Mathis, Proffitt, and Evans on FCC and CE testing

After reading my article about Bob Pease’s solenoid drivers, Howard Evans wrote me a letter explaining how he drives solenoids with an H-bridge. Its great stuff and we are working on a follow-up article. Evans mentioned some FCC approval things and that got an email thread started between my consultant pal Dave Mathis, who has already weighed in on FCC requirements here and here. Then Howard asked his pal Scott Proffitt to chip in. Scott runs an EMC approval lab and was kind enough to clear the air.

The first lesson is that I have been too cavalier in my terminology. Saying “FCC certification” is different than saying “FCC approval”. Dave Mathis kept calling me on this, because we were talking orthogonally. Dave was thinking about radios and I was thinking about computer equipment. Understand that a radio is an “intentional radiator” and it gets its own section in the hundreds of pages of rules. A computer without a wireless system is an “unintentional radiator”.

Dave would get exasperated with me when I would say something “…needs to get FCC approval”. To him that sounded like I wanted to get a TV station or some other licensed use where you need FCC permission to operate. As Dave keep reminding me, Zigbee and Wi-fi are unlicensed. That means the end user does not need to ask the FCC for approval to use the device. It does not mean there are no rules and you can just build anything you want and sell anything you want. Dave does note that you are allowed to build 5 units for personal use, but prototypes for a salable product are not personal use, so you need to worry about the FCC right from the start. Dave reminded me of the $10,000 per device penalty if you exceed the FCC limits on your Gizmo.

So let’s get Scott Proffitt to clear the air about what FCC things you need with what gizmos:

“It all depends on the type product and category it falls under.”

“FCC ‘Certification’ is intended for all radio transmitters (Intentional radiators) per FCC 47 CFR, Part 15, Subpart C, Section 15.201.  Certification is also required for Scanning Receivers, Radar Detectors and Access BPL and is an option for TV interface devices, personal computers, computer peripherals, personal computer mother boards and supplies and all other receivers except TV and radio broadcast receivers per FCC 47 CFR Part 15, Subpart B, Section 15.101.

“FCC ‘DoC’ [Declaration of Conformity] is required for Cable System Terminal Devices and a personal computer employing certified components.  A “DoC” is an option for a TV interface device, personal computer, PC peripheral and all receivers except a scanning receiver and broadcast receivers.

“FCC Verification is for everything else, that is not captured above, to include broadcast receivers and all other digital devices.

“The above categories have two classes.  Class B is intended for residential environments… including apartments, nursing homes, etc… any living situation.  Class A devices are anything that is not Class B.  Class A would be office environments, commercial, retail, public areas that are not residential areas.

“Now, given all that… there are some exceptions and exemptions, laboratory equipment for example, as long as it’s not a radio transmitter.  These are too many and too complex to list.  So at this point we ask what the device is and what it does and see if any of the exemptions apply.”

Now in the context of the solenoid circuits Howard Evans and I were talking about, I asked if you would need FCC anything if you used an Atmel chip and did not bring the oscillator out to any pin. I thought I was being clever and beating the FCC requirement that you have to test and self-certify (using Scott’s lab or equivalent) anything with a clock that runs faster than 9kHz. This is a big deal, the fact that anything with a clock frequency over 9kHz falls into the perview of the FCC rules. Dave parsed the FCC rules and told me that even a clock internal to the IC will still require testing. But Scott Proffitt chimed in with the reminder that testing is only needed for end user equipment:

“Your last point of discussion regarding your and Dave’s pondering on the chip… I think if I understand it correctly, this chip is a component not to be defined as an electronic device requiring FCC approval.  The end user device that the chip will be integrated within, will be subject to FCC rules, but not the chip itself.  The end user device is where all compliance requirements should be applied.  (There is the exception for modular components of a system, such as components for a PC per Part 15, Section 15.101 where those components require authorization.)“

“If the intent of the question may have been regarding what sources should be considered in determining the maximum Radiated Emissions measurement frequency, then you are correct, it is above the threshold and the end device the chip is integrated in, would fall under the FCC requirements for testing and approval.”

So this means that the certainly the chip itself is not tested, but if you make a solenoid driver board that is for sale to companies that integrate into their equipment, then you don’t have to test it either. But both Proffitt and Mathis agree that just because the 32kHz in internal to the chip and does not appear on any pin, if you do sell it as part of an end-use device, you still have to test it. Howard Evans had some advice as well, and note how he too got confused when I used the term “FCC approval” instead of FCC verification”:

“Well as long as you are not an intentional radiator of RF you do not need FCC approval.  By law you are still required to meet FCC limits for emissions, but you can test this yourself or go to a compliance lab.  If it is later found your emissions are too high, the government could force you to pull your product from the market.  In practice, you can get away with radiating too much as long as it doesn’t interfere with enough people to garner the FCC’s attention.   That said, you should be a good citizen and not pollute the RF spectrum.  Your IC will radiate some, but it is usually the traces from a bad PCB layout and the cables that radiate the most.  If you keep your edge rates no faster than necessary and keep your signals well coupled to their return paths (i.e. follow good EMC design practices), you will be well on your way.”

Making your devices FCC compliant is being a good citizen. I note that the engineers who seem to care most about this are also ham radio operators who want to keep the radio spectrum clean of unwanted junk.

This graphic points out mis-designed CE logos. More serious is when a wireless system just forges an FCC number for their product.

And although I have been talking about FCC compliance, getting world-wide approvals under CE (Conformité Européenne) is similar. Howard Evans notes those are even tougher:

“I am by no means a certifications expert and being that my background is in industrial equipment, I can only speak to how we deal with the FCC in relation to our class of equipment which is to say we do not deal with the FCC at all. So I was incorrect in saying that as long as the device is not an intentional radiator, it does not need certification.  That is only true for my situation.  It is safe to say that unless your device falls into an exempted category, it does indeed need FCC certification for sale in the US.  Sorry for the misinformation.”

“We perform emissions testing to CE levels which are stricter than the FCC’s, so we give no mind to passing FCC limits.  Yes, when doing emissions, we must operate the device in its intended worst case scenario (highest expected emissions state for standard use).  So the cycle rate and duty cycle that you operate the solenoid will have a dramatic effect on your average and quasi-peak readings.

“We test at only one distance, usually 3 or 10meters depending on the size of the test facility’s semi-anechoic chamber or OATS [Open Air Test Site].  I believe the standard for the class of equipment we test to (CISPR 11) allows us a choice of distance as long as you adjust the limits accordingly.  I don’t have the standard in front of me so I may be incorrect and that it is a device class standard that allows us to do that.  CISPR 11 is a generic standard that applies to industrial equipment in general but there are device class specific standards that override parts of the generic one.  You should consult with a competent EMC engineer to determine which standards apply to your product.”

