News & Analysis
Comment
MikeSmith2011
Very interesting. The real advantage will be to spread these things around. But ...
GREAT-Terry
Interesting stuff. Hope the price will be lowered once the acceptance level in ...
Former Apple, Google, Facebook engineers launch IoT startup
Peter Clarke
5/16/2012 12:57 PM EDT
Cards and use cases
The Imp card demonstrates capabilities Fiennes perfected at Apple. It is extremely compact, based on a 0.35-mm four-layer PCB. It includes a Cortex-M3 based 32-bit microcontroller from STMicroelectronics and a Broadcom Wi-Fi chip. "It's long range too, much better than smartphones and tablets," Fiennes claimed. An edge-mounted status LED and photodetector for optical configuration are also included.
The optical sensor is included since Wi-Fi devices need an SSID and password for network security. Electric Imp uses a system in which the network name is selected on a smartphone, then a password typed in. An app then sends the digital information optically – through a series of flashes of the screen – to the card edge as it sits in the socket.
"We'll be licensing this [programming system] to other vendors with both iOS and Android code to implement into their own apps," Fiennes said in a separate e-mail.
Click on image to enlarge.
Click on image to enlarge.
Electric Imp cards have a familiar memory card physical format but contain a Wi-Fi node inside
When the $25 card is installed in a slot and powered up, it will find the ID number and automatically transmit the information to Electric Imp’s servers. Fiennes and his colleagues have written a virtual machine that runs under a proprietary embedded operating system on the node and looks for updates of itself on the Internet. SSL encryption is used for data security when transmitted over the link.
In sleep mode, the Electric Imp card consumes 6 microamps, Fiennes said.
Click on image to enlarge.
An Electric Imp enabled wall power socket. With card installed it can be part of an Internet of Things
Use cases
Fiennes demonstrated a power adaptor with an Imp socket. He installed a card and an appropriately labeled block appeared in a browser window. Fiennes plugged in a chain of decorative lights and we clicked on the box on our browser. After clicking, the box text went from "off" to "on." Over Skype, we could see the lights had come on.
Fiennes emphasized that control need not be manual and could be linked to other Internet apps such as weather reports, or to Electric Imp sensor nodes that monitor conditions such as humidity.
A second example is an Electric Imp enabled passive infrared sensor. Fiennes demonstrated how it could be programmed to report the time and date of detected motion to a client's Web pages on the Electric Imp server. In turn, those pages could be programmed to send an alarm to a mobile phone. The alarm could also be triggered if no motion was detected, allowing the sensor to serve as a monitor for the elderly in their homes, for example. If there is no activity before 9 a.m., a message is sent to a caregiver.
The final example is an Electric Imp washing machine. Machine operation can be made conditional on a number of variables, including the price of electricity. "Every washing machine has microcontroller and that microcontroller has a lot of data," said Fiennes. "That data could be sent back to a washing machine service organization that could call the client up before the washing machine breaks down."
Fiennes said Electric Imp is not in the business of making IoT objects. Instead, it wants to enable the market with simple but elegant building blocks. "We expect to be blown away by the things people will make from this," he said.
The Imp card demonstrates capabilities Fiennes perfected at Apple. It is extremely compact, based on a 0.35-mm four-layer PCB. It includes a Cortex-M3 based 32-bit microcontroller from STMicroelectronics and a Broadcom Wi-Fi chip. "It's long range too, much better than smartphones and tablets," Fiennes claimed. An edge-mounted status LED and photodetector for optical configuration are also included.
The optical sensor is included since Wi-Fi devices need an SSID and password for network security. Electric Imp uses a system in which the network name is selected on a smartphone, then a password typed in. An app then sends the digital information optically – through a series of flashes of the screen – to the card edge as it sits in the socket.
"We'll be licensing this [programming system] to other vendors with both iOS and Android code to implement into their own apps," Fiennes said in a separate e-mail.
Click on image to enlarge.
Click on image to enlarge.
Electric Imp cards have a familiar memory card physical format but contain a Wi-Fi node inside
When the $25 card is installed in a slot and powered up, it will find the ID number and automatically transmit the information to Electric Imp’s servers. Fiennes and his colleagues have written a virtual machine that runs under a proprietary embedded operating system on the node and looks for updates of itself on the Internet. SSL encryption is used for data security when transmitted over the link.
