Building an IoT coffee maker with realtime capacity monitoring

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Now you can see how much coffee is left in the pot without leaving your chair. 

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You’ve all been in the situation before: You arrive at the office coffee maker in the morning only to find that it’s empty. If only you could curb that disappointment with realtime reporting on exactly how much coffee is left in the pot. Well fortunately for you, PubNub has harnessed the power of the ATmega328P MCU and the PubNub Data Stream Network to build the IoT Coffee Maker with realtime coffee capacity monitoring. The project works by collecting coffee volume levels and then streams the data in realtime to a live-updating UI.

In the video below, the coffee maker’s creator Kurt Clothier introduces his project, walks through some of the steps to build it, and shows it in action. If you want to get to creating one for yourself or your workplace, be sure to check out the entire IoT coffee pot tutorial and live demo on PubNub.

In a nutshell, the Atmel IoT coffee pot gathers volume data based on the weight of the coffee pot using a scale. The ATmega328P MCU is the brains behind the operation, while an ESP8266 is used for Internet connection. The volume data is then sent to a realtime web UI and visualized in realtime via PubNub Pub/Sub Messaging and the EON JavaScript framework.

The project requires the following:

• Digital Kitchen Scale: Any kind with an LCD screen should work.
• Microcontroller with I/O and Wi-Fi: ESP8266 in combination with an ATmega328P MCU.
• PubNub: PubNub Pub/Sub messaging to stream data between our scale and the web UI.
• Source Code and Schematics: All the source code and schematics are open source and available in PubNub’s full tutorial and code walkthrough.

Web UI updates the % of coffee left in realtime.

Obviously, this tutorial can be expanded outside the kitchen to a broad number of powerful IoT use cases. With this same design, you can track readings from any number of sensors, and stream its data in realtime to any number of subscribers in realtime. Thinking big, you can implement similar technology in large scale industrial IoT settings, like agriculture, oil or medical.

You can even get rid of the scale altogether and use these concepts to collect data from anything with a segmented LCD screen. With that said, Clothier and the PubNub team would love to see what you come up with, so be sure to let them know about your awesome project! But for now, let’s enjoy the fact that we know exactly what percentage of the coffee pot is full.

Branto is a remote presence and security devic

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This smart orb lets your home feel, speak, entertain and protect you. 

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Have you always wished that you could be in two places at once? As impossible as it was, thanks to the ever-evolving Internet of Things, it may soon become a reality. That’s because a Ukranian startup has developed a streamlined, versatile wireless device that will let your home feel, speak, entertain, and most importantly, protect your loved ones.

For instance, say you and your significant other are away on vacation, thousands of miles from home. Your mother is there with your three young grandchildren, but you can’t stop worrying about the kids. You also know that no one will be around during the day. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a smart robot that could keep an eye on things and communicate with you regardless of your location, putting all anxieties to rest?

Branto is just that: a remote presence orb equipped with an HD camera that can rotate 360-degrees to provide users with a full panoramic view of every room in their house, warning them of problems like water or gas leaks, and giving ultimate control of their appliances over Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ZigBee and infrared. This should come as a sigh of relief to those who leave the house always wondering as to whether or not they shut off the oven or unplugged their hair accessories.

Beyond that, Branto includes bi-directional microphones that allow users to hear everything that is going on inside their residence, and enables them talk to inhabitants through high-quality speakers, whether that’s urging a pet to hop off the counter, a child to listen to their babysitter or a wife sending a quick reminder to their husband. In other words, the spherical gadget can act as the eyes, ears, voice and hands of tomorrow’s smart home using its accompanying mobile app (Android and iOS).

As if that weren’t enough, the intelligent platform lets users host video calls with colleagues by connecting to a TV, stream music and radio through its built-in speakers, adjust the thermostat, as well as turn the lights on and off from anywhere. What’s more, Branto can serve as an all-in-one security system with a night-vision camera, plus motion and sound detectors, that notifies owners of any suspicious activity around their house via its app.

Born out of their own frustrations with modern-day smart home hubs that only worked with a limited number of devices, the team made it a priority to integrate a number of popular appliances including Philips Hue, Belkin WeMo, Nest and FirstAlert, among several others. In the forthcoming months, Branto hopes to seamlessly work with any existing unit that supports ZigBee, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

What’s nice is that various Brantos can be linked together for widespread coverage. And with its embedded GSM module and 3000mAh LiPo battery, the orb will work even if the Wi-Fi or power in a home should go out — especially helpful for security purposes. It has internal memory of 16GB (which can be upgraded to either 32GB or 64GB), along with the option of storing content in the cloud. Everything is safeguarded by two-factor authentication, and data is encrypted when stored or transferred.

