Atmel wireless connectivity supports industrial IoT revolution

---

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

---

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…

---

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.

Atmel and IoT and Crypto, oh my!

One of the companies that is best positioned to supply components into the Internet of Things (IoT) market is Atmel. For the time being most designs will be done using standard components, not doing massive integration on an SoC targeted at a specific market. The biggest issue in the early stage of market development will be working out what the customer wants and so the big premium will be on getting to market early and iterating fast, not premature cost optimization for a market that might not be big enough to support the design/NRE of a custom design.

Here is Atmel’s latest product in the SmartConnect family, the SAM W25 module

Atmel has microcontrollers, literally over 500 different flavors and in two families, the AVR family and a broad selection of ARM microcontrollers ad processors. They have wireless connectivity. They have strong solutions in security.

Indeed last week at Electronica in Germany they announced the latest product in the SmartConnect family, the SAM W25 module. It is the industry’s first fully-integrated FCC-certified Wi-Fi module with a standalone MCU and hardware security from a single source. The module is tiny, not much larger than a penny. The module includes Atmel’s recently-announced 2.4GHz IEEE 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi WINC1500, along with an Atmel | SMART SAM D21 ARM Cortex M0+-based MCU and Atmel’s ATECC108A optimized CryptoAuthentication engine with ultra-secure hardware-based key storage for secure connectivity.

Atmel at Electronica 2014

That last item is a key component for many IoT designs. Security is going to be a big thing and with so many well-publicized breaches of software security, the algorithms, and particularly the keys, are moving quickly into hardware. That component, the ATECC108A, provides state-of-the-art hardware security including a full turnkey Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) engine using key sizes of 256 or 283 bits – appropriate for modern security environments without the long computation delay typical of software solutions. Access to the device is through a standard I²C Interface at speeds up to 1Mb/sec. It is compatible with standard Serial EEPROM I²C Interface specifications. Compared to software, the device is:

• Higher performance (faster encryption)
• Lower power
• Much harder to compromise

Atmel has a new white paper out, Integrating the Internet of Things, Necessary Building Blocks for Broad Market Adoption. Depending on whose numbers you believe, there will be 50 billion IoT edge devices connected by 2020.

Edge nodes are becoming integrated into everyone’s life

As it says in the white paper:

On first inspection, the requirements of an IoT edge device appear to be much the same as any other microcontroller (MCU) based development project. You have one or more sensors that are read by an MCU, the data may then be processed locally prior to sending it off to another application or causing another event to occur such as turning on a motor. However, there are decisions to be made regarding how to communicate with these other applications. Wired, wireless, and power line communication (PLC) are the usual options. But, then you have to consider that many IoT devices are going to be battery powered, which means that their power consumption needs to be kept as low as possible to prolong battery life. The complexities deepen when you consider the security implications of a connected device as well. And that’s not just security of data being transferred, but also ensuring your device can’t be cloned and that it does not allow unauthorized applications to run on it.

IoT design requirements: Software / development tools ecosystem

For almost any application, the building blocks for an IoT edge node are the same:

• Embedded processing
• Sensors
• Connectivity
• Security
• And while not really a “building block,” ultra-low power for always-on applications

My view is that the biggest of these issues will be security. After all, even though Atmel has hundreds of different microcontrollers and microprocessors, there are plenty of other suppliers. Same goes for connectivity solutions. But strong cryptographhic solutions implemented in hardware are much less common.

The new IoT white paper is available for download here.

This post has been republished with permission from SemiWiki.com, where Paul McLellan is a featured blogger. It first appeared there on November 19, 2014.

Internet of Things will generate 400 zettabytes of data by 2018

The Internet of Things will generate an astonishing 400 zettabytes (ZB) of data per year by 2018, according to a new report from Cisco. To put things into perspective, a zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes.

The company’s annual Global Cloud Index study reveals that data from connected devices will reach 403ZB each year by 2018, up from 113.4ZB in 2013. In particular, Cisco cites a number of real-world business examples that will drive this rise in data, including a Beoing 787 aircraft which generates 40TB per hour of flight or an automated manufacturing facility that produces approximately 1 TB per hour (of which 5 GB is transmitted to a data center).

As the report highlights, cloud-based services are essential for most Internet of Everything (IoE) applications, which increases the ability for people, data, and things to communicate with one another over the Internet. Despite this huge growth in data from IoE devices, only a small amount will actually be sent to data centers for storage and subsequent analysis.

Moreover, the company notes that data created by connected devices worldwide will be 277 times higher than the amount of data being transmitted to data centers from end-user devices, while 47 times higher than total data center traffic by 2018.

Another key component of the Internet of Everything and cloud services adoption will be the growth of IPv6 capability among users, devices, network connectivity, and content enablement. Globally, 24% of Internet users will be IPv6-capable by 2018, while nearly half of all fixed and mobile devices will be IPv6-enabled.

According to Google, the percentage of IPv6 global users on in late September 2014 was 4.54%, up from 1.82% the same time last year — an increase of nearly 150% in the last year alone.

Explore the latest predictions by reading the Global Cloud Index in its entirety here.

Building real-time monitoring for IoT device state

You may have a couple Arduinos, or billions of IoT devices connected in a single instance. A common need today is the requirement to detect when devices are turned on and turned off, also known as device state. And, monitoring the device state of connected devices and machines in real-time is called presence.

In this blog post, we’ll walk you through how to use presence to monitor IoT devices and hardware connected with PubNub (for both Java and JavaScript).

Why You Need to Monitor Your IoT Devices in Real-Time

IoT hardware comes in all shapes, sizes, and prices. But despite their differences, monitoring device state is essential, and we need to know exactly when they’re online and offline. Say you have an (Atmel based) Arduino hooked up to your apartment doorbell for whatever reason. Your Arduino goes offline, the pizza man is standing outside, and you’re not eating. Or maybe the situation is more dramatic. You may have hundreds of IoT devices hooked up to manage your farm. Keeping tabs on those devices is vital for the health of your farm, and you need to know when they go offline.

Device Monitoring Using Presence

We’ll first walk you through using Presence for IoT devices with Java, then move onto JavaScript. With both, you’ll first need to sign up for a PubNub account. Once you sign up, you can get your unique PubNub keys in the PubNub Developer Portal. In the developer’s portal, click to enable Presence. Feel free to play around as much as you want in our free Sandbox tier.

Check out our simulated Presence demo to get a better idea of how Presence can be used for real-time monitoring of Internet of Things devices.

Java

Step 1: Presence and here_Now() are two features of PubNub that update device or user state in real-time. Whether you choose to use JavaScript or the PubNub Java Presence SDK, the output for Presence is the same. You will get an output in this format:

{"message":"OK","status":200,"uuids":["uuid1"],"service":"Presence",
"occupancy":1}

where “uuids” contains a list of the uuids online and occupancy gives the number of online users.

