IoT. Companies are designing it. Companies acquire other companies making it, and it is going to be a market of Billions of dollars. But no company has it. What is it? This thing called the Internet of Things.

For a couple of years we’ve been hearing about how the Internet of Things (IoT) or Internet of Everything (IoE) is coming and that is going to revolutionize everything. Funny thing, I worked on it long before it was even called IoT, and I can tell you much hasn’t changed. These are grand ideas that require a fundamental revolution in our technology but being built on the back of basically the same technology we’ve been using for 10+ years.

As the precursor to the IoT, the Department of Defense funded initiatives to develop smart sensor networks that would cost nothing and monitor everything. Applications were clearly military in nature to monitor soldiers and the battlefield. The National Science Foundation also provided funding for some of the more civilian applications such as mine monitoring, structural health monitoring, medical monitoring, etc. These Wireless Sensor Networks were developed by many universities worldwide. A few startups even started commercializing some platforms and either died or evolved into developing IP based products. I myself developed a few Wireless Sensor nodes. These “Motes” as they came to be called had a few issues:

1) Power Consumption – A useful platform is one that is operating and sending data, but battery technology has progressed very little compared to semiconductors. This forces these platforms have to sleep for long periods of time in order to last long enough. Wireless transmissions are very expensive in terms of power and require complex algorithms.

2) Cost – The idea was to deploy millions of low cost sensors that wouldn’t need to be retrieved. Needless to say, using Commercial components made reasonable systems rather expensive. A few custom ICs made that integrated complete WSN functionality were interesting, but never really made it out there.

3) Limited Functionality – The limitation in size and power resulted in limited applications. Video and audio require significant processing that drains batteries easily.

The biggest question back then, and now, is what to monitor. If sensor nodes were free and last forever, then we would deploy them everywhere. But they are now and so we must strategically  fit them where they would provide the most value. Today you hear the internet of everything. Do I really need to monitor my chair? Does it really provide me with any value?

The answer to this question is basically that WSNs and IoT will move at the pace where they would provide value and can be “absorbed” by customers. As an example, WSN technology made it to some data-centers where they could save money by monitoring power consumption and improving power efficiency. Clearly a good value proposition where you could show quick savings. Today you see Internet enabled outlets, Smartphone enabled  key locks, etc.

Another issue back then was the diverging technologies used for wireless connectivity. 2.4GHz, 900MHz, Wi-Fi, Sonar, and many other low level layers were used, making compatibility impossible. Some of this hasn’t changed.

In many ways, IoT is very much the Gold rushes of old, with the usual results:
1) Most will try and fail to make a dent in the market, either to be acquired or simply disappear
2) Some will figure out good and sensible applications and solutions that people actually want.
3) Everyone wants a piece of the action and is supposedly moving into position to extract all they can, but few actually understand what it will be.

#2 is critical. While talking with people developing IoT solutions I often ask what are their customers going to monitor. “Everything” is one of the most common answers I get.
Don’t develop a generic system that does everything. Start attacking problems that IoT technologies can solve. People will pay for this value.

One company that seems to be attacking the issue the right way is Nest Labs, the developer of the Nest Thermostat and Smoke Alarm. Tony Faddell, who worked at Apple designing the iPod and left to start Nest hates the IoT monkier. He’s right. He also says that companies should focus on solving actual problems. The Nest Thermostat and Smoke alarm aren’t billed as IoT devices, but just devices that help improve household items.

Everywhere I go “innovation” seems to be all present and omniscient. Visit Linkedin for any amount of time and you will see most every company touts how innovative it is in its business sector. I’ve started to get the feeling that “innovation” is the new bandwagon, that if you don’t call yourself innovative then no one should look at you. Bullshit.

First let’s get an idea of what is the official definition of innovation as given by the Merriam Webster dictionary:

The strict definition doesn’t give us the complete feeling. My experience tells me that innovation is introducing new ideas, devices or methods that are different and create value. Usually we call innovation things that make our lives better and improve old processes. In this sense, Apple could be one of the most easily recognizable companies introducing innovation. The iPhone revolutionized phones primarily due to ease of use, tight integration, responsiveness, and a few other factors. Many of the technologies already existed, but they made it better. This in turn created value.

But, for a company to be innovative, it must constantly introduce new forms of doing things. Innovation is in a sense a spectrum, and many abuse it by calling what they’re doing innovation.

