The smart router is ready for IoT play

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The evolution of router has reached the IoT’s doorsteps, and it raises some interesting prospects for industrial and smart home markets.

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The router used to be largely a dumb device. Not anymore in the Internet of Things arena where node intelligence is imperative to make a play of the sheer amount of data acquired from sensors, machines and other ‘things.’ The IoT router marks a new era of network intelligence — but what makes a router smart?

For starters, it employs embedded hardware platforms with DIY capabilities while balancing the performance and power consumption requirements. Next, an IoT router provides the operational status on an LCD screen while manipulating the data from different interfaces. In human machine interface (HMI) applications, for example, a smart router offers LCD and touch screen interfaces on expansion I/Os.

Take the case of the DAB-OWRT-53 smart router, which is developed by the Belgian design house DAB-Embedded. The sub-100 euro device — based on Atmel’s SAMA5D36 processor and OpenWRT router hardware platform — is mainly targeted at smart home and industrial IoT applications.

The IoT router supports popular wireless interfaces such as Wi-Fi, ZigBee and Z-Wave, as well as a diverse number of wired interfaces including Ethernet, USB, CAN 2.0A/B, KNX and RS-232. And all the data from these interfaces can be stored in either microSD card or NAND flash.

Anatomy of Smart Router

The Atmel | SMART SAMA5D36 is at the heart of the smart router design. First and foremost, it optimizes power consumption in the battery-operated router that features 3.7V lithium polymer battery support with charging capability over a microUSB connector. The router boasts eight hours of battery lifetime while being in full ON mode with Wi-Fi communications.

Second, the ARM Cortex-A5 processor shows a robust performance in the communications domain. For instance, the SAMA5D36 implements routing functionality to transfer data from one Ethernet port to another in a way that router designers don’t require an external hardware hub or switch. Moreover, Atmel’s MPU offers greater flexibility to run a lot of embedded software packages such as OpenZWave and LinuxMCE.

Third, the SAMA5D36-based IoT router offers users the ability to manipulate firewall settings, Disable PING, Telnet, SSH and UPnP features. Furthermore, the hardware security block in SAMA5D3 processor allows the use of CryptoDev Linux drivers to speed up the OpenSSL implementation. The Wi-Fi module — powered by Atmel’s WILC3000 single-chip solution — also supports the IEEE 802.11 WEP, WPA and WPA2 security mechanisms.

The smart router of DAB-Embedded employs Active-Semi’s ACT8945AQJ305-T power management IC, but the real surprise is Altera’s MAX 10 FPGA with an integrated analog-to-digital converter (ADC). That brings the additional flexibility for the main CPU: Atmel’s SAMA5D36.

The FPGA is connected to the 16-bit external bus interface (EBI) so that IoT developers can put any IP core in FPGA for communication with external sensors. All data is converted inside the FPGA to a specific format by using NIOS II’s soft CPU in FPGA. Next, the SAMA5D36 processor reads this data by employing DMA channel over the high-speed mezzanine card (HSMC) bus.

An FPGA has enough cells to start even two soft cores for data preprocessing. Case in point: A weather station with 8-channel external ADC managing light sensors, temperature sensors, pressure sensors and more. It’s connected to the FPGA together with PPS signal from GPS for correct time synchronization of each measurement.

OpenWRT Framework

The SAMA5D36 embedded processor enables DAB’s smart router design to customize free OpenWRT Linux firmware according to the specific IoT application needs. The OpenWRT framework facilitates an easy way to set up router-like devices equipped with communications interfaces such as dual-port Ethernet and Wi-Fi connection.

What’s more, by using the OpenWRT framework, an IoT developer can add now his or her own application (C/C++) to exchange data with a KNX or Z-Wave transceiver. OpenWRT even supports the Lua embedded interpreter.

Next, while DAB-Embedded has built its smart router using the embedded Linux with OpenWRT framework, Belgium’s design house also offers a board support package (BSP) based on the Windows Embedded Compact 2013 software. That’s for IoT developers who have invested in Windows applications and want to use them on the new hardware: the DAB-OWRT-53 smart router.

