TomTom Runner teardown reveals ATSAM4S8C inside

Back at Maker Faire Bay Area in May, the iFixit team took a deeper dive into the technology that is powering some of today’s sports watches, like the TomTom Runner. During its teardown, the iFixit team revealed that the wearable device was powered by an Atmel ATSAM4S8C.

The popular GPS sports watch is equipped with a built-in heart rate monitor, a large monochrome LCD display and one-button control. In addition, the TomTom Runner is embedded with an accelerometer and sensors allowing it to work both outdoors, indoors and even on a treadmill, thus providing providing a user with the kind of data they’d expect to find on most sports watches — such as distance, pace, stride length, calories burned and lap times all in real-time. Bluetooth Smart support also enables a user to sync the Runner with other devices, including a heart rate strap.

Based on ARM’s powerful Cortex-M4 core, the Atmel | SMART SAM4S lineup offers increased performance and power efficiency, higher memory densities (up to 2MB of Flash and 160KB of SRAM), along with an extensive peripheral set for connectivity, system control and analog interfacing. The SAM4S operates at 120MHz and integrates Atmel’s Flash read accelerator, along with optional cache memory to increase system performance. The SAM4S also features a multi-layer bus matrix, multi-channel direct memory access (DMA) and distributed memory to support high data rate communication.

So, how low is low in terms of power consumption? Well, the Atmel | SMART SAM4S family manages to achieve 200µA/MHz in dynamic mode at a low operating frequency; 30mA at 120MHz; and 1µA at 1.8V in back-up mode with the real-time clock (RTC) running. In short, it offers some of the best power consumption/performance rates on the market for standby mode, achieving 120MHz+ operating frequency with a RAM retention mode below 25µA.

On the security side, the SAM4S prevents unauthorized access to on-chip memory, supports secure device reconditioning (chip erase) for reprogramming – while a 128-bit ID and scrambled external bus interface ensures software confidentiality as the hardware cyclic redundancy check (CRC) checks memory integrity. And last, but certainly not least, fitting a device with a SAM4S means easy access to Atmel Studio 6, which offers hundreds of ARM project examples with source code to streamline the design process.

Joining a number of other watchmakers, TomTom Runner is the latest device to feature an Atmel | SMART SAM4S microcontroller. If you recall, Secret Labs announced last year that their AGENT smartwatch was powered by both the SAM4S and tinyAVR microcontrollers.

For those interested in learning more, Atmel engineers have recently published 28 application notes for the company’s comprehensive Atmel | SMART SAM4S devices.

Atmel | SMART powered Narrative Clip raises $8 million in funding

The future, for anyone who wants to tell their own story, has never looked brighter. That is because of the Atmel | SMART SAM9G25 powered Narrative Clip — a tiny, automatic 5-megapixel camera paired with an app that offers users access to a “photographic memory” which is both searchable and shareable. Clip it onto your shirt and let it snap away, recording all your daily activities in 30-second increments. Kind of like a GoPro but less obtrusive, always on, and of course, interconnected.

The Narrative Clip began shipping in January 2014. In just eight months, users have uploaded somewhere north of 100 million photos to the Narrative service. The photo sharing trend is only going up year by year, with around 1.4 billion photos shared daily in 2014. Currently, Narrative says that it sees approximately 700,000 photos uploaded daily by users from all over the world, as illustrated in their recent infographic.

Now, Narrative has announced that they have received $8 million in a funding round that was led by Khosla Ventures and followed by existing investors True Ventures and Passion Capital.

“We’ve experienced significant growth over the past year. With the opportunity to work with Khosla Ventures, we can continue to build on this growth and improve the Narrative Clip and our services,” said Martin Källström, Co-Founder and CEO of Narrative.

According to its blog announcement, the new funding will help spur development of the Narrative Clip and service, as well as support an accelerated growth of the team. “We are building Narrative to offer more features and an even better experience. Opening a U.S. office helps us better serve our North American users and partners. The new office also allows our fantastic support team to offer 18 hours of available support throughout the week and creates a base for maintaining and developing partnerships that will keep Narrative on top.”

This is not the first round of funding for Narrative but certainly the biggest to date. If you recall, the device had a highly-successful Kickstarter campaign during the earlier days of crowdfunding back in 2012. Launched by then Stockholm-based startup, Memoto, the life-logging camera garnered well over half a milllion dollars, surpassing its original goal of a mere $50K. As you can see in the photo below, even original prototype during the campaign was powered by the ARM-based Atmel | SMART SAM9G25.

Weighing in at 20 grams (0.7 oz) and measuring 36 x 36 x 9 mm (1.42 × 1.42 × 0.35 inches), Narrative boasts a storage capacity of 4,000 pictures and a two-day battery life. This makes it rather easy to tag along and log your experience in real-time. The device also features a double-tap function to more easily capture images, automatic sleep upon being placed face down, a specially coded companion smartphone app (iOS/Android) and cloud storage options.

