There are now plenty of Espressif ESP8266 boards or module to play with, but most of them require some cables or wires, at least for power. WiThumb does not need any of that as it’s designed to be plugged into any USB ports, and includes a 6-axis motion sensor, and a temperature sensor. WiThumb USB dongle specifications: SoC – Espressif ESP8266 32-bit MCU with 802.11b/g/n WiFi Storage – 4MB Flash memory Sensors – Temperature sensor (+/- 0.25C typical accuracy, -40 to 125 C range), 6-axis gyroscope + accelerometer Expansion – Breadboard friendly through holes with 1x 10-bit ADC, I2C and 4x GPIOs USB – USB type A connector Misc – Reset and flash buttons Power – 5V via USB port Dimensions – 4.8 x 2.2 cm The USB stick can be programmed like most ESP8266 board, i.e. via USB using the Arduino IDE. In case you wonder what kind of […]
$25 Ameba Arduino IoT Board Powered by Realtek RTL8195AM MCU Supports WiFi and NFC
Ameba Arduino is another development board for the Internet of Things, but beside WiFi connectivity, it also includes an NFC tag, and can support Ethernet via Arduino compatible headers. The brain of the board is Realtek RTL8195AM ARM Cortex M3 MCU that includes WiFi connectivity, hardware SSL, SRAM, and flash. Ameba Arduino Specifications: MCU – Realtek RTL8195AM ARM Cortex M3 @ up to 166MHz with 512KB SRAM, 1MB ROM, WiFi connectivity, hardware SSL engine Memory – 2MB SDRAM Connectivity – WiFi 802.11 b/g/n 1T1R with PCB antenna and external antenna connector, NFC tag with read/write Function, 10/100M Ethernet via expansion headers USB – 1x micro USB OTG port, 1x micro USB host port Expansion Headers SDIO Device/SD card controller Up to 30x GPIOs 2x SPI interfaces supporting master and slave modes 3x UART interfaces including 2 HS-UART and one log UART 4x I2C Interfaces supporting master and slave mode 2x […]
Get an Early ESP32 Board by Contributing to Luanode for ESP8266 & ESP32 Project (Crowdfunding)
Development boards and module based on Espressif ESP32 dual core processor with WiFi and Bluetooth LE connectivity are due for Q3 or Q4 2016, but you could get an early sample as early as July if you contribute to Jimmy Wu’s (of wifimcu.com) crowdfunding campaign to develop Luanode (Lua SDK) for ESP8266 and ESP32 processors, as ESP32 boards are part of the rewards. Luanode is a Lua SDK for ESP32 and ESP8266 that supports multi-tasking through FreeRTOS, and includes support for peripherals. The source code and documentation can be already be found on Github, and the main differences against something like NodeMCU appear to be multi-tasking and (for now) ESP32 support. Interestingly the SDK contains a tools called WiFi-Killer uses for Denial of Service (DoS) attacks using ESP8266 or ESP32 modules… One hardware project is called WiFi tank comprised of one T300 Tank Chassis, ESP8266 Development Kit, 720p HD Camera, […]
BusyBotNet is a Fork of Busybox with Security Tools
Busybox provides a lightweight version of common command line utilities normally found on “big” Linux into a single binary, in order to bring them to embedded systems with limited memory and storage. As more and more embedded systems are now connected to the Internet, or as they are called nowadays the Internet of Things nodes, adding security tools, such as cryptographic utilities, could prove useful for administrators of such system, and so BusyBotNet project wsa born out of a fork of Busybox. Some of the tools implemented include: fenc to encrypt stuff with salsa algo tsh. needs work, backdoor shell aes enc rathole backdoor shell, blowfish enc ssyn2 ddos tool sudp udp ddos tool jshon sh wrapper for json hydra prism userspace icmp triggered reverse shell backdoor You can access the source code and instructions on busyboxnet github repo. I’ve quickly tried it in my AMD x86 computer running Ubuntu […]
The Eclipse Foundation Releases Open Source Smart Home & IoT Gateway Frameworks, MQTT & oneM2M Implementations