I noted that some engineers dither the clock frequency to spread out the interference. This does not really lower the interference, it just looks lower since the spectrum analyzer is sweeping a narrow bandwidth as it tests so the dithering just gives a lower reading, it doesn’t really make the interference go away. Evans, agreed, pointing out,

“Dithering is certainly frowned upon by most engineers I know because, like you suggest, it doesn’t really lower your emissions.  It just spreads them out and takes advantage of the fact that testing limits pertain to average and quasi-peak measurements, not peak measurements.  It might lower interference if the victim equipment is susceptible to only a narrow band within the dithering band.  Without dithering, the polluting equipment could be radiating continuously in that band causing continuous interference while only some of the time with dithering, but is interfering some of the time really acceptable?  It really depends on how well the victim handles the interference, but practically I’d rather just lower the total emissions than play games with the test method.  But that said, it is a tool which you can use if needed.”

“With PWM circuits like this and assuming the PCB layout is solid, it really comes down to containing the edge rates on the signals leaving the board.  It is hardly the switching frequency that bites me, but the edge rate of all the signals.  I always use gate resistors on my MOSFETs to slow the turn-on and turn-off which has worked well for me in the past.  It does increase the switching losses some but not too much if the resistance is reasonable.  I also usually add some capacitors between the outputs and the rail to divert the high frequencies back in to the driver.   “I also often add a common-mode choke (either ferrite or wound) for the common-mode noise which radiates very well from your cables given the miniscule currents involved.  Cable design is critical.  I always use shielded twisted pair with the shield bonded (360 degree is best) to the metal enclosure of the driver.  The shield limits E-field radiation while the twisting helps lower the H-field in the far field.  It helps too if the coil is in an enclosure with a decent RF ground.

“Finally, I would encourage you to keep the cable distance as short as possible.  There can be some very high voltages (3X the bus voltage or more) that can develop along the cable that can surpass the insulation rating of the cable and/or the magnet wire of the coil.  This has been well written about with regard to variable frequency motor drives.  This is probably not an issue for you unless you run the bus from rectified line.”

Howard Evan’s comments about cable length reminded me of a problem I had with CE immunity when I was a consultant. Many engineers are finding it is tougher to pass immunity than emissions. Immunity testing is when you bombard your machine and its cables with RF and verify that it does not malfunction. I will tell that story in a future blog post, since Evans also points out: “I’ll comment on immunity in a future email.  I just went through a somewhat difficult issue with that.”

Building a $20 wireless platform with the Atmel-powered Flutter

Flutter – which recently tipped up on Kickstarter – can best be described as an open source Atmel-powered wireless platform with a 1000m+ (3200 ft) range. Protected from digital intruders by Atmel’s ATSHA204 which offers 256-bit AES hardware encryption, Flutter makes it easy for DIY Makers to build projects that communicate across a house, neighborhood and beyond.

“Creating Flutter networks is easy, even if it’s just two boards. Specify networks in Arduino code or configure Flutter with our mobile app,” the Flutter crew explained in a Kickstarter post. “Once configured, devices can enter and exit the network seamlessly. This makes it extremely easy to set up a network at home (or anywhere else) where all of your projects can reliably communicate. Flutter is like a second network for your devices.”

In terms of hardware, the Flutter crew is currently offering a range of options for Kickstarter backers, including basic, pro and a number of shields (Bluetooth, breakout board, RC, network and Bluetooth).

Potential applications for Flutter? Mesh networking, quadcopters, sensors (light, water and temperature) sensors, self-diagnosis/spectrum analyzer, as well as RC cars.

As noted above, Flutter is powered by Atmel technology. More specifically, prototype devices were originally designed using the  Arduino Pro Mini board (Sparkfun), although the final version of Flutter will be built around Atmel’s SAM3S, based on a powerful ARM CPU with plenty of speed and storage space.

Interested in learning more about Flutter? You can check out the project’s official Kickstarter page here.

Atmel MCUs: High performance for the IoT

Atmel microcontrollers (MCUs) are designed to deliver maximum performance and meet the requirements of advanced applications. That is why our MCUs offer highly integrated architecture optimized for high-speed connectivity, optimal data bandwidth and rich interface support – making them ideal for powering the smart, connected products at the heart of The Internet of Things (IoT).

Essentially, the Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a future world where all types of electronic devices link to each other via the Internet. Today, it’s estimated that there are nearly 10 billion devices in the world connected to the Internet, a figure expected to triple to nearly 30 billion by 2020.

“As applications become more interconnected and user interfaces become richer, microcontrollers must handle and transfer ever-growing levels of data,” an Atmel engineering rep told Bits & Pieces. “To boost performance for these smart, connected applications, Atmel’s 8-bit Flash MCUs integrate a wide range of classic communication peripherals, such as UART, SPI and I2C. Plus, our higher-performance 32-bit MCUs and embedded MPUs (eMPUs) feature Ethernet and full-speed and high-speed USB, while also providing extension ports for external communication modules such as WiFi or cellular modems.”

More specifically, Atmel’s ARM-based SAM9G45 eMPU  boasts high-speed 480 Mbps USB Host and Device Ports with on-chip transceivers, Ethernet MAC and SDIO/SD Card/MMC interfaces – offering developers an easy way to manage large amounts of data and interconnection both between systems and printed circuit boards (PCBs) inside a system. Indeed, the SAM9G45 eMPU is fully compliant with both EHCI and OHCI standards, enabling easy porting of USB host drivers to the SAM9G45.

Similarly, Atmel’s 32-bit AVR and AT91SAM devices are also well-suited for a wide range of standards-based high-speed USB applications. To be sure, the peripheral DMA controller found in the AVR XMEGA and AVR UC3 facilitates efficient data transfers between peripherals and memories with minimal CPU intervention. This eliminates CPU bottlenecks, allowing AVR microcontrollers to achieve transfer rates of up to 33 MBit/s per SPI and USART port with only a 15 percent load on the CPU.

“In addition, Atmel offers a complete line of IEEE 802.15.4-compliant, IPv6/6LoWPAN based, ZigBee certified wireless solutions,” the engineering rep continued. “They are based on our extensive family of RF transceivers, 8-bit and 32-bit AVR, and ARM microcontrollers. As expected, to ease development and speed time to market, Atmel offers a variety of free software stacks, reference designs, wireless modules and development kits.”

