Smaller electronics, smarter clothing

In a recent Gigaom article, Signe Brewster notes that a new generation of textiles is on the brink of redefining wearable technology.

To date, a great deal of wearable activity has been centered around companies like Arduino and Adafruit, both offering wearable electronic platforms powered by versatile Atmel microcontrollers (MCU).

Though we may have yet to find the easy-to-make smart textile, Brewster encourages startups wishing to do so need to find their fabric and sensors and then independently develop a way to combine them.

“What was missing until now were electronics small enough to fit into clothing the same way as a button or a single cotton fiber.” With the advent of Arduino Lilypad (ATmega328V) and Adafruit’s FLORA (ATmega32u4), we’re seeing the emergence of the softer side of wearable technology, which hides LED lights, battery packs and electronic devices in the folds of clothing fabric. With more platforms readily accessible, we can expect to see more Makers creating a next-gen of wearable gizmos.

Ever wanted a t-shirt that can send and display text messages? Now you can — thanks to the latest innovation of startup, Switch Embassy. The only “scrunchable, washable and connected t-shirt” is embedded with LED lights, each of which are woven directly into the fabric.

“Until technology, like fashion, can augment who we are in the exact way we want, it won’t be compelling enough to wear on our bodies,” Brewster concludes.

Interested in learning more about wearable tech? Check out what Atmel has been up to in this exciting, evolving space.

Atmel is the No. 1 supplier of sensor hubs

Analysts at IHS have confirmed that Atmel was the number one supplier of sensor hubs in 2013 – clinching an impressive 32 percent of total industry shipments.

In 2014, worldwide shipments of sensor hubs are expected to reach a projected 658.4 million units, up 154 percent from 259.6 million units last year.

As senior IHS analyst Marwan Boustany notes, the market has been “on a tear” since 2011, when shipments first started from a low initial base.

Indeed, the 2012 growth rate exceeded a staggering 2,000 percent, with the market pegged to increase 1,300 percent to shipments of 1.3 billion units by 2017.

“The centralized processing in a sensor hub is typically achieved via three different approaches, each with its own advantages along with specific tradeoffs in cost or performance,” Boustany explained.

“One approach employs an external hub, typically a dedicated microcontroller (MCU), as offered by the likes of chip makers such as Atmel.”

According to senior IHS analyst Tom Hackenberg, the MCU approach will be the best-performing, most flexible solution for high-end handsets and tablets for several development generations to come.

“In whatever format, low-power sensor hubs are absolutely critical to supporting the expansion of sensors and other low-power capabilities in mobile and other applications, such as wearable electronics,” Hackenberg added.

Atmel’s Tech on Tour mobile trailer hits the road

Atmel’s Tech on Tour (ToT) crew has tirelessly crisscrossed the globe for many years, offering hands-on technical training for a wide range of company products. This month, Atmel kicked off a new ToT era with a tricked-out mobile trailer that will be hitting the road this month.

The versatile mobile training center allows visitors to interact with a plethora of next-gen Atmel tech, including AVR and ARM based microcontrollers, automotive and crypto solutions, microprocessors, Internet Of Things (IoT) products, wearable devices, 3D printers, touch sensors and XSense.

In addition to hands-on training, Atmel will leverage the fact that it is at the heart of the Maker Movement and well positioned at the center of IoT innovation. From my perspective, the IoT will be led by a rising generation of tinkerers, inventors and innovators. These are dedicated people who are working out of universities, garages and small companies. We will go and meet them.

Our mobile Tech on Tour trailer provides a familiar setting for customers, engineers and Makers, as well as designers, students, professor and executives. We want to meet people in the market working on projects like electronics, robotics, transportation, alternative energy and sustainable agriculture. That is why we are offering hands-on training and access to soldering irons, along with a chance to brainstorm about the future together.

To be sure, the ToT trailer is quite a scalable platform, functioning not only as a mobile training center, a showroom and conference center, but also as a trade show booth, entertainment center, content creation platform, executive meeting center, recruitment platform, tech support center and employee engagement engine.

On top of that, we are partnering with all global distribution partners, customers, third parties, Makers, government officials and universities to bring Atmel to the market. We are very excited about the concept and the pull from the market and distribution partners has been very promising.

Note: You can request a ToT stop at your location here.