I will be using the code feature to see ‘who’s there?’. All you need to provide is the channel name, and then check if there is anyone on that channel. The code sample below is basic usage.

pubnub.hereNow("my_channel", new Callback() {
     public void successCallback(String channel, Object response) {
         System.out.println(response);
     }
     public void errorCallback(String channel, PubnubError error) {
         System.out.println(error);
     }
 });

This will output the devices that are online which is identified by the UUIDs. In order to consume this information, all you need is to modify the callback function a little. The following code shows you how:

Step 2:

Callback callback = new Callback() {
	public void successCallback(String channel, Object response) {
	    String temp = response.toString();
	    int start = temp.indexOf('[');
	    int end = temp.indexOf(']');
	    for(int index = start+1;index<end;index++){
		    if(temp.charAt(index)!=','){	
		    	uuid1 = uuid1 + temp.charAt(index);
		    }
		    else{
		    	System.out.println();
		    }
	    }
    	String replaced = uuid1.replace("\""," ");
    	String[] uuidlist = replaced.split("\\s+");
    	for (String tempstring : uuidlist){
    		System.out.println(tempstring);
    	}	
	}
		
	public void errorCallback(String channel, PubnubError error){
		System.out.println(error.toString());
	}
};
	
	public void herenow(){
		Pubnub pubnub = new Pubnub("demo", "demo");
		pubnub.hereNow("my_channel", callback);
	}

This code, modifies the information received by the hereNow function, and stores and prints it in an array called ‘uuidlist’. In this manner, you can now use this information according to your requirements.

JavaScript

Step 1: The PubNub JavaScript Presence feature is an optional parameter used along with the subscribe call in JavaScript. The code sample below is basic usage:

pubnub.subscribe({
     channel: "my_channel",
     presence: function(m){console.log(m)},
     callback: function(m){console.log(m)}
 });

The presence feature will output the devices that are online as identified by their UUIDs, along with their timestamp, an action that indicates join/leave/timeout and the occupancy of the channel. This information will be displayed in the console.

But what if you want to consume this information by publishing it to a screen or store it somewhere? The following code lets you do just that.

Step 2: Now we’ll bring the presence to life with JavaScript

var deviceList[],
devices =[];

pubnub.subscribe({

    channel: 'my_channel',
    presence: function(message,channel){
        if(message.action == "join"){
        	devices.push(message.uuid);
    		deviceList.append("<li text-align:
    		center>" + message.uuid + "</li>");
      		}
        else{
          devices.splice(devices.indexOf(message.uuid), 1);
          deviceList.find(message.uuid).remove();
	}
 }
});

Here, we define a custom function for presence which basically uses the different actions of a presence event that could occur, such as join, timeout and leave.

• If a ‘join’ occurs, we append the UUID to the list of devices that are online.
• If a ‘leave or a timeout’ occurs, we remove that UUID from the list of list of devices that are online.

You now have the online users, both in an array called ‘devices’ and also as list printed on a page.

This way, you can now be updated on the different devices joining and leaving your network in real-time.

You can check out the PubNub JavaScript Presence documentation here.

Additional PubNub Presence Resources

• JavaScript Presence documentation and tutorial
• Java Presence documentation and tutorial
• 5 Ways to use PubNub Presence
• Build real-time IoT dashboards with freeboard and PubNub

The Internet of Things and energy conservation

Humans are creative, and adaptive. We’ve done it all our lives, and all our existence. We needed more food, and so we created agriculture. We needed to live together, and so we created architecture. We needed to communicate, and so we created hundreds of ways to do just that; Internet, mobile telephone networks, computers. We are so fond of computers that we have them everywhere, often without noticing them. Yes, you might have a bulky desktop computer at home, or maybe even a flashy new laptop, but those are not the only computers. Your mobile telephone is a computer, but technically, so is your microwave, your car, your television set, and even your washing machine.

Our lives have changed greatly. We’ve all seen pictures and even films of medieval castles, and we know how we used to live. Today, our lives are made more comfortable by scores of machines; when was the last time you washed your clothes by hand? The clothes go in the washing machine, then in the dryer, and then in the cupboard. This all comes at a cost; financially, of course, but also in terms of energy.

Energy. The art of creating electrical power and delivering it to our homes and cities. For most people, this is as simple as having overhead power lines here and there, and paying a bill at the end of the month. Unfortunately, it is much more complicated than that. Power stations require scores of people to operate, and something surprising, data. In France, we have “too many” power stations, and most run at low capacity. When it gets hot, those who have air conditioning like to put it on, consuming electricity. Multiply that by a few thousand, and you get an idea of how much energy the power station needs to produce. When it gets cold, people like to heat their homes and businesses, and since everyone has radiators, electrical consumption soars. Imagine the amount of radiators an entire city can contain, and imagine even 50% of them turned on at the same time. Imagine.

Data is needed from other sources, not just from the weather. Imagine the amount of power required to let all the football fans watch the world cup. Our problem is that we can generate electricity, but we cannot store it (at least, not on this kind of scale). When everything gets turned on, the power station must be able to respond. If it can’t, bad things happen; the lights dim, or sometimes everything goes dark. We now know we cannot live without electricity.

We all know that we need to reduce our energy dependence, even if some of us don’t want to. To make more people aware, some cities turn off all the lights for an hour. It’s called Earth Hour. For one hour, people are encouraged to use as little electricity as possible; turning off the lights, for example. This does have an impact, but it is a double-edged sword. For one hour, the electricity usage drops considerably, while everyone thinks about the planet, and what we will leave behind for our children. At the end of the hour, everything goes back on, and this is where things get tricky. When electrical devices are first turned on, some can generate what is called an energy spike; a large consumption at first, before something more stable. It is visible just after Earth Hour, but it actually happens every day.

Peak hours. In my house, my electric water heater is connected to a peak-hour detection system. At 11:30 PM, my electricity provider starts “off-peak” hours, a time where electricity costs less. It costs less, an incentive to make me use power-hungry devices at a time when other devices are not needed. At this time of night, most businesses are closed, and so there is less demand. It is all about normalizing energy requirements, and to stop peaks during the day. At 7:30 AM, peak hours start, the water heater turns off, businesses start up, and my kettle turns on, the day is about to begin.

Energy is available, that isn’t the problem. Our problem is our use of energy. If only we had a way of using energy when it was available. Imagine, a certain amount of energy available. When I need light, I want my light to be usable immediately. I need a start time; now. However, when I put my clothes in the washing machine generally, I need them to be ready for the next day. I need and “end” time; I need the device to get the work done before a certain time. When will the washing machine start? Well, I don’t actually mind when it starts, and this is where I need help. This is where the IoT can help us, because we really need help.

The IoT will give us millions of connected sensors. This will also supply us with data, lots and lots of it. Why wouldn’t a small device in my house have direct control over my washing machine, or even better, actually be inside my washing machine? It could be programmed to start at a specific time, talking to other devices on the energy grid? Or even in my home; it could tell the water heater to wait until it has finished, and then the water heater gets its chance. The possibilities are endless.

IoT will give us an incredible amount of data, and data that can be used to help up control, and maybe even overcome our need to energy. But wait a minute, doesn’t the IoT itself need energy? It does, but the amount of energy that it will save outweighs the amount of energy it uses, and by a large factor. Take, for example, Atmel’s SAM D21 microcontroller. It uses less than 70µA per MHz, and that is when it is running at full speed. Of course, these devices have advanced power management, and with careful coding, they can last for months on cell batteries. Low power does not mean no power; it has enough flex to get the job done, and more. With built-in USB, ADCs, DACs and enough RAM and ROM for the most complex programs, it gets the job done. It also has the Atmel Event system, a powerful system that lets the microcontroller react to external events without the need to constantly look at inputs.