Later, the embedded design firm plans to release smart router hardware based on the Windows 10 IoT software and Atmel’s SAMA5D family of embedded processors. The Belgian developer of IoT products has vowed to release the second version of its router board based on Atmel’s SAMA5D4 embedded processor and WILC3000 chipset that comes integrated with power amplifier, LNA, switch and power management. Atmel’s WILC3000 single-chip solution boasts IEEE 802.11 b/g/n RF/baseband/MAC link controller and Bluetooth 4.0 connection.

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Majeed Ahmad is the author of books Smartphone: Mobile Revolution at the Crossroads of Communications, Computing and Consumer Electronics and The Next Web of 50 Billion Devices: Mobile Internet’s Past, Present and Future.

Develop secure IoT apps with the Atmel Certified-ID platform

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The Atmel Certified-ID security platform prevents unauthorized reconfiguration of an edge node to access protected resources on the network.

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Atmel has announced a comprehensive security platform that enables businesses of all sizes to assign certified and trusted identities to devices joining the secure Internet of Things. The Atmel Certified-ID security platform prevents unauthorized reconfiguration of an edge node to access protected resources on the network. This new platform is available on the Atmel SmartConnect Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Smart and ZigBee solutions that connect directly to Atmel Cloud Partners, providing a secure turnkey solution for IoT edge node-to-cloud connection.

The Atmel Certified-ID platform delivers a distributed key provisioning solution, leveraging internal key generation capabilities of the ATECC508A CryptoAuthentication device, without invoking large scale infrastructure and logistics costs. This platform even allows developers to create certified and trusted identities to any device before joining an IoT network.

With billions of devices anticipated by 2020 in the rapidly growing IoT market, security is a critical element to ensuring devices can safely and conveniently access protected assets through the Internet. Today, secure identities are commonly created through a centralized approach where IoT device keys and certificates are generated offline and managed in secure databases in Hardware Security Modules (HSM) to protect the keys. These keys are then programmed into the IoT devices by connecting the HSM to automation equipment during device manufacturing. This approach is indispensable in large deployments consisting of millions of devices. It can also entail significant upfront costs in infrastructure and logistics which must be amortized over a large number of devices for cost effectiveness.

By utilizing the unique internal key generation capabilities of ATECC508A device, the recently-unveiled platform enables decentralized secure key generation, making way for distributed IoT device provisioning regardless of scale. This method eliminates the upfront costs of the provisioning infrastructure which can pose a significant barrier in deploying devices in smaller scales. On top of that, developers will be able to create secure IoT devices compatible with partner cloud services and to securely join ecosystems.

Atmel is currently working with several cloud service companies, including Proximetry and Exosite, on the Certified-ID platform. These collaborations will give developers a wide range of ecosystem partners to choose from for a secure connection between the edge nodes and the IoT. Other partners will be announced as they are integrated in the Certified-ID platform.

“As a leader in the security space with a track record of over two decades, enabling secure networks of all sizes is our mission,” said Nuri Dagdeviren, Atmel Vice President and General Manager of Secure Products Group. “Streamlining secure processes and simplifying deployment of real world secure networks will be key to unlocking the potential and enabling rapid growth of IoT. We will continue delivering industry-leading solutions in security, a critical element in enabling billions of ‘things’ to be connected to the cloud.”

Atmel now offers security provisioning tool kits to enable independent provisioning for pilot programs or production runs when used in conjunction with the ATECC508A ICs. These devices are pre-provisioned with internally generated unique keys, associated certificates, and certification-ready authentication once it is connected to an IoT ecosystem.

Developers will need two kits to securely provision their gadgets: the AT88CKECCROOT tool kit, a ‘master template’ that creates and manages certificate root of trust in any ecosystem, and the AT88CKECCSIGNER tool kit, a production kit that enables partners to provision IoT devices.

The AT88CKECCSIGNER kit lets designers and manufacturers generate tamper-resistant keys and security certifications requiring hardware security in their IoT applications. These keys provide the level of trust demanded by network operators and allows system design houses to provision prototypes in-house—saving designers overall investment costs.

