Need Help regarding IOT

Hi,

To get started quickly, I suggest you head over to mbed.org and check out the ARM-based mbed platform. Follow the links to developer.mbed.org for lots of resources on how to develop software, connect sensors etc.

Good luck!

Chris

It depends on what type of sensor you will be using as well as the operating system of your choice.  Also, will you be using some sort of cloud service to store your data?  May I suggest you to take a look at our iCon platform.  You have a choice of a Cortex-M3 or a Cortex-M4 processor.  If you will be doing a lot of numerical calculations based on your sensor data, then I suggest you go with a Cortex-M4 to take advantage of the built-in floating processor.  It really calculate a lot faster.  iCon comes standard with 802.11b/g/n WiFi as well as Bluetooth 4.0.  In terms of firmware, all protocol stacks and WiFi security features are included.  We also include a small web server and DHCP client such that you can easily send data over the network.  So, have a look and see if iCon works for your project.

Good Luck.

Floyd

You need to be aware of the boundary conditions your system should be running with, because this defines the processor you need:

- is it (really) energy critical. Means: are we talking about average current of < 10 µA at 1.8V or 3.3.V for extending battery life to months or years or is battery not the issue.

- is energy not the critical path because it is permanently power connected.

Besides the avilability and efficiency of GPIO-Ports (which are bidirectional IO ports) the energy consumption drives the main decision for a processor type. Later questions are about the connectivity and bus protocols:

- are your sensors analogue connected directly to the processor GPIOs or do they need a digital bus such as SPI or I2C

- what kind of conection do you need to the outside of the world (BT, Zigbee, Ethernet, WLAN, CAN, LIN, ...). Here you may decide about a special processor with all the capabiblities on board or a multi-chip-system or a PSoC.

Last but not least you should have an idea about the estimated static and dynamic code size for RAM and ROM considerations as well as about your algorithm efficiency for the need for processor speed.

If you can give us some ideas, you will find many people in this forum who may help you finding a good system.

If you are not familiar with µC at all you should start with special systems an embedded developer would consider as "a toy": The arduino platform. There you do not need to care about deep µC secrets which make the life complicated but very efficient. These little "secrets" are usually the things, embedded guys are discussion about because some features are not running as they are expected to. But if you just want to get aquainted with µC they are just perfect because you can concentrate on the very high level things such as port reading and writing, connections to the outside world. But system tuning for the last bit and byte and µA is hardly possible with that platform.

What role does ARM play: ARM provides core technology for operating processors efficiently to chip designers like TI, Freescale, Cypress, .... So ARM is the basis of many high performant cores of many chip and controller companies in the world so that the basic principle of all these chips is rather similar and developers know 70% of the function of all chips (of this series) if they know one. Therefore it is rather likely the you may solve your problem with one of the ARM Mx-series chips. But it is not unlikely that you may also end at an proprietary technology of ATMEL or TI or .... because this is EXACTLY what you need. But in this case you are stuck in a trap if you need to extend your systems because you can not change again to another chip provider without redoing ALL your system design.

Hope this extensive answer helps for your very fundamental question.

Don't hesitat to ask if you need more input.