November 17
16
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evICe
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evelopment
Tackling the challenges of IoT
device development
By Amir Sherman,
Arrow Electronics
This article describes
the ARIS (Arrow Renesas IoT Synergy)
development platforms, which
leverage the Renesas Synergy
framework and address the specific
needs of IoT device developers
in ways that many established
conventional embedded
development platforms
cannot do.
n
As more and more consumers and busi-
ness teams encounter the concept of IoT and
understand the opportunities it brings, the
desire to harness its potential in millions of
individual scenarios will be irresistible. The
possibilities are limitless: maintaining an
installed base of printer/copiers, managing a
fleet of delivery vehicles, keeping control of
industrial processes, monitoring the environ-
ment to improve air or water quality, accel-
erating medical research, cutting the costs of
healthcare, improving comfort in the home,
capping domestic utility consumption. The list
doesn’t just go on – it will never be complete.
IoT device developers need flexible hardware/
software platforms to help create the smart,
connected “things” that will handle sensing
and local processing at the extremities of
the IoT, and share data with the Cloud either
directly or via upstream gateway devices. Suit-
able platforms must support the fundamen-
tal values of IoT devices, including low power
consumption, high energy efficiency, and ver-
satile communication options encompassing
industry-standard protocols like Wi-Fi, Blue-
tooth Low Energy (BLE), NFC, Thread, and
ZigBee. Arrow is responding to this emerg-
ing need through its growing family of ARIS
(Arrow Renesas IoT Synergy) development
platforms. Leveraging the Renesas Synergy
framework, the ARIS concept addresses spe-
cific needs of IoT-device developers in ways
that many established conventional embed-
ded development platforms cannot do.
The Renesas Synergy platform is well suited
to IoT development, supporting scalability
and compatibility and enabling developers to
reuse proven code to save development time.
In future, the platform will be extended; new
technologies will be employed, and new fea-
tures will be permanently implemented, to
launch embedded design applications more
quickly and efficiently on the market.
It is based on the Eclipse Open Source inte-
grated development environment (IDE) and
hence offers a high level of flexibility as well
as easy access and familiar user controls. The
complete Renesas Synergy platform, which
includes the Renesas Eclipse Embedded Stu-
dio (e² Studio) IDE as well as extensive ready-
to-use software and application examples that
can be easily adapted to the ARIS Board, can
be downloaded and installed free of charge
from the Renesas Synergy Gallery.
ARIS boards are developed in conjunction
with Italian embedded specialist Reloc, which
is strongly focused on IoT development, and
has not only perfected the ARIS hardware
but has also handled driver implementation
and generated middleware for managing
the peripheral devices to enable the boards
to run out-of-the-box. The first ARIS IoT
board, introduced in 2016, brought together
the efficient and high-performing Rene-
sas S7 microcontroller, featuring a 240MHz
ARM Cortex-M4 core, with a rich set of
sensors, and support for Wi-Fi, BLE 4.1/4.2
and NFC wireless communications includ-
ing fully integrated software stacks. Ethernet
and USB ports are also provided, while indi-
cator LEDs, pushbuttons, a TFT-LCD con-
troller, and a resistive touchscreen controller
give the option to implement a sophisticated
user interface. Ready-to-use on-board sen-
sors include a three-axis acceleration sensor
and two-axis gyroscope, a thermal sensor,
and a humidity sensor. Device security and
future-proofing are assured through features
such as the integrated crypto bootloader and
support for over-the-air (OTA) firmware
updates.
Now, to help meet the specific challenges fac-
ing designers of small resource-constrained
devices like smart sensors at the extreme
edges of the IoT, Arrow has extended the
ARIS concept by introducing the ARIS EDGE
platform. ARIS EDGE is based on the ultra-
low-power Renesas S1 32MHz ARM Cor-
tex-M0+ microcontroller with analog and
digital peripherals. Key features of the board
are illustrated in figure 1.