The tool kits also include an easy-to-use graphical user interface that allow everyone to seamlessly provision their IoT devices with secure keys and certificates without special expertise. With distributed provisioning, developers are not required to use expensive HSM for key management and certificate acquisition fees.

In addition to secure IoT provisioning, the new Certified-ID platform provides high-quality random number generation to guarantee a diverse set of public and private keys. It delivers solutions to a variety of IoT security needs including node anti-cloning protection, data confidentiality, secure boot, and secure firmware upgrades over-the-air. The tamper resistance built into the ATECC508A device continues to provide the desired protection even when the device is under physical attack.

Ready for the Internet of Trusted Things? Both the Atmel AT88CKECCROOT and AT88CKECCSIGNER are available today.

DIPDuino is Arduino-compatible board in a DIP32 package

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DIPDuino is an Arduino-compatible board that combines a number of useful interfaces in one DIP32 package.

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While the idea of having an entire MCU platform in a DIP format isn’t all that new,  Alex Gornostayev just wasn’t satisfied with some of those on the market today, like the Teensy and Arduino Nano. And so, the Maker decided to create his own Arduino-compatible board that crams many useful interfaces all into one easy-to-use DIP32 package.

The aptly named DIPDuino goes a step further than most of today’s breakout boards. Based an ATmega1284RFR2 along with a 2.4GHz ZigBee transceiver, the unit is equipped with a 128×32-pixel OLED display, a microSD card reader, a serial FTDI port, 1MB of SRAM, a full JTAG debugger port, USB and pin power supply, LEDs, and a stabilized 3V and 3.6V power output.

Looking ahead, Gornostayev is planning on using the board for a number of DIY projects, ranging from an OLED watch to a weather station and a home automation system. Aside from that, one of his friends even wants to build a DIPDuino-based RepRap controller. The possibilities are endless! However, first he would like to improve its software so that the firmware can be programmed and updated from an SD card.

“I want to be able to be able to program DIPDuino from SD card. Just save BIN file on SD card and boot the device. The bootloader must be able to flash the firmware and it does not look too complicated. (I call this project ‘DIPBoot’).”

“I want to implement a simple BASIC translator for DIPDuino to be able to write programs in BASIC using simple text editor, save it on SD card and execute it form file on DIPDuino (which will be DIPBasic in this case),” Gornostayev adds. “This is really cool, because I will be to write programs on any devices, including smartphones or even DIPDuino itself, and execute them without any compilers and connections.”

Intrigued? Read more about the project on its Hackaday.io page here.

BitCloud ZigBee PRO SDK achieves Golden Unit status

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Compatible with the Atmel | SMART SAM R21 and ATmega256RFR2, the BitCloud ZigBee PRO Software Development Kit has achieved Golden Unit status.

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Atmel has announced that the BitCloud ZigBee PRO Software Development Kit (SDK) has achieved the prestigious Golden Unit status for the ZigBee PRO R21 standard. As an approved Golden Unit, the Atmel BitCloud solution will be used by ZigBee testhouses to verify standard compliancy for all future ZigBee 3.0 products. This guarantees superior interoperability for customers designing the latest connected lighting, security and comfort control products for smart home applications.

With improved security, interoperability and ease-of-use, the Atmel BitCloud SDK provides a comprehensive set of tools to quickly design and develop wireless products compliant to ZigBee LightLink and ZigBee Home Automation Profiles, as well as the upcoming ZigBee 3.0 standard. The BitCloud SDK includes full-featured reference applications, ZigBee PRO stack libraries and API, user documentation, and implements reliable, scalable and secure wireless solution that supports large mesh networks of hundreds of devices, and is optimized for ultra-low power consumption with up to 15 years battery life.

BitCloud ZigBee PRO SDK fully supports Atmel | SMART SAM R21 devices, a single-chip solution integrating Atmel’s Atmel | SMART ARM Cortex-M0+-based MCU and high-performance IEEE 802.15.4 RF transceiver available as a standalone component or production-ready certified modules. The Atmel BitCloud is also compatible with the AVR ATmega256RFR2 wireless MCU, an ideal hardware platform delivering the industry’s lowest power consumption at 12.5mA in active receive mode, combined with receiver sensitivity at 101dBm.

