Joint Development of Granite SemiCom and Icewire
•We focus on End Points, not Gateways, with an emphasis on hardware based on spread-spectrum, LoRa compatible, sub 1 GHz, transceivers from Semtech (SX1276). These transceivers can operate through walls over very long distances (up to 15km in a rural setting). They are optimized for battery-powered operation with life-times of many years (up to 10) depending on “sleep” duty cycles.
•End Points have transceiver and sensor plug-in sub-modules making customization fast and simple; or, optionally, are single board for reduced cost in higher-volume applications.
•Three Endpoints: a) STM32L486 for long-life battery-powered applications, b) Raspberry Pi for powered applications connected to the internet, and c) Beaglebone Black for industrial sensor applications requiring many I/Os and possibly COM bus. All EPs have real-time clocks. The STM32L486 and RPi EPs can use either standard LoRaWAN protocol or a proprietary protocol for applications requiring bi-directional data, greater error detection and correction, and deterministic latency; the protocols are switchable during operation depending on applications.
•Battery-powered End Point (EP) processor (STM32L486) is a fast 32-bit ARM Cortex M4 processor with floating point unit, hard-ware encryption, and many peripherals including I2C, SPI, UART, COM, A/Ds and D/As, and uSD storage; it is optimized for low-power applications. The EP's significant processing power and memory substantially minimizes requirements for data being sent over wireless link extending battery life. The MCU mother board and transceiver board do not need to be changed when extending EP's to support different sensors; this minimizes hardware support and software changes.
•Currently, the sensor module has temperature, humidity, 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis magnetometer, and 3-axis gyroscope sensors. Alternative sensor modules can be quickly developed based on customer needs.
•Demonstration systems use either a MultiTech Conduit mLinux Gateway (GW) or the Raspberry Pi 3B with a “hat” including LoRa transceiver, real-time clock, EEPROM, and configured as a Gateway rather than an End Point.
•LoRa demonstration communicates samples to the cloud (“The Things Network”) and from there to a node.js server and PostgreSQL data base that may be located anywhere in world (and accessed from anywhere in world).
•RPi GW demonstration software has a browser running on lap top communicating with server running on RPi; link to RPI is either WiFi, internet cable, or USB cable. Sensor samples from End Points are stored in non-volatile secure data base (PostgreSQL) on RPi and then concurrently accessed by server.
•Proprietary wireless link is spread spectrum with channel hopping (over 64 channels); any incorrect transmissions are resent resulting in robust links; EPs also support open-source LoRa Alliance LoRaWAN protocol. Protocols can be switched during operation, for example typically LoRaWAN for communicating to Cloud, and then switched to proprietary to allow for over-the-air firmware updates.
•Very flexible, contract-design based; we can supply modules in low volume and customize modules to meet specific customer needs. We have a PCB “Pick and Place” machine for low-volume production. Sub-contractors, customers ,or third parties take over high volume production; we help getting to high volume quickly; our maintenance support is primarily time and material; as little or as much as the customer requires. We work with customers to minimize time-to-market and share our experience and knowledge with them.
•Granite Semicom: martin@granitesemi.com, 647 479-9857
•Icewire: david.johns@icewire.ca, 647 478-9946