There is no doubt that the Internet of Things has become a major disruptive force in the electronics industry. The impact of the Internet of Things can cover almost every market area from B2C to B2B. Although the availability of athletic performance wearable fitness bands and other IoT-connected devices has become popular among tech-savvy consumers, the adoption of IoT in industrial applications is equally impressive and promises many business benefits. Organizations are eager to simplify and reduce all possible profits in traditional business operations, and the Internet of Things can help achieve this. The capture of large amounts of operational data (so-called "big data") supported by the Internet of Things is also opening up new business service delivery models that were not possible before.
It's worth noting the diversity of various IoT applications, but also the speed at which they enter the market. Whether it's B2C or B2B development, introducing new business models, establishing new partnerships, gaining first-mover advantage and building a widely adopted ecosystem's potential depends largely on the possibility of bringing hardware designs to market. Embedded developers face many engineering challenges in bringing energy-efficient, high-functionality and wireless connectivity designs to market, but the time required is a fraction of what was previously thought. It's no surprise that engineers seek to radically change the way they handle any IoT-based development.
Most IoT applications have similar components, namely multiple edge nodes (sensor devices), gateways (to facilitate short-to-long distance communication), and cloud-based service or analytics applications. Compliance with open systems standards has become synonymous with any IoT design to ensure cross-platform compatibility and the widespread adoption of edge node sensors in the market to accommodate a variety of applications.
Regardless of the type of application, edge nodes tend to have the same basic elements. These features include the ability to connect to multiple one or more sensors, embedded processing capabilities, wireless connectivity, support for "lightweight" IoT protocols such as MQTT, and device and communication security. The physical size of the device is another factor. Each of these elements, of course, has its own set of considerations and challenges. For example, many IoT devices are battery powered, which requires processing and wireless components to exhibit frugal energy consumption. In search of a fast and different way to architect IoT designs, many embedded developers have turned to more and more powerful single board computers (SBCs) as a way to quickly track their IoT designs.
Figure 1. Intel's Edison module. An example of the recently launched SBC is the Intel Edison module, as shown in Figure 1. The incredible comprehensive feature set is packaged in an extremely compact module measuring only 35.5 x 25.0 x 3.9 mm. This stamp-sized module has an Intel SoC device that includes an Intel Atom dual-core running at 500 MHz, a dual-threaded CPU, and a 32-bit Intel Quark microcontroller running at 100 MHz. The SoC plus 1 GB of RAM, 4 GB of flash memory and 40 configurable GPIO pins undoubtedly meets the processing attributes of most IoT designs. GPIO can be configured for up to 20 digital input / output PWMs, up to 6 analog inputs, UART, SPI and USB interfaces. Edison modules operate at 1.8 VDC and are well-positioned for battery-powered wearable designs. However, Edison offers more capabilities to easily meet or exceed the core system processing and connectivity elements required for IoT design. It comes standard with 802.11 a / b / g / n Wi-Fi connection and Bluetooth 4.0. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) profile support is coming soon. Figure 2 shows the basic block diagram of the Intel Edison module. The SoC runs a pre-installed embedded Yocto compatible Linux distribution, which also includes Python, Node.js and a comprehensive software stack.
Figure 2. Intel Edison block diagram.
However, the availability of such a complete module is just one aspect that any professional embedded developer needs to consider. Being able to prototype your design requires a hardware platform, such as an evaluation kit or reference design, that allows the sensor to interface with any other hardware. Software support is another crucial consideration, not only in terms of IDEs that support the embedded development process, but also in the entire tool area, such as RTOS and any related board support packages.
Intel has clearly given a lot of consideration in meeting these standards. To support the initial design prototype, Intel designed two motherboards that fit into the Edison module. The first and easiest is the Intel Edison Breakout motherboard. This board provides a way to break the Edison 70-pin connector, with USB OTG and USB micro AB type connectors, and a 0.1-inch grid array header connector with through-hole solder joints provides a full 40 GPIO channels, including PWM, I2C, UART, SPI and other available GPIOs. The module's power input is also provided through this board.
The Intel Edison development board for Arduino is suitable for prototyping a wide range of IoT applications and is attractive to engineers familiar with Arduino shielding methods. This larger and larger board provides all the GPIO Breakout pins of the Breakout board, but the extended layout is compatible with Arduino Uno R3 shield pins.
Figure 3. Block diagram of Arduino's Intel Edison board.
The board is very easy to access GPIO and can accommodate a large number of commercially available Arduino expansion boards, making it an ideal companion for your first development with Edison. Because Edison operates at 1.8 VDC, there are many level shifters that can accommodate both 3.3 and 5 VDC shielding, which is user-selectable. The availability of the Intel EdisonArduino IDE further enhances Arduino compatibility. Available for download from Intel's Maker site, the familiar IDE provides a quick and easy way to start prototyping IoT designs with Arduino Sketch. The site also provides easy-to-use getting started instructions and links to other tutorials.
Figure 4. Edison developer-software platform options.
More targets for professional developers are Intel's XDK IoT Edition IDE. This cross-platform toolchain supports Node.js, which is very suitable for use in IoT applications; other development tool options are also available, as shown in Figure 4.
Edison's pre-installed software stack includes all required OS loaders, Linux BSP and trusted boot ROM loaders, and more IoT-specific middleware such as the MQTT protocol stack, zero configuration. Multicast mDNS service and Connman command line network management daemon.
To further simplify the prototyping process, Intel developed the Intel IoT Development Communications Connectivity Kit. This set of code examples and libraries available in Node.js or C / C ++ provides many simple IoT application examples such as heating control thermostats, library references and short tutorials. To complement the library and complete Intel Edison's edge node-to-cloud capabilities, visit Intel's IoT Analytics website. This direct cloud analytics service allows registration of individual Edison-based devices and the use of code examples to register a repository of data generated from IoT applications. Service functions include data analysis, graph display, rule-based alerts, and device (IoT node) management.
With its extremely small form factor package, Intel Edison is the ideal computing and connectivity module that can serve as the basis for your next IoT design. The core hardware platform is perfectly complementary with a large number of software tools, connection libraries, and examples to ensure that your design is available in the shortest possible time.
