The smart router is ready for IoT play

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The evolution of router has reached the IoT’s doorsteps, and it raises some interesting prospects for industrial and smart home markets.

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The router used to be largely a dumb device. Not anymore in the Internet of Things arena where node intelligence is imperative to make a play of the sheer amount of data acquired from sensors, machines and other ‘things.’ The IoT router marks a new era of network intelligence — but what makes a router smart?

For starters, it employs embedded hardware platforms with DIY capabilities while balancing the performance and power consumption requirements. Next, an IoT router provides the operational status on an LCD screen while manipulating the data from different interfaces. In human machine interface (HMI) applications, for example, a smart router offers LCD and touch screen interfaces on expansion I/Os.

Take the case of the DAB-OWRT-53 smart router, which is developed by the Belgian design house DAB-Embedded. The sub-100 euro device — based on Atmel’s SAMA5D36 processor and OpenWRT router hardware platform — is mainly targeted at smart home and industrial IoT applications.

The IoT router supports popular wireless interfaces such as Wi-Fi, ZigBee and Z-Wave, as well as a diverse number of wired interfaces including Ethernet, USB, CAN 2.0A/B, KNX and RS-232. And all the data from these interfaces can be stored in either microSD card or NAND flash.

Anatomy of Smart Router

The Atmel | SMART SAMA5D36 is at the heart of the smart router design. First and foremost, it optimizes power consumption in the battery-operated router that features 3.7V lithium polymer battery support with charging capability over a microUSB connector. The router boasts eight hours of battery lifetime while being in full ON mode with Wi-Fi communications.

Second, the ARM Cortex-A5 processor shows a robust performance in the communications domain. For instance, the SAMA5D36 implements routing functionality to transfer data from one Ethernet port to another in a way that router designers don’t require an external hardware hub or switch. Moreover, Atmel’s MPU offers greater flexibility to run a lot of embedded software packages such as OpenZWave and LinuxMCE.

Third, the SAMA5D36-based IoT router offers users the ability to manipulate firewall settings, Disable PING, Telnet, SSH and UPnP features. Furthermore, the hardware security block in SAMA5D3 processor allows the use of CryptoDev Linux drivers to speed up the OpenSSL implementation. The Wi-Fi module — powered by Atmel’s WILC3000 single-chip solution — also supports the IEEE 802.11 WEP, WPA and WPA2 security mechanisms.

The smart router of DAB-Embedded employs Active-Semi’s ACT8945AQJ305-T power management IC, but the real surprise is Altera’s MAX 10 FPGA with an integrated analog-to-digital converter (ADC). That brings the additional flexibility for the main CPU: Atmel’s SAMA5D36.

The FPGA is connected to the 16-bit external bus interface (EBI) so that IoT developers can put any IP core in FPGA for communication with external sensors. All data is converted inside the FPGA to a specific format by using NIOS II’s soft CPU in FPGA. Next, the SAMA5D36 processor reads this data by employing DMA channel over the high-speed mezzanine card (HSMC) bus.

An FPGA has enough cells to start even two soft cores for data preprocessing. Case in point: A weather station with 8-channel external ADC managing light sensors, temperature sensors, pressure sensors and more. It’s connected to the FPGA together with PPS signal from GPS for correct time synchronization of each measurement.

OpenWRT Framework

The SAMA5D36 embedded processor enables DAB’s smart router design to customize free OpenWRT Linux firmware according to the specific IoT application needs. The OpenWRT framework facilitates an easy way to set up router-like devices equipped with communications interfaces such as dual-port Ethernet and Wi-Fi connection.

What’s more, by using the OpenWRT framework, an IoT developer can add now his or her own application (C/C++) to exchange data with a KNX or Z-Wave transceiver. OpenWRT even supports the Lua embedded interpreter.

Next, while DAB-Embedded has built its smart router using the embedded Linux with OpenWRT framework, Belgium’s design house also offers a board support package (BSP) based on the Windows Embedded Compact 2013 software. That’s for IoT developers who have invested in Windows applications and want to use them on the new hardware: the DAB-OWRT-53 smart router.

