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PCB Design Role in IoT Industry

PCB / By / 2 Comments
PCB Design IOT

IoT, or the Internet of Things, refers to an infrastructure incorporating several electronic devices connected to the Internet. Smart devices, remotely controllable utilizing dedicated apps, represent only a tiny part of the IoT network. Connecting smart sensors and traditional electronic devices has significantly impacted various application fields, such as industry, agriculture, biomedical, transport, and consumer electronics. Every IoT device must meet the primary connectivity requirement, achieved through wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, WiFi, and mobile networks. As a result, the hardware development capable of supporting IoT functionality passes through subtle but targeted change connectivity, remote control, and high energy efficiency are requirements that every IoT device shall meet. So, the success of the intelligent product lies only when the mechanical side and the engineering side work together, which means PCB Design services’ role is crucial in the IoT industry. But have you ever wondered how it would work without implementing a PCB?

According to the research, this year’s latest IoT trends have demonstrated the interconnectedness of smart device approaches, where PCB designers will have to develop new strategies to match smart devices. A new PCB design is needed to check the new features built into smart IoT devices. Simply put, IoT requires printed circuit boards to work.

Let’s find out why IoT devices need exclusive PCB design services.

PCB Design Requirements for intelligent devices

The IoT underpins any electronic device, including PCBs that drive essential changes in the electronics business. PCB designers have to make changes to these new products to work smart and prevent bugs. Let’s read more about the requirements of a PCB design for such devices.

Form Factor

Even in these early days of IoT development, many different platforms are available in the market. See the difference between Thermostats, Smartwatches, Nest cams, hue lamps, and Ring Doorbells. 

 There are four critical issues to consider when choosing a brand for your IoT device.

  • Lightweight: Most IoT products are customer-focused and don’t want users to use something heavy.
  • Miniaturized: In many cases, IoT portable devices are everywhere. You want it to be unobtrusive, which means the signal should be as small as possible.
  • Ergonomic: if you build a device, it must optimize for the user.
  • Durable: Some product designs are to work in extreme conditions. If you expect your device to be abuse, it needs a form factor to withstand that use case.

Connectivity 

There are many different technologies and criteria to choose from when building an IoT product. The communication decisions you make will affect, among other things, power consumption, compatibility, and reliability.

Every decision you make will affect your IoT device’s data transfer speed and range, so making the right choice is essential. Although easier said than done, these standard layout techniques can help you create a PCB that converts data with minimal noise/interference and high bandwidth:

  • Energy Analysis: Usage will fluctuate throughout the day, and an energy consumption formula is needed that takes these fluctuations into account. It is imperative when a battery powers the devices. When designing a PCB, you need to have a clear energy consumption forecast for the product’s expected life.
  • PCB Stack: The PCB stack is essential for thermal and RF applications. Take the time to set up the correct storage to avoid broadcasting signals, power outages, antenna feeds, and more.
  • Grounding: The surface area is usually minimal for small devices. Must take care to provide a proper ground connection for heat dissipation and RF performance.
  • StitchingVias: Efficient stitching ensures correct, recent returns and reduces noise interference. In combination with grounding, you can effectively reduce noise and maximize the performance of your RF design.
  • Antenna performance: Orientation, direction, gain, and form factors are the most important criteria for choosing an antenna. Also, please pay close attention to all objects in the antenna area as it may cause tuning.

These standard methods consider your ability to obtain certifications for your RF designers. The most common certificates are FCC (in the USA), IC (in Canada), and CE (in Europe). But you must also pay attention to standards for intentional/unintentional radiators, multiple radios, and the requirements for additional certifications such as PTCRB and WEEE.

Cost

The price range of your IoT product depends on its overall complexity. Thus, you can take this familiar example as a way to create your expense concern:

  • Research and Development: You can spend six months to two years relying on the complexity of your product.
  • MSRP: Make sure you sell your product in a suitable price range. Depending on the features and functionality, this can cost between $ 50 and $ 200.
  • One-time engineering fees: NRE production is the money spent to create a production. Usually involves a contract manufacturer, and you can spend several months setting up supply chains and testing the build. If production requires non-standard fixtures or equipment, you will see costs increase. This cost component can fluctuate greatly, averaging between $30,000 and $70,000.or
  • Diplomae: The certifications we talked about above can be expensive. You can spend between $20,000 and $50,000 to certify your new PCB design fully.