“Intelligence, wireless connectivity and security are key elements to enable the anticipated growth of the Internet of Things market,” says Pierre Roux, Atmel director of wireless solutions. “Achieving the prestigious Golden Unit Status for our BitCloud SDK ensures designers that our wireless solutions are world class and will cater next-generation solutions for this smart, connected world. We are excited to achieve this certification again.”

Branto is a remote presence and security devic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Musio is an AI robot designed to learn, adapt and grow with you

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Meet the Musio, an Arduino-compatible, artificially intelligent robot that evolves with you and makes your home smarter.

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If it’s up to one California-based startup, the next member of your family won’t be a baby brother or sister, nor will it be a furry four-legged animal. Instead, the AKAStudy crew believes it may very well be an artificially intelligent robot that can engage and evolve with its users. In what would appear to be a mix between Joaquin Phoenix’s digital companion Samantha from Her and the iPhone’s knowledge navigator Siri, Musio is an AI personal assistant that is capable of holding natural conversations, sharing emotions, growing wiser with age and communicating with connected objects in its environment.

Musio is comprised of three different brains — simple, smart and genius — that vary in terms of complexity, memory, battery and speed. For instance, simple merely features a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU, 16GB of memory, a 1800mAh battery, all while lacking any wireless functionality. Genius, on the other hand, boasts a 2.5GHz quad-core CPU, 64GB of memory, a 3000 mAh battery, an on-board AVR chip, as well as Wi-Fi, Buetooth Low Energy and ZigBee compatibility to control smart home gadgets.

The system itself is based on Android 5.0 Lollipop OS and built around the versatile ATmega328 MCU. Meaning, the Arduino-friendy device can be programmed to the liking of its owner through its accompanying Arduino and Android controller libraries. What’s more, Musio also comes with a developer kit add-on that includes an accelerometer, a trio of Arduino Mini boards, ZigBee modules and Arduino ZigBee shields.

Unlike other virtual personal assistants before its time, Musio can actually converse with its user — whether that’s offering up an appointment reminder, gossiping about a colleague at work, lending a helping hand during a homework assignment or asking a question to satisfy its curiosity. AKA’s mission was to devise a robot that not only thinks on its own, but ultimately creates an interactive learning environment for people. Moving ahead, the team hopes to further improve its built-in textual and vision intelligence, and integrate motion, in order to make it a truly holistic AI machine.

“AKA is using Musio to create an ecosystem which consists of Musio Friends, which also have built-in AI and sensor-technologies. Your artificially intelligent friend Musio wants to develop with you. This ecosystem will become possible not only with our developers’ efforts but yours as well.”

Ready for a robotic sibling or sidekick to help you out with your daily tasks? Then head over to its official Indiegogo page, where the AKAStudy is currently seeking $50,000. As if it were actually a baby brother or sister, it looks like you’ll have to wait a year before it arrives. Shipment is expected to begin in June 2016.

Zymbit wants to accelerate IoT development

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Get your real-world Internet of Things ideas to market in days, not months. 

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As the next frontier of the Internet approaches, the IoT represents a compelling opportunity across a staggering array of applications. That’s why the team behind Zymbit has developed an end-to-end platform of hardware and software devices that will enable Makers, engineers and developers alike to transform their ideas into real-world products in blistering speed.

In an effort to deliver secure, open and interactive gadgets for our constantly-connected era, Zymbit is hoping that latest set of solutions will help accelerate adoption and interface with our physical world in a more secure, authenticated manner. The company — who we had the chance to meet at CES 2015 and will be on display in our Maker Faire booth — recently unveiled its Zymbit 1 (Z1), which is being billed as the first fully-integrated piece of IoT hardware that provide users with local and remote live data interaction, along with a low-power MCU, battery-backed operation.

“Z1’s motherboards incorporate some of the latest secure silicon from Atmel, providing accelerated processing of standard open security algorithms. A separate supervisor MPU takes care of security, while you take care of your application,” explained Zymbit CTO Alex Kaay.