In terms of ensuring sufficient data bandwidth, Atmel’s 32-bit MCUs and eMPUs contains a set of parallel data buses where each bus master controls its own dedicated bus connected to all the slaves. This lets the devices support tremendous data bandwidth and removes processing bottlenecks. Atmel 400 MHz eMPUs also feature a high data speedway architecture based on a peripheral DMA (direct memory access) and distributed memory architecture that, together with a multi-layer bus matrix, enables multiple simultaneous data transfers between memories, peripherals and external interfaces without consuming CPU clock cycles.

Meanwhile, select models of Atmel’s 32-bit microcontrollers feature additional SRAM blocks connected to the multi-layer databus or tightly-coupled with the CPU, enabling devices with multiple high-speed communication interfaces to transfer more data by allowing each peripheral to use all of the available bandwidth of any one of the SRAMs. Combined with the peripheral DMA controller, this allows large blocks of data to be transferred with minimal load on the CPU.

It should also be noted that Atmel’s versatile and expansive MCU portfolio can be used to power a wide range of sophisticated interfaces. Examples include industrial applications, such as home and commercial building automation, data loggers, point-of-sale terminals and cash registers, in-house displays for energy metering, alarm systems and medical equipment – all are joining the “smart” revolution currently enjoyed by portable media player and smartphone markets.

So in addition to ubiquitous Internet connectivity, a central aspect of The Internet of Things, the way in which individuals interface and interact with equipment is fundamentally changing. This is prompting hardware designers to increase the processor performance to several 100 MIPS, the peripheral data rates to tens of Mbps and on and off-chip bandwidth to Gbps. As such, the memory size scales with the software to several Mbytes in cases of an RTOS-based implementation or tens of Mbytes for Linux or Microsoft Embedded CE.

Last, but certainly not least, videos are replacing static images. To address this demand, the Atmel SAM9M10 eMPU embeds a high-performance hardware video decoder and 2D accelerator, delivering a high-quality user experience, all while preserving the full processing power of the central processing unit for the application.

“Simply put, we are continuing to build on its legacy of innovation and highly integrated designs, to deliver a solid combination of performance, flexibility and efficiency to support the machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and evolution of the ‘industrial Internet,'” the engineering rep added.

Car-to-car communication

There are a lot of great things on the horizon for MCU makers like Atmel. The Internet of Things (IoT) is going to be a huge boon for companies like us that make both microcontrollers and radio chips. Just last week I read that you can consider an automobile just another “thing” in the IoT. So it was with great interest that I read an article about how the American National Traffic Safety Board (NTSB) is encouraging manufacturers to design cars that communicate with each other to make them safer.

The car-to-x system warns of road works, congestion, obstacles and dangerous weather (courtesy Daimler).

This is based on observations and research of accidents that could have been avoided if vehicles can communicate without driver intervention. Needless to say, the US automakers are not pushing it. “Mitch Bainwol, the [Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers] president and chief executive, raised doubts that such systems could be feasible in the near term.” I sent this article to Susanne, a co-worker that works with Atmel’s automotive group. She notes: “…not that long way off as you may think: Daimler will launch this year the first car ever with intelligent drive function including car-to-car communication.” The Daimler Car-to-X system is the wireless exchange of information between vehicles and between vehicles and transport infrastructure. Daimler has been testing a system since the Spring of 2012.

In the Daimler Car-to-X system, obstacles are shown on the vehicle’s display (courtesy Daimler).

A little research shows that the European automakers are out ahead of this technology. There is a consortium of Mercedes Benz/ Daimler, BMW, Audi, Volkswagen, Ford, and Opel involved with testing real world systems. They call it Sim TD (Safe intelligent mobility Testfield). Volkswagen and BMW independently came up with smart intersection technology back in 2011.

When you look at the tragic train accident in Spain, most likely caused by operator negligence, you can see how smart transportation can offer immense benefits to the public. If rail corners had wireless transmitters, the curve could override the irresponsible or incompetent throttle input of the human driving the train. That is independent of the internet of things, where a car can look up real-time road conditions. At the SAE Convergence show a few years back, I saw one automaker talk about how the car can connect to the Internet to see the grade of a highway is it on. That will help it plan the shift-points of the transmission for best safety and fuel economy.

It won’t take many instances of showing we can save the lives of innocent passengers, or children on school busses, before the public will demand car-to-X communication. An added benefit will be the fuel economy and convenience benefits. When the auto industry is ready, Atmel will be there to enable the technology.

Wearable computing with Atmel MCUs

Atmel is smack in the middle of the rapidly evolving wearable tech revolution. First off, Atmel’s SAM4S and tinyAVR MCUs are inside the Agent smart-watch which recently hit Kickstarter.

Atmel MCUs have also tipped up in a number of Maker projects for wearable tech, like the LED pocket watch we featured earlier this month, as well as Adafruit’s Flora, which is built around Atmel’s Atmega32u4 MCU.

And why not? Simply put, Atmel offers a wide range of wearable computing platforms designed for ultra-low power consumption – both in active and standby modes. Indeed, Atmel’s EventSystem with SleepWalking allows peripherals to automatically connect with each other even in ultra low power modes, thereby simplifying sensor interfacing and further optimizing power consumption. Meanwhile, “Wakeup” times are minimized, facilitating the use of low-power modes without missing communications data or sensor events.

In addition, Atmel devices integrate numerous features to save circuit board space, such as USB transceivers and embedded termination resistors. Many devices are offered in very small form factor packages, a critical characteristic for engineers and Makers designing wearable tech.

On the software side, the Atmel Software Framework (ASF) includes communications libraries to support external Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios, mesh and point-to-point networking on Atmel’s 802.15.4/Zigbee AT86RF radios as well as a full range of USB drivers. The ASF also contains libraries and driver functions for many popular third-party sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers.

In addition, standalone Atmel controllers support off-the-shelf capacitive buttons, sliders and wheel (BSW) implementations. Plus, all our microcontrollers can directly manage capacitive buttons via provided software libraries, while the maXTouch series of capacitive touchscreen controllers are capable of managing optically clear touch sensors overlaid on LCD displays.

And last but certainly not least, Atmel’s touch platforms may be tuned to function when moisture is present – which is often a key requirement for wearable applications. Interested in learning more? Check out Atmel’s white paper on wearable tech here.

Dave Mathis with more on FCC certification

My buddy Dave Mathis learned a lot about FCC certification of products when he consulted for Aerielle, a Silicon Valley company that makes wireless audio devices. He shared with me some of his hard-learned knowledge this week.

His strongest point is that when the FCC tells you a section of spectrum is unlicensed, it does not mean it is unregulated. What unlicensed means is that the end-user of your product does not have to fill in forms and send it to the FCC in order to use the product. Things like wireless microphones and radio stations do need a license from the FCC. But realize that your unlicensed wireless gizmo still requires certification. That is where you or a lab measures the RF coming off your product and gives you results to the FCC showing the product does not exceed radiated power limits and does not have excessive harmonic spurs in the broadcast signal. You are supposed to measure out to the tenth harmonic. For a 2.4GHz product, that is quite an expensive spectrum analyzer you need.