We can’t all be innovative. The reality is that most companies fall on a bell curve or a similar distribution. Some companies fall behind and stick to their old methods for decades, rarely improving or innovating. Most companies introduce some innovation,but very few introduce constant innovation and change the rules. My feeling is that it comes to getting too comfortable with what you’re doing to break everything again. After all, most people were probably very happy with their horse and buggy until ford showed up. A car was innovation, small incremental improvements are minimally innovative.

Innovation feels like it is the new bandwagon, years after the Six Sigma craze swept companies (which is the antithesis of innovation, basically perfecting doing the same thing the same way again and again), it looks like companies are getting on the Innovation bandwagon to try and look good.

Innovation doesn’t come from simply saying “we’re innovative”.  You can readily tell when something is innovative and when something isn’t. So please, use this term with care, and practice it rather than . As always, innovation for the sake of innovation is pointless. Simply changing things and introducing new devices without any value doesn’t count as innovation.

In I’m the PC: Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated I talked about the industry calling the PC dead and what I considered to be the reality of the state of the PC industry. Fast forawrd to 2014 and it seems that the trend I discussed is accelerating. The PC isn’t dead, but the growth is. A few days ago, Sony practically exited the PC market. Even though I have never owned a Sony PC or laptop, I felt sad realizing that things will never go back. The industry has changed and its affecting vendors and OEMs.

Intel some time ago realized that the industry had changed too quickly and stopped a fab that was under construction, deciding on retrofitting existing fabs instead, but just as I predicted, the demand for workstations for professionals seemed to help the situation.

In large part this is unavoidable. The PC industry was running for 20+ years on the same path. At some point, the gig is up, and the iPad was the beginning of the end . I realize this means layoffs, and that is tough. We can only hope that the market can absorb those who have been laid off and use their skills in the next phase.

Many people and companies are now jumping on the Internet of Things and Wearable devices wagon. Almost every major technology company is now working on a wearable device, a watch, or a fitness device. I’m not convinced. I do believe that wearable technologies will be important, but they’re not yet selling in any compelling way. For something like that to sell well, a customer has to see the value in it immediately. The customer has to basically say “If I don’t buy that I’m a sucker, because it solves a ton of problems, its cool and pretty affordable.” If the customer takes too long to decide, you know that the product has issues. I’ve yet to see a device get to this level. The problem is, some devices excel in one area, but have a small ecosystem. If Apple taught us anything is that you want to have a large eco-system that enables a device to have extended value across a variety of platforms.  Google has realized it too and its Google services carry across multiple devices.

Finally, I want to discuss Google’s acquisition of Nest, clearly a foray into the Internet of Things. Nest has a recognizable name, a good brand that people consider high up, in no small part due to Tony Fadell. I’ve worked close to the Nest and can tell you its a beautiful device with a lot of thought and effort to make it great. It’s no wonder Google wanted to get its foot in the door this way. But, as news of Google acquiring Nest surfaced, many became concerned about their privacy. A thermostat capable of telling when occupants are present can provide an awful lot of information that can be useful in advertising, Google’s main revenue source. I’ve heard that some companies have canceled partnerships because of these concerns. Whether their concerns are justified is hard to tell. It would really depend on what Google would want to do with Nest. At the moment, it remains independent, but Google purchased it help its revenue and at some point will use for this purpose.

As a very lucky embedded systems engineer I get to design and build many many PCBs. And when I say many, I mean it. Oftentimes, I can have 2-3 different designs going at the same time. Some designs are simple: a microcontroller with a few components. Others are complex boards with impedance matching, length matching, and BGAs worth upwards of $5k. However, no matter how much each board is worth, the second a new design comes from assembly (If I don’t do it myself) it gets a special treatment. It feels a bit like a police officer interrogating a subject – I’m suspicious of the whole board and until it gives me the truth (and runs as expected) I assume it will lie to me and cause all kind of issues.

Most of the designs work wonderfully. When you take the time, dive into the details to ensure the board will be good on arrival, you’re stacking up the odds in your favor. The board is working before it even leaves for manufacturing (as Sun Tzu said, a war is won before a single battle begins). But, in engineering, like in many other fields, things happen. That power supply specification that you though was right isn’t anymore because the customer asked for changes and there was little time to investigate the ramifications. A manufacturer failed to give you the right spec. The assembly house placed a diode with the reverse orientation. All of these things happen.  At best, a few component changes
resolve the issues and everyone is happy. Bluewires on a board are not desirable, but you live with them. The worst, however, is when issues damage the board. You’re left to figure out what went wrong and when you finally do, there’s nothing to be done but change components or build a whole new board (the former brings a whole host of issues). This should never happen for a simple reason – it is mostly an avoidable occurrence.