We need a little help in our lives to make simple decisions; when should I turn the heating on? When is the best time to turn on the air conditioner? We think we know, but we don’t. IoT will allow us to know exactly when the cold weather is coming. IoT will know when to turn the lights off. In short, IoT will generate enough data that it will know better than us what to do, and when. What we have seen so far is only the beginning.

1:1 Interview with Magnus Pedersen of Atmel

TV: What do you do? How are you contributing to the realization and maturation of the Internet of Things (IoT)?

Magnus Pedersen with the Philips Hue (a connected IoT enabled smart device). The Philips Hue Wireless Light Bulb promises full control of its functions over Wi-Fi, including per-light brightness and color settings, remote operation and geofencing capabilities. In addition, Philips includes a powerful GUI-driven app to custom tune lighting in nearly any environment.

MP:  I am currently working on new ultra low power wireless devices and systems compliant with the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, which supports wireless applications such as ZigBee and IPv6/6LoWPAN. Providing standards based reference designs and implementation helps our customers bring IoT devices quickly to the market.

TV: What products do you see becoming the potential glue for Internet of Things embedded designs?

MP: IoT in my mind is all about connectivity and there is a major trend towards wireless. There are many standards competing for designs in the IoT space, but I believe low power solutions like ZigBee, Bluetooth Smart and Wi-Fi will grab the lion share of the market for IoT devices.

TV: What are some of the challenges in building out MCU Wireless and Wireless/RF enabled devices to support enterprise initiatives?

MP: The primary challenge is the lack of standards for the upper layers, and to some extent, lack of infrastructure and gateways to gather data from the IoT devices – bringing the data back into the enterprise servers for analysis.

TV: What’s your favorite MCU wireless device and why?

MP: My current favorite is Atmel’s ultra low power family of wireless microcontrollers. It’s single die design, offering a high level of integration. Plus, it is designed with ultra low power consumption in mind. The ATmegaRFR2 family is quickly grabbing market share in some relatively new markets like wireless lighting control. Major players are putting a lot of efforts into ZigBee Light Link compliant systems these days.

AT256RFR2-EK

TV: Can you think of a reference design and various other solution sets that have helped a customer realize his or her vision of embedded architecture and design? Specifically, one that meets all design and BOM requirements – while also exceeding quality and maximizing in B2B as well as customer end to end satisfaction?

MP: Atmel has been active in the ZigBee community for many years. We have certified ZigBee Stacks and referenced implementations for firmware and hardware that we are sharing with our customers. We have a very open policy to share source code, and we are even sharing our hardware design files for our customers to use, either as is, or modified to customer needs. This way, customers can leverage years of R&D that have already been invested in the reference designs – all while moving efficiently through evaluation, prototyping and actual products ready for mass-production.

TV: Is there any advice you can offer to our readers who are forced to make tough decisions when it comes to schedule and embedded projects? For designers, architects and manufacturing managers?

MP: Learn from the mistakes of others. You do not have time to make them all yourself! Make sure you engage with suppliers that have been in the game for a while and are willing to share past experiences in terms of hardware, communication stacks and reference designs. Relying on and working with an experienced supplier will save you from some of the traditional pitfalls and challenges in wireless designs.

TV: There are so many standards related to connectivity. I can imagine the early web and many early technology paradigms in similar nascent scenarios. Which protocol and stack do you endorse as the communicator for IoT embedded designs? Does it matter?

MP: I think you’re right – the IoT is still in it’s infancy and there are still quite a few standards competing for the same applications. In the ultra low power domain IPv6/6LoWPAN is promoted by the IPSO Alliance and the ZigBee solutions promoted by the ZigBee Alliance is now fairly mature and ready for prime time. A couple of years ago the smart energy domain was very interesting, but the fastest growth today is within wireless lighting control and home automation. Do a search for “Philips Hue” and you can see some of my favorite applications right now.

TV: IoT refers to connecting literally everything to the Internet. Do you agree with this sentiment? How soon do you think this will become a reality?

MP: Yes – I do agree. And that means we are talking about a set of solutions ranging from handsets and tablets to even smaller embedded and highly specialized devices with years of battery lifetime. We’re even seeing battery-less devices being driven by energy harvesting techniques.

TV: Is the Internet of Things going to be the biggest leverage point for IT as well as valued added chain to many industries? If so, what are some of the business challenges?

MP: IoT represents huge opportunities for existing industries and it will also represent great opportunities for startups to create new business. The latest forecast provided by Gartner indicates that there will be up to 30 billion connected devices by 2020, resulting in  $1.9 trillion in global economic value-add through sales into diverse end markets. Those are big numbers!

TV: Will competing communication standards get into the way of IoT emergence? Does lack of agreement equate to limited economies of scale? Is there a risk associated to choosing the wrong MCU Wireless device?

MP:  I do not think competing standards will create any issues. Some standards will fit better than others, and especially in consumer applications growth will be driven primarily by consumer demand, rather than standardization bodies or organizations. There is an obvious risk for the product vendors tied to this – selecting the wrong standard might prohibit growth and represent a fatal decision for both startups and even established companies.

TV: IoT is obviously about more than just connecting your toaster. What are some some examples for big industries and markets where IoT can bring added value and revenue? Explain at least to a B2B customer point of view for a Fortune 500?

MP: IoT is about making everyday life easier for everyone. It’s about the introduction of the smart home, HVAC and lighting solutions coming online. It’s about alarm systems and doorlocks and cameras – everything coming online. It is also a story about a generation of people being always online, almost to the point of being addicted to internet-access. I recently saw an update to the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs indicating that WiFi access is now becoming the most important requirement, perhaps even more important than food and water. I thought it was funny, but yes, there is probably some sense of truth in this as well – at least for some people.

Figure: Maslow 2.0

 

It might not fair to give one example of products or companies, but if you look at communities like Kickstarter and search for IoT projects, there are an overwhelming number of ideas and projects.

TV: Is the IoT hype going to mature and actually become mainstream with an unfolding of emergent products that redefine the shape for products and services offered to a company? If so, tell me about some of the challenges and what can be done to make this transition easier?

MP: The IoT hype is going to mature and there will be new businesses in data collection, data transfer and data storage. New businesses will also be build around data analysis of  smartphones and tablet applications.

TV: Have you heard of Amara’s law?  We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. What are the potentials in the short/long term for Internet of Things as we move forward?

MP: Devices that communicate with each other enable new opportunities. This can be a device(s) within a limited geography or area, while in the longer term these devices will be connected to the cloud and can then be accessed from anywhere.

TV: Describe some of the technology partnerships and reference designs that can act as mentors and education models for engineering teams seeking to revamp/evolve their products into the world of connectivity.

MP: Atmel is involved with numerous partners in the IoT domain. We’ve enjoyed long-term partnerships with standardization bodies such as IETF and IEEE, as well as the ZigBee Alliance. Atmel is also teaming up with marketing organizations such as the IPSO Alliance and The Connected Lighting Alliance. As a silicon vendor, there is also a need for additional resources at the application level and even hardware reference designs. Over the past few years, we’ve teamed with companies like MeshNetics in the ZigBee domain (their IP was acquired by Atmel in 2008), and Seninode for their embedded IPv6/6LoWPAN solutions. (Sensinode was recently acquired by ARM). A general goal is to provide complete reference designs for both hardware and firmware in order speed the design process on the customer side, and it is also the general idea that these designs should be available as open source.

