Atmel | SMART MCUs are here!

Atmel Corporation, a global leader in microcontroller (MCU) and touch solutions, today announced the company has launched 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 Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

Atmel® | SMART™ ARM-based microcontrollers deliver the platform for intelligent, connected devices in the era of IoT, wireless and energy efficiency. These solutions include embedded processing and connectivity—as well as software and tools, designed to make development faster and more cost-effective to bring the best-in-class products to market. Atmel® | SMART™ MCUs combine powerful 32-bit ARM cores with industry-leading low-power technology and intelligent peripherals.

“Through the convergence of Atmel’s ultra-low power MCUs and Wi-Fi solutions, Atmel continues to benefit through the vast range of products developed such as SmartConnect,” said Reza Kazerounian, senior vice president and general manager, microcontroller business unit at Atmel. “Encompassing our unique combination of high performance, power efficiency and design flexibility, Atmel® | SMART™ is a true testament to Atmel’s commitment to innovation and is poised to deliver breakthrough technologies and key ingredients powering The Internet of Things.”

As part of the Atmel® | SMART™ product offering, the SAM W23 module offers the ideal solution for designers seeking to integrate Wi-Fi connectivity even with limited experience with IEEE802.11, RTOS, IP Stack or RF. These modules are based on Atmel’s industry leading ultra-low-power Wi-Fi SoC (System on Chip) combined with Atmel’s ARM® Cortex®M0+ based microcontroller technology. This turnkey system provides an integrated software solution with application and security protocols such as TLS, integrated network services (TCP/IP stack) and a standard Real Time Operating System (RTOS) which are all available through a simple serial host interface (SPI, UART) within Atmel Studio 6’s integrated development platform (IDP).

“With the increasing demand for extended battery life and greater connectivity, the SAM W23 eliminates the complexities associated with using traditional Wi-Fi solutions with an ease of use ideal for a vast range of industrial and consumer markets,” said Kaivan Karimi, vice president and general manager of the wireless microcontroller business unit at Atmel. “Whether you are a OEM, a developer or a maker, the SAM W23 paired with our broad portfolio of MCUs enables you to accelerate your development of IoT products, providing increased seamless connectivity with a whole new world of device use cases.”

Evaluation Kit

To help accelerate a designer’s development, the SAM W23, mounted on an XPRO wing, and compatible with any existing Atmel Xplained PRO evaluation board, is available now. The SmartConnect library is a turnkey Software Framework available in Atmel Studio that removes the need to understand the Wi-Fi stack, allowing designers to focus on adding functions.

Availability

The SAM W23 is available both as a fully certified module, as well as a reference design kit for OEMS to build modules based on the SAM W23 chipset. Developers can use the SAM W23 platform as a standalone system or as an add-on solution to enable Wi-Fi connectivity in an existing design.

A closer look at Atmel’s SAM R21 Xplained Pro

Atmel’s SAM R21 Xplained Pro evaluation kit allows developers to more easily design connected lighting, smart metering and wireless sensor network systems based on true Internet-connectivity and open standards such as IPv6 and 6lowpan.

Key hardware specs include:

• Atmel’s ARM-based ATSAMR21G18A microcontroller (MCU)
• Embedded debugger (EDBG) and USB interface
• Programming and debugging on board SAM R21 via SWD
• Virtual COM-port interface to target via UART
• Atmel Data Gateway Interface (DGI) to target via SPI and TWI
• Four GPIOs connected to target for code instrumentation
• Digital I/O
• Two mechanical buttons (user and reset button)
• One user LED
• Two extension headers
• Three possible power sources
• External power
• Embedded debugger USB
• Target USB
• 32KHz crystal
• 16MHz crystal
• Atmel Software Framework support

The SAM R21 Xplained Pro was recently showcased at Atmel’s Embedded World 2014 booth by Thingsquare. Indeed, a number of Thingsquare’s demonstrations were powered by the evaluation board, illustrating the seamless integration of Thingsquare’s software stack with Atmel’s new SAM R21 ultra-low power wireless microcontroller (MCU).

As Atmel Product Marketing Director Magnus Pedersen notes, developers are demanding complete, easy-to-use IoT solutions that can quickly bring a full system to market.

“Our cooperation with Thingsquare is an example of that, with a web-based toolchain and open source firmware to offer our customers a fully integrated hardware and software solution for various IoT applications.”

Thingsquare CEO Adam Dunkels expressed similar sentiments.

“The addition of Atmel’s hardware solutions provides our customers additional options,” he said. “Atmel’s new SAM R21 wireless microcontroller is an important step forward in the emerging IoT space.”

The ATSAM R21 Xplained Pro board is available at the official Atmel Store, with Atmel currently sampling the ATSAM R21 series to select customers. Public sampling will be available the end of March with production quantities slated for July 2014. Pricing for the SAM R21? Starting at $2.75 in 10,000-piece quantities.

Interested in learning more? The SAM R21 device combined with the Thingsquare open source firmware is available at http://thingsquare.com and as a separate delivery via Atmel’s Studio 6 Gallery.