Sound like a full remote presence gadget you’d love to have? Head over to its Indiegogo campaign, where the team is well on its way towards reaching their $50,000 goal. Delivery is slated for December 2015.

This robot brews the perfect cup of loose leaf tea in seconds

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I’m a little teaBOT short and stout…

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“We don’t have lunch hour anymore, we have lunch minutes.” This was the idea behind one team of Toronto-based Makers’ endeavor to converge grab-and-go food with modern-day robotics. The device, aptly named teaBOT, was designed to eliminate the hassle and guesswork out of whipping up a quintessential cup of loose leaf tea.

When think about the fact that most tea requires anywhere from five to 10 minutes to brew, not to mention that each type of tea leaf needs to steep at a certain temperature in order to get the right flavor, this can certainly be an efficient and cost-effective solution for cafes, especially amid the hustle and bustle of major metro areas.

The system itself includes a “100% Atmel-powered” automated kiosk that lets customers choose from 18 different ingredients to create over 10,000 of flavor combinations via an accompanying mobile app, and receive a perfect drink in just 30 seconds. With the help of a tablet, users can either choose from a menu of popular mixtures curated from fellow customers or make a blend of their own. From there, they are prompted to adjust the brew’s strength and the ratio of flavors.

Adding to its convenience factor, patrons not only can pay with the swipe of a credit card but their Apple Watch as well. And after deciding on what to order, they can quickly store the selection or share it with their friends via the app.

Establishments who install a machine will receive a percentage of the revenue, while teaBOT will own and operate the kiosks for them, including servicing parts and replacing supplies.

The team has been hard at work building teaBOT in Canada for over a year and have officially launched in California with the help of Y Combinator. The machine is currently live in Coupa Cafe in Palo Alto with a second set to launch at the Workshop Cafe in San Francisco. After all, what better place to have a high-tech, automated tea device than in the heart of Silicon Valley?

Intrigued? Watch the teaBOT in action below! Oh and speaking of tea, remember this DIY, Atmel-driven tea robot from Modulo?

Report: 100% of tested smartwatches exhibit security flaws

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HP report finds a majority of smartwatches to have insufficient authentication, lack of encryption and privacy concerns.

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While wearable technology continues to increase in popularity, it appears that embedded security may have been left behind. That is according to new research conducted by HP, which discovered serious vulnerabilities in a vast majority of today’s most popular wrist-adorned timekeeping devices.

Without question, the wearables space has experienced tremendous growth over the last couple of months, with analysts now projecting the space to surge upwards of 150 million units by 2019. However, as smartwatches like the Apple Watch, the Motorola Moto 360 and the Samsung Gear become mainstream, malicious hackers have found a new entry point for consumers’ most valuable and confidential data.

For its “Smartwatch Security Study,” HP combined manual testing along with the use of digital tools and its HP Fortify on Demand methodology to evaluate 10 of what they believe to be today’s “top” gadgets. The team found many of the devices to be susceptible because they simply lacked basic, industry standard security measures. While the results may be disappointing, they are not too surprising given the latest string of hacks and breaches.

“Smartwatches have only just started to become a part of our lives, but they deliver a new level of functionality that could potentially open the door to new threats to sensitive information and activities,” explained Jason Schmitt, general manager of HP Security, Fortify. “As the adoption of smartwatches accelerates, the platform will become vastly more attractive to those who would abuse that access, making it critical that we take precautions when transmitting personal data or connecting smartwatches into corporate networks.”

Topping the list of flaws included insufficient verification, lack of encryption, insecure web interfaces and other privacy concerns. Not only did every tested unit lack a two-factor authentication process and the ability to lock out accounts after three to five failed password attempts, but the company flagged as many as 30% of the wearables to be vulnerable to account harvesting, a technique where an attacker could gain access to the device and data using a combination of weak password policy, lack of account lockout and user enumeration.

