At the cutting 'Edge'

Year 2018, just like preceding years, gave an incremental capability to the Commonly available systems like Single Board Computers (SBC), single Board Microcontrollers (SBM), Microcontrollers with immense capabilities serving beyond the needs of a hobbyists and students, though the primary aim was to cater the education of students.

Unlike earlier times, where the manufactures used to dictate the specifications and the Development environment, now the open source movement has changed the whole ecosystem. Not only the systems are cheaper, the development environment is free with no Freemium, they are adding more features every passing year. 

We have all the new system in one all box. Be it the BLE, NFC, WiFi, and other embeddable interface, a rich set of Open Sourced tools as "Free as in Beer" or even "Free as in speech". we no longer have huge costly complex VLSI, FPGA, WindRiver, RTLinux and other RTOSs.

With the constantly evolving hardware and OS, the OSs are tending to get the performance of RTOS while providing great futures. And to top it all, OSs are Damn Free. 

Single board microcontrollers are also keeping pace with Single Board Computers and designed to work in sync with Single Board Computer.

The Single Board Microcontrollers come with all known communication interfaces like I2C, SPI, USB 2, RS-232, RS-485, extensions to Modbus, Profibus, Profinet and ASI, wireless interface like BLE, WiFi, ZigBee, SMS, 3G & 4G, 6LoWPAN, Thread, NBIoT, RFID, LoRaWAN, Weightless-P. The Firmware contains all the pluggable libraries built in the IDE, which is free and extensible.

Moving beyond SBC and SBM, the Electronic Transducers and Sensors too have changed the landscape by adopting MEMS technologies and miniaturization and Calibrated sensors such that we have Chemical, Gas, Weather, RFID, 9 Degree of Freedom(9DOF) sensor, Bio-Sensors, Flex, PIR, Spectral, Ultrasound, Laser, Proximity, Current, Piezo, Geiger counter, 14 Bit ADC etc. etc., The Actuators like Electrical Solenoids, Servo motor, Hydraulic & Pneumatic, Hall effect sensors, Magnetic flux and many more. 

Then with the availability of the Messaging systems like Wireless, Wired, Internet (MQTT, AMQP, CoAP etc.), open sourced brokers, Big Data Systems, Analytical systems, the Cloud Computing space, open sourcing and access mechanisms of the systems (like Industrial systems) that were isolated and siloed, the scope widened beyond the common domain.

Wait! all these things have been there long since modern Industrial age? We have seen it during M2M, IoT and IIoT days. How does it matter now?

Well, the change is that they are available at extremely low costs, high efficiency, small form factor, less power requirements, easy integration with MicroController and best of all the sensors are widely available across world and there is enough literature in easy reach of the people who would want to know about the system.

This revolutionary shift in the Ecosystem has changed the way the Embedded systems are designed and built largely through the Open Source Revolution, high Penetration of Internet, availability of the products across the world through online stores and payment systems.

The interest Millennials have shown in adopting new things, the Makers Faire, easy Crowd Funding entities like KickStarter, GoFundMe and IndieGoGo have helped creating great products, Systems and services at a far lesser capital and small teams (usually freshers developing core products) and easy availability of resources.

It all boils down to the person with intention to develop something, without having to worry on the all impeding factors that had plagued the development.

Well, all those have been happening every year in recent times, what new?

Every CES, we have been seeing a new product being developed, much have been in products, but sometimes components too. We have seen Alexa, Google Home etc

This year too, we have new and revolutionary products that will give that extra leap.

‘For A Few Dollars More', we could boost the processing capabilities of the Single Board Systems by adding a specialist system that bring the most recent AI capabilities to a simple system like Raspberry PI.

We have Very advanced applications like TensorFlow, the most advanced AI tool, to work on a small 35 USD Single Board Computer, without need for high end computational resources from RaspberryPI. And it is available at a very low and affordable cost.

The AI library is packaged in a small low cost and parallizable chipset and that could be easily integrated with and System-on-Board like Raspberry PI or BeagleBone. This chipset is seriously professional or Industrial grade rather than being just a Hobby grade.

Well we now have an AI capable Single Board Computer; and will this be a new shift in ubiquitiness of the technology?

Wait! we had many issues with single board computing systems which had the Embedded Linux OS like SBC, IP Cameras, Routers. 

They all had weakness in security (due to retainment of default settings and weak interfaces). The Mirai bots had hijacked and spread using IoT systems as Host. We have many other malware that are just looking to a connectable Host system to launch its offensive.

In order to cover this gap, we have new Crypto Chipset that Generates Cryptographically derived ID based on Multiple device measurements, provides API for modern Crypto Algorithms for Encryption and Digital Signing.

Till now even all the OSs have been generating the Crypto seed using Pseudo Random Number Generator, but these new chipsets can generate Digital Random Number generation with very high level of Entropy, unlike the seed form the PRNG and at Real Time Clock at 20 PPM accuracy, extendible to 5 PPM. 

These chipsets, truly a pocket Dynamo, just costs a dime, while offering very advanced security.

For an adventurous person, this combination of the above systems and resulting package on the form and price front gives the person a Megamind capabilities.

Now everyone is a Company and every product becomes a company. All you need is the innovation, intent and a small work space and little bit of bootstrapped finances.

Will this affect the Goliaths of the Product industries? Not quite. Each of them would operate in their own space in many sense may not be crossing over each other. 

They could work independently or in a simple symbiotic relationship.

The corporates have developed many tools and utilities that are at Enterprise level, very robust and secure. They are heavy, costly and require some minimum level of hardware capabilities. The Embedded ecosystem is not a ground for those products.

However, the big enterprises like IBM, Cisco, Google, Samsung etc. have been watching the ecosystem closely and pruning and orienting their flagship enterprise products like Informix DB, Bluemix, TensorFlow etc. to work with ARM based Embedded systems at price point that is few Dollars.

This is great support and synergy from big corporates that changes the equation.

It isn't just the benefit to the ecosystem, but as the numbers of adopters are huge, these lower costing adds up. Another factor is the big name for the corporates in the hobbyist circles as there are many open source alternatives.

The Embedded Space with System-on-Board, Microcontroller-on-Board and all associated electronics have gained so much power that its isn’t just the Edge or the Fog anymore, but self-sustained independent, intelligent and secure system, that has immense capabilities and serve as an intelligent system capable of interacting with ambient systems, Internet and making decisions intelligently. 

My hypothetical Hobby Agri-Bot would have Eyes, Vocals, Ears and would visit fields on its own, it can visually see the objects on its way to fields, view and study plants and its conditions, take decisions on micro irrigation after taking into account the current status and weather forecast, micro-nutriate, de-weed, selectively use pesticide and come back and report to the Analytical server about the status and plan next day. AND AT AFFORDABLE COST TO FARMER!

Now, we could say ‘Don’t underestimate the power of Edge’