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Kickstarter Bets On 'Wired' Arduino-Compatible IoT Platform
L-One-L-One writes: Most IoT home projects today are based on Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and friends. But this is not always the ideal solution: you end up swapping batteries frequently, which becomes annoying quite quickly. You also have to deal with signal strength issues and interferences. To address this problem, a new Kickstarter campaign called NoCAN is proposing an Arduino-compatible internet-of-things platform based on wired connections that combine networking and power in one cable. The platform uses a set of cheap Arduino-compatible nodes controlled through a Raspberry Pi. The network uses CAN-bus and offers a publish/subscribe mechanism like MQTT and over-the-network firmware updates. It can also be controlled by a smartphone or tablet. Even with such features, can it succeed in going against the all-wireless trend? We'll know in a few weeks.
Some Kickstarter campaign marketing company!
As this is just thinly veiled advertising. The last straw in the steady decline that is slashdot.
Just do it all with PoE compliant equipment. Fuck most basic wireless APs use it or support it already, so the mature technology exists to implement at a cheap price and high scale.
This is a good idea for serious IoT stuff, instead of the insecure toys we have now.
However, I do not trust a Kickstarter company to be serious, this is just yet another toy, but it might seed the idea to serious technology in the future.
question: why is this company seeking funding based exclusively round a *patented* interface? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Just sayin' . . .
It comes from the automobile industry and people there are thinking of getting rid of it because, amongst other things, it has zero security.
Use ethernet or you could go with a wireless standard like Wi-Fi for high bandwidth or Bluetooth for low power local
dont give these fools any money...
C'mon Slashdot! You can do better than this!
Paul Beardsell
and it does solve a lot of problems. If the nodes are kept properly shielded, they could be running for years without maintentance. That's far far more than you can say about wireless devices, they seem to be usable only as short-term gimmicks.
MySensors dot org
It's free
It's opensource
Really cheap!
Can do:
Lora
Wifi
Bluetooth
Wired
MQTT
NRF24
433Mhz
And more!
25+ controllers support it (domoticz is my favorite, but that is just my taste)
Has at least some form of security if you want to.
Already has a large user-base on their forums
Is around for a couple of years.
And has build instructions on their site for at least 30 different sensors.
Also check out
openhardware.io
STM32F0 and SAMD21... so it's not cheap and can't be.
Is the connector standardized for CAN? Otherwise they could have picked one that's easy to install by crimping, like RJ11. We've already been there with the Dallas one-wire networks: either use RJ11 to have power, power ground, signal and signal ground, or RJ45 because those connectors are more readily available and some extra pins are there just in case. Or maybe use an audio connector, for convenience and robustness, although those are more trouble to make up your own cables.
But there are other standards for a reliable low-speed low-wire-count low-compute-power network. But differential signaling is a must, and higher voltages help to make it more robust too.
A worthwhile next step would be to get an open core design for one of these incorporated into a next-gen Risc-V based microcontroller. Then all the makers could get behind it, just to support the open-IP ecosystem.
Remember when RepRaps used RS485 between components? (e.g. https://reprap.org/wiki/Extrud...) And there have been smart stepper motors. I kindof thought that idea was going to take off, early on, but most seem to have decided it's cheaper to centralize the logic and the stepper drivers on one board. But that doesn't scale to larger machines. If CAN has an advantage over RS485 for that, it might make some sense; but I still think one micro ought to be enough to implement it; and if it's not, then CAN is probably the wrong choice.
Wireless is popular, but every device needs power so nothing can really be disconnected for the long term, unless it runs from solar power. (Batteries either have to be plugged in to recharge, or else they are environmentally unsustainable. Or both.) And there is the ongoing suspicion that RF exposure might cause health problems too. Whenever that risk finally hits the majority's radar, which technology is going to be in position to be the next contender? LiFi could be fairly easy I think.
I had an idea years ago to incorporate optical fiber into every power cable and every power outlet (simply standardize the position on the plug, relative to the other 3 prongs, assuming a choice of fiber technology such that precise alignment isn't necessary), so that when you plug anything in, you get networking at the same time. But that's a chicken-egg problem.