Additionally, researchers uncovered that the devices demonstrated a lack of transport encryption protocols. While each of them implemented encryption using SSL/TLS, 40% of the watches remained defenseless to known vulnerabilities such as POODLE, allowed the use of weak cyphers or still used SSL v2.

30% of the tested smartwatches used cloud-based web interfaces, all of which exhibited account enumeration concerns. In a separate study, three in 10 exhibited account enumeration concerns with their mobile applications as well. This flaw enables hackers to identify valid user accounts through feedback received from reset password mechanisms.

Making matters worse, 7 out of 10 gadgets analyzed are said to have problems with firmware updates. Researchers revealed that most of the smartwatches did not receive encrypted firmware updates, and while a number of updates were signed to help prevent malicious code or contaminated updates from being installed, a lack of encryption did allow files to be downloaded and looked at elsewhere.

If that all wasn’t scary enough, HP says the wearables demonstrate a risk to personal security and privacy ranging from names, addresses and date of births to weight, gender and heart rate information. Given the account enumeration issues and use of weak passwords on some products, exposure of this personal data is surely a concern.

“As manufacturers work to incorporate necessary security measures into smartwatches, consumers are urged to consider security when choosing to use a smartwatch. It’s recommended that users do not enable sensitive access control functions such as car or home access unless strong authorization is offered. In addition, enabling passcode functionality, ensuring strong passwords and instituting two-factor authentication will help prevent unauthorized access to data,” HP concludes.

Want to delve a bit deeper? Be sure to check out HP’s entire report, as well as explore ways to embed hardware-based security into future wearable designs.

Why the IoT needs multi-layer security

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When it comes to the Internet of Things, you’re only as a strong as your weakest link. 

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The notion of security being only as strong as its weakest link is especially true for the Internet of Things. When it comes to connected devices, security must be strong at all layers, closing any possible open doors and windows that an attacker can crawl through. Otherwise, if they can’t get in on ther first floor, they will try another.

Internet security has been built mainly upon Transport Layer Security, or TLS. TLS provides confidentiality, data integrity and authentication of the communication channel between an Internet user and a secure website. Once a secure communications channel is set up using a TLS method, for example, the other half of the true security equation is needed, namely applications layer security.

To understand this notion, think of logging into your bank account on the web. First, you go to the bank’s website, which will set up a secure channel using TLS. You know TLS is successful when you see the lock symbol and https (“S” for secure) in the browser. Then, you will be brought to a log-in page and prompted to enter your credentials, which is how the bank authenticates your identity, ensuring that you’re not some hacker trying to gain access into an unauthorized account. In this scenario, your password is literally a secret key and the bank has a stored copy of the password which it compares to what you entered. (You may recognize that this is literally symmetric authentication with a secret key, though the key length is very small.) Upon logging in, you are, in fact, operating at the application. This application, of course, being electronic banking.

So, as autonomous IoT nodes spread around the world like smart dust, how do those nodes ensure security? This can essentially be achieved using the same two steps:

• Set up Transport Layer Security to secure the communications channel using TLS or another methodology to get confidentiality, data integrity and confidentiality in the channel. This channel can be either wired or wireless.

• Set up Applications Layer Security to safeguard the information that will be sent through the communications channel by using cryptographic procedures. Among proven cryptographic procedures to do so are ECDSA for authentication, ECDH key agreement to create session keys, and encryption/decryption engines (such as AES that use the session keys) for encrypting and decrypting messages. These methods make sure that the data source in the node (e.g. a sensor) is authentic, the data is confidential and has not been tampered with in any degree (integrity).

The reason that multi-layer security, particularly application layer security, is required is that attackers can get into systems at the edge nodes despite a secure channel. Long story short, TLS is not enough.

IoT nodes collect data, typically through some kind of sensor or acting on data via an actuator. A microcontroller controls the operation of the node and a chosen technology like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Zigbee provides the communications channel. The reason that application layer security needs to be added to the TLS is that, if an attacker can hack into the communications channel via any range of attacks (Heartbleed, BEAST, CRIME, TIME, BREACH, Lucky 13, RC4 biases, etc.), they can then intercept, read, replace and/or corrupt the sensor/actuator or other node information.

Unfortunately in the real world, TLS gets breached, making it not sufficient. As a result, true security requires both Transport Layer and Applications Layer Security. Think of it as a secure pipeline with secure data flowing inside. The crypto element — which are an excellent way to establish the Applications Layer Security for the IoT — gets in between the sensor and the MCU to ensure that the data from the sensor has all three pillars of security applied to it: confidentiality, integrity, and authentication (also referred to as “CIA”). CIA at both the transport and application layers is what will make an IoT node entirely secure.