Most labs charge about $10,000 to certify a device. But if you cheat and the FCC decides to prosecute you, the penalty is $10,000 per device that you have sold. You are supposed to get a conditional license that lets you have 5 devices to test and prototype. When you pass your lab test or give the FCC your test results, they assign you a certification number. What infuriates Dave is that many cheap imports just copy a number off a different product or invent a number. There are some open-source and kit vendors who don’t even bother to do that, they just invent a number or leave it off.

This RF digital module on the Open Source RF board is FCC Certified as evident by the ID number printed on the case.

Now there is an interesting wrinkle in the FCC rules. The RF portion of your device is an intentional radiator. If that radiator is certified by the maker, then the microprocessor you add to it is considered an incidental non-intentional radiator, so you don’t have to do testing and certify the module-MCU combination. If you start with an Atmel ZigBit 802.15.4/ZigBee module, the micro is included. An Anaren AIR module is just a radio, but you can connect it to an MCU and still be covered by the FCC ID on the module. Same goes for the RF Digital module. And best yet, Dave thinks you might even be covered for a switching power supply in your product (check with your test lab, don’t trust us) as long as you have a certified RF module.

Also be aware that the FCC has slightly different rules for RF kits that plug in. One important principle is that the modules are certified with a known antenna. You are not allowed to lengthen or change the antenna in any way. So don’t think you can cheap-out and just plop a wireless chip on a board and guess at an antenna. You might get away with it, but one day there will be some ISM (industrial medical scientific) band interference that will inconvenience a politician, and then the FCC will come down on us like a ton of bricks. So you may be far better off paying more for a pre-certified RF module that going through the hassle of having it tested or testing it yourself. If your design budget allows for $10k to do testing great, but any little change to the PCB or antenna will require a re-test, if you play by the rules.

Atmel licenses Sensinode’s 6LoWPAN software stack

Atmel has inked a deal with Sensinode to license the latter company’s 6LoWPAN software stack. According to Magnus Pedersen, Director of Wireless Solutions at Atmel, 6LoWPAN will facilitate the rapid development of smart, connected wireless devices that help make up The Internet of Things (IoT).

“Teaming with Sensinode is another key step Atmel has taken to ensure designers can quickly bring their smart, connected devices faster to market,” said Pedersen. “With this license agreement, designers now have all the necessary hardware and software elements at their fingertips to build products that require connectivity for the IoT.”

As noted above, Sensinode is licensing its 6LoWPAN stack and router solutions, the NanoStack 2.0 and NanoRouter 3.0 – all to be paired with Atmel’s ultra-low-power wireless hardware platforms for the design of power-efficient IPv6-based embedded wireless products.

Specifically, Sensinode’s NanoStack 2.0 will be used with Atmel’s ATmega256RFR2 wireless MCU, while the NanoRouter 3.0 is slated to support Atmel’s SAM4E Cortex-M4 flash-based MCU and AT86RF231 or AT86RF233 ultra low power IEEE 802.15.4 RF transceivers.

As previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, the Internet of Things is a rapidly evolving and growing market. Indeed, there are nearly 10 billion devices connected to the Internet – a figure expected to neatly triple when it hits approximately 30 billion devices by 2020.

“The IoT represents perhaps the greatest potential growth market for semiconductors over the next several years. What people want is WiFi capability along with very low power, because most of these smart devices are battery-powered,” Atmel President and CEO Steve Laub told the Wall Street Transcript during a recent interview.

“This is advantageous [for] Atmel, because we have both ultra low-power WiFi capability, and the microcontroller device, which when combined with WiFi, makes these devices intelligent and connected. This is a great opportunity for us, and we are very excited by the potential future growth of this technology and its business for us.”

Keep the FCC happy with Atmel’s ZigBit modules

So the other day my pal Dave Mathis calls me up to talk about how some people don’t seem to understand the FCC requirements on certain wireless chips. See, a lot of people hear “unlicensed” ISM (industrial scientific and medical) bands and think that means “unregulated.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. What “unlicensed” means is that the end user does not have to register your wireless device to use it. But the FCC does put power level restrictions and harmonic spur requirements on your gizmo. And it is not just for the radio, it is for the whole system including the power supply. So if you have some sloppy switching power supply churning out interference, you will fail your FCC certification, even if you use a wonderful Atmel wireless chip for the radio.

Selling uncertified wireless gear can get you in trouble. The FCC puts a $10,000 fine per gizmo on infringers. That adds up pretty quick. Now it seems like the FCC is ignoring a lot of the wireless systems coming into the country without certification. And you are welcome to take your chances just slapping a chip on a board and hoping you would pass if you ever go to get certified.

Dave tells me the testing costs about $10,000, so it is not cheap. But if you want to be sure you are squeaky clean and legal, just buy a pre-built module. Atmel makes them under the name ZigBit. They are pre-certified so you can sell them without worrying about the FCC busting you. You get an MCU, the radio and power and everything you need for low-volume wireless systems – all in a well-built and tested module.

Electronics User Experience with Sally Carson, co-founder of Pinoccio

By Eric Weddington, Marketing Manager, Open Source & Community

Sally Carson, co-founder of Pinoccio

Sally Carson, co-founder of Pinoccio

In February I did an interview with Eric Jennings, co-founder of Pinoccio. Pinoccio is a new Open Source Hardware business, building “a complete ecosystem for the Internet of Things”. The Pinoccio is a pocket-sized microcontroller board, with wireless networking, rechargeable LiPo battery, sensors, and the ability to expand its capabilities through shields, much like an Arduino board. It features the new Atmel ATmega256RFR2, a single-chip AVR 8-bit processor with low power 2.4GHz transceiver for IEEE 802.15.4 communications.

Pinoccio featuring new Atmel ATmega256RFR2

Eric Jennings, along with his partner Sally Carson, co-founded Pinoccio. In my interview with Eric Jennings he said:

Eric Jennings: Sally Carson, Pinoccio’s other co-founder, is an expert in the intersection between humans and technology.  What I mean by that is that she thinks very deeply and carefully about the psychology of humans interacting with computers.  Human-computer interaction, user experience, and usability all fall under her umbrella.  I consider her contribution a secret weapon in what we’re trying to achieve with Pinoccio.