In related IoT news, Bits & Pieces readers may also want to check out the Atmel-backed 2014 IPSO challenge. Essentially, IPSO strives to advance the development and standardization of the Internet of Things (IoT).

The initiative challenges participants to submit working prototypes from innovative concepts in interfaces, interactions and applications which demonstrate the use of the Internet Protocol (IP) in real world sensor/control and machine-to-machine (M2M) applications. 

In 2014, IPSO and its sponsors will offer prizes and incentives worth over $50,000. All ten semi-finalists will be given the opportunity to demonstrate working prototypes to industry experts and investors at Sensors Expo 2014, the largest event devoted to sensor and actuator-integrated technology in North America.

Interested in learning more? You can click here for additional details.

Going beyond the IDE with Atmel

In today’s complex and feature-rich embedded world, a comprehensive microcontroller (MCU) software framework with an easy integration of software libraries and tools is becoming increasingly important for design teams.

As Atmel’s Joerg Bertholdt notes, a truly integrated development platform comprises a combination of software and hardware – including the software framework and an app store.

“That is why Atmel offers the Xplained Pro evaluation kits, a development board and kit which works with Atmel’s IDE, software framework and Atmel Gallery,” the Director of Marketing, MCU Tools and Software, explained in recent Electronics Weekly article.

“The kits feature a range of professional ARM-Cortex-M4 based Atmel SAM4 microcontroller boards that are complemented by optional interface, display and prototyping boards. These boards are fully supported across Atmel Studio 6, Atmel Software Framework and Atmel Gallery, providing devs with immediate access to over 2,000 ready-to-run project examples.”

Simply put, Atmel’s comprehensive platform allows designers to more easily prototype and accelerate time to market.

“Moving beyond the traditional integrated development environment, the platform-based approach yields yet further developer productivity and efficiency,” Bertholdt continued.

“By combining the editor, compiler and debug functions with quick and easy access to a host of libraries, middleware and specialist tools the integrated development tools platform approach yields efficiencies across the whole design, development, test and prototype process.”

Bertholdt also discussed FreeRTOS, one of the real-time operating systems available in Atmel’s Gallery.

“By accessing FreeRTOs, designers can implement a hassle-free deployment in their application without having to worry about driver integration. Since this is integrated into ASF, it comes complete with a project configuration wizard and example projects to ease the application development process,” he added.

Interested in learning more about how going beyond the IDE with Atmel? Be sure to check out the full text of Joerg’s article here.

Up close and personal with Atmel’s SAM4L Xplained Pro

As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, Atmel’s SAM4L is quite the versatile microcontroller (MCU), as it can be used to power a wide range of devices including glucose meters, game controllers, thermostats and remote process control nodes.

“Essentially, Atmel’s SAM4L lineup of MCUs redefine the power benchmark for Cortex-M4 processor-based devices, delivering the lowest power in active mode (down to 90µA/MHz) as well as sleep mode with full RAM retention (1.5µA) with the shortest wake-up time (down to 1.5µs),” an Atmel engineering rep told Bits & Pieces.

“Embedding Atmel picoPower technology, the SAM4L family provides highly efficient signal processing, ease of use and high-speed communication peripherals – all ideal for power-sensitive designs in the industrial, healthcare and consumer application areas.”

To accelerate development with the SAM4L, Atmel offers the SAM4L Xplained Pro, a hardware-based platform that allows engineers to more easily evaluate the ARM-powered SAM4LC4 MCU. Supported by the Atmel Studio integrated development platform, the kit provides easy access to various SAM4L features and explains how to integrate the device in a customer design. Like other Atmel Xplained Pro evaluation kits, the SAM4L Xplained Pro is capable of significantly expanding its original functionality by linking to additional Xplained Pro extension kits.

For a complete and ready to go package, engineers can also check out the ATSAM4L-XSTK starter kit, which is packaged with Atmel’s I/O1 Xplained Pro, OLED1 Xplained Pro, PROTO1 Xplained Pro and SLCD1 Xplained Pro extension boards.

Key SAM4L Xplained Pro specs include:

• SAM4LC4 microcontroller
• One mechanical reset button
• One mechanical user pushbutton (wake-up, bootloader entry or general purpose)
• One QTouch button
• One yellow user LED
• USB interface, host and device function (shared physical interface)
• 32.768kHz crystal
• 12MHz crystal
• 4 Xplained Pro extension headers
• One custom extension header for segment LCD displays
• LDO/Buck regulator mode selection
• LCD cluster power configuration option
• Embedded Debugger
• Auto-ID for board identification in Atmel Studio 6.1
• One yellow status LED
• One green board power LED
• Symbolic debug of complex data types including scope information
• Programming
• Data Gateway Interface: USART, TWI, 4 GPIOs
• Virtual COM port (CDC)
• USB powered
• Supported with application examples in Atmel Software Framework

The SAM4L Xplained Pro can be purchased here from Atmel’s store.