IP speeds development of wireless sensor IoT applications

20th March 2015

Siobhan O'Gorman

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Linear Technology’s SmartMesh IPTM wireless sensor networking products now provide the ability to programme industrial IoT applications directly on the embedded ARM Cortex-M3, running Micrium’s µC/OS-II RTOS. Users no longer need a separate processor for sensor interface and edge data analytics, reducing the cost, footprint and power consumption of the integrated wireless sensor node.

Application development time is accelerated with a library of reference code and source code examples. Based on 6LoWPAN, SmartMesh IP mesh networking products include a pre-compiled networking stack that delivers more than 99.999% network reliability at ultralow power. This is particularly important for industrial IoT applications, where WSNs may be deployed in harsh and remote environments.

The On-Chip Software Development Kit (SDK) provided with the LTC5800-IPM (system-on-chip) and LTP5901/2-IPM (PCB modules) has been architected to ensure that developers can stably run both the pre-compiled SmartMesh IP networking stack and their applications simultaneously. To support the growing community of developers on this platform, the DustCloud Developer Community www.dustcloud.org provides an interactive forum for developers building applications on SmartMesh IP. It contains source code, software reference designs and detailed documentation for the SDK, as well as a developer discussion forum.

Applications written within the SDK may read and control peripherals such as GPIO pins, ADC inputs, UART, SPI master, I2C master and 1-wire master. The SDK may also process data such as statistical analysis and local decision-making and control, and send and receive wireless messages through the SmartMesh IP wireless mesh network.

With an average power consumption of less than 50µA in heavy usage applications, SmartMesh IP and SmartMesh WirelessHART products deliver over 10 year battery life, enabling wireless sensor nodes to be placed anywhere. Since all SmartMesh products include pre-compiled network stacks and dynamic mesh optimisation software, developers can focus on rapid industrial IoT application development.

The On-Chip SDK is now available as part of the SmartMesh IP product line.