purpose 16- bit timers, two I2S controllers with two-way, one-channel pulse density modulation, one real-time timer (RTT) and one 8-channel 12-bit ADC. The device operates from 1.62V to 3.6V and is available in a 49-ball WLCSP package and a 100-pin LQFP package.

Interested in learning more about Atmel’s SAM G53? You can check out our detailed data sheet here.

Atmel talks ARM, IoT and sensors on Google+

On Tuesday, February 18, ARM hosted a live Google+ Hangout panel with executives from Atmel, Freescale and Sensor Platforms.

Participating panelists included:

• 

Will Tu – Director of Embedded Segment Marketing at ARM
• Diya Soubra – CPU Product Marketing Manager for Cortex-M ARM Processors at ARM
• 
Adrian Woolley – Director of Strategy and Business Development at Atmel’s Microcontroller Business Unit
• Mike Stanley – Manager of Freescale’s Sensor Solutions Division
• Kevin A. Shaw – CTO of Sensor Platforms

As you can see in the video above, the panelists discussed various software and hardware design techniques to help IoT developers achieve a precise balance between low power sipping and high software complexity for sensor-enabled devices.

“When Atmel designs its microcontrollers, we make sure we have a very good understanding [of particular] applications. [We] optimize the hardware and peripherals [accordingly], developing ICs around the software and [specific] implementations,” Wooley explained.

“[We] understand how software algorithms work, how sensors work and optimize our microcontrollers to operate at extremely low power levels. Atmel puts a lot of intelligence around peripherals in both mobile and IoT, so we don’t need to wake them up anymore than is absolutely necessary. When activated, our MCUs efficiently process data with a minimal amount of battery power.”

Interested in learning more about Atmel’s comprehensive ARM-based MCU and MPU portfolios? You can check out our official ARM product page here.

IoT sensor fusion with ARM and Atmel on Google+

Sensors convert physical world characteristics into raw data that is subsequently processed by various hardware and software platforms. As the name implies, sensor fusion combines sensory data from multiple sources to improve the overall state of the system being observed.

As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, ensuring an extended battery life is perhaps the most important criterion for any device with integrated sensors.

On Tuesday, February 18, ARM will be hosting a live Google+ Hangout panel with executives from Atmel, Freescale and Sensor Platforms. 

The panelists are slated to discuss various software and hardware design techniques that can help IoT developers achieve a precise balance between low power sipping and high software complexity.

You can follow the panel discussion and access the live video feed from the following links:

• ARM Google+ page – A video link will be posted once the Hangout kicks off
• Google+ event page – If you have a Google account you can RSVP and receive a reminder before the hangout
• ARM Facebook event page
• ARM’s original blog post, in the comments section
• @ARMCommunity and @ARMEmbedded Twitter channels

Panelists include:

• 

Diya Soubra – CPU Product Marketing Manager for Cortex-M ARM Processors at ARM
• Adrian Woolley – Director of Strategy and Business Development at Atmel’s Microcontroller Business Unit
• 

Mike Stanley – Manager of Freescale’s Sensor Solutions Division
• 
Kevin A. Shaw – CTO of Sensor Platforms
• Will Tu – Director of Embedded Segment Marketing at ARM

We’ll see you on Tuesday, February 18!!!