Later, the embedded design firm plans to release smart router hardware based on the Windows 10 IoT software and Atmel’s SAMA5D family of embedded processors. The Belgian developer of IoT products has vowed to release the second version of its router board based on Atmel’s SAMA5D4 embedded processor and WILC3000 chipset that comes integrated with power amplifier, LNA, switch and power management. Atmel’s WILC3000 single-chip solution boasts IEEE 802.11 b/g/n RF/baseband/MAC link controller and Bluetooth 4.0 connection.

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Majeed Ahmad is the author of books Smartphone: Mobile Revolution at the Crossroads of Communications, Computing and Consumer Electronics and The Next Web of 50 Billion Devices: Mobile Internet’s Past, Present and Future.

Atmel wireless connectivity supports industrial IoT revolution

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The BTLC1000 exhibits the lowest BLE power consumption in the industry.

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With both this year’s CES and Embedded World now behind us, it’ll be interesting to see which of the gadgets unveiled during these shows find a way to market — some will go to production, others won’t. I am skeptic about the smart shoe offering self-fastening mechanism… And during these two weeks, the IoT revolution has silently progressed in industrial automation. (You will be surprised if you read some very serious white papers extracted from the Internet of Things series published by Bosch.)

While attendees flocked to Vegas, progresses were made in industrial automation thanks to hard work being done in Germany. In fact, these two worlds — consumer oriented and industrial — are both relying on wireless connectivity, including products from Atmel: the ATWILC1000, ATWILC1500 or ATWILC3000 supporting Wi-Fi and ATBLC1000 supporting BTLE 4.1,which  was recently crowned “Product of the Year” from Electronic Products.

According to Bosch’s white paper “Leveraging the Internet of Things: Companies can streamline business processes for stakeholders across the extended enterprise,” we realize that Bosch’s managers have brainstormed about the IoT to extract the added business value for the enterprise, like for example, “in manufacturing, data automatically collected from smart and connected products, give companies meaningful feedback as to how products should be reengineered, and provides opportunities for additional revenue through selling services.”

In order to become smart and connected, industrial products need to integrate either a Wi-Fi connection supported by ATWINC1500, or a Bluetooth supported by the very tiny (see above) ATBTLC1000.

Shows the requirements for scalability on two current customer PoCs at Bosch Software Innovations. These PoCs start in year one with a very low umber of connected devices and sensors. However, in a short space of time, they scale massively upward for commercial launch and rollout.

From the above graphic, extracted from another white paper from Bosch, “Realizing the connected world-how to choose the right IoT platform,” we can derive two crucial information. The first is the fact that IoT is already a reality in the industrial market segment, not really known to be fashion driven like could be consumer electronic. The second information is about scalability. In both examples, the number of connected devices was very low, but in a short space of time they scale massively, reaching 500k devices for the first and up to 3 million for the other. A single industrial automation application can generate a very good semiconductor business, including sensors, MCU and wireless connectivity device. In our previous blog, we have investigated the ATWINCxx00 family bringing Wi-Fi connectivity to any embedded design. Let’s take a look at the award winner ATBTLC1000 device supporting BT 4.1 connectivity.

The BTLC1000 is an ultra-low power Bluetooth SMART (BLE 4.1) SoC with an integrated ARM Cortex-M0 MCU, a transceiver, a modem, MAC, PA, TR Switch, and a power management unit (PMU). It can be used as a BLE link controller or data pump with external host MCU, or as a standalone applications processor with embedded BLE connectivity and external memory. If we look at the key features list:

• BLE4.1 compliant SoC and protocol stack
• Lowest BLE power consumption in industry
• Smallest BLE 4.1 SoC — Available in WLCSP (2.26×2.14mm) or QFN ( 32p 4×4 mm)
• Optimized system cost — High level of integration on chip reduces external Bill of Material significantly
• Wide operating Voltage range — 1.8 – 4.3V
• Host Interface — SPI or UART
• Certified modules — FCC, ETSI/CE, TELEC
• Enterprise Development support & tools with the ATBTLC1000 Xplained Pro

The main reasons why the Atmel BTLC1000 has won the Electronic Design award are power, cost and certification. This chip not only exhibits the lowest BLE power consumption in the industry, it’s also the smallest BLE 4.1 SoC (see picture) offering optimized system cost, thanks to high level of integration. If companies like Bosch supporting industrial automation segment for years (if not centuries) start to be seriously involved into smart connected IoT systems, no doubt that ATBTLC1000 and ATWILC1000 devices have a bright future…

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This post has been republished with permission from SemiWiki.com, where Eric Esteve is a principle blogger and one of the four founding members of the site. This blog first appeared on SemiWiki on January 10, 2016.

mbed eval boards showcase focus on IoT software and connectivity

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Chipmakers like Atmel are joining hands with ARM to bring the entire ecosystem under one roof and thus facilitate the creation of standards-based IoT products.