TV: What are some of the challenges associated with extending the typical product to a connected product? What are the design constraints and challenges that can be learned from one another?

MP: Atmel recently conducted an IoT survey with our key customers, revealing few technical challenges. The evolving standards enable new businesses, but it also broadens the competition.

TV: What sort of recommendations and technical advice do you offer to help core engineering teams and architects build highly connective products that can be designed and produced in the  highest quality and lowest BOM available?

MP: Being responsible for the low power wireless product line in Atmel, we’re bringing out standard compliant wireless solutions including RF transceivers, wireless microcontrollers, communication stack and profiles, and even certified hardware reference designs to kickstart customer projects and bring them quickly to market.

TV: What are you currently working on and most excited about?

MP: As a marketeer for a large microcontroller and touch company, I have the opportunity to engage with products and solutions that are going to be introduced in the near future. Products that don’t exist yet – I find that part very exciting

TV: Are there any people or books that have inspired you lately?

MP: Steve Jobs. It is really amazing how he created killer products and applications, even thought we didn’t know that we wanted or needed them. The iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and the Apps-store… Steve changed the world of handsets from Nokia/Blackberry dominance to the handsets as we know them today. I have also watched the speech he gave for Stanford University graduates back in 2005 many times. Steve Jobs urged the students to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life’s setbacks — including death itself. I think this was a really great speech in the sense that he asks us to think about what we really want to achieve in life, knowing that death is the only destiny we all share – no one has ever escaped it.

TV: How can we establish and negotiate technological priorities? In a world of limited bandwidth, the growth in connectivity will challenge our current network capacity to cope with data. We need a better way of understanding which services should be prioritized. For example, how can we make sure vital medical data or pluggable Internet of Things devices aren’t slowed by streaming and IoT enabled loose end points?

MP: I wouldn’t be too worried about this. Network capacity will continue to scale and various security mechanisms will deal with priorities and separate the vital networks and applications from the less critical ones.

TV: How can we take a long-term perspective on services and objects? We currently design for beginnings – getting people connected and tied into a system. How can we make sure people end relationships with service providers as easily? As more big-ticket items become connected (cars, fridges etc) and are sold on to new owners and users, this becomes increasingly important.

MP: As “things” becomes connected more and more consumers will make use of the new applications and systems. Ease of use and the willingness to change will be the keys. The consumers are a challenging set of customers as they will not accept systems and application not stable enough or easy to use. Companies offering such products will simply fail.

TV: How can we balance aspirations for the IoT with the reality of what it will be able to deliver? There are strong tensions between the aspirations and our vision of a technological future and the pragmatics of our everyday lives.

MP: I do not agree to the statement that there are strong tensions. We see enormous activity from entrepreneurs in the IoT space these days, and yet I think that this is just the very early beginning of a new mega-trend in the industry, as well as applications and services being provided to the consumers. Some of these ideas will fly and become great products, others will fail. And again, I think the consumers will be the judges when it becomes to the decision of what will be a success story and what will fail.

TV: Who represents who? Who stands up for, educates, represents and lobbies for people using the IoT or connected products? Is this the role of people centered designers? As a product extraordinaire, how can you help companies bring Internet of Things devices or connected smart products to life?

MP: That’s a really good question! With the indications I already mentioned from the analysts, (predicting a $1.9 trillion market in 2020), there are many groups and communities scratching their heads trying to figure out how to get their piece of this big pie. Some of the drive will come from the industry promoting their technology, but there will also be IoT solutions being demanded and pushed for by the consumers themselves.

TV: Who are the people using it? How do we define the communities and circles that use each product and their relationship to each other?

MP: As with most new products and solutions, quite a number of initiatives will be rolled out in high end products first. Some solutions are maybe more the limited audience of tech-freaks, but IoT is rapidly becoming a reality in everyones lives.

TV: What can we learn about IoT in everyday business communication, product design and product emergence?

MP: IoT opens up a huge space of new solutions, systems and products. We will move into a world of smarter devices, where the devices themselves are capable of communicating with other IoT devices. Some of these devices will even make decisions to interact with and control other devices without any input from human beings. Just look at the car-industry. High end cars are now able to park without a driver, they can position themselves in the lane, keep distance from the vehicle in front, and we’re about to get a fleet of cars that are able to communicate with each other, making decisions on our behalf. Some cars are also equipped with systems for automated emergency calls and even report the exact position it is calling from. These are examples of systems already available. Given the fact that the devices are connected they can also be reprogrammed to change behavior without any need for major hardware updates. This offers flexibility in design and helps keeps the platform up to date before a new hardware product design cycle needs to be kicked-off.

TV: How does rapid prototyping help drive new product developments and how does it fit with a people-centric or customer-centric methodology? How can government nurture efficiencies or disruption? Is it their role to help adopt innovation for the end customer?

MP: Rapid prototyping enables shorter development cycles, but it can also be used to spin multiple prototypes quickly to test various options and product configurations. This way you can execute modifications and changes early in the development stage and avoid costly redesigns at a later stage. This might represent the difference between a project failure and a successful product. Personally, I think governments should play an active role in innovation, making sure startups and even established companies have an environment where they can achieve sustainable growth. In the past we’ve even seen governments actively funding IoT projects during economic downturns, like what US government did back in 2009 – feeding hundreds of billion of dollars to the industry in order to create new jobs. Some of these funds went into smart energy projects rolling out smart meters as we have already seen in California.

TV: How can we track “Things” and what will this tell us about their use?

MP: There are a number of ways to track “things,” ranging from traditional GPS technology to various methods of range measurements and triangulation algorithms. This provides useful information about the device, or its owner, and can be used in many ways. I already mentioned automated emergency calls reporting a vehicle’s position, but the number of applications benefiting from location (positioning) services is really unlimited. From the retail industry for example, we see an increased demand for such services in connection to targeted commercials for each and every customer, as well as monitoring customer behavior in a shopping mall to maximize sales.

TV: What are the new interfaces and dashboards that will help people to interact with the IoT? How important will the distinction be between devices equipped with a screen (touch, etc) and those without? How does this play a role in the latest features of Atmel’s microcontrollers and microprocessors?

MP: User interfaces are extremely important. These interfaces have quickly evolved from traditional button and screens, to the touchscreen technology as we know it today. Touch screens and their related applications and user interfaces has proven very easy and intuitive to use, so it is quickly becoming the de-facto standard. This is obviously also the reason why Atmel as a company has invested heavily in touch technology over the last few years, ranging from capacitive buttons, sliders and wheels, to small and large touch screens. As more and more products utilize this technology, capacitive touch technology is rapidly becoming a standard building block in all Atmel microcontrollers.

TV: Who should ask where potential pain is in the business innovation belt? Is it the designer or business manager, or both?  Do we create value and value chains that reward creators or just end user customers? How can the designer and product creativity map to microcontroller functionality and capabilities?

MP: I think this needs to be reviewed by all parties involved. Innovation is an interactive process involving everyone from the designer to the consumer. Good products will also create value for everyone involved in the process – from the design kickoff until there is a finished product in the hands of the consumer. Selecting Atmel as a design partner ensures access to a family of microcontrollers capable of scaling in terms of resources and peripherals such as wireless connectivity and touch enabled user interfaces. It is a very important strategy for Atmel to be positively aligned with the customer when defining roadmaps and the next generation of microcontrollers. The only way we can make sure we have the right technology available at the right time is to define our future roadmaps in close cooperation with our customers.