Test Early and Often to Minimize Costs

Nobody wants to make mistakes, but sometimes they are inevitable. The deeper you go into the hardware development process, the more expensive mistakes become. For this reason, you should catch any errors as early as possible in the process.

Frequent testing and maintaining an agile mindset can help minimize late-stage errors. Shortening feedback loops also helps. You want to have an iterative approach to providing feedback on small features to review and approve before moving to a specific build.

Every wasted feature implementation effort will increase the cost of the entire project. Testing may prove that you’ve made a mistake, but at least you’ll find it quickly and minimize the consequences.

Time To Market

Being the first to bring your IoT product to market can help build a solid customer base before competitors flood the space. Look at intelligent doorbells, for example. The company was the first to enter the market and protected itself from the competition with its high-quality product.

However, everyone wants to be first in the market. Even a couple of weeks of development delay can push you back to second or third place, giving you less market share. Also, if you take too long to market, you risk the technology becoming obsolete before you even start production.

It all depends on spending more time in the design stages to avoid further design cycles down the road. The evident best practice is accelerating time to market to prevent development mistakes. Work out your needs quickly and do your market research to make development as smooth as possible. The sooner you can communicate with vendors, your CM, and parts suppliers, the better.

You can further reduce your time to market by practicing rapid prototyping. I delved into a quick prototype in another article. But in general, you should focus on constant iteration to secure your product in the future. You don’t want to design something for 2G connectivity only to find it fades away until you’re finished.

KEY CONCLUSIONS FOR SUCCESSFUL BOARD DESIGN IN IoT PRODUCTS

Of course, each of these pillars of successful PCB design offers a lot. When starting to develop IoT hardware, keep the following points in mind:

  • Do your best to choose the right technology early.
  • Maximize cooperation between MCAD and ECAD
  • Always design for production and installation.
  • Plan ahead for certification and production.
  • Shorten the design feedback loop. Check quickly and often.
  • Mistakes = time + cost.

Hope these tips help you create a fantastic IoT product. And if you need help with strategy and development, BridgeThings can help. Contact us today and let us know what you would like to build.

LoRaWAN vs NB-IoT: A Comparison of LPWAN Technologies

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As the amount of connected devices grows, new technology standards have progressed to manage the expanding IoT scope. While smartphones utilize the cellular system for their data, several IoT devices (for example, a smart water meter) only need to shift small volumes of data. Relying entirely on cellular or satellite networks would be costly and use much battery power for most devices. Furthermore, WiFi and Bluetooth networks are not constantly excellent or cost-effective solutions. Most IoT devices don’t require constant contact with a cellular network, so they need a new type of Lpwan Technologies.

LPWAN stands for Low-Power Wide Area Network, a wireless network intended to efficiently join smart devices over long ranges, usually at a low bit rate. LPWANs are perfect for IoT devices that don’t want to handle large volumes of data or bypass more expensive gateway technology. It can incorporate smart meters, consumer products, and sensors.

Many technology studies compare LoRA and NB-IoT technologies as battling out for dominance in the IoT market. These technologies are a couple of sections within an emerging technology ecosystem. Related to WiFi and Bluetooth, they will most likely differ in various corners rather than straight compete with each other. This article will dip more deeply into the skills, costs, durability, maturity, and differentiators of NB-IoT and LoRa-based technology.

What are LoRa and NB-IoT?

Lora and NB-IoT both function within Lpwan technologies. They are two significant standards for low-power IoT devices.

LoRaWAN is a low-power IoT protocol that comprises the LoRa radio technology, allowing for open, reliable, and economical network deployment. By contrast, NB-IoT is a licensed LTE radio technology offering low latency and robust security at a steeper price point.