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ARM’s mbed operating system is winning attention in the highly fragmented embedded software space by promising a solid software foundation for interoperable hardware and thus scale the Internet of Things designs by narrowing the development time.

Atmel has put its weight behind ARM’s mbed OS by launching the single-chip evaluation board for the IoT ecosystem in a bid to ensure low software dependence for the embedded developers. The leading microcontroller supplier unveiled the mbed evaluation platform at the recent ARM TechCon held in Santa Clara, California.

The mbed OS platform is focused on rapid development of connected devices with an aim to create a serious professional platform to prototype IoT applications. So IoT developers don’t have to look to software guys for help. The mbed stack features a strong focus on enhancing the IoT’s connectivity and software components.

ARM is the lead maintainer for the mbed OS modules while it adds silicon partners, like Atmel, as platform-specific dependencies for the relevant mbed OS modules. Silicon partners are responsible for their platform-specific drivers.

Atmel’s mbed-enabled evaluation board is based on the low-power 2.4GHz wireless Cortex-M0+ SAM R21 MCU. Moreover, Atmel is expanding mbed OS support for its Wi-Fi modules and Bluetooth Low Energy products.

The fact that Atmel is adding mbed OS to its IoT ecosystem is an important nod for ARM’s mbed technology in its journey from merely a hardware abstraction layer to a full-fledged IoT platform. Atmel managers acknowledge that mbed technology adds diversity to embedded hardware devices and makes MCUs more capable.

Solid Software Foundation

There is a lot of code involved in the IoT applications and software is getting more complex. It encompasses, for instance, sensor library to acquire data, authentication at IoT gateways and SSL security. Here, the automatic software integration engine like mbed lets developers focus on their applications instead of worrying about integrating off-the-shelf software.

The mbed reference designs like the one showcased by Atmel during ARM TechCon are aimed at narrowing the development time with the availability of building blocks and design resources—components, code and infrastructure—needed to bootstrap a working IoT system. Atmel managers are confident that a quality software foundation like mbed could help bring IoT products to market faster.

Atmel’s mbed-enabled IoT evaluation board promises harmony between hardware and software. Apparently, chipmakers like Atmel are joining hands with ARM to bring the entire ecosystem — OS software, cloud services and developer tools — under one roof, and thus facilitate the creation of standards-based IoT products. Atmel’s mbed evaluation board clearly mirrors that effort to deliver a complete hardware, software and developer tools ecosystem in order to bring IoT designs quicker to market.

The platform comprises of mbed OS software for IoT client devices like gateways and mbed Device Server for the cloud services. ARM launched the mbed software platform in 2014 and Atmel has been part of this initiative since then.

mbed in Communications Stack

Additionally, Atmel has tied the mbed association to its SmartConnect wireless solutions to make the best of mbed’s networking stack in the Internet of connected things. The IoT technology is built on layers, and here, interoperability of communications protocols is a key challenge.

For a start, Atmel’s SAM R21-Xpro evaluation board is embed-enabled and is built around the R21 microcontroller, which has been designed for industrial and consumer wireless applications running proprietary communication stacks or IEEE 802.15.4-compliant solutions.

Next up, the evaluation board includes SAM W25 Wi-Fi module that integrates IEEE 802.11 b/g/n IoT network controller with the existing MCU solution, SAM D21, which is also based on the Cortex-M0+ processor core.

Furthermore, Atmel is offering an mbed-enabled Bluetooth starter kit that includes SAM L21 microcontroller-based evaluation board and ultra-low-power Bluetooth chip BTLC1000, which is compliant with Bluetooth Low Energy 4.1. Atmel demonstrated a home lighting system at the ARM TechCon show floor, which employed SAM R21-based Thread routers that passed light sensor information to an mbed-enabled home gateway. Subsequently, this information was processed and sent to the mbed Device Server using a web interface.

