Amazon Sidewalk – A Low Bandwidth Network For Connecting Smart Devices and IoT

Amazon Sidewalk Endpoints Overview

In 2019, Amazon introduced the Sidewalk with privacy and security at the core. Amazon Sidewalk a low-bandwidth, long-distance wireless protocol that is expected to provide a new way for devices to stay connected especially when smart devices leave their WiFi or Bluetooth coverage range by leveraging the 900 MHz spectrum. Amazon Sidewalk will most likely be an LPWAN type network since it is promising neighborhood-like device connectivity with is crowdsourcing initiative. It uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for short distances, the 900 MHz spectrum, and other frequencies for longer distance coverage. Sidewalk attempts to make sure your BLE devices can still connect to your home network even when you take a walk away from your home. According to Amazon, users can easily access the Sidewalk network using two types of devices: Sidewalk Bridges and Sidewalk-enabled devices. Amazon has now announced that compatible Echo devices can now act as bridges and also some […]

Gateworks Venice Industrial IoT SBC Family Features Dual Ethernet and mPCIe Sockets

Gateworks Venice GW7300 SBC

US-based Gateworks is known for its Ventana and Newport embedded networking single board computers, and the company has now introduced a third family with Venice SBC family based on NXP i.MX 8M Mini SoC with support for multimedia capabilities through MIPI-DSI, MIPI-CSI and I2S Audio headers, and targetting industrial IoT with dual Ethernet, and mini PCIe expansion sockets that can be used for 802.11ax/ac/b/g/n WiFi, 5G/4G/3G/CATM1 cellular modems, and more. The company plans to introduce four different models with GW7100, GW7200, GW7300, and GW7400 with an increase in size and feature set for each model, and mechanically compatible with previous Gateworks families. But at launch, only GW7300 SBC is available so we’ll focus our reporting on this particular model. Gateworks GW7300 specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 8M Mini single, dual or quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ up to 1.6GHz, with Arm Cortex-M4 at 400+MHz, 3D GPU (OpenGL ES 2.0), 2D […]

Raspberry Pi inspired MaaxBoard Mini SBC features NXP i.MX 8M Mini SoC

MaaXBoard Mini

Last year, Embest – an Avnet company – introduced MaaXBoard NXP i.MX 8M SBC mostly compatible with Raspberry Pi form factor and running Android 9.0 or Yocto Linux. The company has now launched MaaXBoard Mini with a 14nm NXP i.MX 8M Mini quad-core processor. In some ways, the new board follows more closely Raspberry Pi 3 Model B form factor with four USB 2.0 ports, instead of the two USB 3.0 ports found in the first version of the board, but it does so without HDMI output, leaving MIPI DSI as the only option for display output. MaaxBoard Mini (AES-MC-SBC-IMX8MINI-G) specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 8M Mini Quad with 4x Arm Cortex-A53 cores @ up to 1.8GHz, Cortex-M4F real-time core @ 400MHz, Vivante GCNanoUltra 3D GPU and GC320 2D graphics, 1080p H.264/H.265 VPU; System Memory – 2GB DDR4 Storage – eMMC socket for up to 64GB flash, MicroSD slot Display […]

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

Apollo 4 Blue

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 […]

DR6018 V2 Embedded WiFi 6 Router Board Adds Support for WiFi 6E and 5G IoT M.2 Cards

DR6018 V2 WiFi 6E & 5G IoT Embedded Board

A few months ago we covered DR6018 (aka CP01) WiFi 6 Embedded SBC powered by Qualcomm IPQ6018 processor and offering six Ethernet ports including five Gigabit interfaces and one 2.5 Gbps Ethernet port. Wallys Communications has now informed CNX Software they had a new version of the board called DR6018 V2 with a more compact form factor, support for PoE, as well as optional WiFi 6E and 5G IoT M.2 modules. DR6018 V2 board specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Atheros IPQ6010 quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.8 GHz System Memory – 1GB (2x 512MB) DDR3L 16-bit interface with 32-bit memory bus design Storage – 256MB NAND Flash, 32MB NOR flash, SD card slot Networking Wired 3x Gigabit Ethernet ports (one less compared to DR6018) 1x Gigabit Ethernet port with PoE support 1x 2.5Gbps Ethernet port Wireless WiFi 2×2 2.4GHz MU-MIMO OFDMA 802.11b/g/n/ax WiFi 6, max 23dBm per chain 2×2 5GHz MU-MIMO […]

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

Z-Wave Long Range

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 […]

M5StickC PLUS ESP32-PICO Devkit Comes with 1.14-inch LCD, 120 mAh Battery and Buzzer

M5StickC PLUS ESP32-PICO DevKit Bluetooth and WiFi

Shortly after introducing the Core2 ESP32 IoT Development Kit with a 2-inch touch display, 390 mAh battery earlier this week, M5Stack has announced the availability of another ESP32 WiFi & Bluetooth IoT devkit, with the more compact M5StickC PLUS featuring a 1.14-inch display, a 120mAh battery, motion, sensor, a buzzer and the usual Grove connector for expansion. M5StickC PLUS is an upgrade to the original M5StickC that lacks the buzzer and features a smaller 0.96-inch display and a lower capacity 96 mAh battery. The new model can be purchased now for $13.95 plus shipping on Aliexpress, while the original device, that happens to be M5Stack top-selling product, is still available for $9.95. M5StickC PLUS key features and specifications: SiP – Espressif Systems ESP32-PICO-D4 system-in-package with ESP32 dual-core WiFI and Bluetooth IoT processor @ up to 240 MHz, 4MB SPI flash Display – 1.14-inch Color TFT LCD with 135×240 resolution (ST7789v2 […]

STMicroelectronics Introduces Zigbee 3.0 to the STM32WB55 microcontrollers

STMicroelectronics has added Zigbee 3.0 support to its STM32WB55 wireless microcontroller family using the Zigbee PRO protocol stack. The STM32 Wireless MCU (STM32WB55) was launched last year with a dual-core Arm Cortex-M4 CPU and Cortex M0+ core, as well as  Bluetooth 5 and 802.15.4 radios. STMicro is hoping to expand the applications of the STM32WB into areas like home automation as Zigbee 3.0 is making brands choose Zigbee for their smart-home connectivity solution, smart-lighting, smart-building, mesh IoT connectivity, and many more. The STM32WB55 microcontrollers already provide support for Thread and Bluetooth 5.0 and the inclusion of the Zigbee connectivity will take this to the next level. The STM32WB55 Zigbee 3.0 software includes support for the Exegin Zigbee PRO protocol stack which is available for free. To ease development and deployment, STM32WB Zigbee solution supports 46 Zigbee 3.0 clusters and a further 21 clusters support legacy products and with the Zigbee 3.0 […]

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