Embedded development has undergone a transformation and the Internet of Things (IoT) has been one of the major agents of transformation. Developers need a defined strategy for dealing with IoT and advanced tools in order to build this new breed of applications, writes Jason Chien, an IoT architect at Renesas.
In the past a coffee maker had simple electronics for power, heating water, or a timer to automatically start brewing in the morning. Nowadays coffee makers have features similar to smartphones such as colour graphics and screens and now require a way to connect to the internet and to be controllable via mobile apps. For embedded developers this technical complexity combined with IoT has challenged the ways they have traditionally worked.
For engineers a focused strategy is to have an IoT application monitor and report sensor data as a starting set of functions that can help stakeholders understand the concept and value of the application. Monitoring serves as a fundamental starting point as it allows a user to know the current condition of the environment they are trying to gather more information on. For monitoring, only one-way communication is required as data will only need to be sent from the device to the IoT cloud. Once data has been sent to the cloud, users can focus on visualising the sensor data from the devices. Most often visualising the sensor data is achieved through dashboards displayed on a website or a mobile app. The visualisation allows users to quickly and easily understand the current state of the device sensors.
In addition to a focused strategy, IoT requires engineers to use advanced tools to create their IoT applications. For engineers to even create a prototype requires technical skills from embedded to software to mobile app and web development.
A tool such as the Renesas Synergy AE-CLOUD1 enables rapid development of IoT applications using the Renesas Synergy Platform, which provides professional grade tools for building IoT products.
AE-CLOUD1 comes with the S5D9 IoT Fast Prototyping Board that can be used for prototyping then converted to a module for production. In its current form the S5D9 Fast Prototyping Board is populated with Pmod and Grove connectors for easy expansion using off the shelf modules. When you are ready to move to production, the same board can be ordered with production grade components such as shrouded locking connectors and 24V capable digital IO. In addition, the design files for the kit or module are open source and can be downloaded from github.
AE-Cloud1 can connect to the internet using Ethernet or Wi-Fi. For WiFi connection AE-Cloud1 uses the GT202 Wi-Fi module to communicate using the 802.11n standard to a WiFi access point.
Depending on the firmware image loaded, AECloud1 can either connect to the Synergy Enterprise Cloud Toolbox or the Renesas IoT Sandbox. The Renesas IoT Sandbox is a free prototyping environment and the Synergy Enterprise Cloud Toolbox is a reference design that allows connection to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform in as little as ten minutes. Both cloud solutions from Renesas can connect to web dashboards to visualise the sensor data.
The embedded code for AE-Cloud1 is built using the Synergy Software Package (SSP) which includes transport layer security (TLS), message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT), and Wireless Application Frameworks. The Wireless Application Frameworks provide for easy implementation for technologies like Wi-Fi, cellular and Bluetooth Low Energy. The NetX Secure TLS secures and authenticates communication between devices and cloud, while the MQTT for NetX Duo enables communication for devices that only send smaller amounts of data. These components provide SSP the means to connect to any major cloud service provider with little to no barriers to getting started. Now let’s look at some examples of how AECloud1 could be used for Intelligent IoT Monitoring Applications. A railway company could use AE-Cloud1 to monitor the conditions in a train car. For train cars issues can arise that operators are not aware of unless a passenger reports them or the train car is brought in for maintenance.
A railway company could use AE-Cloud1 to detect various conditions throughout each train car and send the data to a web dashboard to visualise the sensor data. For example using the on-board sensors AECloud1 could detect glass breaking and monitor the humidity and temperature of the passenger cabin. In addition, using relays to connect to external sensors AE-Cloud1 can monitor the train car doors, detect flooding from ground water, detect smoke, detect motion using infrared sensors, and measure the electricity used by the train car. A railway company could prototype using AECloud1 and the Renesas IoT Sandbox, then seamlessly transition their design to production using the module form of AECloud1 and the commercial IoT Cloud from Medium One, whose software powers the Renesas IoT Sandbox.
AECloud1 could also be used by a kiosk manufacturer to monitor the status of kiosks used in fast food restaurants and hotel reception desks. Fast food restaurants are starting to use kiosks as a way to allow their staff to focus on serving food to customers to enhance the customer experience. Companies such as Panera are seeing sales at kiosk as part of the 26% of company sales and 1.2 million orders placed per week coming from cashier-less systems1. For hotels they are recognising that many customers view the interaction during check-in at the front desk as a transactional exchange versus an interaction focused on welcome and hospitality. Studies show a customer’s satisfaction with the hotel decreases 50% when hotel check-in time exceeds five minutes2. With these automated kiosks, it becomes necessary to be able to remotely monitor the kiosk status in order to detect any fault or errors that occur. Remote monitoring allows the kiosks to be fully automated versus requiring human to watch over a cluster of kiosk as many grocery store selfcheck-out lines require.
1 https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2017/06/14/panera-bread-says-scoring-big-digital-sales/102820618/
2 Pingitore, G., Huang, W., & Greif, S. (2013). Lost in translation: Cross-country differences in hotel guest satisfaction [Electronic article]. Cornell Hospitality Industry Perspectives, 3(2), 6-14