Alternatively, find a way to make one of the powerline networking standards cheaper. We can't get away from in-wall wiring to power stuff; so, one way or another, the network and the power wiring ought to be combined, IMO.
Anything else, like adding wires in the walls is nonsense.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
+1 Insightful!
I ran my computer fans on HDMI power while making a video for my popular YouTube channel in order to make my AmazonTM revenue streams more redundant.
Hard wired and behind a firewall is the ONLY way to use any device that interfaces to my real life.
Call me a luddite all you wish, but you can't fuck with my locks, lights, freezer or whatever else I might care to control.
As long as it is still connected to he Internet.
Otherwise you do not neet it to have a CPU at all. Just I/O. Basically turning it into a bog-standard peripheral device. Like a LED or speaker.
The SoC only exists to support the retarded things like web interfaces and radio communication stacks.
...Chinese knockoff in 3, 2, 1...
Lay a cable with your power cable that is like thunderbolt but 100m maximum lenght without repeaters. At the expense of just enough bandwidth for the actually used distance.
Ideally make the actual copper thicker to give it a bigger reliability.
Hardwired does provide improved security, but if done correctly wireless can be almost as secure.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Why didn't they call it the CANduino? Because it's already taken...
Regardless whether this is a slashvertisement or enthusiast submission, it is quite an interesting product - apparently you can make 300m / 1000 feet long networks with it, using the one cable that transports both power and data. I find it quite a cool solution for makers.
Hardwired does provide improved security, but if done correctly wireless can be almost as secure.
That depends on how you define secure. With one powerful transmitter you can execute DOS attack on a wireless network fairly easily.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
All about trade offs, and I don't think most IoT is worth the trade off. Someone is almost always home at my house. I can get up and switch on/off lights and other stuff in my house rather than doing it from my couch with my smartphone. I'm willing to pay people to come into my house to do things, except for the rare more expensive item like a replacement AC, so a physical key is all I've ever needed to get in and out of my house. I also pretty much never forget to turn off the lights or similar things so remote indications of what is on is pretty useless to me.
Don't get me wrong, there are some useful applications to IoT out there, mostly monitoring devices are what interest me. However most IoT just seems like a very minor convenience item, with the trade off being a security risk that would have to be virtually 0% risk to be a viable trade off with the low value added (IMHO). When you add that these items aren't free, just not worth it for me.
From the link you gave, the patents are expired.
I don't know about CAN-FD, but this project does not use CAN-FD.
Or your meant trademarked? You can call it ISO 11898 instead of CAN...
That would be my interest as well— wireless is just subject to too many unknowns even with a fairly robust design. I also cringe when people talk about powerline— I expect 24VDC to start taking over in the next 10 years for both commercial and residential power, with a power supply on a room-level basis. Power consumption per device simply no longer warrants 120VAC (much less 220VAC). The lower energy consumption, ability to provide backup power, and lower installation cost/ease of modification will push it.
why not just integrate Ethernet over powerline (IEEE Std 1901-2010) with a Arduino in a single box
Re done correctly wireless can be almost as secure.
Not if the bad people jam all consumer wifi. That is very bad for security that will use wifi.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
CANbus was developed for the automotive environment and it has some worthwhile features there, but for a flexible network where you want some amount of bandwidth? No way.
In the automation world we went through a decade or more of using DeviceNET, which is just a proprietary version of CANbus. Yes it's nice that power goes through the same cable, but you have to set your throughput at 125, 250, or 500 kbit/sec based on cable length and you have to add terminating resistors at both ends. There's only one master and all the rest are slaves, so no peer-to-peer. Drop cables are very limited in length (6'?). The power is limited to 4A, and the grounding/shielding issues... oh my! You could follow all the whitepaper instructions perfectly (checking for ground loops, etc.) you'd have random communication troubles until you did something perverse like disconnect the shield from ground and let it float and suddenly it'd work fine. DeviceNET was sold as perfect for long runs, such as along a conveyor system, but go too far and you're into weird power or grounding issues.