Analyst Patrick Moorhead talks IoT

The rapidly evolving Internet of Things (IoT) is clearly an idea whose time has finally come. Indeed, falling technology costs, developments in complementary fields like mobile and cloud, together with support from governments have all contributed to the dawning of an IoT “quiet revolution.”

In fact, over three-quarters of companies are now actively exploring or using the IoT, with the vast majority of business leaders believing it will have a meaningful impact on how their companies conduct business. In a recent report sponsored by ARM, Clint Witchalls confirms that consumers will likely soon be awash with IoT-based products and services – even if they may not realize it.

Commenting on the Witchalls report in Forbes, analyst Patrick Moorhead notes that business leaders seem to be highly optimistic about the IoT and its ability to transform their business, either by driving new sources of revenue or by making operations more efficient.

“This is a good sign that leaders think they can make more money and save more money. It isn’t often that you can find both of these together,” he explains. “The [Witchall report] also shows that most companies are investing in IoT right now, but most are just researching what they can do with it versus planning, piloting, or implementing projects.”

So how far are we along the continuum from early adoption to mass adoption?

Well, 95% of those surveyed in the above-mentioned ARM report say they believe their companies will be using IoT in three years.

“While most in surveys are optimistic, this is a huge number when you think of it, even if, in reality, it’s four to five years,” Moorhead notes. “While I think 95% is overly-aggressive, this would be as pervasive as a smartphone or a personal computer use.”

Interestingly, Moorhead splits the concept of IoT into two distinct segments: the Industrial IoT (IIoT) and the Human (HIoT).

“The IIoT brings autonomous monitoring and operations capability to factory boilers, HVAC systems, and hospital medical systems,” he says. “IIoT systems are very high availability and companies like General Electric GE  and Echelon ELON play in this space. The HIoT comprise of more interactive, consumer-based devices like a FitBit, Revolv Hub and a Nest Thermostat. ARM, the study sponsor, obviously plays heavily in both the IIoT and the HIoT.”

Interested in learning more? The full text of the Forbes article can be read here, while the ARM-sponsored Witchalls report is available here.

1:1 interview with Rob van Kranenburg (Part 3)

RvK: Around 2000 it became clear to me that too few stakeholder were negotiating this paradigm shift. IoT literally is, without exaggeration, about global domination for whoever who ensures inter-operability through his standards, protocols and legal formatting. It must be a public IoT if we want to ensure the largest and most inclusive playing field of free men, women, animals and machines who through the best possible resource allocation and decision-making are able to live in harmony with each other and the environment. 

For the past 10 years I have been talking to political and civil servant decision makers. My story was and is that this transparency and full traceability is not an attack on their system. In fact they played a vital role in providing democratic tools such as education, libraries, relatively open access to knowledge. Yet they have no more agency in this current age. A large majority in the previous Chinese government were engineers. The new Premier is a chemical engineer. The country is already run like Google (which has about the same ration engineers/non-engineers). In the West our politicians are fundamentally unable to grasp that their skills and toolsets (and ego’s) have become irrelevant. The civil servants I talk to understand they have no more managerial role in the (semi) autonomous grids they have build themselves, but do not want to let go for fear of losing prestige, a pension, a “position.” Throughout history such paradigmatic shifts have led to revolution, breakdown and loss of life and resources. It is the task and duty of the current IoT engineering community to help these forces understand that we can facilitate their skillsets to move over into more networked organizations.

TV: Describe the foundation of the IoT consortium? Why is it important for organizations in technology to map to these requirements ensuring such use-cases are adopted? What is the integral center-piece? Any rule of thumb such as aligning with Efficiency? Cost? Experience? Customer? or Multi-Faceted?

RvK: This is indeed a key issue. It is about the nature of value. No one is making money with IoT at the moment beyond the boring low hanging fruit of optimizing, efficiency and pre-pre figuring out predictive maintenance; nickles and dimes. These do add up of course on a global scale but even there at one moment every object is tagged with a barcode, QR code, NFC, RFID, monitoring device. Cisco has grasped the implications and is selling its hardware and is moving into output based business models, occupying the very moments where the data becomes meaningful to the customer entangling customer relation management of their client clients with their own formats of making the data legible to them in the first place. Imagine a giant like Cisco having to go through the nitty gritty of identifying 21 use cases (including the ‘smart toilet’) and imagine the savvy people trying to sell that to the Board as their only way of survival: trying to get through the next three to five years making pennies of these use cases, just to stay afloat in order to be the new hegemony in a world that has become fully traceable by then. Quite a feat I’d say.  The real value of IoT will only be visible if it is embraced, trusted and really wanted by the people. One can imagine a business model of providing neighborhood servers, amassing all data anonymous, selling or auctioning it to providers who enrich it and play back scenarios that you might want to buy into on the full spectrum from housing to mobility, from food to health, from better sleep advice to matchmaking skill sets and providing work (not ‘jobs’).

TV: The appeal for IoT has taken the stage globally now. How are you involved in the IoT China Consortium and what are the drivers regionally? Do they have distinct differentiators across other regions for IoT? 

RvK: I was asked to moderate the first IoT Conference in Beijing in 2010. In the conversations prior to that I realized from the questions how savvy the Chinese organizers were. No wonder given the fact that most top politicians are engineers. In 2005 a Whitepaper on RFID was published. It was released by 15 Ministries and Commissions, including the Ministry of Science and Technology. To build that level of integration between your Ministries means that the channels to communicate and understand a technological paradigm shift underlies the entire structure. The same might be said to be true of the US, but with a difference that in the US half your tax dollars go to the military which is building a similar structure (as we see now in the revelations of Manning and Snowden) but fully closed without any sense that this cybernetic harness could be used for something else then security and isolating data.

In fact, negotiating with the top military is what needs to happen fast by the top IoT US companies – Cisco, IBM, Google, Apple, GE, Microsoft, or else they will suffer greatly from the lack of trust that globally is beginning to take shape. And as we know, trust is the key to making money and adding value in IoT. Imagine if they could do what RAND did after WWII, take the entire field to a new plane: space in their case. Imagine that negotiations could start on how the entire USA, or maybe even the whole world, could benefit from opening up this military infrastructure and use it for sharing and cooperation?

For the past two years I have been involved in helping to program and shape the IOT China Conference in Shanghai and I have been struck by the enthusiasm and the positive attitude towards monitoring – and why should that not be? IoT can help clean the air, provide better food from farm to fork, solutions to the crazy car ownership notions, streamline energy from infrastructure to devices (why should you ‘own’ your washing machine? Is that what life is about? ‘Owning things?). 

My point is very simple and I make it everywhere. If we want a better balance between humans, animals, resources and the planet we should take control of infrastructure that should be fully open, modular and public. All data coming from that platform should be open to the public to build better services and better iterations of the infrastructure. I think I can safely say that the Chinese leadership also knows that if it wants to make full use of the creative potential of this younger generation, that it should stop any kind of censorship on content level, but precisely open all data sets and allow all stakeholders to work in the public interest. If all is in the open, it is very difficult to be corrupt or to isolate data for a long time. Building the best balance between open and closed on a platform will be the biggest challenge. Whoever gets that right will have the hegemony in the 21th century.