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Majeed Ahmad is the author of books Smartphone: Mobile Revolution at the Crossroads of Communications, Computing and Consumer Electronics and The Next Web of 50 Billion Devices: Mobile Internet’s Past, Present and Future.

This biometric band can unlock your touchscreen device

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Instead of passwords, what if your tablet authenticated you each time you touched the screen?

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Having to continually enter passwords isn’t so convenient, especially when you’re in a rush. With hopes of putting an end to login prompts, two researchers have developed an innovative way of authentication for pretty much any touchscreen device. The brainchild of Christian Holz and Marius Knaust (who you may recall from their earlier project Bodyprint), Bioamp is a smart strap that uses a biometric sensor and a low data rate transmitter to access and protect content on tablets.

“From each touch, the touchscreen senses the 2D input coordinates and at the same time obtains biometric features that identify the user. Our approach makes authentication during interaction transparent to the user, yet ensures secure interaction at all times,” the duo explains.

To test their concept on today’s gadgets, they first created a watch-like prototype. Bioamp is equipped with several electrodes that sense the impedance profile of a wearer’s wrist and then modulate a signal to the body through their skin. From there, the touchscreen obtains the biometric data, identifies the particular user, and continuously grants permission for each interaction.

As Hackaday notes, Bioamp’s electrodes couple a 50V 150kHz signal through a wearer’s finger to the touchscreen, which picks up both the finger’s location via capacitive sensing and the background signal that’s transmitted by the bracelet. This background signal is modulated on and off, relaying the biometric data.

“Since Bioamp senses contact with skin, it is sufficient to collect biometric values initially and then ensure that the same user is wearing the device during further use. When Bioamp detects that the user has taken off the band, it stops transmitting signals, waits for the band to be put on again, and repeats the biometric measurements for subsequent modulation,” the duo writes.

The researchers integrated their approach into a Surface 2 Pro running Windows 8.1 to demonstrate various use cases, which include payment for app store purchases, authentication for emails and notifications, as well as temporary access for sharing photos. Additionally, Bioamp supports logins that require more than one person to be present at a time. For example, two users would need to touch a single login tile simultaneously in order to unlock and open sensitive emails.

In terms of hardware, Bioamp is driven by a Blend Micro. This board features an ATmega32U4 MCU and an nRF8001 BLE chip, which handles the wireless data transmissions to the tablet to compensate for low touchscreen sampling rates. Meanwhile, power is supplied by a pair of 110mAh LiPo batteries.

While some may argue that there are limitations to the design, this idea of making touch interaction convenient and secure is pretty darn cool. You can see it in action below, and be sure to read all about it in their research paper here.

Bring your LEGO projects to life with the Brick Sound Kit

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This rocket-shaped device will add motion-activated sound effects to any LEGO or Mega Bloks project. 

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“What if there was a way to record our own sounds and play them back whenever we flew our Lego spaceship?” This was the simple question that prompted eight-year-old Chase Freedman to explore his imagination and resulted in the conception of the Brick Sound Kit — an attachable device that allows users to record or download sounds to enhance their playing experience.

Instead of having to actually make the typical “whoosh,””pew pew” and “pow pow” noises  yourself, the Brick Sound Kit enables children (and those who are still kids at heart) to transform their toys into interactive machines. Recreating your favorite scenes from Star Wars has never been so much fun!

The BSK is built around an Arduino-friendly board equipped with an ATmega328, LEDs, light-up buttons, a AAA battery and a gyroscope, all protected by a highly durable, rocket-shaped enclosure. This casing not only functions as a standalone toy, it can easily snap onto anything you build with Lego, Mega Bloks, Kre-O and other compatible brick building sets.

Freedman’s innovation is ready for use right out of the box. What’s more, it can be paired over Bluetooth with the accompanying BSK Sound Effects App, along with other apps and games to add more interaction to the your bricks in just minutes.

And that’s not all. The Brick Sound Kits includes an FTDI USB adapter and cable so you can reprogram the gadget’s capabilities using free Arduino tools. Open source SDKs let anyone build their own apps and games controlled by the BSK. All programming is super simple for users of any age or skill, and will be supported by the team through a developer portal.

