smart home News - Page 24 of 28 - CNX Software

November 19, 2020November 25, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

Shelly Motion sensor to feature Silicon Labs WiFi chip with Bluetooth-like power consumption

[Update: The information from Shelly about a new “Cortana M3” processor is incorrect, we’ve been contacted by Silicon Labs, and there’s no Cortana M3 microcontroller from the company, Shelly is just using one of the company’s Cortex-M3 based WiFi solutions (SoC or module). The article remains unchanged] WiFi is one of the most convenient ways to connect IoT devices as it’s omnipresent, low-cost, and the range is ideal for the typical smart home. That’s all good until you start to power the device with a tiny battery, as WiFi consumes much more power than Zigbee, Z-Wave, or Bluetooth. Over five years ago, Rockchip RKi6000 WiFi SoC promised Bluetooth 4.0 LE power consumption numbers allowing coin-cell powered WiFi devices, and there were some demos the following year, but I’ve yet to see a consumer device based on the solution. This brings me to the main topic of this post: Shelly Motion, […]

November 13, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

OPTIGA Trust-M evaluation kit for Raspberry Pi targets Connected Home over IP standard

Optiga Trust-M evaluation-kit-Raspberry-Pi-Connected Home over IP standard

Last December, we reported that Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance had partnered to create Project Connected Home over IP (CHIP) working group with the goal of developing a royalty-free, secure Smart Home standard to increase compatibility among products over WiFi, Ethernet, Bluetooth LE, Cellular, 802.15.4 and others community protocol. Infineon has now unveiled OPTIGA Trust-M evaluation kit for Raspberry Pi designed to experiment with Connect Home over IP standard and comprised of Infineon Shield2Go HAT/adapter board, and OPTIGA Trust-M Security Shield2Go board equipped with Infineon OPTIGA Trust-M “Common Criteria Certified EAL6+” security controller. The Shield2Go adapter just re-routes the 40-pin Raspberry Pi header I/Os to sockets compatible with Infineon boards and a prototyping area. So the most important part is OPTIGA Trust-M Shield2Go which supports the following: X.509 certificates Device authentication Cryptographic support ECC NIST curves up to P-521, Brainpool r1 curve up to 512 RSA up to […]

October 27, 2020October 27, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Oplà IoT Kit is Arduino’s first open programmable IoT platform

Arduino is well-known for its maker boards and shields that are sometimes sold as part of kits to experiment with electronics. Arduino Oplà IoT kit is a little different as it looks more like an actual consumer product once assembled. Powered by an Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 board, it is designed to make getting started with IoT easy for beginners, while still allowing more advanced users to customize and hack their smart home applications. Arduino Oplà IoT Kit is comprised of several hardware components: MKR IoT carrier with a 1.2-inch OLED color display, onboard environmental sensors (temperature, humidity, pressure, light, and proximity), IMU sensor, Grove connectors, two 24V relays, and five capacitive touch buttons. Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 board powered by Microchip SAMD21 Cortex-M0+ MCU and equipped with a 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 4.2 module based on ESP32 chip. Sensors – PIR motion sensor and moisture sensor A […]

October 12, 2020March 19, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Hi3861 based HiSpark WiFi IoT development board supports LiteOS and HarmonyOS

HiHope HiSpark WiFi IoT development board features Hisilicon Hi3861 microcontroller with 2.4 GHz 802.11b/g/n WiFi 4 and supports Huawei LiteOS as well as HarmonyOS. Equipped with 2MB flash and 384KB SRAM, the board targets smart home applications, and ships with a baseboard to help with development. HiSpark board specifications: MCU – Hisilicon Hi3861 32-bit microcontroller @ up to 160 MHz with 352 KB SRAM and 288 KB ROM, 2 MB flash memory, and WiFI 4 connectivity; QFN-32 5x5mm package WiFi 802.11b/g/n standard up to 72 Mbps @ HT20 2.4 GHz frequency band (ch1-ch14). Station (STA) and access point (AP) modes with up to 6 clients for the latter WiFi mesh with up to 256 nodes Security – WPA, WPA2 personal, and WPS 2.0 PCB antenna USB – 1x USB Type-C port for power and programming via CH340 chip Expansion – 2x headers with up to 2x SPI, 2x I2C, 3x […]