A Secret Weapon?!… I had to find out more what Eric meant, and just what exactly is Pinoccio’s Secret Weapon. I contacted Sally Carson and asked her about the intersection of User Experience (UX) with electronics and the design of the Pinoccio. Along the way, I learned some good lessons on why Design is important, even to just a set of electronics.

Eric Weddington (EW): What intrigued you about the Pinoccio to co-found a hardware startup company?

Sally Carson (SC): Well, I was always a creative kid, always drawing or making something. And, I always loved fiddling around with gadgets and electronics. In high school, I became an audio/video nerd. I got into skateboarding and playing in bands with friends. But, a huge part of both of these hobbies was the A/V part. So, for example, I filmed tons of footage of my friends and I skating. I would make these skate videos, editing the footage down using two VCRs. I’d use a 4-track to mix in audio, or I’d splice in the audio from an old Nintendo, like from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Every time we ollied or did a trick, there would be the “bloop” sound of a turtle jumping. So, I wasn’t like, busting out the soldering iron, but I was trying to find all of the different ways I could combine the electronics that I had access to.

Later on, I became a Web Designer and suddenly all of my creative output was virtual and done on a computer. I missed the physicality of using my hands to make things. Tim O’Reilly was a big influence on me, and I tried to keep up with whatever O’Reilly Media was putting out. I cut my teeth on the Web Design In a Nutshell book. I listened to podcasts of ETech and the Web 2.0 Conference.

Around 2004, I started to specialize in Interaction Design, and I was really interested in the Interaction Design Institute of Ivrea — where Massimo Banzi was teaching, and where Arduino was being developed. They were teaching Interaction Designers to prototype and test their product ideas by quickly building a physical prototype. This was fascinating to me — you could still be a Tech nerd but also build things with your hands. That blending of physical and virtual was super compelling; I always thought I had to choose one or the other.

Then, I got the first issue of Make when it came out, and I was totally enchanted. Make had found this incredible group of people who were tech geeks like me, but who knew how to build real things with their hands. I filled sketchbooks with ideas for DIY projects that I personally wanted to build. But, I still felt this barrier to entry and I hadn’t yet found a community of Makers who could help me. Every project I wanted to build needed to be wireless and Web-enabled, but that seemed totally out of reach for someone like me who wasn’t deeply technical.

I think there are a lot of people out there like me, who are somewhat geeky, but not super “deep geeks.” They want to build wireless, web-enabled projects but they don’t know how and they’re not sure it’s even possible. With Pinoccio, we’re providing all of that scaffolding for you. Your board is talking to the Web wirelessly within minutes of taking it out of the box. It already has a rechargeable battery that can last for weeks or months. From there, it’s up to you to start imagining possibilities for this platform. We want you to focus on the specifics of your project, instead of losing momentum trying to figure out all that other stuff.

So, with Pinoccio, I got really excited about enabling other people to build cool projects like the ones I had been dreaming about for years. There’s something really magical about creating a tool that enables other creative, talented folks — there’s this amazing multiplier effect.

EW: The Pinoccio could be looked at just the electronic guts of a larger system, as just a set of functions to be implemented. You and Eric Jennings see a need to approach the problem differently with Pinoccio. What led you to do this differently?

SC: The two most basic questions that I ask when I’m designing a product are: “Is it useful?” and “Is it desirable?” I want the answer to both questions to be yes.

If we had approached Pinoccio as “just a set of functions to be implemented,” we would have been building something useful, but not desirable. And that’s when you run the risk of commoditization. Your customers won’t have any particular loyalty to you, they’ll simply comparison shop between functionally similar products and choose whatever’s cheapest. Even if you’re first to market, this makes you vulnerable to cheaper knock-offs in the future.

So we want to be both useful *and* desirable. What does that look like? Let’s take Sugru as an example. Sugru is this magic, self-curing rubber that you can use to fix or modify practically anything — tools, electronics, everyday objects around the house. I had a sample packet laying around for a few months. I understood what it was, I understood the usefulness of it, but it wasn’t yet desirable in my mind.

Once Fall rolled around, I was commuting by bike at night, and I was frustrated with my new headlight. It had this recessed on/off button that was nearly impossible to press with thick gloves on. I used Sugru to fatten up the button and make it taller. The next day, once the Sugru had cured, I tried turning my light on and off with gloves and it was way, way better. I FELT SO SMART AND AWESOME! That was the moment that I fell in love with Sugru, because of how it made me feel about myself. I felt clever, capable, and industrious.

Now Sugru is both useful and desirable to me. I want to use it again, because I want to feel smart and awesome again. I want to show off what I “made” to my friends. It’s less about the Sugru, it’s more about how it made me feel. That “a-ha!” moment is what we’re shooting for with Pinoccio. We want to build a useful tool that makes people feel smart and awesome. We want to reduce those frustrating barriers to entry so you maintain your motivation to see a project through to completion. Then we want you to share what you built, show it off online, and collaborate with others who are working on similar projects.

EW: How is the process of designing the User Experience for the Pinoccio different than for other products?

SC: When I’m designing for the Web, I try to put together a functional prototype as quickly as possible, even if it’s just a clickable simulation comprised of sketches. Then I test it with real users. But, this is harder to do with hardware, it takes a lot longer to get to the functional prototype phase.

So, we used conferences like the Open Source Hardware Summit as an opportunity to interview potential customers and ask them about what they have actually done in the past. Have they tried to build a web-enabled project? How were they powering their projects? What tools did they use? What was frustrating? What worked well? This is a lot different than asking them if they think they would use Pinoccio, or asking them what features they’d like to see. We tried to identify existing pain points, based on the actual previous experiences of our target audience, then shape features around those insights.

EW: What part of the design process of the Pinoccio surprised you?

SC: I wouldn’t say I was surprised by this exactly, but I am constantly amazed by how awesome our community is. They’re brilliant, creative, and determined. They’re also incredibly generous and it’s super fun to see them sharing ideas and helping each other. I guess it surprised me how much idea exchange is already happening between members of the Community. It’s really rewarding to see that happening, and being an open source hardware company made it possible.

EW: What was the biggest challenge of the design process of the Pinoccio, and how did you overcome it?

SC: Well, for Web-based products, we try to build a Minimal Viable Product, get something into the hands of users as quickly as possible, see how they respond, then iterate and evolve the product organically from there. That’s a lot easier to do with software, because it’s relatively fast and cheap to put together an MVP.

Hardware is slower, it’s more expensive, and it’s inherently a “Waterfall” process — meaning there are a series of linear dependencies and the project can’t advance until each phase is complete. For each iteration, you have to make design changes to the board, order components, order PCBs, get the boards assembled, test them, rinse and repeat. It’s a weeks-to-months iteration cycle, instead of the hours-to-days cycles that we enjoy in Web Development.