Key Differences

They developed LoRa and Nb-IoT Standards to build security, power efficiency, and interoperability for IoT devices. Each emphasizes Two-way communication (meaning the network can send data to the IoT device, and the IoT device can send data back), and both designs scale well, from a few devices to millions of devices.

Technology ParametersLoRaWANNB-IoT
Bandwidth125 kHz180 kHz
Coverage165 dB164 dB
Battery Life15+ years10+ years
Peak Current32 mA120 mA
Sleep Current1 µA5 µA
Throughput50 Kbps60 Kbps
LatencyDevice Class Dependent<10 s
SecurityAES 128 bit3GPP (128 to 256 bit)
GeolocationYes (TDOA)Yes (In 3GPP Rel 14)
Cost EfficiencyHighMedium
source: google images

Latency :

The major differentiator of LoRa and NB-IoT is their latency. Here’s a fast refresher on network latency: networks and devices interact with each other by utilizing data packets. But certain data packets don’t constantly transfer because it picks up battery power and network coverage. Latency is the time lag in transferring data after performing a change request. A low latency device “checks in” with the network more frequently than a high latency device.

For instance, a smart sensor identifies that a pipe has burst and needs to alert the network. If this sensor is high latency, it often transfers data to the network, and it strength be a few hours before the system gets the alert. If the sensor is low latency, the web will receive the warning much sooner.

Location / Density

Because LoRa devices use gateways, they run well in remote or rural areas without 4G coverage. They use an unlicensed spectrum to interact with the network. They also go well when they are in motion (for instance, on a truck, plane, or ship) making them well adapted for supply chain and transportation applications. Lora’s geolocation is non-GPS, so devices give location services without massive battery usage.

NB-IoT devices don’t require a gateway, and they rely on 4G coverage unless using spectrum within LTE, GSM spectrum, or “standalone,” which leads to unused frequency within LTE guard bands. It means that things(devices) with NB-IoT chipsets work better in indoor applications and compact urban areas. NB-IoT uses GPS technology for geolocation.

Power Usage & QoS

 NB-IoT and LoRa are both invented for low-power devices; NB-IoT’s lower latency indicates that it uses battery fluid faster than LoRa. The trade-off is that it can ensure a better quality of service (QoS) than LoRa due to quicker response times. NB-IoT also owns much higher data rates than LoRa.

What are optimal methods for each Lpwan technology?

Depending on the requirements of an application, one technology may be more proper than another. For most applications, the most notable considerations are latency, cost, battery life, and coverage. In this position, NB-IoT and LoRa serve different purposes.

Lpwan Technologies

Smart metering:

Most meters process only reasonable data measures each day, so LoRa is most suitable for most significant applications, considering that the cost of establishing a gateway is not restrictive. NB-IoT is a good choice for uses that require extra constant communication.

Manufacturing:

Industrial automation takes various forms, and there is no one answer for this space. NB-IoT is the best fitter option for manufacturing uses that require extra constant communication and assured QoS, while LoRa is more desirable for lower-cost sensors and more extended battery life. Both are beneficial in several environments.

Smart city/buildings:

Lora is the more suited option for most smart buildings due to the easier installation of gateways. However, buildings have their current supplies and therefore have a more limited need for LoRa’s battery efficiency, so NB-IoT may be a better choice for smart buildings with extremely high data throughput and high-security facilities. NB-IoT is also fitted better for smart city networks that combine hundreds of buildings, whereas LoRa is fitter for a single-building application.

Agriculture:

Irregular cellular network coverage in farm areas makes LoRa the clear choice since LoRa doesn’t require 4G. Lora acts powerfully to track agricultural indicators, such as water usage, soil pH, and temperature gauges, which don’t turn rapidly or require immediate responses. Not only that, LoRa’s more economical price point is a top-selling point for farmers.

How mature are the LPWAN technologies?

Lora had an early two-year advance, and highly integrated LoRa modules are now obtainable on the market for a competitive price, with added benefits already in development. Lora has already recognized the IoT network industry standard for several countries, including the United States. NB-IoT choices are new but are already obtaining traction in industry spaces that aren’t a good fit for LoRa. Technology as whole demands to evolve quickly due to the vast market demand.