A couple months ago, the Adafruit crew conducted a detailed teardown of the device – confirming it is indeed embedded with the Atmel | SMART SAM9G25 ARM-based MPU.

If you have come across an Atmel booth at any industry events (e.g. CES, Embedded World, Computex and ESC Brazil) or hop aboard our decked-out Tech on Trailer over the past year or so, there’s a good chance you’ve had the opportunity to demo the incredibly convenient device. For those who haven’t, head on over to Narrative’s official website now.

Just one of many next-gen devices powered by the recently-unveiled Atmel | SMART family, the Clip will be using the funds to dominate the world of wearable cameras – plus they opened up an office right down the street in San Francisco! Just in time for the holidays, this life-logging device should surely top your list!

Preview: Atmel to enhance the IoT experience at ESC Brazil 2014

The World Cup and RoboCup have both come to an end. The Summer Olympics are still another two years away. So why are we heading to Brazil next week? The Embedded Systems Conference, of course! Held August 26-27th in São Paulo, Atmel is excited to be an exhibiting sponsor of this year’s ESC, which will bring together over 5,000 engineers from the vibrant Latin American embedded community.

Whether you live nearby or plan on swinging over to the Transamerica Expo Center, be sure to mark “stopping at Booth E 20” on your daily planner. There, you’ll have a chance to ask Atmel’s Tech Experts your toughest design questions, learn about industry trends, and see live demos of the newly-unveiled Atmel® | SMART™ product line. Experience firsthand how our latest solutions can help achieve high-performance standards, while meeting your power consumption expectations. With our configuration options, you’ll be able to implement our chips in all sorts of applications, ranging from smart metering to wearables. Atmel products are driving a vast majority of IoT and Maker devices in the market today, all of which will be on display during the two-day show.

We’ll be showcasing our complete offering of microcontrollers and microprocessors together with the all-important adjacent technologies like connectivity, sensor solutions, capacitive touch sensing and Atmel CryptoAuthentication devices. Here are several of the smart and secure ‘things’ you can expect to see this week:

Atmel AVR for IoT

Atmel AVR® MCUs are superior in terms of power consumption and are a better suited battery-powered application than any 32-bit MCU. The demo shows the AVR with a wireless connection running of battery. A graphical display also shows power consumption data.

Atmel | SMART SAM D20 QTouch Robustness

The Atmel | SMART SAM D20 QTouch® Robustness showcases not only the high touch performance of this device but also best-in-class conducted immunity and moisture tolerance required in home appliance and industrial applications.

Atmel SmartConnect

The Atmel SAM W23 includes the industry’s lowest-power Wi-Fi tailored for IoT use cases. It is positioned as an add-on turnkey solution for retrofit or new development with a highly scalable MCU approach that leverages the Atmel portfolio.

Thingsquare Open Source 6LoWPAN using Atmel | SMART SAM R21

The Atmel | SMART SAM R21 shows the latest generation of ultra-low-power ARM Cortex® M0+ based wireless MCU combined with an open source IPv6/6LoWPAN embedded communication stack provided by Thingsquare. The application targets ultra-low power-applications in home and building automation. The solution is also ideal for gas and water meters, which demand years of maintenance-free operation on a single battery cell.

Atmel | SMART SAM D20 GPS Tracker

The GPS asset tracker reference design with GSM connectivity is controlled through SMS messages and can support features like geo fencing, automated alarms, panic button and position tracking to SD card. It uses an accelerometer to determine if the GPS should be enabled or not, allowing lower power consumption. The high number of serial communication interfaces on a small, low power device makes the Atmel | SMART SAM D20 a perfect fit for asset tracking applications.

Atmel | SMART SAMA5D3 Qt-based Applications

The Atmel | SMART SAMA5D3 is a versatile, high-performance, low-power embedded MPU shown here in home automation and smart fridge applications. The demo also shows the SAMA5D3’s UI capability and system performance on a WVGA screen resolution.

Atmel QTouch

Atmel | SMART SAM D21+ QT1 Xplained Pro demonstrates high-performance Atmel QTouch button, slider and wheel use for easy integration in any application requiring human control. The SAM D20 + QT2 Xplained Pro demonstrates QTouch Surface ideal for any consumer or wearable application.

Atmel CryptoAuthentication Devices

The Atmel CryptoAuthentication ATSHA204A is an easy to use, low-power hardware key storage device. The demo shows symmetric authentication between the drill (host) and client (battery). Each contains an ATSHA204A with identical stored secret keys. The drill sends a random number“challenge”to the battery, which processes that with its secret key to send a coded response back to the host to verify if the stored secret keys indeed match.