I think the way that we address this is to bring assembly in-house. That will really allow us to take advantage of these Agile methodologies that we’re used to — rapid iterations of testing and refining. It will let us tighten up those cycles of iteration.

EW: What are some common mistakes that you see in hardware product design, that don’t take into account User Experience?

SC: Well, I think for any tech product, be it hardware or software, it’s tempting to think about features first, and to create a list of technical requirements as a starting point.

What we try to do instead is to think deeply about who our customer is. We think about what Peter Merholz calls their “emotional requirements.” What are their needs, motivations, and goals? What excites them? What frustrates them? How does Pinoccio fit into their lives, and how does it fit into a typical day? We answer these questions via different methods of qualitative research, including ethnography and interviews. It’s not enough to ask your target audience if they think they would like a particular product or feature. People are famously bad about self-reporting, it’s better to observe what they actually do, as opposed to asking them what they think they might do or might like.

Let’s go back to my bicycle light again. I’m going to hypothesize around what happened. The designers knew they were designing a light. They decided on some features — it’s possible they even asked customers what features they’d like — and they decided the light should have three modes: blink (for visibility and longer battery life), steady/low beam, and steady/high beam. They explored the interface — how do you use a single button to turn it on/off and to cycle through the three modes? The single button may come from a cost constraint. The flat, rubber button may have been an attempt to waterproof the light for riding in the rain. But did they observe real customers actually using the product? Not just in a lab setting, but in the real-world, during a typical day? Here in the States, in the late Fall, daylight saving ends and suddenly we’re all biking home in the dark. This is the time of the year that I start using my bike light. And because of the colder weather, I’m usually wearing gloves. If they had observed customers like me, in everyday conditions, they would have seen how hard it is to press that button with gloves on. And they would have seen me cursing under my breath, vowing to never buy a light from them again.

I think the best products make their customers feel smart. When you’re building complex technology products, if you do a bad job with the User Experience, the customer will blame themselves, “I suck at computers.” But it’s not their fault, it’s yours. And no one wants to keep using a product that makes them feel dumb. Frustration, hacks, and work-arounds are all super valuable insights. These are signals that a need that’s not being met. When I used Sugru to make the button easier to push, this was a work-around that signaled a need was not being met.

The key is to learn who your customer is, and to build empathy for them. Let that shape your product.

EW: How do you extend User Experience to the Pinoccio shields that are being developed?

SC: We talk to customers, we try to identify pain points that they’ve experienced with existing tools out there. We also talk to them about what they’re planning on building with Pinoccio. So, we just sent out a survey to our IndieGogo campaign funders asking them what their first Pinoccio project would be. Their answers will inform which shields we produce first. Then, once we have some shields produced, we’ll conduct qualitative research — observe actual customers using them during a typical day, in a typical setting. For example, we might go to a Makerspace where we know someone is building a project with Pinoccio, and just be a fly on the wall while they’re working on their project. Where do they get stuck? Where do they feel frustrated, or need help? That will help us refine the experience for the next iteration.

EW: There are many different solutions in the Wireless field, and the networking of objects that communicate wirelessly. What are some of the challenges of the user experience in this area, and what is Pinoccio doing to help users in this area?

SC: I think to-date, most solutions out there are either (1) so technical that only deep geeks can make use of them, or (2) they’re user-friendly but they’re constrained to a very specific use case, like home automation.

Our challenge is to build an extensible enough system that can support a variety of use cases, a robust enough system that we don’t lose the interest of those deep geeks, and yet still offer something that is easy for less technical folks to understand and use. For that final piece, we’ll be building a series of web-based tools that will help get those less technical folks up and running quickly and easily.

EW: You and Eric Jennings are located in different parts of the country, yet you have a start-up company together. What are the tools that you use to work together?

SC: Yep, Eric’s in Reno, and I’m in Ann Arbor. Eric and I use a number of tools, and have found a set up that works really well for us. We usually have IM running in the background, and ping each other throughout the day. We also do a daily Google Hangout — basically our “Stand Up” meeting in the Scrum parlance. Because we’re a young company, we’re happy to let these calls go long, and meander from detailed product decisions, all the way to long-term roadmap stuff.

We use Git for collaborating on code. We also have an internal documentation site that we use for asynchronous communication. It’s just a WordPress install running the P2 theme — it’s well-suited for short updates that can grow organically into longer discussions. We can archive pages that have evergreen info, and can easily search for and reference them later:

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/p2

EW: What are your future goals with Pinoccio?

SC: I want Pinoccio to become just another tool in the average person’s workshop, makerspace, or art studio, sitting there right next to the duct tape. When they have an idea, they’ll grab a couple of Pinoccios and quickly throw together a prototype. I want this to feel totally unremarkable. Pinoccio is just another tool at their disposal that expands their capabilities. The object — the board itself — is less important. What’s important is that it enables them to build what they want to build, and it makes them feel smart, industrious, and clever (which they are!).

1:1 interview with Michael Koster

Series 3 – Why IoT Matters?

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By Tom Vu, Digital Manifesto and Michael Koster, Internet of Things Council Member

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Three-part Interview Series (Part 3)

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Tom Vu (TV):  Describe how Internet of Things matters? Why should anyone care? Should futurist, technologist, data hounds, product extraordinaires, executives, and  common consumer need to understand what’s to come?

Michael Koster (MK):

There are two main effects we see in the Internet of Things. First, things are connected to a service that manages them. We can now monitor things, predict when they break, know when they are being used or not, and in general begin to exploit things as managed resources.

The second, bigger effect comes from the Metcalfe effect, or simply the network effect, of connecting things together. Bob Metcalfe once stated that the value of a communications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected compatible communicating devices. Since then it’s used to refer to users, but maybe Bob was thinking way ahead. Notice the word compatible. In this context, it means to be able to meaningfully exchange data.

When we connect physical objects to the network, and connect them together in such a way as to manage them as a larger system, we can exploit the Metcalfe effect applied to the resources. We are converting capital assets into managed resources and then applying network management.

Because Internet of Things will be built as a physical graph, it’s socialization of everything, from simple everyday devices to industrial devices. Metcalfe states that 10X connections is 100 times the value.  Cisco is projecting that the Internet of Everything has the potential to grow global corporate profits by 21 percent in aggregate by 2022. I believe these represent a case for pure information on one end, and an average efficiency gain over all of industry on the other.

This has the potential to change things from a scarcity model, where the value is in restricting access to resources, thus driving up price, to a distribution centered model, where value is in the greater use of the resource.  Connecting things to the network is going to reverse the model, from a model of “excluding access” to “inclusion access”, a model where you push toward better experience for consumer/customer/co-business.

