
ONiO.zero: ultra-low-power wireless MCU using energy harvesting technology - thinxer
https://www.onio.com/technology.html
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veba
The harvester(s) are of course built in. There are some pasives - one resistor
for a master bias and a handful caps. The antenna is taken directly in - or
solar cell type.

How low power is it - it all depends is the correct answer. The chip is tuned
for a few different application scenario:

1\. DVFS mode: Here you select a clock speed/voltage your application require
- and you will get the associated voltage/clock speed in return. You can
doctor your code with calls to have various performance levels.

2\. Deadline based: You select a deadline for the work to complete within -
and the device will throttle by setting clock speed to match this requirement.
The voltage is matched for the selected clock speed.

IO voltage is maintained from a seperate regulator - so internal logic voltage
can vary with stable IO voltage.

Mask rom + flash...why? Maskrom for some secure boot stuff, stdlib and math -
it is less energy per fetch from mask rom vs. flash. Ideally everything should
be in ROM - but that makes it hard for the end user to add his/her application

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KaiserPro
Hmm, without a datasheet, its very difficult to asses how useful it is.

Does it have the RF harvesting bits built in? or is it a bunch of passives
that I have to add after.

How low power is it? are we talking microamps per mhz(I know we're not...) How
much useful time do you have per charge cycle?

the articles section seems to be full of generic health mumbojumbo, which isnt
a good start... [https://www.onio.com/article-
list.html](https://www.onio.com/article-list.html)

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miohtama
You can request the data sheet at the bottom of the page.

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dmitrygr
Nope. They collect contact info but send nothing. At least not automatically.
No email sent to my trash email account when I filled out the form as Johny
Smith

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veba
This is correct. And I would not encourage using what is likely not your real
name. The initial versions of the datasheet will be watermarked.

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dmitrygr
Um, no.

The initial versions of the datasheet will be read by _NOBODY_ if this is kept
up! If you make it hard to see what your product does, who will care?

Learn from STM32 - public datasheet!

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SlowRobotAhead
> 1KB of mask ROM (stdlib, math etc). 2KB RAM. 8/16/32KB ULP Flash. 100k
> Writes. Read supported down to 850mV.

Even 32kB of rom is going to be very tight to fit a wireless stack like BTLE.
It’s not clear if their BTLE peripheral includes the stack or just the radio.
I would hope it’s the latter.

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rkagerer
Would love to peek at the datasheet without going through their email
harvester.

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1024core
[http://www.mailinator.com/](http://www.mailinator.com/)

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wallacoloo
The combination of a mask rom and reprogrammable flash on the same product
surprised me. Why would you want a customizable mask rom if you’ve already got
8x or more of flash? Is it a power consideration: are mask roms lower-power to
read from?

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dmitrygr
NOR flash is also slow. That is why a lot of microcontrollers that run at
hundreds of megahertz have very strange flash accelerators that read slowly in
parallel (STM uses a 128-bit-wide bus for example), and then dispense
data/code to the CPU quickly in 16 or 32-bit pieces. Most ROMs can be read
very quickly.

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ricardobeat
Seeing as they hail from Norway, is it a spin-off of Nordic?

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baybal2
They are ex-Nordic cadres. You can note, they keep their own key tech cadres
incommunicado :). Unlike business people, they have not a single bit of their
contact information listed on their page.

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Rebelgecko
If this comes out and is affordable, it'll have some really cool applications.
As per datasheet, it also has UWB support so you could make a "where's my
keys????" (or inventory tracker) without having to worry about dead batteries
or limited range of RFID.

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fit2rule
Would love to know if this is going to capitalise on the 5G rollout .. I seem
to remember a few years ago someone making claims that once 5G was deployed,
ULP sensors would be more feasible ..

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etaioinshrdlu
Have any hobbyists ever done something similar in a approachable manner?
Obviously this could be great for some iot tasks.

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spzb
"Product under development". Might be a complete pipe dream.

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crtlaltdel
I worked on a line of wireless energy harvesting based occupancy sensors. It's
doable.

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spzb
Doable and commercially available aren’t the same thing though

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crtlaltdel
Well...I mean we did sell the products so there was a market for them. And
yeah, before we released them they were not commercially available...so you
got me there ;)

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osivertsson
Very interesting.

They have open positions on their career page:
[https://www.onio.com/career.html](https://www.onio.com/career.html)

Seems like a great time to join this company and help make this product come
alive after years of work. I would guess they are an efficient and driven team
where everyone knows everyone else.

I am not affiliated with them, but working at companies when they start to
gain traction and to feel how proud everyone is at getting a product out with
a relatively small team is great fun!