Based on the Atmel | SMART SAM D21, the Z1 motherboard is electronically robust with enhanced security provided via an ATECC108 crypto engine and an ATWINC1500 Wi-Fi controller — meaning, no additional parts are necessary. Ideal for those developing next-gen IoT projects, the modular board is super customizable and compatible with Atmel Xplained Pro wingboards, Arduino shields, Raspberry Pi B+, as well as ZigBee, cellular and POE options. The Zymbit team has even implemented discretely controlled blocks to simplify coding and to secure remote device management, while advanced power management supports battery, solar and POE operations.

The Z1 integrates all of the key components required to support a generation of global IoT applications. This includes easily transitioning between Arduino, Atmel and Raspberry Pi designs, integrated open software tools for seamless innovation, as well as a choice of wireless communication. For instance, Makers can design and implement their programs using the Zymbit’s Arduino Zero app processor and take advantage of a vast number of Arduino shields. Or, developers can connect their Raspberry Pi to utilize the various Zymbit services via SPI bus, allowing their B+ module to interact with a wide-range of “things.”

The unique Zymbit architecture delivers three key pillars of security: authenticated data source with 72-bit ID serial number, protected data transmission with SHA 256 and private data transmission via a Wi-Fi embedded AES engine. This is accomplished through a dedicated hardware crypto engine that ensures only trusted data is exchanged between devices.

At the heart of Z1’s operation lies a network/Linux CPU, the Atmel | SMART SAMA5D4 MPU, tasked with its secure communication. Meanwhile, its security processes run within a supervisory, ultra low-power Atmel | SMART SAM L21 MCU, separately from its SAM D21 Cortex-M0+ I/O application MCU. This hardware is all housed inside a dynamically-constructed case, which features standard expansions and mounts perfect for any consumer, commercial or industrial applicable IoT product.

Adding to its already impressive list of capabilities, Zymbit comes with a remote manager that makes it easy to connect and manage gizmos both securely and with transparency. This service enables users to SSH to their devices, whether they are on your desk or across the country. Publishing through Zymbit’s Pub/Sub Engine lets developers collect and share data one-to-one or one-to-many, with or without subscriber authentication. As you can imagine, this opens up an assortment of project possibilities, which range from changing Philips Hue color lighting with data streams to monitoring key parameters of a refrigeration system.

“We are providing some standard dashboard widgets that allow you to quickly view your device performance metrics and data-channels. Initially we are supporting time series charting, together with plugin metrics for Raspberry Pi, and Arduino Yún,” the team writes.

Interested in learning more? You can stay up-to-date with the Zymbit team’s progress here, watch our latest interview with one of the company’s co-founders below, and swing by our booth at Maker Faire Bay Area!

Atmel’s SAM L21 MCU for IoT tops low power benchmark

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SAM L21 MCUs consume less than 940nA with full 40kB SRAM retention, real-time clock and calendar, and 200nA in the deepest sleep mode.

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The Internet of Things (IoT) juggernaut has unleashed a flurry of low-power microcontrollers, and in that array of energy-efficient MCUs, one product has earned the crown jewel of being the lowest-power Cortex M-based solution with power consumption down to 35µA/MHz in active mode and 200nA in sleep mode.

How do we know if Atmel’s SAM L21 microcontroller can actually claim the leadership in ultra-low-power processing movement? The answer lies in the EEMBC ULPBench power benchmark that was introduced last year. It ensures a level playing field in executing the benchmark by having the MCU perform 20,000 clock cycles of active work once a second and sleep the remainder of the second.

 

ULPBench shows SAM L21 is lower power than any of its competitor’s M0+ class chips.

Atmel has released the ultra-low-power SAM L21 MCU it demonstrated at Electronica in Munich, Germany back in November 2014. Architectural innovations in the SAM L21 MCU family enable low-power peripherals — including timers, serial communications and capacitive touch sensing — to remain powered and running while the rest of the system is in a reduced power mode. That further reduces power consumption for always-on applications such as fire alarms, healthcare, medical and connected wearables.

