Simplifying IoT design with development kits

Development kits for the internet of things have become a mainstay in the IoT developer’s toolkit, providing everything they need for accelerating their prototypes. This includes all of the hardware and software needed to get started, such as microcontrollers (MCUs), sensors, actuators and radios.

Many also offer cloud connectivity, which stores the data after it is processed on the edge to enable faster operation on the IoT devices. They also provide wireless and cellular connectivity to reduce design complexity.

The usage of IoT development kits continues to grow across industries from industrial and healthcare to consumer electronics and retail. The consumer electronics sector is the biggest demand driver for dev kits in North America, which holds about a 36% market share in 2022, according to Future Market Insights Inc. Europe follows with a 24% market share.

The IoT development kit market is expected to grow from $6.2 billion in 2022 to $30.7 billion in 2032, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.3% over the forecast period of 2022–2032, according to the market research firm. The CAGR is up from 14.2% over the previous forecast period of 2017–2021.

To meet the rising demand, IoT development kits come in a variety of flavors. Here are several samples that show a cross-section of those kits, from hardware to software and cellular to wireless.

Let’s start with Microchip Technology Inc.’s AVR-IoT cellular mini development board for developers who are connecting IoT devices to an available 5G network. The small-form–factor MCU board, based on the AVR128DB48 8-bit MCU, connects to 5G LTE-M narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) networks. It offers a low-power–consumption solution that is easy to deploy.

The development board provides a platform to start building sensor and actuator nodes on 5G NB-IoT networks, particularly for mobile or remote devices with limited availability of long-range (LoRa) networks or other low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) solutions.

The dev board comes pre-configured to send data from on-board light and temperature sensors to the cloud, which is viewable using Microchip’s sandbox portal. The sandbox portal provides the ability to track and monitor devices in real time from a remote location. This functionality covers the core requirements of many applications, including agriculture, industrial and energy, transportation of goods, alarm systems, building automation and remote monitoring, Microchip said.

Also included is Sequans’s Monarch 2 GM02S single-chip radio equipped with 5G LTE-M and NB-IoT for applications like sensors, wearables and other low-data and low-power devices. Microchip also partnered with Truphone to provide the SIM card for cellular service that offers reliable coverage worldwide.

The board also includes security protection with Microchip’s ATECC608 CryptoAuthentication device. The ATECC608 device can be configured to most major cloud service providers through Microchip’s IoT Provisioning Tool.

Fitting into the Adafruit Feather form factor, it is a good solution for makers and hobbyists. It also features a Qwiic/Stemma I²C connector for extending functionality for a path to production. The board is also Arduino-compatible and is supported by Microchip’s GitHub Library, which provides lot of functionality, such as HTTPS, MQ Telemetry Transport (MQTT) and low power.

Also targeting cellular-to-cloud applications, Renesas Electronics Corp. offers certified cellular-to-cloud IoT development kits that simplify solution prototyping. They are comprised of Renesas’s MCUs, sensors, analog devices and power ICs with a Cat-M1 cellular module for end-to-end cloud connectivity. These dev kits are powered by the company’s RA and RX MCUs.

Two of the most recent cloud development kits are the CK-RA6M5 and CK-RX65N for the 32-bit RA and RX MCUs. The kits are the first to support the RA6M5 and RX65N MCU groups in a unified development platform, Renesas said. They provide identical hardware and software features and a common dashboard user interface to access real-time cloud data.

These kits are also the first with Renesas’s RYZ014A Cat-M1 module, a certified LTE cellular module that enables a secure wireless connection between MCUs and cloud services without a gateway.

In addition to the Cat-M1 Pmod module and MCU, the kits include multiple sensors, hardware-based security and a software stack, eliminating the need for developers to design their own circuitry and software stack for their IoT cloud products and solutions. It also provides an option to use Ethernet if a Cat-M1 network is not available.

Both kits run on Amazon Web Services (AWS) FreeRTOS for the CK-RA6M5 using Renesas’s Flexible Software Package (FSP) and CK-RX65N using the RX Driver Package (RDP). Once connected to the AWS IoT Core, the kits have access to many cloud and IoT services for data analytics and IoT device management. These kits are offered as part of the company’s Quick-Connect IoT Platform that offers standard hardware and software building blocks.

Designing for the Matter standard, which is a unifier of smart-home devices, is a growing trend, and companies are offering dev kits to help kickstart designs. Renesas, for example, recently introduced its first development kit that supports the Matter protocol. The company plans to offer Matter support on all future Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy and IEEE 802.15.4 (Thread) products.

The first Renesas product to support the Matter protocol is the DA16200 ultra-low–power Wi-Fi modules development kit. Renesas claims the DA16200 system-on-chip (SoC) is the industry’s first Wi-Fi SoC to deliver year-plus battery life for always-connected Wi-Fi IoT devices. The DA16200 also supports Quick-Connect IoT through the ultra-low–power Wi-Fi Pmod board. It is integrated into Renesas’s E2Studio for system development using the Renesas MCU, connectivity and other devices.

Late last year, Qorvo Inc. introduced its Matter-compatible development kits to create smart-home IoT solutions that meet the industry standard.

The Matter standard, recently released by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), provides a unified way to connect compatible devices and systems to each other that are fully interoperable, open and secure, Qorvo said. Matter’s security features, including device attestation, are integrated into the Qorvo dev kits, which are pre-certified for Matter.

These dev kits for gateway and connected devices simplify IoT design by combining advanced hardware and software solutions. They also integrate Qorvo’s ConcurrentConnect Multi Radio technology, enabling simultaneous operation of Bluetooth LE, Matter and Zigbee.