Crowdsourcing of things is an example, where models are inverted.  The power arrow is going in the opposite direction, a direction equalizing toward the benefit of the massive body consumers and people.  This in turn, helps shift the business model from a customer relationship managed by vendors, also called advertising, to vendor relationship managed by customers. This is called Vendor Relationship Management, or VRM, pioneered by Doc Searls. This reverses the power arrow to point from customer needs toward business capability to meet needs, and needs are met now that the vendor is listening.  A lot of this is not just IoT but also open source nature, and the big changes happening in people, where sharing being held more valuable than the exclusion of access.

Inverting the value model, breaking down artificially bloated value chains, creating a more efficient economy, I believe it important to create a layer of connectivity that will act as the necessary catalyst to the next Internet of Everything, Internet of Things, Industrial Internet.  Break down the scarcity-based models, exclusion of access, turn it around. Instead of excluding access and driving prices up for limited resources, we will yield higher more efficient utilization of resources.

Michael Koster describing Internet of Things and the Maker Movement and Open Source Importance of this Development with Booth attendees at Maker Faire 2013 in San Mateo

It matters on a Global Scale, by giving us better resource utilization. SMART Grid alone has resulted in up to 19.5% efficiency improvement, with an average of 3.8% improvement over all deployments already. We do not have enough energy storage or transmission capacity to deal with the major shift to solar energy sources now in progress worldwide. We are going to have to adapt, learn, monitor, manage, and control our usage in ways only possible with large scale sensing and control.

For the spirit of IoT, it’s not only in making peoples/consumers lives more convenient, solving their first world problems, but its more in the ability to manage resources together as a larger system, from the individual out to a global scale. Especially, this holds true with the effects of globalization, balancing, localization, connectivity, and ubiquity.  It’s for the people.  Social Media had it’s transformation across many things, Internet of Things will also have an efficiency and business transformation.

Companies like Atmel play an important role in creating the building blocks for embedded control and connectivity by means of progressing the ARM / AVR / Wireless / Touch portfolio of products, all of which are the necessary thinking and connecting glue of the Internet of Things. Internet of Things has a large appetite for ultra low power connectivity using wireless standards.  Wireless Sensor Networks are key technology for the IoT, so much that WSN was probably the number one issue in the early deployment. There are many competing standards: Zigbee, SA100.11, Bluetooth, Body Area Network, Wi-Fi Direct, NFC, Z-Wave, EnOcean, KNX, XRF, WiFi, RFID, RFM12B, IEEE 802.15.4 (supporting WPAN such as ZigBee, ISA100.11a, WirelessHART, IrDA, Wireless USB, Bluetooth, Z-wave, Body Area Network, and MiWi).

Michael Koster Exhibiting with Atmel Booth at Maker Faire 2013 San Mateo

Tom Vu (TV):  What would be the most important design decision that supersedes the eventual success of an open source Internet of Things compliance?

Michael Koster (MK):

The first most important decisions are to do open source design based on needs and use cases. I don’t think we can build an IoT if its not open source, or if it’s not connected to the real world use cases.

Just like the Internet, built on open source and open standards, the starting data models are important for building on and building out. HTML and http and URLs allowed many platforms to be built for the web and supersede each other over time, for example Server Pages, SOAP, Javascript, and AJAX. A browser can understand all of the current platforms because they are all based on common abstractions. We believe that the Semantic Web provides a solid basis of standard web technology on which to base the data models.

Tom Vu (TV):  Describe the importance of Internet of Things silos and other M2M standards currently at large in the development community? What are the differences?

Michael Koster (MK):

The IoT has started off fueled by crowdfunding, VC money and other sources that have to some extent built on a business model based on vertical integration. Vertical integration has a big advantage; you need to have a self-contained development to get things done quickly for proof of concept and demonstration.

Vertical integration is also a big driver of the current machine-to-machine, or M2M, communication market. This is the paradigm supporting the initial deployment of connecting things to services for management on an individual thing basis.

The downside of vertical integration is that it leads to silos, where the code developed for a system, the data collected, and even the user interfaces are all unique to the system and not reusable in other systems. Moreover, the vertical integration is often seen as a proprietary advantage and protected through patents and copyrights that are relatively weak because they apply to commonly known patterns and methods.

It’s not always this way, though. As an example, the Eclipse foundation is open source, allowing their M2M system to be used for vertical application development as well as integrated with IoT Toolkit data models and APIs to enable interoperability with other platforms.

The European Telecommunications Standardization Institute, or ETSI, also has an M2M gateway that is a combination of open source and paid license code. New features are enabled through Global Enablers or GEs that implement a particular function using an OSGi bundle consisting of Java code. The Smart Object API can be built into ETSI through a GE bundle, which will enable an ETSI M2M instance to inter-operate with other IoT Toolkit instances. This is the power of the approach we’re taking for interoperability, which is obtained by adding a Smart Object API layer to the system.

Tom Vu (TV):  Explain horizontal and service interoperability for Internet of Things, why is it so important?

Michael Koster (MK):

Connected things connect through WSN gateways and routers to Internet services that fulfill the application logic for the user. Today, for the most part, each vendor provides a cloud service for the devices they sell, e.g. Twine, Smart Things, or the Nest thermostat. There are also some cloud services that allow any connection, providing an API for anyone to connect, for the purpose of integrating multiple devices. But the dedicated devices mentioned earlier don’t work with the generic cloud services.

Many IoT services today are based on providing easy access to the devices and gateway, with open source client code and reference hardware designs, selling hardware on thin margins, and Kickstarter campaigns. There is typically a proprietary cloud service with a proprietary or ad-hoc API from the device or gateway to the service, and a structured API to the service offering “cooked” data.

These systems contain a highly visible open source component, but much of the functionality comes from the cloud service. If a user wishes to use the open source part of the system with another service, the APIs will need to be adapted on either the device/gateway end or service end, or both. It’s not exactly a lock-in, but there is a fairly steep barrier to user choice.

Internet of Things (IoT) in Silos

There is the beginning of an ecosystem here, where some devices are being built to use existing services, e.g. Good Night Lamp uses Cosm as their cloud service. Other services that allow open API connectivity include Thingworx and Digi Device Cloud. These services all use very similar RESTful APIs to JSON and XML objects, but have different underlying data models. As a result, sensors and gateways must be programmed for each service they need to interact with.

The current system also leaves users vulnerable to outages of a single provider. Even if there was a programmable cloud service that all could connect to that ran user applications, there would be a vulnerability to provider outages. Much better and more robust would be an ability to configure more than one service provider in parallel in an application graph, for a measure of robustness in the face of service outages. Even more, it should be possible to run user application code in IoT gateways, local user-owned servers, or user-managed personal cloud services. Today’s infrastructure and business models are at odds with this level of robustness for users.