The most common issue that can destroy a board is power supply problems. The simple reason is that power supply typically produce large currents, large currents create heat, and heat destroys components and PCB (the PCB traces can act as wonderful fuses). Clamping diodes in ICs can handle a signal that is over-voltage (withing a reasonable range), but a power supply will keep trying to pump more and more current until the desired voltage is reached (not likely when a short). This has to go somewhere and will get dissipated by components that are not designed for it. Given this, there is a simple regimen that every board I get goes through:

1. All component are visually checked to esnure there’s nothing strange going on. This means checking polarized components for the right orientation, ICs with pin 1 correctly aligned. You’ll be suprised the stuff that Automated Optical Inspection (AOI) doesn’t catch. Checks for any obvious shorts, missing components, etc.
2. You can’t power the device. Note that the term short is very subjective. Each multimeter has a different limit for what it considers short and may still emit a beep. Anything below 1 ohm is typically a hard short (metal to metal). Never underestimate this check. This is probably the most overlooked but useful test. If all is OK your board might not work, but it will likely not blow up.
3. If possible by design, all on-board power supplies are disconnected from the circuit they power. While disconnected from the load, they’re powered isolated and checked to ensure they’re voltage is correct. Imagine if a mistake is made on the feedback network of a regulator, and 5V is supplied to a 3.3V part? Its happened, but checking the voltage without it being applied to the actual circuit can catch this.
4. For powering the on-board power supplies, use a current limited power supply with the limit set to a reasonable figure. You might hit the constant current limit on it, but this will result in a low voltage which is unlike

These simple checks ahead of time have saved me a lot of headaches. Once the board is blown there’s typically little time to build new boards, test them, etc. I hope they’ll help you in your next project as well. When you’re confident the basic design is working, you can lighten up on the checks (assuming you trust assembly).

I recently had to switch hosting to a new service provider. The transition was quite smooth and I was up and running in about an hour. E-mail server came up nicely but I noticed something interesting; Outlook 2013 took quite a while to Send/Receive messages. I was used to pretty quick Send/Receive given small < 100kB e-mails.

Since I was quite happy with everything else from the new hosting company, I was inclined to leave the matter alone. It was a bit annoying and I could notice that e-mails would take a while to arrive compared to my phone. I broke down and contacted the web hosting company, but they could find nothing wrong.

Then a few days ago I checked my bandwidth (Can’t hurt to make sure you know how things are going) and I was shocked to see over 9GB of IMAP transfer. Considering the largest mailbox is about 500MB, this would mean a complete download of the account 18 times. In one day over 1.2GB were transferred. This couldn’t be happening. IMAP is configured to download only new messages, and most of these are a few MB at most.

A quick check online revealed that Outlook 2013 (and perhaps other versions) has issues handling IMAP. Seriously? One of the most common internet protocols and Outlook has problems supporting it? I already had enough putting up with the new Outlook 2013 interface. To be honest I don’t like it at all. Large icons make reading e-mails more difficult.

The options aren’t good. I tried to change the e-mail server from dovecot to another, no luck. No updates from Microsoft seem to fix the issue. Should I just take the fall and keep the bandwidth saturating? Absolutely not! Every minute Outlook is open is a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. Using a computer with a more bandwidth limited connection would prove disastrous.

So what should you do? I went back to Mozilla Thunderbird. Easy interface, good searching, plenty of space for messages.

I’ve been reading “Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture” by David Kushner after a recommendation from Jeff Atwood.
This is the first e-book I read on a tablet (iPad to be specific) and I have to say
I’m hooked, both for the experience of reading on the tablet, and for the book itself.

As an engineer, it was hard for me to accept using a tablet. All my tools naturally run on a laptop or desktop. Schematic design, layout, compilers, etc. After all these years I broke down, got a tablet and now I see what all the fuss was about. Of course I had worked in some form or fashion in the same group that worked on parts of the original Amazon Kindle tablet and a few others tablets. I knew what Steve Jobs was talking about but I didn’t realize it would great it can be to hold a thin device that you can use to read any book. I was worried about the battery life. After designing a few devices with LCDs while keeping low power I was a bit paranoid, but the iPad stayed true and kept going for hours.