If you wanted a network with the same topology with more off-the-shelf hardware and more flexibility for bandwidth and peer-to-peer, just go with RS-485. That would work well with Arduino hardware because it already has the serial port chip and you can level shift to RS-485 levels with an off-the-shelf adapter. Buy some two-pair twisted-pair cable and run power in the other pair. Pick a wire gauge to suit.
Of course, why not just go with Ethernet, optionally PoE? You will pay more for the device with an Ethernet chip, but they're getting cheaper, and wouldn't you rather run CAT5/6 through your walls than some proprietary thing nothing else uses?
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Over the past year, I started a few projects and tested several microcontrollers.
There are already several alternatives that are very capable. There is no point in using Arduino anymore with these options available.
First, you have the STM32 Blue Pill and its cousin, the Black Pill. Each sells for less than $3 on eBay. They are 72MHz ARM Cortex M3, with 20KB of RAM, and 128KB of Flash storage. I am using it to make a Goto telescope controller with USB and WiFi based on OnStep, and ported it to the STM32 platform, and implemented a Hardware Abstraction Layer for the project. See the prototypevideo. The entire controller's electronics can be built for $25 or less (motors extra).
There is also the ESP32 ($8) from Espressif, and its predecessor, the ESP8266 (~ $4). This has a single or dual core processor with WiFi and Bluetooth. I built a temperature and humidity sensor using the ESP8266 (with a DHT22 sensor), and I am building a car garage sensor using the ESP32 with ultrasonic sensors.
So networking already exists, as well as powerful CPUs. The only drawback of the ESPs is that they draw lots of power (relatively speaking, I run them using USB phone chargers) and they have a limited number of GPIO pins (so not suitable for a telescope controller with 7 pins per axis, and a few other peripherals).
And as pointed out earlier, an open network is called Ethernet (or WiFi) not CAN-Bus.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
I use a raspberry zero w to do some light switching. I could access it from the Intertubes over ssh, but turning in and off a light would bre the least of my problems.
The web interface is not accessible from the outside. But no way on hell would i do this via an external app with any company. Oh, the webserver is http://hackme.houghi.org/
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Shouldn't it be called NoWAN?
Doesn't the 1-wire bus or the SPI bus already do all this already? Arduino and Raspi have these libraries. So is this just adding a convenient molex connector?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
CAN is just horrible. It was designed for high noise environments, but get it slightly wrong and it is a real pain to diagnose. Interoperability can be touchy.
They include *2* 32bit arm cores on the end nodes why? I am guessing they are using some off the shelf code on one of them for the networking, but come on, no real device would function this way.
Their prices are rather high for the level of functionality.
And they are asking for a very small amount of money in total - looks much more like someones personal hobby-project they are trying to cash in on.
And yet we are supposed to think it is somehow revolutionary? Umm, no.
Nothing much to see here, but I guess someone got a backhander for the slashvertising.
This sounds like another Smartduino Kickstarter fiasco in the making.
It's about time the updated X-10... I installed an X-10 system in my bedroom back in the late 1980s. All wired, no batteries to change (except the backup battery in that brown faux-wood alarm clock controller thingy I picked up at Radio Shack), and it worked wonderfully as long as there wasn't a lightning storm that sent surges through the power lines. Then my TV would turn on, my lights would all come on...
I had an idea years ago to incorporate optical fiber into every power cable and every power outlet
In Europe KNX (formerly knows as EIB) has changed the electrical installation laws. Now you can have a very low voltage (30VDC) twisted pair cable (only few cable types are certified) in the same tube as the low voltage 230V wires. A dream that a lot of engineers had in the 90's but the laws were impossible to change, Siemens did it...
The data rate is only 9600 bauds...
There had been a website freebus.org with a simple KNX compatible interface, of course it is not online anymore.
Here is a web page with some information about freebus:
http://xavier.fenard.free.fr/fx_knx.htm
Jean-Marc L.