TV: What vertical industry or player do you see playing a major role in fulfilling at least a major part of IoT concepts then reciprocating this back to the customer?

RvK: Given the current global crisis the focus is not so much on the home and housing, but I think about the Connected Car. The revenue streams are as solid as possible. The younger generation is buying less cars, but still sharing them. Fleet management is relatively stable. China and Africa are growing markets. Automotive is both a vertical as well as a horizontal. It makes it possible for Apple for example to sell hands free Siri across a range of brands. Google can sell its expertise of autonomous driving. Synching data from home, work, and even ehealth with the sensors in the car allows for the ‘seamless’ experience. People like driving cars, they won’t easily give up this sense of ‘freedom’ (even if they are in traffic standing still in most mega-cities).

TV: What are the differentiators between IoT, IoE, Industrial Internet? Do you see an overlap, is there a need to coin the evolution into a unified technological disruption?

RvK: Internet of Things is a term coined by Kevin Ashton that was timely and productive, and it still is. To the researchers doing ubicomp, pervasive computing and ambient intelligence it must be a bit sour that people start googling ‘Internet of Things’ and are not finding their work. So yes, there is a huge overlap between the cybernetics from mid last century, McLuhan, Mark Weiser, the pervasive and calm computing groups and AmI (ambient intelligence). The new terms coined by the big boys is just marketing. Smart Planet, IoE, Industrial Internet have the same roots. The focus might be slightly different. IBM sees the smart city as the business model for IoT (just lease everything in a gated community), Cisco wants to draw attention away from end to end connections only and focuses on intelligence at the edge of the network, in the devices (one can imagine routers that could be enhanced with robotic qualities; drone routers), therefore the ‘Everything’ and in a mail conversation I had with GE on the name, that I thought was retro leaving out all the DIY, Maker movement, Kickstarter, open hardware and bottom up qualities of IoT, I was informed that with that name they refer to huge and mission critical infrastructure and services thinking very little of that messiness on the ground. I think such thinking is a huge mistake. There is no more top, down, middle. We are in the network now and becoming a supernode means that you take each and every stakeholder (even to the level of one/the super-empowered individual/lone entrepreneur) extremely serious.

TV: We have seen how Social Networks changed things from all places. How does IoT affect culture, poverty, business, and earthly things such as humanity? What does it take for this to clearly show?

RvK: We see the effects most clearly in the fact that the creative elites are able to organize with cheap tools on the web now. In fact, Council too is just a website and I post everything myself. Membership is free and all the Knowledge Partnerships I have done so far are done without money, simply swapping logo’s. We see it in organized and semi organized networks such as Anonymous, Wikileaks and all kinds of new initiatives on Kickstarter, itself a good example of bottom up funding for those without resources like money, heritage or institutional power. The Internet and IoT is a meritocracy. All you need is time, intelligence, focus and perseverance, belief and hope maybe too. The cracks in the all old system power – banking, government and security agencies, hereditary forms of authority – are beginning to show because as a bright geek or activist you are no longer dependent on their ‘salons’, ‘projects’, ‘creative industries’.

You just start your own team and if you are good the brightest will find you, immediately or eventually, like in the Coolio song ‘I’ll see you when you get there’. What this means for the world? Only good things, a thorough shift from forces of competition, to forces of cooperation and sharing. Monitoring resources eventually eradicates corruption and mafia (this is already happening). There is no longer a role for the state, nor the current actors that make up states. The future is in ‘platforms’ and a Steve Jobs model of dedicated devices talking to particular platforms where citizens manage services, taxes and identities. Again it is our task to help the current actors to see this as a logical and normal generational and technical operation that they should not stall or perceive as a threat, but welcome as a joint responsibility of much more stakeholders.

TV: How can a business line manager, Executive for Engineering, CEO, or Founder take evolve a product or business in to IoT centric characteristics and IoT customer-centric experience?

RvK: For the past two years now I have posted a course on Internet of Things on a Dutch portal for courses where people that are working go to find out to learn about the latest trends. They flock to courses on social media and Twitter but so far I have no takers, none at all!  After a while I realized that if you are working or running a business you do not see ‘IoT’, no you simply start to worry or be a bit surprised that you see clients you never saw before, new types of customers that come for a problem or a solution that does not fit your current business model. The trick is to go and talk to your competitors now as they probably experience the same issue with your service or product and jointly look for IoT type of solutions, taking it together to a whole new level.

From that point on you lower structural costs to a minimum as you share them and compete on issues tailored to specific needs of clients. It is for these kinds of situations, as well as for in house consultancy: talking to basically everybody in the company – that we set up IoP Limited in London recently with Lorna Goulden (ex Philips), Martin Spindler (specializing in energy) and Alex Deschamps Sonsino (ex Arduino and Tinker, now Goodnight Lamp and IoT Meetups London). We have learned that basically the major issue is the balance between good old fashioned change management  and technical potential in every given business, that will determine the successful implementation of new business models.

This concludes Atmel’s 1:1 interview with Rob van Kranenburg.  View Part 1 and Part 2.

1:1 interview with Rob van Kranenburg (Part 1)

1:1 Interview conducted by Atmel’s Tom Vu with Rob van Kranenburg, IoT-A Stakeholder Coordinator, Founder of Council, and Adviser to Open Source Internet of Things, osiot.org.

TV: Why IoT-A? There are a multitude of IoT consortiums important to forging the progress of this next era of connective technology. Why is it important to the general business and mainstream? Why so many consortiums? Will it eventually roll up to one?

RvK: In systemic shifts the next normal is at stake. Of course you have to believe that IoT is a systemic shift first. Paradoxically, it is precisely the fact that we see so many contenders and consortia – no one wants to miss out or be left behind – that IoT is moving from being a vision to a business proposition. The success of the device as a standard – the Steve Jobs approach to controlling hardware, software, connectivity, app store; what goes in and what goes out and who it is friends with – has been an eye opener.

Patrick Moorhead writes in his Forbes piece that “the stunning success of smartphones, followed by similar success for tablets, has pushed the standardization opportunities for next generation infrastructure into play for the top tier of visionary companies”¹, listing among others IBM Smarter Planet, Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group, Google, IPSO Alliance, ARM, International M2M Council, IoT-A (Internet-of-Things Architecture), and Intel’s Intelligent Systems Framework (ISF).  Software as a service, could only come into existence with the Cloud: “In the 90s, storage disks of less than 30GB capacity were incredibly expensive. Today, thanks to innovations in silicon technology, we are able to get high capacity storage disks at a nominal cost.”² In the early 2000s we see the first experiments with real-time feedback.

