These days the number of applications de-
veloped to connect a device with other devices
(smart objects) or to store the data they meas-
ured in the cloud is growing exponentially.
Embedded applications often have limited re-
sources regarding memory, CPU speed and
power supply. Therefore, they are developed
with respect to these limitations. The connection
of smart objects can be realized using different
communication channels, depending on what
fits best for the area of application. To allow
product development engineers to focus on
their application needs, it greatly helps not to
have to struggle with writing low-level functions
for peripheral drivers or communication pro-
tocol stacks. Tools which make it easier to de-
velop IoT enabled devices help the embedded
software developer to shorten the product de-
velopment time and thus the market launch of
the product. Including a wide range of periph-
eral drivers and communication services, the
Tasking Software Platform Builder can aid in
this software development process.
The idea for the Software Platform came in
late 2012 when developers asked why developing
embedded software takes so much more time
than developing a similar desktop application.
This seems a legitimate question. Simply show-
ing „Hello World!“ on the LCD display of an
embedded evaluation board requires a surpris-
ingly large amount of effort. Driving the LCD,
converting characters to pixels, keeping track
of the cursor, etc – nothing seems to work au-
tomatically. And even if convenient libraries
are available, for example for TCP/IP commu-
nication, then there is still a lot of work to be
done to make the new code fit into the applica-
tion and to configure it correctly. This cycle
often repeats itself for every new project.
So, there had to be a better solution. This chal-
lenge motivated us to come up with what we
now call the Software Platform. The basic con-
cept is quite simple. Put generic software com-
ponents in a repository and provide them
with a uniform interface. Assure the software
components can be configured in a standard-
ized manner. This way, one does not have to
know how each component is built up inter-
nally. Because of the unified interface, compo-
nents can easily work together. A graphical en-
vironment presents the software components
as coloured blocks. Required blocks are picked
from the repository to create a starting point
for the application. Components can be con-
figured to match the application requirements
and relationships between selected components
can be specified.
The Software Platform is all about integration
of content. It is not the content itself that
makes it so special. Much of the current
content comes from third parties and can be
downloaded freely from the Internet. But cre-
ating an application with a bunch of collected
software components is not so easy. That is
where the Software Platform is helpful. It pro-
vides the content in a way they can work
smoothly together. All components can be
configured in a similar way. And that combi-
nation creates the possibility to build reliable
applications rapidly.
The Software Platform Builder can be used
for the creation of ARM Cortex-M CPU based
applications. The Software Platform itself in-
cludes various software modules which are
added to the application code if needed, like
Smart design of IoT applications
using Software Platform Builder
I
NTERNET
-
OF
-T
HINGS
By Harrold Spier and Ulrich Kloidt,
Altium
Nowadays billions
of people worldwide are
connected to the internet
with their PCs or mobile
devices. One of the upcoming
challenges is to extend this
computer network to a
network of devices which can
communicate with human
beings, or other devices
without human interaction.
Figure 1. Device stacks
June 2014
32
Figure 2. Add software services and device
stacks