The young Maker didn’t do this all by himself; in fact, he collaborated with his father, Chuck, to bring the idea to life — and now Kickstarter. After receiving enormous amounts of great feedback from friends and family, the duo looked into how they could commercialize the invention and make it something that other people could use. The two ended up contracting Boston University Electronics Design Facility to develop the kit’s circuit board and Clear Design Lab of Boston to design the housing.

“The Brick Sound Kit is not only a device for kids. It was also developed to be used by enthusiasts and collectors, that want to enhance the device even further and create their own programs and sounds. All this comes together in a marketplace where sounds, apps and games can be exchanged between Brick Sound Kit users and developers,” dad explains.

Are you ready to make the spaceship of your dreams? Then fly on over to the Brick Sound Kit’s Kickstarter campaign, where the father-son duo is currently seeking $18,000. Amazingly, Chase is actually the second eight-year-old Maker to launch a crowdfunding campaign this year. Over the summer, Omkar Govil-Nair debuted his O Watch, which went on to garner more than $18,000.

Gemio is giving friendship bracelets an IoT makeover

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This piece of smart jewelry combines self-expression with the ability to connect with friends in-person.

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Friendship bracelets first emerged on the wearable scene in the 1970s, and have remained pretty much the same ever since. In order to evolve with the times, one Seattle startup has unveiled more intelligent and interchangeable jewelry for today’s tech-hungry and fashion-savvy world.

Whereas most wearable devices have a uniform appearance, Gemio boasts modular Gemsets that can be snapped on and off with ease. These Gemsets can be programmed with various light and special effects from a palette of colors, so you can create an entirely new look each and every day. You can even swap out designs in a matter of seconds via its accompanying mobile app.

Crafted with a social component in mind, Gemio is the first wearable to focus on connecting people rather than the gadgets themselves. The bracelet employs much of the technology commonly found in existing trackers and smartwatches, such as Bluetooth, an accelerometer, a gyroscope and 20 LEDs, but applies them in a different manner.

Using BLE connectivity and a mesh network, wearers are able to sync their Gemios through gestures like high-fives and handshakes. Once paired, the bands alert its user to their friends’ proximity through the detachable Gemsets. The unit not only recognizes who you’re with and responds to what you are doing, it also illuminates when your friends are nearby, playing a signature “light tone.” (Think of it as a personalized ringtone, but in lights.)

What’s more, the responsive bracelet can detect various gestures and allows users to assign light effects to them. For example, wave hello and Gemio plays a light show, or twist your wrist to make it sparkle.

The startup was founded in 2014, with some of its earliest backers including Tricia Black, the first vice president of sales at Facebook. Gemio joins the likes of JewelBots and several others in developing wearable products that appeal to girls with hopes of enticing more to pursue STEM-related disciplines.

TrackR atlas locates your lost items

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You’ll never misplace things (or pets) again!

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Whether you’re an organized or messy person, you inevitably lose things or forget the last spot you saw it. What is more frustrating is that you make a bigger mess just trying to find it. You can keep a mental map of where you put things in your home, but wouldn’t it be much easier if your phone did that for you? Now with TrackR atlas, you can.

Fittingly named, TrackR atlas maps out your home and enables room-based item monitoring of your BLE-based items. This is the second project to come from the team that created the successful TrackR bravo, a small Bluetooth tracking device that attaches to your valuable items. Atlas works with bravo and other wireless trackers to better organize your home.

The TrackR atlas plugs into a wall socket in each room of your home, and utilizes both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy radios to detect the presence of items that have TrackR devices or third-party Bluetooth-based trackers attached to them. From the Android and iOS app, you can locate which room all of your items are in your home.

Atlas can also notify you when things move around or leave the house. This is perfect if you have pets that tend to wander off. Among its other features, atlas has remote ringing, Amazon Alexa voice-activation, and is backed by the Crowd GPS network so you can track your items when they are missing outside of your home. You never have to aimlessly search for things again!

The tiny unit has an 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi radio with a range of 230 feet (70 meters), and Bluetooth 4.0 with a range up to 98 feet (30 meters). It supports wall sockets for the U.S., UK, Australia and most of Europe.