Fortunately, Atmel has an industry-leading portfolio of crypto, connectivity and controller devices that are architected to easily come together to form the foundation of a secure Internet of Things. The company’s wireless devices support a wide spectrum of standards including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy and Personal Area Networks (802.15.4), not to mention feature hardware accelerated Transport Layer Security (TLS) and the strongest link security software available (WPA2 Enterprise).

Crypto elements, including CryptoAuthentication and Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) with protected hardware-based key storage, make it easy to provide extremely robust security for IoT edge nodes, hubs, and other “things” without having to be a crypto expert. Built-in crypto engines perform ECDSA for asymmetric authentication and ECDH key agreement to provide session keys to MCUs, including ARM and AVR products that run encryption algorithms.

Why do drones love the Atmel SAM E70?

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Eric Esteve explains why the latest Cortex-M7 MCU series will open up countless capabilities for drones other than just flying. 

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By nature, avionics is a mature market requiring the use of validated system solution: safety is an absolute requirement, while innovative systems require a stringent qualification phase. That’s why the very fast adoption of drones as an alternative solution for human piloted planes is impressive. It took 10 or so years for drones to become widely developed and employed for various applications, ranging from war to entertainment, with prices spanning a hundreds of dollars to several hundreds of thousands. But, even if we consider consumer-oriented, inexpensive drones, the required processing capabilities not only call for high performance but versatile MCU as well, capable of managing its built-in gyroscope, accelerator, geomagnetic sensor, GPS, rotational station, four to six-axis control, optical flow and so on.

When I was designing for avionics, namely the electronic CFM56 motor control (this reactor being jointly developed by GE in the U.S. and Snecma in France, equipping Boeing and Airbus planes), the CPU was a multi-hundred dollar Motorola 68020, leading to a $20 per MIPS cost! While I may not know the Atmel | SMART SAM E70 price precisely — I would guess that it cost a few dollars — what I do I know is that the MCU is offering an excess of 600 DMIPS. Aside from its high performance, this series boasts a rather large on-chip memory size of up to 384KB SRAM and 2MB Flash — just one of many pivotal reasons that this MCU has been selected to support the “drone with integrated navigation control to avoid obstacle and improve stability.”

In fact, the key design requirements for this application were: +600 DMIPS, camera sensor interface, dual ADC and PWM for motor control and dual CAN, all bundled up in a small package. Looking at the block diagram below helps link the MCU features with the various application capabilities: gyroscope (SPI), accelerator (SPI x2), geomagnetic sensor (I2C x2), GPS (UART), one or two-channel rotational station (UART x2), four or six-axis control communication (CAN x2), voltage/current (ADC), analog sensor (ADC), optical flow sensor (through image sensor Interface or ISI) and pulse width modulation (PWM x8) to support the rotational station and four or six-axis speed PWM control.

For those of you who may not know, the SAM E70 is based on the ARM-Cortex M7 — a principle and multi-verse handling MCU that combines superior performance with extensive peripheral sets supporting multi-threaded processes. It’s this multi-thread support that will surely open up countless capabilities for drones other than simply flying.

Today’s drones already possess the ability to soar through the air or stay stationary, snapping pictures or capturing HD footage. That’s already very impressive to see sub-kilogram devices offering such capabilities! However, the drone market is already looking ahead, preparing for the future, with the desire to get more application stacks into the UAVs so they can take in automation, routing, cloud connectivity (when available), 4G/5G, and other wireless functionalities to enhance data pulling and posting.

For instance, imagine a small town tallying a few thousand habitants, except a couple of days or weeks per year because of a special event or holiday, a hundred thousand people come storming into the area. These folks want to feed their smartphone with multimedia or share live experiences by sending movies or photos, most of them at the same time. The 4G/5G and cloud infrastructure is not tailored for such an amount of people, so the communication system may break. Yet, this problem could be fixed by simply calling in drone backup to reinforce the communication infrastructure for that period of time.