In an earlier post you mention Formula 1. In 2002 Wired published a piece on sailing and the America’s Cup: “We’re trying to find patterns, to see that one set of conditions tends to result in something else. We don’t know why, and we don’t need to, because the answer is in the data.” This a programmer talking, a programmer and a sailor: Katori is writing a program that crunches the measurements and creates a “wind profile number an implied wind,” a wind an implied boat can sail on, as sailing, so long an intuitive art, has become a contest of technology: “Sensors and strain gauges are tracking 200 different parameters every second and sending the information across Craig McCraws OneWorld’s LAN to its chase boats and offices. Then the info gets dumped into a Microsoft SQL database, where it’s sifted to pinpoint the effects of sail and hardware experiments. Unraveling all the input is, in the words of OneWorld engineer Richard Karn, “nearly impossible.” And that’s not all: every day for the past two years, five OneWorld weather boats have headed out into the Gulf to harvest data.”³

I remember how struck I was by that notion of an “implied wind.” Before that notion there was the “real” and the “digital,” two concrete and separate worlds. You could argue that prior to that there was the “real” and the “surreal” or spiritual world. Large groups of people historically have been animists. To them objects do have stories, hold memories, are “actors.” Things are alive in that vision. Introducing this notion of implied, it became clear that it was no longer about the relation between the object and the database, materialized in a “tag,” but that the relation itself was becoming an actor, a player in a world where you did not know why, and you could nor care less why or why not – you wanted to gather data. There is “something” in it.

Grasping this key paradigm shift, it then becomes clear that the stakes are very high. In 2001, Steve Halliday, then vice president of technology at AIM, a trade association for manufacturers of tagging (RFID) technology, interviewed by Charlie Schmidt claimed: “If I talk to companies and ask them if they want to replace the bar code with these tags, the answer can’t be anything but yes. It’s like giving them the opportunity to rule the world.”⁴ Since then the most publicized attempt to create one single architecture, an Object Name Server, is the story of the RFID standard called “EPC Global” -two standard bodies EAN and UCC merging to become GS1 in 2005. In a bold move that no regulator foresaw, they scaled their unit of data from being in a batch of 10,000 and thus uninteresting for individual consumers to that of the uniquely identifiable item.

TV: Gartner suggest IoT as a #4 business creation factor for the next 5 years. What are your thoughts? Is this true?

Credit: Image obtained from Gartner’s 2012 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Identifies “Tipping Point” Technologies, Unlocking Long-Awaited Technology Scenarios

*****

RvK: Depending on how you define IoT, I would say definitely. Internet of Things influences changes in production (smart manufacturing, mass customization), consumption (economy of sharing, leasing vs ownership), energy (monitoring grids, households and devices), mobility (connected cars), decision making processes (shift to grassroots and local as data, information and project management tools come in the hands of ‘masses’), finance (IoT can sustain more currencies: Bitcoin, bartering, and again ‘leasing’) and creates the potential for convergence of the above shifts into a new kind of state and democratic model based on the notion of “platform.”

It is more an operation on the scale of: before and after the wheel, before and after printing/the book. In a kind of philosophical way you could say that it is the coming alive of the environment as an actor, it touches every human operation. The browser is only 20 years old – Mosaic being the first in 1993. The web has dramatically changed every segmented action in every sequence of operations that make up project management tools in any form of production and consumption. Because of this some people in the EU and elsewhere are trying to change IoT name-wise to something like Digital Transition. The Singularity is another way of looking at it. As a concept it is Borgian in the sense that the next big trends: Nano electronics and (DIY) biology are not in an emergent future realm as time to market could increase exponentially as they are drawn into being grasped within the connectivity that IoT is bringing.

Interested in reading more? Tune into Part 2 of Atmel’s 1:1 interview with Rob van Kranenburg. View Part 2  and Part 3

*****

¹ http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2013/06/27/how-to-intelligently-build-an-internet-of-things-iot/?goback=%2Egde_73311_member_253757229

² http://www.ramco.com/blog/5-cost-effective-ways-to-store-data-on-the-cloud

³ Carl Hoffman, Billionaire Boys Cup. High tech hits the high seas in a windblown battle between Craig McCaw and Larry Ellison. Carl Hoffman sets sail with Team OneWorld in the race to take back the America’s Cup.http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.10/sailing_pr.html

⁴ Beyond the Bar Code – High-tech tags will let manufacturers track products from warehouse to home to recycling bin. But what’s great for logistics could become a privacy nightmare. By Charlie Schmidt, March 2001.http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/400913/beyond-the-bar-code/

An introduction to Kevin Ashton’s recent IoT keynote

Recently, a number of industry heavyweights have taken a keen interest in the Internet of Things (IoT). Essentially, the IoT involves various nodes collectively generating a tremendous amount of data.  We know there is a strong emphasis now for the “Things being connected”.  In a small scale, a Formula 1 constructor such as McLaren uses a cluster of sensor nodes to transmit vital telemetry from the pit crew to garage, then to race engineers and ultimately back to R & D centers. During the races, this all happens in realtime. Of course, the customer in this scenario is the driver and engineering team – converging machine logs and other relevant data to ensure a vehicle runs at optimal speed.  During the races, this happens realtime; converging decisive machine log and digital data together to formulate decisive actions toward minor setting adjustments; this results in balancing the force of physics to the engine and car to produce fractions of a competitiveness in seconds.  This equates to a win in the race and competitiveness on the circuit.  Comparatively as a smaller micro-verse, this is the world of Industrial Internet and Internet of Things.

Now let’s imagine this same scenario, albeit on a global scale. Data gathered at crucial “pressure points” can be used to optimize various processes for a wide variety of applications, scaling all the way from consumer devices to manufacturing lines. To be sure, an engine or critical component like a high efficiency diesel Spark Plug is capable of transmitting information in real-time to dealerships and manufacturers, generating added value and increasing consumer confidence in a brand.

Sounds like such a scenario is years away? Not really, as this is already happening with GE and other larger Fortune 500s. Then again, there are still many frontiers to continually innovate. Similar to aviation, its more about building smarter planes, rather than aspiring to a revolution in design. Meaning, building planes capable of transmitting data and implementing actions in real-time due to evolved processes, automation and micro-computing.

Likewise, applications combined with embedded designs also yield improved output. Given the multitude of various mixed and digital signals, efficiency and computing quality factors also play vital roles in the larger system. The GE jet engine featured in one particular plane has the ability to understand 5,000 data samples per second. From larger systems down to the micro embedded board level, it’s all a beautiful play of symphony, akin to the precision of an opera. To carry the analogy further, the main cast are the architects and product extraordinaires who combine intelligent machine data, application logic, cloud and smartly embedded designs to achieve the effect of an autonomous nervous system.

Remember, there are dependencies across the stack and layers of technology even down to the byte level. This helps planes arrive at their destination with less fuel – and keeps them soaring through the sky, taking you wherever you want to go. Ultimately, a system like this can save millions, especially when you take into account the entire fleet of aircraft. It is truly about leveraging intelligent business – requiring connectivity states concerted in a fabric of communication across embedded systems. Clearly, the marriage of machine data and operational use-cases are drawing closer to realization.

“When you’ve got that much data, it had better be good. And reducing the CPU cycles cuts energy use, especially important in applications that use energy harvesting or are battery powered. And that is why Atmel offers a wide range of products mapping to more than the usual embedded design ‘digital palette’ of IoT building blocks. The market needs illustrations and further collaboration; diagrams that show what plays where in the IoT and who covers what layers,” says Brian Hammill, Sr. Atmel Staff Field Applications Engineer.