HackEDA is a mashup tool for DIY electronics

HackEDA – powered by Atmel’s versatile ATmega328 – gives Makers the ability to automatically design complete and manufacturable circuits.

“At it’s core, HackEDA is a collection of reusable-sized pieces of electronic designs, along with the knowledge necessary to reuse them in new designs,” HackEDA creator Ben Wilson explained in a recent Kickstarter post.

“The library is available to browse online, you can download the individual bits, as well as create custom circuits by simply selecting the features your project needs. Think of it as a mashup tool for electronics. Now the next time inspiration strikes, there’s that much less between you and the hardware you need to make it a reality.”

Although HackEDA isn’t a tool capable of facilitating a completely original design, it can help to recreate classic projects and arrange them in a unique way.

“[True], there are many circuit designs already on the internet, but they can be difficult to use for a host of reasons. It can be hard to find what you need. They come in varying file formats, some more reusable than others,” Wilson continued.

“Many are incomplete, leaving out part numbers, using components that aren’t available any more, or don’t include good documentation. There may not be a way to give feedback or directly edit the design for the benefit of others. And even if all that weren’t the case, hooking a bunch of circuits together is still an error prone process that can take a while to get right. So here we are. That’s what we want to fix.”

According to Wilson, HackEDA all starts with a library of designs – cool stuff like wireless radios, sensors and motor drivers.

“Then our smart software knows how to make it all work together. Next, integrate with manufacturing to seamlessly transfer the designs to reality,” Wilson noted.

“Designs are [based on] three ingredients, a processor, a power supply,and up to 6 peripherals. Creating a design is as easy as going to HackEDA, dragging a few circuits onto a target board and letting us take care of the rest.”

Additional information about HackEDA can be found here on Kickstarter.

Open Sauce

By Steve Castellotti

CTO, Puzzlebox

North Beach, San Francisco’s Italian neighborhood, is famous for the quality and wide variety of its many restaurants. From colorful marquees scattered up and down Columbus to the hushed, more dimly lit grottos hidden down side streets and back alleys, there is no lack of choice for the curious patron.

Imagine then, having chosen from all these options, you sit down and order your favorite dish. When the plate arrives the waiter places next to it a finely embossed card printed on thick stock. A closer examination reveals the complete recipe for your meal, including hand-written notations made by the chef. Tips for preparation and the rationale for selecting certain ingredients over others are cheerfully included.

Flipping the card over reveals a simple message:

“Thank you for dining with us this evening. Please accept this recipe with our regards. You may use it when cooking for friends and family, or just to practice your own culinary skills. You may even open your own restaurant and offer this very same dish. We only ask that you  include this card with each meal served, and include any changes or improvements you make.”

Sharing the “Secret” Sauce

Having been raised in an Italian family myself, I can assure you that there is no more closely guarded secret than the recipe for our pasta gravy (the sauce). But I can’t help but wonder how such an open sharing might affect the landscape of a place such as North Beach. If every chef was obliged to share their techniques and methods, surely each would learn from the other? Customers would benefit from this atmosphere of collaboration in terms of the taste and quality of their dinners.

These many restaurants, packed so tightly together as they are, would still be forced to compete on terms of the dining experience. The service of their wait-staff, the ambience, and cost would count for everything.

For the majority of customers, knowledge of the recipe would simply be a novelty. In most cases they would still seek a professional chef to prepare it for them. But to the aspiring amateur, this information would contribute to their education. A new dish could be added to their repertoire.

An experienced restaurateur could no doubt correct me on any number of points as to why such a scenario would be a poor business model and never could or should be attempted. But just across town, throughout Silicon Valley and indeed across the globe, in the realm of technology, this exact model has been thriving for decades.

Open Source in the Software World

In the software world, developers have been sharing their source code (the recipe for the programs they write) under licenses similar to the one outlined above on a grand scale and to great success. The Internet itself was largely constructed using open platforms and tools. Mobile phones running Google’s Android operating system are now the most popular in the world, with complete source material available online. And in 2012 Red Hat became the first open source company to achieve a billion dollars in revenue, with customers from IBM to Disney and Pixar among their roster.

The benefits are many. Developers can leverage each others’ work for knowledge and time saving. If you want to build a new web site, there’s no need to write the web server or common routines such as user management from scratch. You can take open versions and start from there. Even better, if you have questions or run into trouble, more likely than not someone else has, too, and the answer is only a search away. Most importantly, if the problem you found indicates a flaw in the software (a bug), then a capable coder is empowered to examine the source and fix it himself or herself. And the result can be shared with the entire community.

