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| EMagazine Volume 6 Issue 2 Apr/May 2001 |
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One particular application that provided greater device control and monitoring involved coin operated laundry machines. emWare reduced servicing costs by Internet-enabling the machines. Therefore, when a washing machine needed servicing it would immediately send a service alert to a technician’s cell phone or any other handheld device. The service alert included information about the specific mechanical malfunction. |
A Personal Experience at COMDEX
In 1994 I had the fortunate experience of attending COMDEX in Las Vegas for the very first time. One of my most memorable experiences was visiting the massive Novell display where, at the time, it was touting its new Novell Embedded Systems Technology (NEST) technology. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a coffee machine that had been network-enabled. The engineer manning the display proudly showed me how he could control and monitor the machine using his desktop PC. I was struck with deep admiration, even forgetting for a moment the dubious utility of the contraption, until I asked what sort of processor he was using. My admiration quickly turned to scorn when I found out he was using a top-of-the-line 32-bit processor with all of the accoutrements. An argument ensued. I asked the engineer why he would add a 32-bit processor and all of the associated parts and costs to a consumer appliance. An 8-bit microcontroller was understandable and already inside most consumer products, therefore, adding a 32-bit processor was like flossing your teeth with a rope. Because a crowd of engineers sympathetic to my arguments had gathered, I was relieved for the sake of this engineer that there were no stones to be found inside of the COMDEX halls. Needless to say, when I returned to COMDEX in 1995, NEST was no more.
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Exploiting the Hidden Intelligence
Many appliance manufacturers today are seeing the opportunity to incorporate small inexpensive microcontrollers into their products in order to offer more diverse remote control and monitoring features for their devices. Consumer products as mundane as washing machines, microwave ovens, or even thermostats are increasingly gaining intelligence through the incorporation of small 8- and 16-bit microcontrollers. Because consumer products and appliances are so sensitive to even small increases in manufacturing costs, the addition of features as minute as a touch screen can be cost prohibitive to manufactures that intend on competing in a price sensitive market. As a result, it remains a challenge for manufacturers to fully exploit this inherent intelligence in ways that allow their products to communicate, provide status and control through rich content graphical user displays, and ultimately, connectivity to the Internet.
The Gateway Solution
This dilemma of tapping into the nascent intelligence of price sensitive consumer devices has been solved by emWare, Inc., which has developed a powerful technology that allows even the smallest of microcontrollers to communicate to the outside world, whether it be the Internet or handheld computers. Through the use of a device object server, which uses just 1 to 4 kilobytes that fits into nearly any microcontroller without the need of additional memory, any microcontroller-enabled device can be linked to the Internet with merely the addition of a connector or infrared LED. This device object server software module provides a standardized and open protocol called emNet that can communicate over a multitude of physical transports such as wireless, infrared or powerline.
emWare’s gateway strategy gives device manufactures the ability to supply low priced connection solutions. The device object server software contains just enough code to handle emWare’s protocol standard, as well as create an easy and intuitive application interface. All other advanced functions are offloaded to emWare’s gateway that provides Internet connectivity, message distribution and routing, and graphical user interfaces. emWare’s gateway software can be integrated into numerous platforms including standalone home gateways, desktop machines running Windows NT or Linux, and even handheld devices such as the Palm or Visor.
The Benefits of Gateways
A device gateway is the keystone in the embedded device networking architecture. Integrating a device gateway into everyday devices can increase the sophistication of the user interface and help reduce the overall cost of the device because:
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Devices can connect to the Internet without using complex protocols such as TCP/IP by using a lightweight networking protocol.
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Low-cost and low-power 8- and 16-bit processors can be seamlessly Internet-enabled without compromising the performance of resource-constrained devices because difficult and expensive functions can be outsourced to the gateway. Software development time is greatly reduced because an existing device networking infrastructure can be leveraged.
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Development time is further reduced because engineers can build their software to connect with a common Application Programming Interface (API).
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Products can utilize an open and standard protocol rather than expensive, proprietary device networking protocols.
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Devices can have full and rich Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) without the addition of expensive LCD displays or buttons.
The GUI is in Your Palm
The ubiquity of handheld devices such as the Palm makes them a very appealing choice as an appliance gateway. The device manufacturer merely needs to add a single infrared sensor to his appliance and drop in emWare’s device object server module into unused memory to enable the device to immediately talk to emWare’s palm-based gateway. After this integration is complete, the palm can then immediately control the appliance or receive status information through the handheld gateway’s standard GUI or a customized gateway interface that the manufacturer can develop using emWare’s software development kit (SDK). Because the user interface has been offloaded to the handheld gateway, the end consumer receives the benefits of greater control without any associated increase in cost.
One particular application that provided greater device control and monitoring involved coin operated laundry machines. emWare reduced servicing costs by Internet-enabling the machines. Therefore, when a washing machine needed servicing it would immediately send a service alert to a technician’s cell phone or any other handheld device. The service alert included information about the specific mechanical malfunction. Based upon the information included in the service alert, the technician could remotely diagnose and service the washing machine or discern if onsite maintenance was needed. If the latter was required, then once the technician was onsite he could point his handheld device with the gateway software loaded onto it at the suspect machine, run tests and retrieve diagnostic information using the GUI of the handheld, despite the machines themselves having no graphical interface.
This is just one instance of how providing a user interface on a client computer reduced servicing costs and provided remote control and monitoring functionality. The benefits of reduced manufacturing and servicing costs can be extended into any other industry or market.
Lightning Fast GUI Development
Embedded programmers can interface their software to emWare’s device networking software with lightning speed with the aid of emWare’s EMIT software development kit (SDK). Developers can write their GUI in Java or C/C++ for numerous platforms. Rich custom graphical interfaces can be created using the emWare SDK and numerous third party tools. Sophisticated user interfaces can be developed in literally minutes using emWare’s Java controls that can be dropped into Symantec’s Visual Café. MFC developers can use emWare’s C or COM libraries to rapidly write C++ or Visual Basic graphical user interfaces. For palm devices, emWare provides a library to their handheld gateway so that applications can be developed in Code Warrior or other Palm OS development tools.
Conclusions
Intelligence is finding its way into more and more everyday appliances and devices that we rely on to make smarter business decisions. Because emWare provides cost-effective technology for adding user interfaces to products, device intelligence, which often has been hidden until now, can be tapped by offloading the user interface to a client computer or gateway. This approach delivers reduced costs for device manufacturers, and, at the same time, provides greater functionality because the client graphical interface or gateway computer can be leveraged by providing a more rich graphical interface and by serving as an Internet proxy.