In terms of business and business models, a lot of the connection and network infrastructure today was built on a “value chain” model. These are businesses that are built on a model of vertical integration. In these models, value is added by integrating services together to serve one function, hence vertical.  With the Internet of Things, traditional value chains are collapsing down and flattening. There is a bit of a disruption in the business model (services, etc), but also new opportunities emerge to create new Internet of Things services, which is good for business and consumers.

Companies will continue to build out vertical models to specialize in their services. IoT can potentially augment service models with the customer even further and offer creative possibilities of cost savings and experience and deploy more customer centric business fabrics, which will result in better service for consumers.

If companies build their vertically based infrastructure of applications integrating into the IoT Toolkit platform, the basic enablement for horizontal connections will already exist, making it easy to create horizontal, integrative applications based on automatic resource discovery and linkage.

Access to the knowledge can enhance the customer experience and ROI for businesses.  We are at the brink of the new era, where companies and products can arise from the information economy; only now motivation via implicit or explicit engagement is tied to things, assets, information, sensors, education, and augmentation; and everything is more intertwined and involved.

Tom Vu (TV):  Please assume the role of a futurist or even contemporary pragmatist. How does the landscape of Internet of Things fit into that picture for an individual?

Michael Koster (MK):

It goes back to the idea that your life is going to change in ways that we are no longer be driven by the scarcity pressures we experienced as hunter gatherers. IoT will trigger the overall shift from the resource accumulative, to the interaction driven and resource sharing-enjoying model due to the ubiquitous connectivity and the right kind of applications we can use to bring this experience to maturity.

We expect the Internet of Things to be where the interaction moves away from screens and becomes more like everyday life, only more convenient, comfortable, and easy to manage. We’re still looking for the valet, the system that simply helps us manage things to enable us to become more as people.

Tom Vu (TV):  Do you have any insights into how industries like Semi-Conductor can help share the responsibility of making Internet of Things for the People and by the People?

Michael Koster (MK):

Yes, of course, everyone has a part in the build up and build out of Internet of Things.  From business to academia, in the home and across the planet, the march to Internet of Things is inevitable.  Again and again, the familiar signs of disruption are being seen.  We see that happening today with the very first initial releases of connected products.  There is a movement in Makers, with substantial global activity. Which is quite harmonious to open source and open hardware.  This will be even wider spread once critical mass takes effect with products more and more becoming connected and smart via Internet.  The power of the sensor proliferation is akin to Twitter having 10 people registered and using their Social Fabric versus 100s of millions.  The more everyday devices and things are connected, the more the power of IoT will overwhelmingly surface.

It’s only how well we integrate and collaborate together across industry to propel this next phase of Internet to the next level.  Every potential disruptive technology has a turning point.  We are at that point and we are all part of this movement. In turn, the Internet of Things will make better products, a better user experience, and optimized efficiency across all resources. How we decide to apply this technology will make all the difference.

This very notion forces industries to be more aware, efficient, and productive. Sensors and connected devices will help supply chain, manufacturing, research, product roadmaps, experience, and ultimately drive an economy of growth. The enterprise begins to have a visibility, transparency to customers, people.   Ultimate, it’s a true nervous system, connected via an enterprise level to a personal consumer level.

SMART, AWARE, and SENSORY are new enhancements to business to include customer habits and patterns of use, threaded right into the production routine and product design. Internet of Things will help sculpt a more consumer oriented and customer centric world of products. Customers will have direct influence in the manufacturing of individual products and instances of products.  Companies can help by being part of the community, albeit in the field of electrical engineering, design, data, to software development on the cloud.  Internet of Things will have touch points between customers and business as much as the electrical power grids have influence across all business today.

The new ecosystem will have micro scale and agile manufacturing at a level of customization unimaginable today. It’s the next driver for brilliant machines, maybe artisan-machines that work for individuals but still live on the factory floor.

You can work with the developers and work toward expanding businesses that can embrace the development world.  Help build the $50 cell phone or connected devices that bridge fiscal and energy compliance for a better world.

Ride the long tail wave… and the inverted business models…  Make more accessibility to all products and be responsible in accessibility… From crowdfunding or crowdsourcing, like Kickstarter or Makers, someone is going to figure out how a sensor can do more, in a very impactful and human experience paradigm. The new innovations will come from everywhere; from the 14 year old in Uganda who takes apart her cellphone to repurpose it into a medical monitoring device, from the basements and garages of millions of makers and DIY’ers worldwide who have sure genius among them.

It is super important to get the very latest hardware out to the open community so that innovation can be leveraged, taken to new levels of creativity and crowdsource ideation for collaboration and massive cross-contribution. Accessibility, documentation, development, ecosystem for software support for the MCUs are all too important.  Atmel holds building blocks to many of these pieces, combined with their development tools and evaluation ecosystem (Atmel Studio 6, Atmel Spaces, Atmel Gallery) and involvement with Makers and Arduino.

Open Hardware / Open Source will come to be de-facto standards.  Bundle open source along with the open hardware to make it even more accessible and embed rapid guide start for newcomers. Right now a key piece is the Wireless Sensor Net. If there were a good open source WSN available and supported by manufacturers, it could enable a groundswell of connected devices.

Build open source and open hardware educational IoT developer’s kits for ages 8 and up, for high school and college, to hit all levels of involvement and expertise. Support community hackspaces and places (ie Noisebridge) where everyone can learn about the digital world and programming.

We are seeing the leveling out of the development happening in all parts of the world. Radical innovation is happening everywhere. Open Source is helping shape this curvature.  This is the broader whole tide that we are seeing. Pinocchio is one great innovation emerging from Makers and Open Source, then we have IoT hubs such as SmartThings, Thingworx, or Xively (formerly Cosm).  There is a lot of crowdfunding, ideation, blooming of disruptive products looking to change the scene of things to come….
Support open source and open collaboration in everything, to create a culture of sharing and innovation, a culture of synergy in building the Internet of Things together. Involve customers as participants and makers of their own experiences. Make sure everyone has access to the information and support they need to build, maintain, hack, and repurpose their devices over time to promote a healthy ecosystem.

This time innovation is going global. The ideation is happening everywhere. There are many global Silicon Valley type hubs, other metros in the world, as well as global accessibility to the same information. We see startup mentality blossoming across all geo-locations.  Again, Semi-Conductors is contributing, helping pave the back-plane for innovation & connectivity for the development layers on top.  Global village of innovation is coming of age… Now.

 

Also read Part 1 and Part 2 of the Interview Series.