While this may be just one example of what could be achieved with the advanced usage of drones, each of the innovative applications will be characterized by a common set of requirements: high processing performance, large SRAM and flash memory capability, and extensive peripheral sets supporting multi-threaded processes. In this case, the Cortex M7 ARM-based SAM E70 MCU is an ideal choice with processing power in excess of 640 DMIPS, large on-chip SRAM (up to 384 KB) and Flash (up to 2MB) capabilities managing all sorts of sensors, navigation, automation, servos, motor, routing, adjustments, video/audio and more.

Intrigued? You’ll want to check out some of the products and design kits below:

• SAM V
• SAM S
• SAM E
• SAM V Xplained Ultra Kit

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This post has been republished with permission from SemiWiki.com, where Eric Esteve is a principle blogger as well as one of the four founding members of SemiWiki.com. This blog first appeared on SemiWiki on July 18, 2015.

Report: Smart lighting has the potential to reduce energy costs by 90%

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The global smart lighting market is projected to grow from 46 million installed systems in 2015 to 2.54 billion in 2020.

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It would only take a quick browse of Kickstarter and Indiegogo, or a walk down an aisle at your nearest Home Depot to sense the bright future of smart lighting, driven by Internet of Things architectures. According to a new report from Gartner, the intelligent lighting installed base is expected to grow from 46 million units in 2015 to 2.54 billion units in 2020.

The research firm defines smart lighting as a “lighting system that is connected to a network and can be both monitored and controlled from a centralized system or via the cloud.” In 2014, anywhere from 300 to 500 million square feet of commercial space worldwide could be considered to have smart lighting. It would appear that quite a bit has changed over the last 12 months, as this space is expected to double by year’s end based on the rapid growth in the market.

“Smart solid-state lighting in office buildings and industrial installations has the potential to reduce energy costs by 90 percent; however, achieving these costs takes more than just installing light-emitting diode (LED) lighting,” explains Dean Freeman, Gartner research vice president. “To successfully achieve the lowest electricity cost, in addition to achieving safety and security and enhancing the office environment, lighting product managers at technology and service providers will need to implement five key strategic phases of smart lighting: (1) LED lighting, (2) sensors and controls, (3) connectivity, (4) analytics and (5) intelligence.”

Implementing all five phases will ensure the highest level of success in reducing lighting costs and accelerating the adoption of smart lighting solutions. With these solutions, smart lighting providers will be able to leverage the impact of sensor data and analytics on the IoT.

“Smart solid-state lighting (SSL) costs are now at a point at which it is compelling to implement just the lighting. Energy savings of up to 50 percent have been well-documented in many installations, and they are difficult to resist when replacing incandescent or high-intensity discharge systems in a warehouse. In a fluorescent installation, energy cost savings of up to 25 percent can be achieved, along with considerable savings in lighting maintenance,” Freeman adds.

However, most new lighting installations require some form of sensor controls, which drive some automation of the system. Connecting the controls and the lighting via a network enables the lighting to be operated through a centralized dashboard, which begins to give the building owner the ability to analyze lighting patterns and further improve lighting costs. Most installations are stopping at this stage. If the lighting provider permits the building owner to stop at Phase 3, the value of implementing analytics and learning is lost.

If the lighting provider is able to persuade the building owner to move to Phase 4 with the dashboard in the cloud, building managers can potentially operate multiple lighting operations from a central point, comparing energy use over time and between buildings. If analytics are added to the system, product managers can demonstrate lighting usage compared with occupancy and, consequently, can recommend to their clients lighting programs that can reduce costs based on building utilization, yet enhance the security and ambience for occupants.

In many cases, a smart lighting implementation will end at Phase 4, whereby either a human or a computer will look at the data being generated by the sensors and controls and identify anomalies in the energy pattern. The ultimate in smart lighting would be a result of the analytic system looking at the data and creating some predictive models that would enable the lighting system to learn and become even more intelligent. Additionally, setting up lighting as a service (LaaS) would enable the lighting provider to maintain the system and keep it up to date, while minimizing the cash outlay for the smart lighting system. Gartner expects that as smart lighting continues to emerge, LaaS providers will begin to emerge.

The study goes on to note that regional growth of smart lighting is varied, while implementation of a true smart lighting system is driven mostly by government regulations around energy savings and bulb recycling laws. In North America and Europe, new lighting installations are driving smart lighting with remote efficient management of the fixtures and the bulbs. While SSL alone might accommodate most of the government regulations, the requirements of daylight harvesting and occupancy sensing drive the need for considerable controls in most lighting systems. Once sensors and controls are involved, then networked systems are the next step and are becoming commonplace for most new installations.