In sleep mode, the Electric Imp card consumes 6 microamps, Fiennes said.
Click on image to enlarge.
An Electric Imp enabled wall power socket. With card installed it can be part of an Internet of Things
Use cases
Fiennes demonstrated a power adaptor with an Imp socket. He installed a card and an appropriately labeled block appeared in a browser window. Fiennes plugged in a chain of decorative lights and we clicked on the box on our browser. After clicking, the box text went from "off" to "on." Over Skype, we could see the lights had come on.
Fiennes emphasized that control need not be manual and could be linked to other Internet apps such as weather reports, or to Electric Imp sensor nodes that monitor conditions such as humidity.
A second example is an Electric Imp enabled passive infrared sensor. Fiennes demonstrated how it could be programmed to report the time and date of detected motion to a client's Web pages on the Electric Imp server. In turn, those pages could be programmed to send an alarm to a mobile phone. The alarm could also be triggered if no motion was detected, allowing the sensor to serve as a monitor for the elderly in their homes, for example. If there is no activity before 9 a.m., a message is sent to a caregiver.
The final example is an Electric Imp washing machine. Machine operation can be made conditional on a number of variables, including the price of electricity. "Every washing machine has microcontroller and that microcontroller has a lot of data," said Fiennes. "That data could be sent back to a washing machine service organization that could call the client up before the washing machine breaks down."
Fiennes said Electric Imp is not in the business of making IoT objects. Instead, it wants to enable the market with simple but elegant building blocks. "We expect to be blown away by the things people will make from this," he said.
|
|
|
|
|
Navigate to related information
daleste
5/16/2012 9:36 PM EDT
This is really great stuff! I would like to play with it. So many possibilities.
Sign in to Reply
Luis Sanchez
5/17/2012 1:09 AM EDT
I say the next with a certain negative feeling. I'm impressed with this approach. It's very smart but I think the idea could perhaps become so powerful that it would take away part of the fun of developing Internet enabled devices to many product vendors out there. This seems to be pushing for an industry standard. Smart indeed.
Sign in to Reply
chanj
5/17/2012 1:55 AM EDT
Impressive product. It will definitely shorten time to market of developing IP-enabled product. Price seems to be a bit too much. I am sure it will come down with volume.
Sign in to Reply
rick.merritt
5/17/2012 1:58 AM EDT
A handful of other startups have been pushing low cost Wi-Fi for IoT apps, one of them recently bought up by Microchip. But I don't think any have hit the consumer market so squarely as these guys.
I remember the CEO's earlier MP3 startup got a Page 1 story on EE Times back in the day.
Frankly I am not sure the CE world is quite ready for IoT yet. They may be 3-5 years ahead of their time--except for DIY engineers who I imagine will love this.
Sign in to Reply
I_B_GREEN
5/17/2012 11:21 AM EDT
how do you plan to mitigate the all ready installed wifi module in products when consumers buyt and plug into an existing laptop or tablet phone...
I would think a software install to switch all chosen applications to only run through the sd card when installed would be needed to stop issues with multiple nodes on one machine.
Sign in to Reply
peter.clarke
5/17/2012 11:32 AM EDT
My understanding is that all Electric Imp nodes will have a unique ID and a unique IP address so there should be no conflicts with Wi-Fi nodes in notebook and tablet computers and smartphones.
Instead of having a couple of Wi-Fi nodes hanging off your domestic router you will have a couple plus however many Electic Imp cards you buy and enable.
Sign in to Reply
I_B_GREEN
5/17/2012 11:23 AM EDT
Also can be made to do mesh type functions with other sd cards in other machines
Sign in to Reply
anomof
5/17/2012 4:29 PM EDT
So what's the cost per card for the server side of this model for the consumer?
Sign in to Reply
peter.clarke
5/18/2012 5:27 AM EDT
no cards are required on the server side....your cards ($25 each) just talk with the Electric Imp server over the cloud
Sign in to Reply
selinz
5/17/2012 5:14 PM EDT
Curious about competition. And I agree that it will be difficult to create a "gotta have this" frenzy without a strong application driving it.
Sign in to Reply
jonsmirl
5/17/2012 9:15 PM EDT
Check out their website. You have to program them in a language called Squirrel. Squirrel looks to be great for writing flashy demos. But we have a bunch of existing ARM code in C and its not going to get rewritten in Squirrel. Have to see if they allow C language access.