Next, the 32-bit ARM-based MCU portfolio combines ultra-low-power with Flash and SRAM that are large enough to run both the application and wireless stacks. Collectively, these three features make up the basic recipe for battery-powered mobile and IoT devices for extending their battery life from years to decades. Moreover, they reduce the number of times batteries need to be changed in a plethora of IoT applications.

Low Power Leap of Faith

Atmel’s SAM L21 microcontrollers have achieved a staggering 185.8 ULPBench score, which is way ahead of runner-up TI’s SimpleLink C26xx microcontroller family that scored 143.6. The SAM L21 microcontrollers consume less than 940nA with full 40kB SRAM retention, real-time clock and calendar, and 200nA in the deepest sleep mode. According to Atmel spokesperson, it comes down to one-third the power of competing solutions.

Markus Levy, President and Founder of EEMBC, credits Atmel’s low-power feat to its proprietary picoPower technology and the company’s low-power expertise in utilizing DC-DC conversion for voltage monitoring. Atmel’s picoPower technology employs flexible clocking options and short wake-up time with multiple wake-up sources from even the deepest sleep modes.

ULPBench aims to provide developers with a reliable methodology to test MCUs.

In other words, Atmel has taken the low-power game beyond architectural improvements to the CPU while optimizing nearly every peripheral to operate in standalone mode and then use a minimum number of transistors to complete the given task. Most lower-power ARM chips simply disable the clock to various parts of the device. The SAM L21 microcontroller, on the other hand, turns off power to those chip parts; hence, there is no leakage current in thousands of transistors in that part.

Here is a brief highlight of Atmel’s low-power development efforts that now encompass almost every peripheral in an MCU device:

Sleep Modes

Sleep modes not only gate away the clock signal to stop switching consumption, but also remove the power from sub-domains to fully eliminate leakage. Atmel also employs SRAM back-biasing to reduce leakage in sleep modes.

Consider a simple application where the temperature in a room is monitored using a temperature sensor with the analog-to-digital converter (ADC). In order to reduce the power consumption, the CPU would be put to sleep and wake up periodically on interrupts from a real-time counter (RTC). The measured sensor data is checked against a predefined threshold to decide on further action. If the data does not exceed the threshold, the CPU will be put back to sleep waiting for the next RTC interrupt.

SleepWalking

SleepWalking is a technology that enables peripherals to request a clock when needed to wake-up from sleep modes and perform tasks without having to power up the CPU Flash and other support systems. For instance, Atmel’s ultra-low-power capacitive touch-sensing peripheral can run in all operating modes and supports wake-up on a touch.

For the temperature monitoring application, as mentioned above, this means that the ADC’s peripheral clock will only be running when the ADC is converting. When the ADC receives the overflow event from the RTC, it will request its generic clock from the generic clock controller and peripheral clock will stop as soon as the ADC conversion is completed.

Event System

The Event System allows peripherals to communicate directly without involving the CPU and thus enables peripherals to work together to solve complex tasks using minimal gates. It allows system developers to chain events in software and use an event to trigger a peripheral without CPU involvement.

Again, taking temperature monitor as a use case, the RTC must be set to generate an overflow event, which is routed to the ADC by configuring the Event System. The ADC must be configured to start a conversion when it receives an event. By using the Event System, an RTC overflow can trigger an ADC conversion without waking up the CPU. Moreover, the ADC can be configured to generate an interrupt if the threshold is exceeded, and the interrupt will wake up the CPU.

Low Power MCU Use Case

Paul Rako has mentioned a sensor monitor in his recent post in Atmel’s Bits & Pieces blog. Rako writes in his post titled “The SAM L21 pushes the boundaries of low power MCUs” about this sensor monitor being asleep 99.99 percent of the time, waking up once a day to take a measurement and send it wirelessly to a host. Such tasks can be conveniently handled by an 8-bit device.

However, moving to IoT applications, which constitute protocol stacks, there is number crunching involved and that requires a faster ARM-class 32-bit chip. So, for battery-powered IoT applications, Rako makes the case for 32-bit ARM-based chip that can wake up, do its thing, and go back to sleep. If a high-current chip wakes up 10 times faster but uses twice the power, it will still use less energy and less charge than the slower chip.