Tired of misplacing things? Head over to TrackR’s Indiegogo campaign, where they have already more than tripled their $50,000 goal. You’ll be able to pinpoint the location of your valuables starting June 2016.

Let your BLE ideas fly with the Adafruit Feather 32U4 Bluefruit

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Trust us, Adafruit’s new board is un-BLE-vable! 

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Remember when we brought you a first-ever look at Adafruit’s new lineup of Feather boards back at World Maker Faire? Well, as Ladyada herself promised, the new dev boards are thin, light and ready to let your imagination fly! After having already revealed the first two members of the family — the Feather 32U4 Basic Proto and the Feather 32U4 Adalogger — the team shows no sign of slowing down. Next up: the Feather 32u4 Bluefruit.

The Feather 32U4 Bluefruit is said to be their take on an ‘all-in-one’ Arduino-compatible and Bluetooth Low Energy unit with native USB support and battery charging.

“Bluetooth Low Energy is the hottest new low-power, 2.4GHz spectrum wireless protocol. In particular, its the only wireless protocol that you can use with iOS without needing special certification and it’s supported by all modern smartphones,” Adafruit explains. “This makes it excellent for use in portable projects that will make use of an iOS or Android phone or tablet. It also is supported in Mac OS X and Windows 8+.”

Like its other siblings, the Feather 32u4 is built around the mighty ATmega32U4 clocked at 8 MHz and at 3.3V logic. This chip boasts 32K of Flash and 2K of RAM, along with built-in USB so not only does it already integrate a USB-to-Serial program and debug capabilities, it can also act like a mouse, keyboard and MIDI device.

As Adafruit notes, they’ve gone ahed and added a connector for a 3.7V LiPo and a 100mA battery charger. However, the Feather 32U4 will run just fine via microUSB.

“But, if you do have a battery, you can take it on the go, then plug in the USB to recharge,” the team adds. “The Feather will automatically switch over to USB power when its available. We also tied the battery through a divider to an analog pin, so you can measure and monitor the battery voltage to detect when you need a recharge.”

Measuring only 2.0″ x 0.9″ x 0.28” without headers soldered and weighing 5.7 grams, the Feather can be implemented in a wide range of projects. The extremely lightweight and compact board has plenty of pins (20 GPIO), with eight PWM and 10 analog inputs, four mounting holes, a power/enable pin and a reset button. What’s more, the board makes use of the leftover space for a Bluefruit BTLE module as well as two status indicator LEDs.

“The board is capable of much more than just sending strings over the air!  Thanks to an easy to learn AT command set, you have full control over how the device behaves, including the ability to define and manipulate your own GATT Services and Characteristics, or change the way that the device advertises itself for other Bluetooth Low Energy devices to see. You can also use the AT commands  to query the die temperature, check the battery voltage, and more, check the connection RSSI or MAC address, and tons more.”

With Adafruit’s Bluefruit mobile app, you can also quickly prototype your next IoT project using your smartphone or tablet as a controller. This data can be read over BLE and piped into the ATmega32U4.

Among the use cases listed by Adafruit include an HID keyboard, a heart rate monitor and a UriBeacon, to name just a few. The chip comes fully assembled and tested with a USB bootloader that enables you to seamlessly program it with the Arduino IDE.

Intrigued? Fly on over to the Adafruit Feather 32U4 Bluefruit page here. Those wishing to unleash the powers of this impressive board will only have to shell out $30. Not too shabby!

SmartHalo will make any bike smart

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SmartHalo is a smart biking system that lets you focus on what matters the most — the road. 

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Like a number of other companies who have created hardware solutions to bring older vehicles into the IoT era, one Montreal-based startup is hoping to do the same for bicycles. Those who’d rather not dig deep into their pockets to purchase a new electronic bike can now make their existing one “smart” for roughly $100.

The brainchild of CycleLabs, SmartHalo is a compact device that attaches to the handlebar of your old bike and provides you with easy-to-read GPS, distance, speed and other performance data. Aside from that, the intuitive navigation system will highlight the quickest route to work in the morning and safest way home at night along with a front headlight for enhanced visibility when it gets dark.

“We believe that technology should not be something you have to worry about – it should just work. We’re urban cyclists who wanted to deal with the main problems of biking in cities: navigation and security. We found that the existing solutions right now were just not suited for harsh urban environments,” its creators share.