October 5, 2020October 8, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

UL-Certified TP-Link Kasa Smart Plug with Dual Outlet Sells for $19.99 (Promo)

WiFi smart sockets to control home appliances have been around for a few years, and one of my favorite companies is Sonoff as they offer a variety of affordable smart plugs pre-loaded with eWelink firmware and compatible with open-source firmware like Tasmota and ESPurna. The company is also attentive to safety. communicate issues with customers, and recently wrote a post entitled “Safety is our responsibility” where they detail all steps taken to make sure their mains connected device sare safe to use. Sadly that does not include safety certifications like UL/ETL, or TUV which may have implications for your home insurance depending on where you live, and for peace of mind, it’s always good to have a third verify your design for safety. Which brings me to the main point of this point, as a UL-certified dual-outlet smart socket, namely TP-Link Kasa Smart Plug, is currently on sale for $19.99 […]

September 17, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

3µA/MHz Ambiq Apollo 4 MCU Targets Battery-powered IoT Devices with Voice Processing

Ambiq Micro is using sub-threshold voltages under 0.5V to offer ultra-low-power Arm microcontrollers. In 2015, the company launch the Apollo Cortex-M4F MCU with 30µA/MHz power consumption in active mode, which was followed in 2016 by Apollo 2 in consuming just 10µA/MHz, and Apollo 3 (Blue) dropped power consumption to as low as 6µA/MHz against using a Cortex-M4F @ 48 MHz in active mode. The fourth generation of ultra-low-power Apollo microcontroller has now been announced with Apollo 4 and Apollo 4 Blue microcontrollers – the latter adding Bluetooth – halving the power consumption of Apollo 3 at just 3µA/MHz, or ten times less than the original ultra-low-power MCU from the company. Apollo 4 (Blue) specifications and key features: MCU Core – Arm Cortex-M4F core up to 192 MHz (TurboSPOT) with FPU, Memory Protection Unit (MPU), and Secure Boot GPU – 2D/2.5D graphics accelerator with full alpha blending, texture and frame buffer […]

September 11, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

Z-Wave Long Range (LR) Promises Up to 4 Times the Range, 10-year Battery Life

The new Z-Wave Alliance Technical and Certifications workgroup, part of the Z-Wave Alliance, has announced the new Z-Wave Long Range (Z-Wave LR) specifications offering up to four times the range, support for ten times larger network, and 10-year coin cell battery life while keeping backward compatibility and interoperability Z-Wave LR will support up to 2000 nodes on a single smart home network making it suitable for indoor and outdoor smart home applications in multi-dwelling units, hotels, and hospitals, and removing the need for repeaters. The Z-Wave LR specification will be managed and certified under the Z-Wave Plus V2 certification program that currently mandates the inclusion of the enhanced S2 security framework as well as SmartStart plug-and-play setup feature for the consumer smart home. More details may be found on the press release and some of the sessions that were presented at Works With by Silicon Labs Virtual Conference on September […]

September 9, 2020December 7, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

$10 System-on-Module Drives Full HD Smart Displays via SigmaStar SSD201 SoC

SigmaStar makes some of the cheapest processors for cameras on the market such as MStar MSC313E SoC. I’ve now been informed about a new low-cost module – IDO-SOM2D01 – based on SigmaStar SSD201 dual-core Cortex-A7 Full HD SoC with 64MB embedded DDR2, 128MB flash, as well as support for Ethernet and WiFi. As far as I understand, there’s no camera input, and instead, the SSD201 processor targets applications leveraging Full HD display for the Smart Home, industrial HMI, and home control systems. Industio IDO-SOM2D01 system-on-module specifications: SoC – SigmaStar SSD201 dual-core Cortex-A7 processor @ 1.2 GHz with 2D GPU, 64MB DDR2 RAM (QFN128 package) Storage – 128MB SPI NAND flash (option up to 2GB) Video Decoder – H.264/H.265 up to 1920×1080 @ 60 fps 96x castellated holes (1.1mm pitch) with Video Output – 4-lane MIPI DSI up to 1080p60 Audio – 1x analog microphone input, 2x DMIC inputs, 1x Line […]