Next, Rako presents sensor fusion hub as a case study in which the device saves power by skipping the radio chip to send the data from each sensor and instead uses the ARM-based microcontroller that does the math and pre-processing to combine the raw data from all sensors and then assembles the result as a simple chunk of data.

Atmel has scored an important design victory in the ongoing low-power game that is now prevalent in the rapidly expanding IoT market. Atmel already boasts credentials in the connectivity and security domains — the other two key IoT building blocks. Its connectivity solutions cover multiple wireless arenas — Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Zigbee and 6LoWPan — to enable IoT communications.

Likewise, Atmel’s CryptoAuthentication devices come with protected hardware key storage and are available with SHA256, AES128 or ECC256/283 cryptography. The IoT triumvirate of low power consumption, broad connectivity portfolio and crypto engineering puts Atmel in a strong position in the promising new market of IoT that is increasingly demanding low power portfolio of MCUs to be matched with high performance.

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Majeed Ahmad is author of books Smartphone: Mobile Revolution at the Crossroads of Communications, Computing and Consumer Electronics and The Next Web of 50 Billion Devices: Mobile Internet’s Past, Present and Future.

Digital photo frame doubles as an energy monitor

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While it might look like an ordinary digital picture frame, it’s so much more.

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A digital photo frame that shares memorable moments of your life and saves you money on your electric bill each month? Picture that! That is the premise behind CEIVA Energy’s HomeView digital picture frame, which allows users to keep tabs on home energy use, without the need for another display showing boring information about kilowatt hours.

Founded in 2000 by former Disney executives, the Burbank, California company officially launched in 2011. Since its inception, the infiltration of smart devices throughout the home has led to an assortment of sophisticated thermostats, like the Google Nest and Honeywell Lyric, that can learn a homeowner’s energy consumption habits and automatically adjust the temperature accordingly to mitigate costs and unnecessary use.

While the idea of merging a digital photo display with energy data may seem a bit absurd, the team behind the frame believes it has developed a new, more intuitive alternative to increase customer engagement. And, as the smart home market continues to emerge, some consumers may find connected devices to either be too pricey or unnecessary, or the average consumer may just not be interested in another form of technology. What’s great about CEIVA HomeView is that it simply brings an accessory already found throughout your home into the digital-savvy era.

How it works is pretty simple. The frame displays a montage of photos uploaded by its owner on its 8-inch screen. Meanwhile, the ZigBee-enabled device wirelessly receives energy use data from the home’s smart meter. Once the information has been sent to and processed by CEIVA’s servers, the frame then displays home energy consumption approximately every 90 seconds. The data points are reduced to two or three numbers, not an entire chart or graphical representation that shares a bunch of confusing information. Instead, the gadget reveals useful things like electric rate and an estimated utility bill for that month.

While receiving information about current and historical electricity, water and gas usage is a welcomed addition into any home, users can also invite friends and family to send photos directly to the frame, send pictures to a frame remotely via the web, email, camera phone, tablet and social media channels, as well as insert a memory card and view a camera’s photos in real-time.

One of, if not the, most important feature of the HomeView is its security — an imperative element as the number of smart home hacks are on the rise. Equipped with an Atmel ATECC108 crypto engine, CEIVA notes that the frame never be replicated and all communications to and from frame are uniquely assigned for that specific. In other words, only you can view information and control your devices. This is because the ATECC108 provides a full turnkey Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) engine using key sizes of 256 or 283 bits, which are appropriate for modern security environments without the long computation delay typical of software solutions.

Want a HomeView frame for your home? Head on over to company’s official page here. In the meantime, watch as CEIVA’s Jack McKee and Jack Brooks provide a hands-on overview of their latest smart device below.

Preview: Atmel is headed to Vegas for CES 2015

What happens in Vegas doesn’t necessarily have to stay in Vegas! From January 6-9, 2015, the Atmel team is headed to Sin City for the 2015 International CES, where we’ll be showcasing a number of cutting-edge Internet of Things (IoT) solutions and offering insight into the smarter, more connected world of tomorrow.

