Press Release mbed.com Developer Blog
There is a great deal of momentum around the ARM mbed IoT Device Platform since ARM Tech Con 2014, when we announced the plans for mbed 3.0. This has mainly been focused on three key areas: extending the cloud services and ecosystem choice available to developers, developer tools designed to help you improve productivity and reducing the time to market so that businesses can take advantage of IoT quickly.
Leading cloud partners have centralized their technologies around the mbed IoT Device Platform with the likes of IBM Bluemix, Microsoft Azure, Salesforce, wot.io and Zebra Technologies joining the mbed ecosystem. We are also excited that the momentum of the mbed ecosystem continues to grow the choice of silicon, tools, applications and support continues to grow. Since May 2015, we have welcomed 24 new partners including: 1248, Alcatel-Lucent, Analog Devices, Baidu, Captiva, Delta, Express Logic, ForgeRock, GreenPeak, Nuvoton, ON Semiconductor, PixArt, Renesas, Schneider-Electric, Silver Spring Networks, SK Telecom, Smeshlink, SpinDance, Switch Science, Western Digital and WIZnet.
Today, just ahead of our ARM Tech Con 2015 conference in Santa Clara, Nov 10-12th, we are releasing mbed Device Connector, a new service for developers to connect and manage up to 100 devices and handling up to 10,000 events an hour for free. This is available to you on connector.mbed.com.
When we announced the mbed OS beta version, you would have noticed that this was a combination of OS and developer tools that are focused on offering the building blocks for IoT build on inter-operable standards, ready for next generation connectivity and with strong foundations of security. mbed OS is a new operating system build with the strong security, connectivity and manageability for large-scale IoT deployments in mind.
Today, we’ve released the first public mbed OS Technology Preview version and associated tools to offer you early access to upcoming product innovations, enabling you to test functionality and provide feedback during the development process. Our focus in this release is on laying the foundation for mbed OS development and collaboration, particularly core tools, technology and testing. We expect mbed OS developers to be able to access, build and run example projects and to explore the underlying code.
mbed OS Technology Preview brings:
With this technology preview we’re ready to start receiving contributions back from the community and we expect this list of supported targets to grow quickly. If you’d like to work on mbed OS with us, we’d encourage you to pitch in.
Alongside these released products, we are also taking some exciting early demonstrations that will be on the ARM mbed Zone (Booth #512) on the ARM Tech Con show floor. Our lead engineers will be onsite to take you through our latest products and how we are enabling developers to focus on their key value add features and ease deployment of IoT devices at scale. Demos will include mbed OS Technology Preview, mbed Device Connector, new developer tools and not to mention more than 20 mbed partners showcasing their own mbed supported products and services. If you are not attending, here is a sneak peak:
mbed Device Connector:
To illustrate how mbed Device Connector is making connectivity, manageability and building of web applications simple and easy for developers, the ARM mbed team has build a live demonstration of an example that uses the service. The live demo of the Device Connector Service will show how an mbed Enabled development board can be programmed with a simple drag and drop then connected to Device Connector in seconds. Diagnostic data is visible on the Device Connector dashboard while payload data is relayed to webapps running on 3rd party services like Heroku and Microsoft Azure. See the connected lights on the mbed Zone change at the press of a button on the development board.
Thread application demo:
See how a mesh network running the mbed OS integrated Thread stack can be managed using Device Connector. This demo example shows how Device Connector can interface to a 3rd party service like Google Calendar to toggle LED colors in the mesh. This would be similar to a scenario of walking past a meeting room in the office and not seeing anyone in there but unsure if it is booked; the ambient illumination color will indicate the booking status of the room.
Test and Quality Assurance:
Our new yotta tool isn’t only for building new mbed OS images, it also supports test automation. This demonstration shows an example of our test rack running live on the show floor loaded with many mbed enabled development boards and how this can be recreated locally for users to prove their new software using the same systems as used at ARM.
mbed App:
This demo shows off the new mbed App which offers provisioning running on a smart phone. Ever wondered how you would go about configuring a small IoT device to join the network and its intended service provider? This app simplifies the whole process by scanning for new devices using Bluetooth Low Energy and sending the network credentials in a familiar way. Using this technique allows the user interface of tomorrows to be simplified or removed completely which also has the benefit of recurring Bill Of Material costs.
mbed Reference Designs:
Typically 80% of hardware engineering time is spent on getting to the first prototype. mbed Reference Designs are aimed at a broad audience who wants to gain a time-to-market advantage, build on their own innovation and launch differentiated products quickly.
There are multiple products being shown on the mbed Reference Designs demo - first of which is the new mbed Wearable Reference Design. The mbed Reference Design serves as a good example of how to make use of typical IoT wireless technologies, sensors and output devices. The demo runs mbed OS with a live power consumption measurement and sports an eight-week long battery life running multiple applications. The mbed Reference Designs will be available as an open source platform with hardware schematics, gerbers, mechanics and software included.
For industrial businesses who have the need to connect a large number of devices, we have a demonstration of the mbed Smart City Reference Design, featuring Sub-GHz 6LoWPAN technology. This shows how a long range wireless sensor system ideally suited to smart city type applications can be built using mbed technology. As we can’t guarantee IPv6 connectivity at the show we also created a tunnelling gateway that is able to provide our demo with IPv6 over IPv4.
Don't forget to share your comments back here on how you would like to know of mbed plans and upcoming releases? If you are developing with mbed OS and have any questions, you can also engage with mbed developer community here.