Atmel expands SmartConnect portfolio with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi SoCs and modules

Atmel has expanded its leading SmartConnect wireless portfolio with four new turnkey system-on-chips (SoCs): the WILC1000 and WINC1500. Each SoC extends the company’s already broad portfolio of wireless connectivity options with the latest 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi capability, seamlessly integrating Newport Media’s (NMI) solutions in just two months.

If you recall, NMI was acquired back in July 2014, thereby enabling Atmel to offer designers and Makers the industry’s most comprehensive wireless portfolio of smart, connected devices for the growing Internet of Things (IoT). The acquisition immediately added 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to its existing offerings and has accelerated the company’s introduction of low-energy Bluetooth products, Atmel CEO Steve Laub recently explained. “Combined with our existing Wi-Fi and ZigBee solutions and industry leading microcontroller portfolio, Atmel is positioned for substantial growth in the Internet of Things marketplace.”

Both wireless solutions are compatible with existing Atmel microcontroller solutions and can connect to all Atmel AVR or Atmel | SMART MCUs. The new WINC1500 is an IEEE 802.11b/g/n IoT network controller, while the WILC1000 is an IEEE 802.11b/g/n IoT link controller.

Expanding on Atmel’s Wi-Fi offering, the WILC1000 and WINC1500 are SoC solutions optimized for battery-powered IoT applications. These wireless SoCs feature fully-integrated power amplifiers for the industry’s best communication range, without compromising cost or performance. Both the WILC1000 and WINC1500 are add-on solutions which can connect to any Atmel MCU or eMPU targeting a wide range of Internet of Things (IoT), consumer and industrial applications. Both products are available either as fully-certified modules ready for production to accelerate a designer’s time-to-market or as discrete SoCs for customers requiring the highest design flexibility.

“Atmel is excited to offer one of the broadest portfolios of differentiated wireless MCU solutions in the industry to further enable more smart, connected devices in the era of the Internet of Things,” said Kaivan Karimi, Atmel Vice President of Wireless Solutions. “Connected devices that were once a concept are becoming a reality because of innovations that are allowing devices to be smaller, easier to use, faster and more powerful—but are lower in power and optimized for battery operations. When these products are paired with Atmel’s broad portfolio of products, along with comprehensive technologies, OEMs and small developers are allowed to streamline the production of the next wave of IoT devices.”

Atmel’s SmartConnect family can be connected to any ultra-low power MCUs or eMPUs and wireless connectivity solutions into an easy, turnkey IoT solution. SmartConnect enables Wi-Fi Internet connectivity using ultra-low power for IoT edge/sensing nodes markets, therefore reducing overall bill of materials. In addition, the latest solutions accelerate development time for cost-effective, battery-operated applications in the residential, healthcare, industrial, smart energy and wearable markets.

As Reza Kazerounian, Senior Vice President and General Manager, MCU Business Unit at Atmel, previously noted, ultra-low power wireless connectivity is critical for embedded applications in the era of IoT.  “[That is why] Atmel’s SmartConnect technology is about simplifying the use of embedded wireless connectivity technologies and enabling users to accelerate their time-to-market. This simplicity allows all players to participate in the IoT market, fueling the innovation needed to accelerate adoption.”

The WILC1000 and WINC1500 provide multiple peripheral interfaces such as UART, SPI, SDIO and I2C. The only external clock source needed is a high-speed crystal or oscillator with a wide variety of reference clock frequencies supported (between 12 – 50 MHz) and are IEEE 802.11 b/g/n, RF, Baseband, MAC certified.

Key features of the Atmel WILC1000, which can be found on its preliminary datasheet ready for download, include:

• IEEE 802.11 b/g/n RF/PH/MAC SoC
• IEEE 802.11 b/g/n (1×1) for up to 72Mbps
• Single spatial stream in 2.5Ghz RF band
• Integrated PA and T/R Switch
• Superior Sensitivity and Range via advanced PHY signal processing
• Advanced Equalization and Channel Estimation
• Advanced Carrier and Timing Synchronization
• Wi-Fi Direct and Soft-AP support
• Supports IEEE 802.11 WEP, WPA, WPA2 Security
• Supports China WAPI security
• Superior MAC throughput via hardware accelerated two-level A-MSDU/A-MPDU frame aggregation and block acknowledgement
• On-chip memory management engine to reduce host load
• SPI and SDIO host interfaces
• 2/3/4-wire Bluetooth coexistence interface

Key features of the Atmel WINC1500, whose preliminary datasheet can also be found here, include:

• IEEE 802.11 b/g/n RF/PH/MAC SOC
• IEEE 802.11 b/g/n (1×1) for up to 72Mbps
• Single spatial stream in 2.5Ghz RF band
• Integrated PA and T/R Switch
• Superior Sensitivity and Range via advanced PHY signal processing  Wi-Fi Direct and Soft-AP support
• Supports IEEE 802.11 WEP, WPA, WPA2 Security
• On-chip memory management engine to reduce host load
• 4Mbit internal Flash memory for system software
• SPI, UART and I2C as host interfaces
• Power save modes
  • 3μA deep sleep mode
  • 600μA standby mode (state is preserved)
  • On-chip low power sleep oscillator
  • Fast host wake-up by chip pin or clock-less transaction
• Fast boot options
  • On-Chip Boot ROM (Firmware instant boot)
  • SPI flash boot (firmware patches and state variables)
  • Low-leakage on-chip memory for state variables (next chip revision)
  • No SPI flash is needed if firmware patches and state variables can be loaded from MCU at boot time
  • Fast AP Re-Association (150ms)
• On-Chip Network Stack to offload MCU
  • Integrated Network IP stack to minimize host CPU requirements
  • Network features TCP, UDP, DHCP, ARP, HTTP, SSL, and DNS
• TCP/IP protocol stack (client/server) sockets applications
• Wi-Fi security WEP, WPA, WPA2 and WPS
• Advanced Equalization and Channel Estimation
• Advanced Carrier and Timing Synchronization
• Wi-Fi Direct and Soft-AP support
• Network protocols (DHCP/DNS)
• WSC (wireless simple configuration WPS)
• No OS small footprint host driver (4KB flash – less than 1KB RAM)

Interested in the newest members of the SmartConnect family? The WILC1000 and WINC1500 are both now available — WILC1000 as a chip and three different modules; the WINC1500 as a chip and a module, with an evaluation kit featuring Atmel’s SAM D21 MCU.

 

 

Open Sauce

By Steve Castellotti

CTO, Puzzlebox

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

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

Flipping the card over reveals a simple message:

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

Sharing the “Secret” Sauce

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

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

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

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

Open Source in the Software World

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

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

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

Brain-Controlled Helicopter

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

Puzzlebox Brain-Controlled Helicopter with Atmel AVR

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

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

Puzzlebox with Arduino and Atmel AVR

Openness and The Internet of Things

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

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

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

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

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

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