Qorvo has several Matter-compatible devices in production, including the QPG7015M, claimed as the industry’s first transceiver featuring real-time concurrency, and the QPG6105, a smart-home communications controller that offers multi-standard performance with a single radio.

The dev kit for the QPG6105, as an example, helps product developers bring Matter products to market faster. The QPG6105 is a multi-standard smart-home communications controller supporting Zigbee, Thread, Bluetooth LE, Bluetooth Mesh and Matter connectivity. Qorvo software solutions for Matter are available on the company’s GitHub site.

The development board combines the QPG6105, peripherals, LEDs, buttons, power supply and program/debug interface for prototyping applications and validating performance of the QPG6105. It is comprised of the QPG6105 plug-on radio board with 1-MB flash, 128-kB RAM and a 2 × 2.4-GHz PCB antenna as well as a carrier board, which is used for application development and debugging of the radio board.

Texas Instruments Inc. also offers Matter-enabled kits. The company has launched two wireless MCU software development kits, featuring its Wi-Fi and Thread SimpleLink wireless MCUs. Designed to streamline the adoption of the Matter protocol in IoT applications, the MCU software kits enable engineers to develop secure ultra-low battery-powered smart-home and industrial-automation applications that connect devices across proprietary ecosystems.

Engineers can use the new software kits and SimpleLink wireless MCUs like the CC3235SF and CC2652R7 to reduce standby power consumption by up to 70% in Thread applications compared with competing devices, extending battery life up to four years while using five-second polling, TI said.

For long-range connectivity applications, the integrated power amplifier in these wireless MCUs consumes 101 mA at 20 dBm, which TI said is the industry’s lowest power consumption, delivering a further reduction in battery power consumption at higher output power.

For Matter-enabled Wi-Fi applications, TI’s dual-band, multilayer security approach protects device data and provides protection against cyberthreats without the need for additional external components. The LaunchPad development kits for Thread LP-CC2652R7 and Wi-Fi LP-CC3235SF are available now.

For a multi-purpose IoT dev kit that covers LTE-M, NB-IoT, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GNSS, u-blox has launched an IoT explorer kit that delivers a prototyping platform that helps designers test and validate their IoT solutions. The u-blox XPLR-IOT-1 IoT explorer kit integrates technologies and services into a prototyping platform with a variety of sensors and interfaces as well as cloud connectivity. It supports LTE-M, NB-IoT, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GNSS.

Called an all-in-one kit, the XPLR-IOT-1 provides everything needed to prototype low-power IoT use cases like logistics container trackers, industrial automation, sensor-to-cloud applications and fleet-management solutions.

The board’s u-blox NORA-B106 Bluetooth LE 5.2 radio module performs double duty as its main MCU, hosting the application software and controlling the other modules. The NORA-B106’s Arm Cortex M33 MCU is solely used to run the application software. It clocks at 128 MHz, with 1 MB of embedded flash, 512 kB of RAM and 8 MB of external flash memory. The module also provides integrated antennas for all featured technologies, a USB interface, USB charging, a Sparkfun Qwiic I²C connector and a debug interface.

The other modules include the SARA-R510S for LTE-M and NB-IoT cellular connectivity with built-in cloud security and the NINA-W156 for 2.4-GHz Wi-Fi. In addition, the board includes an ultra-low–power MAX-M10S positioning module that is capable of concurrently tracking four GNSS constellations.

The kit also provides a variety of sensors commonly used in IoT applications, including accelerometers, gyroscopes and a magnetometer, as well as temperature, humidity, pressure and ambient light sensors. Other features include a power-on switch, LEDs and user buttons for ease of use. It also includes u-blox’s CloudLocate cloud service and CellLocate mobile-network–based location service.

Reducing the expertise needed for hardware, software and code development, developers can use code from u-blox’s ubxlib GitHub repository, a library of software examples for key use cases. These solutions include wireless sensor networks, indoor/outdoor tracking and industrial or smart-building gateways.

If you need help prototyping artificial-intelligence applications at the edge, Synaptics Inc. offers an Edge AI evaluation kit (EVK) that targets AI-vision and sensor-fusion applications for the IoT. Based on Synaptics’ low-power Katana SoC platform, the Katana Edge AI EVK combines vision-, motion- and sound-detection hardware and software with wired and wireless connectivity.

At the heart of the AI EVK is the low-power Katana SoC with its advanced neural network engine, in combination with multiple sensors (for image, audio, voice and motion), software and Wi-Fi + Bluetooth LE wireless connectivity. The small form factor is packed with features like vision and audio processing on-chip, with a dedicated neural network accelerator, without requiring companion motherboards to develop low-power AI-vision solutions.

Target markets include smart homes, smart buildings, smart cities, industrial vision and monitoring. Applications include people detection and counting, object and pattern recognition, keyword spotting, sound-event detection, fall detection, asset or inventory tracking, digital meter reading and environmental sensing.

The EVK includes accessories for people-detection application development (such as mounting bar and clips for overhead camera), cabling, batteries and enclosure, along with the instructions and software. In addition, there are associated tools to enable optimization of the AI algorithms.

The EVK is also available within Edge Impulse’s web-based Studio environment. Machine-learning models developed in Studio using the Katana EVK will be automatically optimized for the Katana SoC platform. The company said this will allow for fast deployment of inference capability for voice, vision, sound and other sensor inputs on low-power edge AI IoT devices.