Among its most notable features is its turn-by-turn navigation system. Simply input your desired location into its accompanying mobile app, tuck your smartphone away and SmartHalo will take care of the rest by guiding you with simple-to-follow directions via an intuitive light between your hands.

As if that wasn’t enough, SmartHalo will automatically monitor your activities. Unlike other trackers on the market today, you’ll never have to hit ’start’ or ’stop.’ Instead, the device will track your progress as soon as you begin pedaling, then display the detailed metrics in the app for later review. It even lets you set goals using any of its parameters, like calories burned, and then view your progress in real-time on your handlebars as you pedal.

Have you ever missed an important call or email because street noise and road vibration made them hard to notice? Well, you’ll be happy to learn that SmartHalo can also serve as your personal assistant while on-the-go. The mounted unit will notify you of any incoming calls and messages, and alert you should there be an impending storm allowing you to take cover.

As any urban cyclist will tell you, theft is an all too common occurrence. Fortunately, when you’re not around, SmartHalo will keep your two-wheeler safe from any burglars by triggering an alarm if its internal motion sensor detects movement. Moreover, the gadget can only be unlocked with a special “key” provided with the product and will seamlessly deactivate as you approach the bike.

“We designed SmartHalo to be beautiful inside and out. There is no on/off button – its sophisticated sensors detect your presence. When you finish your ride, it automatically shuts down. This leads to amazing battery life, to keep going as long as you do,” the CycleLabs team explains.

With standard use, its battery can last for approximately three weeks before having to be recharged via USB. In terms of hardware, SmartHalo is equipped with a Bluetooth Low Energy module for communication, low energy LEDs, an accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope, as well as a crypto authentication chip for enhanced security.

Ready to make your bike smarter? Then race over to SmartHalo’s Kickstarter campaign, where the CycleLabs crew is currently seeking $50,000. The first batch of shipments is expected to get underway in May 2016.

Bluefruit LE Micro is a BLE board for Makers

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Bluetooth Low Energy + ATmega32U4 = Bluefruit LE Micro 

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Makers who are looking to create a Bluetooth-enabled project will be excited to learn of Adafruit’s latest product. The newly-unveiled Bluefruit LE Micro rolls the versatility of the ATmega32U4 MCU and the wireless connectivity of the SPI Bluefruit LE Friend all into one board.

What’s nice is that the Bluefruit LE Micro makes is easier than ever to add BLE capabilities to any number of DIY projects. Makers can program the ATmega32U4 over USB using its built-in USB bootloader, either directly with AVRDUDE or the Arduino IDE. The board runs at a 8MHz clock speed, boasts a logic level of 3.3V for compatibility with a wide range of sensors, and features more than 20 GPIO pins, including I2C, SPI, a UART and six analog inputs. On top of that, the chip packs 28KB of Flash, 2KB of RAM, and of course, native USB for programming and communication.

As Adafruit points out, Makers can add a rechargeable LiPo battery with the help of a LiPoly backpack as well. Simply solder it on top of the Bluefruit LE Micro and it’ll juice up the battery via the microUSB connector. When the USB is unplugged, it will run off the battery.

“The Bluefruit LE module is an nRF51822 chipset from Nordic, programmed with multi-function code that can do quite a lot! For most people, they’ll be very happy to use the standard Nordic UART RX/TX connection profile. In this profile, the Bluefruit acts as a data pipe, that can ‘transparently’ transmit back and forth from your iOS or Android device.”

“Thanks to an easy-to-learn AT command set, Makers will have total control over how the device behaves, including the ability to define and manipulate your own GATT Services and Characteristics, or change the way that the device advertises itself for other Bluetooth Low Energy devices to see. You can also use the AT commands to query the die temperature, check the battery voltage, and more, check the connection RSSI or MAC address, and tons more.”

Additionally, the Bluefruit app enables Makers to quickly prototype their projects by using their iOS or Android device as a controller. Adafruit has a color picker, a quaternion/accelerometer/gyro/magnetometer, an eight-button gamepad and a GPS locator. This data can be read over BLE and relayed to the on-board ATmega32U4 for processing.

Interested in this un-BLE-ievable board? Head over to Adafruit’s official page to order yours.