Report: 700 million smart home devices to ship by 2020

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One million smart home appliances shipped globally in 2014, IHS reports.

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If your home isn’t smart yet, just wait. That’s because intelligent household appliances — like your washing machine, air conditioner, dryer, stove and refrigerator — are set to multiply in the years to come, a new report from IHS suggests.

According to the firm, the global market for such goods is projected to grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate of 134%, bringing the total units shipped from less than one million in 2014 to more than 223 million shipped by 2020. Factor in smaller home machines, such as robotic vacuums, electronic toothbrushes and coffeemakers, and the total number of smart devices skyrockets to 700 million in that same timeframe.

Beyond that, IHS lists three key factors that will help facilitate smart appliance adoption: energy management initiatives, standards for interoperability, and other marketplace dynamics including pricing, retail environment and competitive landscape.

Already today, appliance makers are shifting their focus from low-profit, low-growth “dumb” products toward emerging high-margin, revenue-oriented connected gadgets. Take for instance, Samsung and LG, who are vying for first-mover advantage — a term that refers to the advantage gained by the initial significant occupant of a market segment — by redirecting their efforts from mobile devices, TVs and other saturated areas to smart home equipment.

“Electronics giants could also benefit from the convergence of mobile devices and TVs with their home appliance business lines, as all of these devices can integrate well with smart technologies,” says Dinesh Kithany, senior analyst of home appliances.

Over the course of the next two to three years, the smart home market is expected to consolidate, and by 2018, IHS believes that there will be only a couple of connectivity platforms, operating systems and a small number of technology-oriented appliance companies dominating the market. One great example of this is the harmonization of ZigBee and Thread, both of which have decided to play nice to simplify home control.

“Consolidation will drive consumers toward earlier adoption of smart home technology, with growth similar to what the mobile phone industry experienced just a few years ago,” Kithany adds.

Want to read more? Check out IHS’ entire report here.

The world’s highest-performing Cortex-M7 MCUs are now shipping

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Atmel | SMART ARM Cortex-M7-based MCUs deliver 50% more performance than the closest competitor.

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Back in January, we unveiled the brand new Atmel | SMART SAM S70 and E70 families. And if you’ve been waiting to get your hands on the new ARM Cortex-M7-based MCUs, you’re in luck. That’s because both are now shipping in mass production.

With 50% higher performance than the closest competitor, larger configurable SRAM, more embedded Flash and high-bandwidth peripherals, these devices offer the ideal mix of connectivity, memory and performance. The SAM S70 and E70 series allow users to scale-up performance and deliver SRAM and system functionality, all while keeping the Cortex-M processor family ease-of-use and maximizing software reuse.

“As a lead partner for the ARM Cortex-M7-based MCUs, we are excited to ship volume units of our SAM E70 and S70 MCUs to worldwide customers,” explains Jacko Wilbrink, Atmel Senior Marketing Director. “Our SAM E70 and SAM S70 series deliver a robust memory and connectivity feature set, along with extensive software and third party support, enabling next-generation industrial, consumer and IoT designers the ability to differentiate their applications in a demanding market. We are working with hundreds of customers worldwide on a variety of applications using the new ARM Cortex-M7-based MCUs and look forward to mass adoption of these devices.”

These boards pack more than four times the performance of current Atmel | SMART ARM Cortex-M based MCUs. Running at speeds up to 300 MHz and embedding larger configurable SRAM up to 384 KB and higher bandwidth peripherals, the new series offer designers the right connectivity, SRAM and peripheral mix for industrial and connectivity designs. Additionally, the SAM S70 and E70 boast advanced memory architectures with up to 384KB of multi-port SRAM memory out of which 256KB can be configured as tightly coupled memory delivering zero wait state access at 300MHz. All devices come with high-speed USB Host and Device with on-chip high-speed USB PHY and Flash memory densities of 512kB, 1MB and 2MB.

What’s more, the Atmel | SMART ARM Cortex-M7-based MCUs are supported by ARM ecosystem partners on development tools and real-time operating system (RTOS) board support packages (BSPs) accelerating time-to-market. Software development tools are available on Atmel Studio, the ARM Keil MDK-ARM and IAR Embedded Workbench. Operating system support include Express Logic ThreadX, FreeRTOS, Keil RTX, NuttX and Segger embOS. A comprehensive set of peripheral driver examples and open source middleware is also provided in Atmel’s Software Package.