“Something like the OSI model showing that we the chip vendors live and cover the low level physical layer and some cover additional layers of the end nodes with software stacks. Then, at some point, there is the cloud layer above the application layer in the embedded devices where data gets picked up and made available for backend processing. And above that, you have pieces that analyze, correlate, store, and visualize data and groups of data. Showing exactly where various players (Atmel, ARM mbed (Sensinode), Open Platform for IoT, Ayla Networks, Thingsquare, Zigbee, and other entities and technology) exist and what parts of the overall IoT they cover and make up.”

Atmel offers a product line that encompasses various products that give rise to high end analog to digital converter features.  For example in Atmel’s SAM D20 an ARM based Cortex-M0+, the hardware averaging feature facilitates oversampling.  Oversampling produces sample rates at high resolution.  The demand for high resolution sampling runs congruent to many real-world sensor requirements.  In the world of engineers and the origin of the embedded designs, achieving lean cost by ensuring no extra software overhead – competitive with benefits.  In the design and mass fulfillment of millions of components and bill of materials used to create a multi-collage of global embedded systems, there exist strong ledger point of view – even for engineers, designers, architects, and manufacturing managers.  Ultimately, augment business line directives to fullest ROI.  Expanding the design/experience envelope, Atmel microcontrollers have optimized power consumption.  Brian Hammill concurs, “Atmel offers several MCU families with performance under 150 microamperes/MHz (SAM4L has under 90 uA/MHz, very low sleep current, and flexible power modes that allow operation with good optimization between power consumption, wakeup sources, wakeup time, and maintaining processor resource and memory.”

Geographically, there seems to be a very strong healthcare pull for IoT in Norway, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and this follows into Finland and other parts of Asia as well as described in Rob van Kragenburg’s travels of IoT in Shanghai and Wuxi. Therein lies regional differences mixed with governance and political support. It is also very apparent that Europe and Asia place an important emphasis on IoT initiatives.

Elsewhere, this is going to happen from bottom-up (groups akin to Apache, Eclipse for the early web, open source, and IDE, and now IoT-A, IoT Forum) in conjunction with top-down (Fortune 500’s) across the span of industry. But first, collaboration must occur to work out the details of architecture, data science and scalability. This is contingent on both legacy systems and modern applications synchronizing and standardizing in the frameworks conceived by open and organizing bodies (meant to unify and standardize) such as IoT-A and IoT-I. Indeed, events like IoT-Week in Helsinki bring together thought leaders, technologist and organizations – all working to unify and promote IoT architecture, IP and cognitive technologies, as well as semantic interoperability.

In the spirit of what is being achieved by various bodies collaborating in Helsinki, Brian Hammill asserts: “The goal of a semiconductor company used to be to provide silicon. Today it is more as we need development tools as well as software stacks. The future means we need also to provide the middleware or some for of interoperability of protocols so that what goes in between the embedded devices and the customers’ applications. I think an IoT Toolkit achieves that in its design.  Atmel also offers 802.15.4 radios, especially the differentiation of the Sub-GHz AT86RF212B versus other solutions that have shorter range and require and consume more power.

We also must provide end application tools for demonstration and testing, which can then serve as starter applications for customers to build upon.”

There will be large enterprise software managing data in the IoT. Vendors such as SAS are providing applications at the top end to manage and present  data in useful ways, especially when it comes to national healthcare. Then there are companies which already know how to deal with big data like Google and major metering corporations such as Elster, Itron, Landis+Gyr and Trilliant. Back in the day, meter data management (MDM) was the closest thing to big data because nobody had thought about or cared to network so many devices.

We tend to think of IoT as a stereotype of sorts – forcing an internet-based interaction onto objects. However, it is really trying to configure the web to add functionality for “things,” all while fundamentally protecting privacy and security for a wide range of objects and devices, helping us shift to the new Internet era. Currently, there a number of organizations and standards bodies working to build out official standards (IETF) that can be ratified and put into engineering compliance motion. Really, it’s all starting to come together, as illustrated by the recent IoT Week in Helsinki which is also working to bring Internet of Things together. Here is IoT’s very own original champion, a leader whom has been working toward promoting the Internet of Things (IoT) for 15 years: Kevin Ashton’s opening talk for the Internet of Things Week in Helsinki (video).

Remarks at the opening of Third Internet of Things Week, Helsinki, June 17, 2013:

Thank you, and thank you for asking me to speak at the Third Internet of Things Week. I am sorry I can’t be with you in Helsinki. This is a vibrant and growing community of stakeholders. I am proud to have been a part of it for about 15 years now.

One of the most important things that is going to happen this week is the work on IOT-A.  It is really important to have a reference model architecture for the Internet of Things. And one of the reasons is that for most of those 15 years, we’ve been talking about the Internet of Things as something in the future, and, thanks to amazing work by this community — I would particularly like to recognize  Rob van Kranenburg and Gérald Santucci and the work of the European Union, which has been amazing for many, many years now — the Internet of Things is not the future anymore. The Internet of Things is the present. It is here, now.

I was with an RFID company a month ago who told me that they had sold 2 billion RFID tags last year and were expecting to sell 3 billion RFID tags this year.

So, just in 2 years, this one company has sold almost as many RFID tags as there are people on the planet. And, of course, RFID is just one tiny part of the Internet of Things, which includes many sensors, many actuators, 3-D printing, and some amazing work in mobile computing and mobile sensing platforms from modern automobiles, which are really now sensors on wheels, and will become more so as, as we move into an age of driverless cars, to the amazing mobile devices we all have in our pockets, that I know some of you are looking at right now. Then there are sensor platforms in the air. There is some really amazing work being done in the civilian sector with drones, or “unmanned aerial vehicles.: that are not weapons of war or tools of government surveillance but are sensor platforms for other things.

And all this amazing technology, which is being brought to life right now, is connected together by the Internet, and we can only imagine what is coming next. But one thing I know for sure is, now that the Internet of Things is the present and not the future, we have a whole new set of problems to solve. And they’re big problems. And they’re to do with architecture, and scalability, and data science. How do we make sure that all the information flowing from these sensors to these control systems is synchronized and harmonized, and can be synthesized in a way that brings meaning to data. It is great that the Internet of Things is here. But we have to recognize we have a lot more work to do.

It is not just important to do the work. It is important to understand why the work is important. The Internet of Things is a world changing technology like no other. We need it now more than ever. There are immeasurable economic benefits and the world needs economic benefits right now. But there is another piece that we mustn’t lose sight of. We depend on things. We can’t eat data. We can’t put data in our cars to make them go. Data will not keep us warm.

And there are more people needing more things than ever before. So unless we bring the power of our information technology — which, today, is mainly based around entertainment, and personal communication, and photographs, and emails — unless we bring the power of our information technology to the world of things, we won’t have enough things to go around.

The human race is going to continue to grow. The quality of our lives is going to continue to grow. The length of our lives is going to continue to grow. And so the task for this new generation of technology and this new generation of technologists is to bring tools to bear on the problems of scaling the human race. It is really that simple. Every generation has a challenge, and this is ours. If we do not succeed, people are going to be hungry, people are going to be sick, people are going to be cold, people are going to be thirsty, and the problems that we suffer from will be more than economic.

I have no doubt that we have to build this network and no doubt [it] is going to help us solve the problems of future generations by doing a much more effective job of how we manage the stuff that we depend on for survival. So, I hope everyone has a great week. It is really important work. I am delighted to be a small part of it. I am delighted that you all are in Helsinki right now. May you meet new people, make new friends, build great new technology. Have a great week.