

Designing Hardware for the Internet of Things - evck
http://www.evenchick.com/cc3000-shield-and-the-internet-of-things.html

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outside1234
Awesome - keep up the great work!

I'm working on one of the next upstream problems in the IoT space: once you
have a way to connect a device this to a network, how do you tie it into the
greater set of things, program it, make it discoverable, and manage it.

My stab at this is called Magenta, which is an MIT licensed project based on
node.js that aims to make it easy to build devices that can securely
communicate in real time and applications that interact with those devices
over a message passing model (its hard to explain in one paragraph but think
of it like this: twitter for devices with agents watching those messages).

I'm only a month into it and a few hundred commits, but if you are interested,
check out the (very early) project at <https://github.com/magentajs> or
contact me on twitter at @timpark. I would love to get some feedback or find
folks interested in helping collaborate on one of the subprojects (client sdk,
service, administration tool, or use it to build devices and provide feedback
and bugs).

Ok, I'm done hijacking your thread!

~~~
evck
Thanks for sharing that, I'll check it out. One problem I'm looking forward to
working on is what the embedded device will do to take care of communications,
and what the firmware to do that looks like. Lots of neat problem including
authentication, minimizing power consumption, etc...

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ippisl
Another interesting internet of things module: " The RS9113 M2MCombo supports
dual-band 802.11n and dual-mode BT 4.0 in addition to Zigbee. Redpine (San
Jose, Calif.) will ship the device before June in a variety of module form
factors at a cost of $6 in 100,000-unit quantities."[1]

Hopefully it will also get into a shield form factor, at a reasonable price,
since it seems ideal to trying all kinds of things out.

[1][http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4406270/Redpine-
devi...](http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4406270/Redpine-device-packs-
Bluetooth--Wi-Fi--Zigbee-)

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mschuster91
The CC3000 is IPv4 only - what the f __k?! I understand it greatly increases
cost in manufacturing, but isn't one of the key sale points of IPv6 that the
IPv4 address space is going to run out in part because of the Internet of
Things!?

~~~
bhb916
Eh. Is everything in my house (i.e. my subnet 192.168. _._ ) going to run out
of IPV4 addresses? Right now cost is a far more important factor.

~~~
mschuster91
People need to get used to IPv6 development. IPv6 development and deployment
is way way behind schedule already, to sell NEW stuff today without IPv6
support is foolish to say the least. All that stuff will have to be replaced
in not-so-far future.

~~~
p1mrx
Selling stuff that can't handle IPv6 isn't foolish, it just makes you a leech
on society, since everyone else will have to clean up your mess. Buying such
equipment, on the other hand, is quite foolish.

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sparky
FWIW, that image is a preview from the OSH Park ordering site[1]. I can highly
recommend the service for prototype 2- and 4-layer boards. The price is right,
the turnaround time and customer service are awesome, and the specs are better
than anything else I've found in the price range. And they're purple.

[1] <http://www.oshpark.com>

~~~
evck
Yep, it's an OSHPark render. I'm not quite ready to release the design files,
so I figured I'd post that picture since it's nice an purple.

I'd also recommend OSHPark.

~~~
sparky
Good luck with the waveguide! Have you done anything that high-speed with OSH
Park before? I'm waiting on a PCIe board from them that I hope will do Gen3
speeds (8GHz) over 2.5-inch traces, but the lack of impedance control has me
nervous.

I suppose the waveguide looks pretty short (under an inch?) so it might not
matter much?

~~~
evck
Haven't done anything high speed, but I'm not too worried since it's short. It
might not be perfect on the first run, but hopefully it'll work.

8 GHz and multiple traces would be a bit more concerning without impedance
control. Hope it works out.

~~~
sparky
To be clear, my differential pairs _are_ impedance controlled in the sense
that their trace/space yield the correct single-ended and differential
impedance values at the nominal dielectric permittivity and thickness, but OSH
Park doesn't additionally guarantee permittivity and thickness tolerances to
guarantee that my nominally-50-ohm traces will be actually-50-ohm traces +/-
10%. That said, I've run the numbers (using the excellent and free Saturn
tools [1]) for the stated Er range of 4.2 +/- 0.3, and a little variation in
the nominal 7.8 mil thickness, and things still looked OK.

Fingers crossed!

[1] <http://www.saturnpcb.com/pcb_toolkit.htm>

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zmanian
I'll point out that it is very clear that there will be BLE support in stock
android(Samsung supports BLE via a device specific SDK) after the Google IO
release of the Android.

Google's Glass supports BLE based on the FCC approval documents. It appears
that BLE support was prioritized after the Bluetooth stack rewrite that
happened in 4.2.

The Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 all have hardware capable of
BLE that should be available after the update.

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bhb916
Great work. I've been keeping a close eye on the CC3000 for some time. I've
also looked at the Wi2Wi modules/chips. I've been working (whenever work and
home allows) on some hardware to connect the CC3000 with a Xilinx FPGA.
Hopefull, I will have some results soon.

Also, I really like seeing hardware on the front page.

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pedrocr
I've played around with a WiFly module sold by sparkfun that seems pretty
functional and reasonably cheap at 35$.

<https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10822>

Any idea how much cheaper this could be?

By the way your site doesn't seem to have a valid RSS or Atom feed. Your html
has an incorrect feed link back to the homepage itself:

    
    
      <link href="./" type="application/atom+xml" rel="alternate" title="Eric Evenchick ATOM Feed" />

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dccoolgai
This looks like a nice shield for that cc3300. Nice to see more hw-related
stuff on HN - thanks for sharing.

~~~
evck
I'd like to write more hw stuff for the HN audience. I'm curious if there's
anything in particular that the HN community, who seem to be more sw focused,
would like to see.

~~~
dccoolgai
IMHO most real innovation is happening in the space between hw and sw (duino /
pi / etc.). The idea that you can call yourself an "innovator" and only know
software is quickly becoming quaint. I don't claim to speak for the HN
community-at-large, but I'm interested in seeing anything in the vein of hw/sw
synthesis like this.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Real innovation is happening _everywhere_. Unfortunately, only the consumer-
facing (and hobbyist) stuff gets covered here. Arduino, Raspi, etc. are
interesting, but not technologically innovative. Their innovation is in
addressing poorly-served markets: just as important, but not quite the same
thing.

The "internet of things" is interesting from a consumer perspective. I've been
involved in it for a few years in terms of being able to remotely monitor and
diagnose complex equipment. There's a long list of companies with lots of
dollars behind them that want to get started in this arena and don't know how.
I suspect that this is soon going to be a hot area of consulting.

Just look at what businesses like Axeda have been doing for the last 10 years
if you want to see where industry is heading.

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mbell
Cool project.

If your interested in some feedback on the PCB layout I'd be happy to help
(e-mail in profile). There are a few things about the pictured layout that
will make it very prone to noise and EM radiation as well as some heat
dissipation issues.

~~~
evck
I would really appreciate your feedback. Can't see your email though. Could
you get in touch through my site (under About)?