“Atmel has developed a global network of ecosystem partners that deliver hardware and software solutions for the Atmel SMART Cortex-M7 MCU,” adds Steve Pancoast, Atmel Vice President of Software Applications, Tools and Development. “Atmel’s robust, easy-to-use development platform along with our partners’ advanced development platforms offer developers the opportunity to use the best tools and services to bring their designs quickly to market. Atmel continues to expand our partner program to bring the best tools and solutions to our customers.”

Interested? Production quantities of both the SAM E70 and S70 are now available. In order to help accelerate design and to support these devices, an Atmel Xplained development kit is shipping today as well. Pricing for the SAM S70 starts at $5.34 in 64-pin LQFP package and 512KB on-chip flash for 10k-piece quantities while the Atmel Xplained board will run you $136.25. Meanwhile, be sure to read up on the new MCU families here.

Atmel launches IoT Cloud Ecosystem Partner Program

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Atmel’s Cloud Ecosystem Partner Program accelerates time-to-market for developers creating next-generation IoT solutions.

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Good news, IoT developers! Atmel has just announced its Internet of Things Cloud Ecosystem Partner Program, providing those using Atmel | SMART MCUs and Atmel SmartConnect wireless solutions with access to a wide range of market-leading ecosystem cloud partners for device management, data analytics and visualization in order to experience end-to-end, out-of-the-box IoT solution development.

With the ever-increasing need to collect, visualize and analyze data from IoT edge nodes and to manage the associated services, cloud connectivity is becoming an essential element for product development. Aside from that, device management has also emerged as an important aspect of cloud services as more gizmos and gadgets are performing functions through remote management. Take a connected thermostat, for example, that is programmed remotely and sends climate information back to the user’s RC device reducing overall power consumption while providing a better user experience.

Each cloud partner in this program not only brings a unique, distinct feature to the IoT ecosystem for developers using Atmel solutions but offers production-ready software stacks ported on Atmel wireless platforms to help accelerate time-to-market as well. Developers can now easily connect to the cloud through various software as a service (SaaS) options, based on their use-case requirements early in the development cycle. Additionally, Atmel is in the process of onboarding multiple cloud service partners providing regional and vertical expertise where required. Among the names on the growing list are PubNub, Proximetry, Exosite and Arrayent.

“We are excited to team with Atmel to deliver to their customers a highly secure solution for bi-directional device communication and control,” says Todd Greene, PubNub CEO. “Our highly reliable and massively scalable Data Stream Network provides companies with real-time infrastructure and a robust feature set for architecting their IoT solutions. Our partnership with Atmel offers the only ‘out of the box’ solution for IoT developers to create secure IoT products, reducing risk and accelerating time-to-market.”

With the anticipated growth of billions of devices by 2020 in the IoT market, secure cloud services will be a critical element to ensure Internet accessibility connectivity of these smart devices. The partner program ensures developers have the opportunity to design with Atmel’s pre-certified Wi-Fi, 802.15.4, and multimode modules and Atmel | SMART MCUs to provide a seamless end-to-end solution from the edge node to the cloud with a simple, plug-and-play connection that works out of the box.

“Our cloud services are integrated into several leading Atmel | SMART MCUs, SmartConnect and security modules,” adds Tracy Trent, Proximetry CEO. “We provide leading software solutions that enable the management of the most critical of things in the IoT including remote access and secure data management. With our services integrated into Atmel’s leading products, IoT developers now have a true end-to-end solution from the edge node to the cloud.”

What’s more, IoT developers can simply use any of the compatible Atmel development boards for access to the application programming interface (API) to qualified cloud partners. In order to expire the design process, several development kits are available with access to Atmel Cloud Partners like the WINC1500-XSTK, the SAMW25-XPRO, the SAMR21-XPRO and the Arduino Zero.

“Launching this highly anticipated IoT ecosystem partner program, we are now one of the few suppliers that delivers solutions from the edge node to the cloud, along with full software support. We are excited to team with these unique cloud service companies and look forward to adding many more,” explains Reza Kazerounian, SVP and GM of Microcontroller Business Unit at Atmel.