There are parallels here to several fields. Similar principles form the basis of the scientific method. Without the sharing of procedures and data, independent verification of results would be impossible. And many discoveries result from iterating on proven techniques. A burgeoning do-it-yourself community, a veritable Maker Movement, has grown around magazines like Make and websites such as Instructables.com. New inventions and modifications to popular products are often documented in meticulous detail, permitting even casual hardware hackers to follow along. Electronics kits and prototyping boards from companies like Arduino are based on Atmel microcontrollers  plus open circuit designs, and are often used to power such projects.

Brain-Controlled Helicopter

Recently, our company, Puzzlebox, released the Orbit, a brain-controlled helicopter. The user begins by setting a display panel to the desired level of concentration and/or mental relaxation they wish to achieve.  A mobile device or our custom Pyramid peripheral processes data collected by a NeuroSky EEG headset. When that target is detected in the user’s brainwaves, flight commands are issued to the Orbit using infrared light. One can practice maintaining focus or a clarity of thought using visual and physical feedback.

Puzzlebox Brain-Controlled Helicopter with Atmel AVR

Beyond novelty, however, lies the true purpose of the Puzzlebox Orbit. All source code, hardware designs, schematics, and 3D models are published freely online. Step-by-step guides for hacking the software and electronics are included. Methods for decoding infrared signals and extending mechanisms to operate additional toys and devices are shared. Creative modification is encouraged.  The goal is to promote the product as a teaching aid for middle and high school sciences classes and in university-level programming and electrical engineering courses.

This business model is itself a bit of an experiment, much like the restaurant described above. There is little preventing a competitor from producing a knock-off and leveraging our own recipes to do it. They might even open their doors just across the street from ours. We’ll need to work hard to keep our customers coming back for seconds. But so long as everyone abides by the rules, openly publishing any modifications of improvements made on our recipe, we’re not afraid to share the secrets of our sauce. We only ask that they include the original material with each dish they serve, and include any changes or improvements made along the way. We’re willing to compete on cost and dining experience. In this way we hope to improve the quality and flavor for everyone.

Puzzlebox with Arduino and Atmel AVR

Openness and The Internet of Things

Today, communities such as Kickstarter and others tapping into the power of openness and crowd-sourcing are fueling a lot of technological innovation.  The next era for enterprise is revolving around The Internet of Things (#IoT), machine-to-machine (#M2M) communications and even the Industrial Internet (#IndustrialInternet).

One strong proponent of innovation and thought, Chris Anderson, is renowned for having his fingerprints and vision on trends as they bloom into movements.  Anderson is committed and energized in this Make-infused world. His latest book, “Makers: The New Industrial Revolution”, eloquently outlines the “right now” moment with makers. “Hardware is the new software”, opening up the brink of the next age of the Internet, where devices and machines become connected. Cloud, agile apps, and embedded design hardware (systems on chips, microcontrollers, or smart devices) are converging and  paving the next generation of integrated products across the fabric of devices.

“The real revolution here is not in the creation of the technology, but the democratization of the technology. It’s when you basically give it to a huge expanded group of people who come up with new applications, and you harness the ideas and the creativity and the energy of everybody. That’s what really makes a revolution.

…What we’re seeing here with the third industrial revolution is the combination of the two [technology and manufacturing]. It’s the computer meets manufacturing, and it’s at everybody’s desktop.”

Excerpt credited from Chris’s Anderson’s “Maker: The New Industrial Revolution”

With that said, we enter the next age, where hardware is the new software.

Are Microcontrollers Powering What’s On Your Black Friday Wish List?

Do you plan to brave the crowds and shop for deals on Black Friday (or online, on Cyber Monday?). If electronics are on your shopping list, there’s a good chance that microcontrollers or touchscreen controllers are inside. These versatile, high-performance, low-power devices are workhorses that handle a variety of functions in a variety of products.

The folks at iFixit have taken a close look at a couple of new products featuring Atmel touchscreen controllers. Microsoft’s new Surface tablet contains three mXT154E devices and a mXT1386 device. And Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD has an Atmel maXTouch mXT768E inside.

What kinds of microcontroller-powered electronic products are you eyeing this holiday season?