Enough of praising the tablet. I said I was hooked on the book and honestly I think any entrepreneur should read it. But it doesn’t have anything to do with me you say? Nonsense. The lessons of the book carry over any enterprise.First lets start by stating these are the guys the worked on so many of the most popular games in the 90’s.
I fondly remember logging into the BBS and getting Commander Keen, playing it for hours. Its amazing now, after all these years to read about the guys behind it. As a kid, you always imagine that these games were built by a mega corporation with all kind of stuff. I remember the Apogee logo. I remember it represented fun, and the guys working on the games had lot of fun working on them.

John Carmack and John Romero are, as the book describes, masters. But they’re not just masters of doom. They’re masters of their craft and business. Why did they succeed where others failed? I chalk it up to several factors which are key
in almost any business.

The first is their ability to create games that pushed the envelope of the technology at the time. They were to games what Apple is to tablets. John Carmack was a master of coding and graphics. He was able to push the limits of every system he worked on,
developing techniques that were non-existant. These techniques allows the two Johns to provide realism and better playing that players were carving. There are plenty of companies that improve something.However, the technical improvements channeled directly to results that gamers could see and feel, and this makes all the difference. Better performance and better graphics made gamers feel as part of the game. So, technical improvements channeled directly into differentiating the product.

Both Johns had an obsession with playing creating games, and had done so for very long before starting id Software. This obsession enabled them to understand their target audience. They were gamers and they made the games they wanted to play. They were also programmers and understood what it would take to build them. I don’t think they ever sat down to do market research. They were the market, and When you know the market, you know what customers want. If you deliver it better than anyone, success is likely to follow.

One very important detail in the book is John Carmack’s refusal to patent his technological advances to improve performance and graphics. Sounds crazy right?
The techniques he developed were very valuable to him and would be to others. But, his hacker ethic didn’t allow him to claim as his the work inherited from others.
I find this is a good slap in the face to patent trolls everywhere and those who keep patenting rediculous things. Why? Quite simply because despite not patenting anything, the company succeeded tremedously due to their continuous innovation. They didn’t need the patents. They were obviously first to market with the techniques, but they kept innovating every game. That was the key. Plenty of companies are granted patents for trivial (and very obvious) things, just trying to keep a fake legal edge on competitors and keeping the real innovation at bay.
They are missing the bigger picture. Innovate or die (as told in the book Ninja Innovation by Gary Shapiro) is really the only way to do it. But its hard and requires continuous improvement. A patent is no panacea for a company sitting on its behind while someone out there is finding a better way to do things.
A patent isn’t a magical charm. I am not against patents, but recent media stories show just how crazy the system has become.

On the other hand, John Romero was multifaceted, doing graphics and the level editors and other tools used to create the game. The ability of the two to naturally divide the tasks allowed each of them could excel at their own tasks and collaborate when necessary. They agreed on the larger picture and left the details to each other.

As Jeff Atwood mentions, the computer today is so powerful and the resources of information so plentiful, that it isn’t necessary to be like John Carmack and invent everything. But, you still have to innovate, someway, somehow.

Its been a while since I’ve posted. Unfortunately, my schedule has become increasingly busy and leaves little time to manage the site.
The MSP430 tutorial continues being one of the most popular on the web. I am aware that it needs more information and editing. As with everything, there is so much to do. I hope it will continue providing the basics for your MSP430 needs.

In the last year I started my own consulting company, Argenox Technologies. I definitively couldn’t have done it with others with assistance from others around me and its quite a learning experience. More than anything I’ve seen the pervasive nature of embedded systems and the growing need for expertise in using them. I dislike shameless plugs so I will be straightforward. Many will take the tutorial and build from that. That’s exactly what I always wanted. However, others especially in commercial companies will need someone with the experience to help them build a product and know that it will work. If that is the case, please contact us at www.argenox.com. We’ll be happy to discuss how we can help you with your embedded systems. We work on a variety of systems, not just MSP430, and also wireless for low power transceivers, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.

The Argenox Technologies website will host the latest MSP430 which I am working on updating with much needed information.

Best Wishes,
Gustavo