Sign in to Reply
peter.clarke
5/18/2012 5:31 AM EDT
That's not my understanding. THEY wrote the virtual machine and embedded OS using Squirrel.
I think users will have a browser-based interface to control and link nodes.
But by all means check out the Electric Imp website.
Sign in to Reply
jonsmirl
5/18/2012 10:00 AM EDT
I think it is this model...
They licensed an RTOS with wifi and run it on the nodes. They wrote a squirrel VM which runs on top of the RTOS. The nodes link back to their sever, no direct access to the nodes.
You go to their website to control the nodes. At their website you can upload code which gets compiled into byte code and downloaded into the nodes. You also have a UI for controlling the nodes.
Sign in to Reply
peter.clarke
5/18/2012 11:33 AM EDT
That sounds right...but Electic Imp are the people to ask
Sign in to Reply
NeznanovicN
5/18/2012 4:36 PM EDT
Twine on Kickstarter shares a lot of functionality with this gizmo.
Sign in to Reply
Bob Mac
5/19/2012 8:01 AM EDT
Does this device support IPv6
Sign in to Reply
t.alex
5/19/2012 11:00 PM EDT
Still confused about the use case. Does it have storage like a normal SD card?
Sign in to Reply
peter.clarke
5/21/2012 10:55 AM EDT
It is not a memory card.
There is memory on it but that is working memory i think rather than storage. Electric Imp would not say how much memory when I asked.
Enough to run the virtual machine I suppose. Peter Hartley is a meant to be a wizz at writing compact software.
Sign in to Reply
KB3001
5/20/2012 5:14 AM EDT
Very exciting product. The price is high in my opinion but hopefully it would come down substantially with high volumes.
Sign in to Reply
Charles.Desassure
5/21/2012 2:37 AM EDT
This is great news. Look forward to working with this.
Sign in to Reply
agk
5/21/2012 9:54 AM EDT
A product with open source platform. Many new software programs can be written to use this from laptops,mobile phones and tablets. There is a big market available and soon we can expect lower priced similar items from other sources.To beat them price it competitively.
Sign in to Reply
t.alex
5/21/2012 10:19 AM EDT
The logo looks evil :)
Sign in to Reply
KB3001
5/21/2012 10:42 AM EDT
Napster-esque :-)
Sign in to Reply
Dr DSP
5/21/2012 11:04 AM EDT
It would be great to have a reader try this out and report back what they find out. Any takers?
Sign in to Reply
spiralbrain
5/22/2012 6:15 AM EDT
Hasn't this been done before? I wonder if its the same as Eye-Fi
Sign in to Reply
peter.clarke
5/22/2012 6:36 AM EDT
@spiralbrain
From what I can see at www.eye-fi.com this is not the same. Mainly because Electric Imp is NOT being offered as a memory card. Whether it could be is another matter. Electric Imp has not revealed how much memory is on their card.
So in one sense Eye-Fi is superior.
However, Eye-Fi appears limited to digital photograph uploads, while Electric Imp is an enabler of a broad range of networked things.
Sign in to Reply
t.alex
5/27/2012 12:00 AM EDT
eye-fi seems to be selling to end consumers while this Imp card is not.
Sign in to Reply
ukzw
5/25/2012 11:11 AM EDT
very good stuff but too expensive for consumer products. It mentioned passive infrared sensor (PIR), which is what I am working on. A PIR is priced $10, how can I afford put a $25 card in it?
By looking at the picture of the card, I guess the BOM should be just a few dollars, whay they charge $25?
Sign in to Reply
GREAT-Terry
5/29/2012 11:34 AM EDT
Interesting stuff. Hope the price will be lowered once the acceptance level in the field becomes higher.
Sign in to Reply
MikeSmith2011
5/29/2012 5:25 PM EDT
Very interesting. The real advantage will be to spread these things around. But this is where the price is too high. $25 would limit its use to appliances that cost a whole lot more. The electric socket example though cute is a non-started. I doublt anyone would see the value of a ~$25 socket. I don't see the price coming down a whole lot as they have to pay for the margins of the silicon vendors.
Reminds me of Cypress PSoC chips which have all of this functionality in a single chip and costs a whole lot less.
Sign in to Reply