Also, don’t miss Sander Arts, Atmel VP of Corporate Marketing, present on how Atmel is fueling the Maker Movement. Arts will share insights into Atmel-based Arduino boards, the growth of the worldwide Maker community, as well as how Atmel microcontrollers were there from the outset, providing simple but powerful MCUs as the hardware side of the equation. Discover why a countless number of artists, designers, inventors, engineers, musicians and even students are turning to Arduino boards designed around Atmel AVR® or Atmel | SMART MCUs to transform their ideas into fully-functional “things.” Details on the session can be found below!

Title: Atmel and the Maker Movement
Presenter: Sander Arts, VP of Corporate Marketing, Atmel Corporation
Date / Time: Tuesday, August 26th @ 5:00 pm
Location: Makers Club

So there you have it, folks! Don’t forget to visit Booth E 20, pick up your Atmel Xplained Mini Kit, chat with a tech expert and of course, partake in a number of hands-on demos!

BI Intelligence details IoT enterprise apps

Writing for Business Insider, Emily Adler notes that the Internet of Things (IoT) — a world comprised of ordinary objects connected to the web and accessible from mobile devices — will soon emerge as a huge market, “dwarfing all other consumer electronics categories.”

Just how large are we talking? BI Intelligence reveals that 1.9 billion once-inert everyday and enterprise devices are already connected to the Internet — from parking meters to home thermostats — while that number is expected to rise to 9 billion come 2018. “That’s roughly equal to the number of smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, wearable computers, and PCs combined,” Adler emphasized.  

“There are already clear signs that the biggest tech companies — and even smaller players — are trying to get out front of the race to dominate the IoT. Google has acquired Nest. Apple has unveiled its HomeKit platform. Even Staples and Honeywell — not typically companies thought of as tech leaders — are putting out new IoT-related products.”

It doesn’t stop there either, thanks in part to the budding Maker Movement. According to Gartner’s Jim Tully, by 2018, 50% of the Internet of Things solutions will be provided by startups which are less than 3 years old — this a clear result of DIY culture continuing to spur innovation throughout both the B2B and consumer space.

As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, BI Intelligence recently listed the 6 primary attributes that’ll help make “things” a part of the rapidly evolving IoT set to connect over 30 billion devices over the next six years.

As uptake among consumers and businesses ticks up, BI Intelligence has unveiled in one of its latest reports that the IoT market “will drive trillions in economic value as it permeates consumer and business life. Soon, it will be perfectly normal to have a refrigerator that talks to you and a garage door you open with your smartphone.”

According to Reza Kazerounian, Senior VP and GM of the Microcontroller Business Unit at Atmel, the IoT is a combination of multiple market segments, tens of thousands of OEMs and hundreds of thousands of products. “It is seen by many as the next wave of dramatic market growth for semiconductors. If you look at the different estimates made by market analysts, the IoT market will be worth trillions of dollars to a variety of industries from the consumer to financial, industrial, white goods and other market segments,” he told EEWeb in February.

Adler notes just some of the most important enterprise applications that are already being developed today:

• Connected advertising and marketing: Cisco believes that this category (think Internet-connected billboards) will be one of the top three IoT categories, along with smart factories and telecommuting support systems.
• Intelligent traffic management systems: Machina Research, in a paper prepared for the GSMA, sees $100 billion in revenue by 2020 for applications such as toll-taking and congestion penalties. A related revenue source will be smart parking-space management, expected to drive $30 billion in revenue.
• Waste management systems: In Cincinnati, residential waste volume fell 17% and recycling volume grew by 49% through use of a “pay as you throw” program that used IoT technology to monitor those who exceed waste limits.
• Smart electricity grids that adjust rates for peak energy usage:These will represent savings of $200 billion to $500 billion per year by 2025, according to the McKinsey Global Institute.
• Smart water systems and meters: The cities of Doha, São Paulo, and Beijing have reduced leaks by 40 to 50% by putting sensors on pumps and other water infrastructure.
• Industrial uses: This includes Internet-managed assembly lines, connected factories, and warehouses, etc.

Earlier this month, Atmel teamed up with fellow industry leaders Broadcom, Dell, Intel, Samsung and Wind River to drive seamless device-to-device connectivity. The Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) aims to define IoT requirements to ensure the interoperability of these billions upon billions of devices projected to come online by 2020.

“Atmel is excited about our participation in OIC to establish an open source framework that goes beyond the digital home and supports services for multiple verticals including consumer, industrial and automotive markets,” explained Kaivan Karimi, Vice President and General Manager of Wireless MCUs at Atmel.

In order to help deliver the platform for a growing demand of intelligent, connected devices, Atmel recently announced the launch of Atmel® | SMART™, the new brand of ARM®-based microcontrollers and has expanded its SMART portfolio with new SmartConnect SAM W23 modules, enabling Wi-Fi connectivity and the best of high performance and low power technology for IoT applications.

Interested in learning more about the IoT? You can access the entire BI Intelligence report here or read through our extensive Bits & Pieces IoT article archive.