ways to participate in the Io T
movement. A good example is
RadioShack’s forthcoming move to
supply kits that help consumers do
the Io T thing. They want to showcase
and sell products that will turn things
off and on remotely with simple
equipment. Some of these products
should be in a few of the stores now.
As for semiconductors, Texas
Instruments recently introduced its
new SimpleLink Wi-Fi CC3100 and
CC3200 platform for Io T applications
(refer to Figure 3). This new Internet-on-a-chip™family allows you to easily
add embedded Wi-Fi and Internet to
a wide range of home, industrial, and
consumer electronics. A key feature is
very low power consumption for
battery operated devices. The
CC3100 provides the flexibility to use
any microcontroller (MCU). The
CC3200 has an integrated
programmable ARM® Cortex®-M4
MCU that allows you to add your
own code. These products offer the
ability to simply and securely connect
your devices to Wi-Fi using a phone
or tablet app or a web browser with
multiple provisioning options. TI
offers the chips in QFN packages, as
well as a wide range of evaluation
boards (Figure 4), development kits,
and support software. NV
70 November 2014
; FIGURE 4. Texas Instruments’
LaunchPad evaluation board for
the SimpleLink CC3100/CC3200.
