Preview: ARM TechCon 2014

Fresh on the heels of World Maker Faire, the Atmel team is headed down the road to the city of Santa Clara for the 10th Annual ARM TechCon 2014. Held October 1-3 inside the Santa Clara Convention Center, the Atmel team will showcase the latest Atmel | SMART ARM-based microcontrollers driving smart, secure and connected devices for the Internet of Things.

At the Atmel booth (#205), visitors will have a chance to explore a number of hands-on demos including:

• Atmel | SMART SAM D20 GPS Tracker
• Atmel | SMART SAM D21
• Narrative Clip powered by Atmel | SMART SAM9G25
• The newly-unveiled Arduino Wi-Fi Shield 101
• Bosch Sensor Hub
• The recently-announced Atmel SmartConnect Wi-Fi modules 
• Crank featuring an Atmel | SMART MCU

…. and, we will also be making announcement around the Atmel | SMART MCU family which you will surely not want to miss. Stay tuned!

Anyone who’s previously attended ARM TechCon — or any event where Atmel was present for that matter– knows one of the highlights is the free giveaways! On Wednesday, we will be distributing several Atmel | SMART SAM4L Evaluation Kits from our booth (#205). Whereas on Thursday, Atmel | SMART SAM D20 Xplained Pro Evaluation Kit will be given away during the ARM Connected Community demo at 1:30pm and 5:00pm PT inside the ARM booth (#300).

Meanwhile, Andreas Eieland, Atmel Senior Product Marketing Manager, will educating attendees on why ARM’s Cortex-M0+ was the ideal architecture to use as a foundation for the highly-flexible and easy-to-use SAM D MCU and its potential use cases in home automation, consumer devices, smart metering and industrial applications. Don’t this this session, aptly entitled “Think Beyond the Core,” which is slated to take place on Wednesday at 2:00pm PT.

Other notable key moments in and around the show include an infrastructure panel with Dell and Oracle moderated by ARM’s Ian Ferguson, discussions around the new Cortex-M7 processor, IoT and wearable tech-focused developer workshops, as well as Thursday’s keynote with ARM CEO Simon Segars.

Be prepared to be blown away by not one, but two keynote speakers: Chris Anderson, CEO of 3D Robotics, and Erica Kochi, Chief Innovator for UNICEF. Anderson will be discussing the latest developments in the drone community along with new opportunities in robotics for ARM, while Kochi will explore the ways in which UNICEF and ARM are working together on power and efficiency improvements for mobile devices.

Thinking of visiting the show? Receive a free ARM Expo Pass using the code: ARMExp100. Hurry, this promotion expires on September 30th.

Unable to attend? As a leading member of the ARM Connected Community, rest assured we will be tweeting away and dishing out up-to-the-minute happenings from the show floor. Follow along using the hashtags #ARMTechCon and #AtmelLive throughout the week.

Atmel | SMART powered Narrative Clip raises $8 million in funding

The future, for anyone who wants to tell their own story, has never looked brighter. That is because of the Atmel | SMART SAM9G25 powered Narrative Clip — a tiny, automatic 5-megapixel camera paired with an app that offers users access to a “photographic memory” which is both searchable and shareable. Clip it onto your shirt and let it snap away, recording all your daily activities in 30-second increments. Kind of like a GoPro but less obtrusive, always on, and of course, interconnected.

The Narrative Clip began shipping in January 2014. In just eight months, users have uploaded somewhere north of 100 million photos to the Narrative service. The photo sharing trend is only going up year by year, with around 1.4 billion photos shared daily in 2014. Currently, Narrative says that it sees approximately 700,000 photos uploaded daily by users from all over the world, as illustrated in their recent infographic.

Now, Narrative has announced that they have received $8 million in a funding round that was led by Khosla Ventures and followed by existing investors True Ventures and Passion Capital.

“We’ve experienced significant growth over the past year. With the opportunity to work with Khosla Ventures, we can continue to build on this growth and improve the Narrative Clip and our services,” said Martin Källström, Co-Founder and CEO of Narrative.

According to its blog announcement, the new funding will help spur development of the Narrative Clip and service, as well as support an accelerated growth of the team. “We are building Narrative to offer more features and an even better experience. Opening a U.S. office helps us better serve our North American users and partners. The new office also allows our fantastic support team to offer 18 hours of available support throughout the week and creates a base for maintaining and developing partnerships that will keep Narrative on top.”

This is not the first round of funding for Narrative but certainly the biggest to date. If you recall, the device had a highly-successful Kickstarter campaign during the earlier days of crowdfunding back in 2012. Launched by then Stockholm-based startup, Memoto, the life-logging camera garnered well over half a milllion dollars, surpassing its original goal of a mere $50K. As you can see in the photo below, even original prototype during the campaign was powered by the ARM-based Atmel | SMART SAM9G25.

Weighing in at 20 grams (0.7 oz) and measuring 36 x 36 x 9 mm (1.42 × 1.42 × 0.35 inches), Narrative boasts a storage capacity of 4,000 pictures and a two-day battery life. This makes it rather easy to tag along and log your experience in real-time. The device also features a double-tap function to more easily capture images, automatic sleep upon being placed face down, a specially coded companion smartphone app (iOS/Android) and cloud storage options.

A couple months ago, the Adafruit crew conducted a detailed teardown of the device – confirming it is indeed embedded with the Atmel | SMART SAM9G25 ARM-based MPU.

If you have come across an Atmel booth at any industry events (e.g. CES, Embedded World, Computex and ESC Brazil) or hop aboard our decked-out Tech on Trailer over the past year or so, there’s a good chance you’ve had the opportunity to demo the incredibly convenient device. For those who haven’t, head on over to Narrative’s official website now.

Just one of many next-gen devices powered by the recently-unveiled Atmel | SMART family, the Clip will be using the funds to dominate the world of wearable cameras – plus they opened up an office right down the street in San Francisco! Just in time for the holidays, this life-logging device should surely top your list!

Adafruit Narrative teardown reveals AT91SAM9G25

The Narrative Clip is a tiny, automatic 5 megapixel camera paired with an app that offers users access to a “photographic memory” which is both searchable and shareable.

Weighing in at 20 grams (0.7 oz) and measuring 36x36x9 mm (1.42×1.42×0.35 inches), Narrative boasts a storage capacity of 4,000 pictures and a two-day battery life. The device also features a double-tap function to more easily capture images, automatic sleep upon being placed face down, a specially coded companion smartphone app (iOS/Android) and cloud storage options.

Recently, the Adafruit crew conducted a detailed teardown of the device — confirming it is indeed powered by Atmel’s AT91SAM9G25 ARM-based microprocessor (MPU).

Additional confirmed specs include:

• SanDisk SDIN7DU2-8G Flash card
• Linear LTC3557 USB power manager with Li-Ion charger and three step-down regulators
• ST LIS3DH 3-axis accelerometer
• CellGuide ACLYS GPS module
• TI LC07A hex level shifter
• 125mAh lipoly battery

Interested in learning more about the $279 Narrative? You can check out the product’s official page here.