Attendees will have the chance to meet our team, demo our latest devices, and get a unique glimpse into some next-gen technology — from the Security of Things (SoT) to futuristic car center consoles — inside Las Vegas Convention Center’s South Hall, meeting space #MP25760. (The show is huge, so it may be helpful to map it.)

Bluetooth and ZigBee and Wi-Fi, oh my! Those looking ahead to a bright future of wireless and smart lighting are also welcomed to join members of our team at the Sands Expo Center in both the ZigBee Alliance Pavilion (booth #71023) as well as the Connected Lighting Alliance (booth #70432).

So what can you expect to see?

Atmel’s SMART LIVING ZONE brings more connectivity, security and intelligence to the home. 

• Wide-range of Atmel SmartConnect enabled applications including intelligent weight scales, door bells with built-in cameras, Wi-Fi connected speakers, as well as motion sensor-laden windows, smart plugs, and ZigBee-controlled lightbulbs and gateways.
• A new energy management solution capable of providing real-time, historic data of gas, energy and water consumption through a wireless remote with secure hardware authentication between the wireless device and home automation controls.
• The recently-revealed Atmel® | SMART™SAM L21 running on an Xplained Pro board with an ePaper display.

• Some of today’s leading tablets, smartphones and phablets powered by Atmel’s maXTouch® controllers, along with keyboards, mice and other human machine interface devices based on the company’s latest QTouch® capacitive platforms.
• Bringing together the IoT ecosystem, we’ll also be exhibiting solutions from a number of our friends and partners.

Atmel’s AUTOMOTIVE ZONE enables smart, connected cars with simple-to-use interfaces. 

• Ushering in an era of connected cars, the fully-functional and futuristic AvantCar™ center console concept is equipped with curved touchscreens driven by Atmel’s XSense®, maXTouch, QTouch, 8-bit AVR MCU technologies, and LIN-controlled ambient LEDs.

• RF and LF technologies for keyless entry systems, LIN- and CAN-based car networking applications, audio via Ethernet-AVB, MCUs and crypto technologies for safe data transfer via automotive networking.
• Multi-channel audio streaming over automotive Ethernet Audio Video Bridging (AVB) with low-power yet powerful SMART | ARM MCUs.
• The latest hardware and communication protocol offerings for remote keyless entry (RKE), passive entry, passive start (PEPS) and immobilizer, this demo showcases a complete reference design for automotive car access applications.

Atmel’s MAKER ZONE showcases Internet-enabled innovations. 

• At the core of the Maker Movement, the well-received Arduino Wi-Fi Shield is further enabling rapid prototyping of IoT projects on the Arduino platform, and will be exhibiting its ease-of-use and wide-range of applications for the professional and DIY communities alike.

• A number of other Maker demonstrations, including a remote-controlled Maker Robot powered by the Atmel | SMART SAM D21 will be displayed. “Mr. Abot” is controlled through an Android app and the communications driven through Atmel’s recently-announced WINC1500 Wi-Fi solution.
• Good news, Makers! You’ll have a chance to bring home a free Atmel Evaluation Kit by simply spotting AVR Man on the show floor, snapping a selfie and tweeting it to @TheAVRMan himself.

“Powered by Atmel” ZONE highlights the latest gadgets using Atmel solutions.

• Aside from an assortment of today’s smartphones and tablets, there will be a collection of wearables on display, too. This includes everything from the Narrative life-logging camera to various fitness tracking bands. As recent teardowns have revealed, Atmel can be found embedded within several highly-popular wrist-adorned gadgets like the TomTom Runner and Motorola Moto 360, as well as in a number of flagship phones like the Google Nexus 6 and Xiaomi mi4.

Stay connected!

Unable to make the show? Can’t find the booth? Follow along with us on Twitter using the hashtag #AtmelLive for all the latest trends and real-time happenings right from the CES floor. Don’t forget to check out insightful interviews on YouTube, daily recaps on Bits & Pieces, photos on Facebook and a whole lot more on our other channels as well!