Haptic feedback is everywhere now, made popular by smartphones. So I decided to include a haptic controller to improve the user experience on the capacitive touch screen.

​I tested three haptic motors on the DRV2605L controller: one ERM and two LRA, one of which branded as a genuine replacement Taptic Engine for iPhone 6s.

Read the full story at I²C Haptic Controller.

The previous years saw a wave of mergers and acquisitions on the silicon industry. Microchip acquired Atmel, NXP and Freescale merged, Qualcomm failed to buy NXP, among others M&A projects.  
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Now, boards manufacturers are consolidating and reshuffling their offers too.

​Intel discontinued all its boards (Galileo, Edison, Joule, Curie), Particle bought RedBear, Punch Through Design stopped selling the Bean boards. Those join the list of former historical providers like Wiring and LeafLabs. The alternative object-based Cosa framework hasn't released any new version since January 2016.

​In the meantime, Arduino is slowly transitioning from 8-bit to 32-bit, and exploring other technologies like FGPA. Teensy goes upscale with more powerful MCUs. Texas Instruments continues to enrich its wide range of LaunchPad and BoosterPack boards, especially with IoT capabilities. 
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​What will the future hold?

I updated the screen of my Low Power Home Network Weather Monitoring project and changed it for the iTC  4.2" BWR from Pervasive Displays, adding red to the previous black and white colours.

​When the evolution of a measure exceeds a threshold, the new value is displayed in red.

In the picture on the right, light has changed for the Base sensor, and Node 1 has just joined the network.

Discover the project.

With the use of Energia MT and the Galaxia library, I rewrote the whole project around a clock, an event and a task. The node performs the measures every ten minutes, and enters low power mode between two measures. 

EnergyTrace shows the following results:

• When idle, the node only requires 0.0505 mW / 0.0141 mA. 
• This combination allows a single CR2032 coin cell battery to last for more than one year.
  

Read the updated story.

After the Bluetooth Low Energy SensorTags, the CC1350 SensorTag runs on a Cortex-M3 MCU with a dual-band radio, 2.4 GHz and sub-1 GHZ, with support for Bluetooth Low Energy and ZigBee.

The CC1350 SensorTag provides the same rich assortment of sensors grouped around inputs, climate and inertial measurement unit, into a compact red box.

The CC1350 SensorTag can be programmed using an RTOS with Energia MT and the Galaxia library.

Read the full review.

Despite the I in IoT, not all the IoT projects require a connection to internet and the use of cloud services. 

In this project, I'm exploring a low power local network, based on the CC1350 MCUs, a Cortex-M3 with sub-1 GHz radio, for home weather monitoring.

The Pervasive Displays e-ink 400x300 4.2" screen displays the measures from up to 4 nodes.

Read the full story.

Current offer on general purpose screens for the LaunchPad eco-system is rather limited. Most of the screens available are highly specialised.

I wanted a good quality general purpose 3.5" screen, with capacitive touch and haptic feedback, compatible with the existing LCD_screen library, using as few pins and as many shared buses​ as possible, with a total target cost below an entry level tablet.

Read the full story.

The new General Data Protection Regulation or "GDPR", starts May 25. However, it is not entirely clear whether personal websites like this one are concerned by GDPR.

The Embedded Computing website is hosted by Weebly. The provider is currently implementing GDPR.

The host of the website may use different cookies, such as technical cookies, necessary to enable the website to function properly; and analytical cookies, used to follow-up traffic and improve user experience. 

• Check the options on your browser preferences.

Based on the most often asked questions on the 43oh.com forum, I decided to compile a FAQ.
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The thread is named Suggestion: Add a FAQ and includes so far:

• Netiquette for Newbies
• What Information to Provide When Asking for Help
• I²C Check-List 
• Porting an Arduino library to Energia
• Use Pins Number instead of Pins Names with Energia
• Add a New Board to Energia
• LaunchPad and BoosterPack Pins Maps
• Boards Supporting the Galaxia Library

Read the FAQ.

Last October 2016, I set two conditions for IoT after I was stuck by the massive DDOs and couldn't use a cloud-only solution. Today, I'm reviewing those conditions and adding a third one.
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• Offline Tools Not an Option

Although this condition was initially about having tools offline when access to the online IDEs was denied, the same confusion seems to exist for IoT.

Does IoT imply cloud solutions? Does a manufacturing plant need to be connected to internet to operate?
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• Local Server Mandatory

I reviewed three evaluation kits featuring a gateway for a sub-1 GHz network. Although the gateways relied on MQTT and JSON, I wasn't able to use the cloud solutions for two of them, and the backup demos running locally didn't expose those features. Luckily, the third one delivered.

​Could fog computing and edge computing be valid answers? The idea would be to process data as close as and as soon as it is originated. This would alleviate the size of the messages, reduce the bandwidth, shortened the feed-back loop, provide better security and ultimately make cloud services optional.

• Open Standards Recommended

​This is the new condition. Many IoT solutions promote their own standard, build silos and walled gardens.

On the IoT and home automation fields, using standards like MQTT and JSON allows to use any broker and basic tools to read the messages. 

New components retrofit existing solutions and bring them inter-operability.

​For example, Node-RED nodes are available for the Blynk application and for the LightBlue Bean by Punch Through Desgin boards.
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But new initiatives match the three conditions natively.

​For example, ​I've been happily surprised by the Mozilla Things solution, running on a local server and based on the W3C Web of Things (WoT) Thing Description.

I hope more options, either retrofitted old solutions or native new solutions, are coming.