The Eclipse Internet of Things (IoT) Working Group has released – or soon will be releasing – four open source projects for the Internet of Things with Eclipse SmartHome 0.8 framework, Eclipse Kura 2.0 IoT gateway framework, Eclipse Paho 1.2 MQTT & MQTT-SN clients, and Eclipse OM2M 1.0 implementation of oneM2M standard. Eclipse SmartHome 0.8 Eclipse SmartHome is a framework for smart home solutions that runs on embedded devices, including Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black or Intel Edison development boards. The latest SmartHome 0.8 release includes a new REST API and corresponding “Paper UI” administration interface, support for new devices including Sonos speakers, LIFX bulbs, Belkin WeMo devices, digitalSTROM systems, EnOcean devices (via a new OSGi EnOcean Base Driver) and others, as well as a new rule engine supporting templates for beginners, JavaScript for automation rules and graphical rule editors. You can find more details on Eclipse SmartHome page, and/or download SmartHome 0.8, […]
Apache Mynewt RTOS for IoT Includes an Open Source Bluetooth 4.2 LE Stack for MCUs
The Apache Software Foundation has recently released version 0.9 Apache Mynewt open source real-time operating systems for micro-controllers under… an Apache 2.0 license. The RTOS works on STMicro STM32 Cortex-M4, and Arduino Zero / M0 Cortex-M0 boards, but they’ve also implemented the first open source Bluetooth Low Energy stack for MCUs, starting with support for Nordic Semi nRF52 Cortex-M4 and nRF51 Cortex-M1 evaluation boards, and acting as a replacement for Nordic SoftDevice Bluetooth Smart / LE solution. The operating system competes with ARM mbed, the Zephyr Project, and RIoT, but the foundation claims it is the only one that’s both community driven and permissively licensed (Apache 2.0) project in the embedded space. The OS is modular and can be configured with a Go-like build and package management tool with components such as secure boot loader, flash file system and TLV storage mechanism, rich logging infrastructure, circular buffering schemes, and Bluetooth […]
Upcoming ARM TrustZone Webinars Explaining Embedded Systems / IoT Security to Non-security Experts
Most people understand that securing the IoT is important, but security is a highly a complex subject, and as seen with the many security breaches, even specialists – who in theory should now better – get their devices or online accounts hacked. So even if you are not a security expert, but are involved in the development of embedded systems, it’s important to get acquainted with online and offline security and understand how all this all work, at least from a high level perspective, without necessarily having to dig into the technical details. ARM is organizing two webinars catering to people who are not security experts, and explaining how they can secure embedded systems using the company’s TrustZone technology. The first webinar entitled “How to build trust and security into your embedded device” will allow participant to gain an understanding of the security that will need to be applied in […]
Marvell IAP220 “IoT” Processor Targets Low Power Touchscreen Enabled Appliances
After IAP140 quad core Cortex A53 processor found in Brillo compatible AndroMeda Box Edge, Marvell has recently introduced another IAP processor for the Internet of Things with IAP220 dual core Cortex A7 processor targeting “low power cost sensitive home automation, industrial, security, and wearable applications”. IAP220 SoC specifications: Processor – Dual ARM Cortex-A7 core up to 1.0 GHz GPU – 3D GPU with OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0 support MCU – ARM Cortex M4F Memory I/F – LP-DDR2/3, DDR3 Storage – eMMC and SDIO interfaces Display – MIPI video and command mode; LCD display Video – Full HD encode and decode with H.264, MPEG-4, H.263, MJPEG and more Camera – Digital video camera interface, 2x, 2-lane CSI Audio – I2S, TDM; support for multiple PDM (pulse-density modulation) microphones and speakers Sensor hub • Low power sensor processing Management I/O – SPI, GPIO, PWM? (the product brief says PWD instead), UART, 1-wire, I2C […]