In the end…

In conclusion, there is no definite winner between NB-IoT and LoRa standardized devices. They describe different needs.

We train in staying ahead of the telecom technology curve. Get in touch with us by emailing info@bridgethings.com.

How IoT Dashboard utilized for business growth

IoT Platform / By / Leave a Comment

Multiple organizations that utilize IoT technology find the data they collect from different devices and sensors overwhelming. So they view for alternatives to make their understanding much smoother and faster. Building an IoT dashboard is one of the most efficient ways of overcoming this challenge.

BridgeThings has experience in solving company problems with software solutions, including those based on IoT technology. Our expert development crew knows how to develop a decent IoT dashboard, and this blog will bring you up to activity with what you need to see if you are considering this option.

What is an IoT dashboard?

An IoT dashboard is a web-based software that enables you to manage your ecosystem, get data from each Device, and control its operation. An IoT dashboard is essentially an IoT control panel that can accomplish several distinct goals for any enterprise.

Critical Components of IoT Dashboard

Data Collection from Device:

Each Device gets tonnes of data, for example, voltage, pressure, motion, acceleration, chemical composition, moisture, humidity, pH, air, and water quality. This data is transmitted to the IoT Dashboard to be prepared and presented as penetrations on the interface.

Data storage

It is a crucial part of an IoT dashboard. In a practice, IoT devices with sensors are lightweight and can’t save much data. Thus, the information needs to be transferred continuously to the backend of your dashboard for further storage. 

At first, the volume of data strength was not that large, but you will need adequate storage over time. The repository should also enable users to reclaim past data instantly. This way, you can see variations or models and track actions effortlessly.

Data visualization

Data visualization plays a vital role in dashboards, in which data converts into heat maps, geographical maps, tables, line graphs, bubble clouds, pie or bar charts, histograms, statistics, and timelines. Depending upon the end-user needs, it will change, and businesses make better decisions on that.

Alerts

Alerts assist users in not avoiding anything while using a dashboard. If your sensors recognize any difference, peculiarity, risk, or unusual behavior, they’ll post a sign, and you’ll see a warning on the dashboard. If you create a custom IoT dashboard, you’ll choose which important alerts and display them on your interface.

Security

Last but not least, any IoT software development company you choose to build a dashboard web application must be capable of assuring that your IoT details are secure and safe. IoT devices collect a lot of raw data, and any data breach or leakage can be highly damaging to your business’s fame. Make sure to guard your dashboard commands properly for maximum confidence. It’s a good idea to create role-based access levels since it’s essential to restrict users from seeing data they shouldn’t see. 

IoT and Analytics are permitting Companies to handle business growth.

Real-time Management  – With joined IoT assets, businesses arrest massive troves of real-time data that serves to track products, support, and day-to-day operations. Such acumens can further aid remote asset monitoring, security, and fraud detection, turning to better services for a company. 

Analytical solutions developed around real-time data, using ML methods, assist enterprises in allowing intelligent business operations and predictive analytics.

Extended Business-Critical Operations on Mobile platform

Businesses leverage the Enterprise Mobility platform to allow real-time access to meaningful information from any place through handheld devices. Cross-platform mobile apps united with IoT and Analytics drove Cloud solutions to give real-time insights on mobile devices. This data assists companies and their customers in making better decisions in real-time. 

For example, a Cloud-based Smart Metering Solution developed throughout water meters assists the utilities and their clients with water waste data in real-time. This method helps the clients in making proper choices towards adequate water consumption.

Automated Work Management System – While automation forms the backbone process in most industries, it can be hugely improved when optimized with Analytics and IoT. It can cover the way for significant changes in the work situation like remote field-force connectivity. 

For example, energy consumption can diminish with the help of intelligent IoT devices that produce such situations to notice. IoT solutions can even predict when a system is likely to break or lose, thus manually offloading the workers to shut them down for maintenance. Moreover, IoT and real-time analytics can assist in building a central data repository, which can notify the identification of issues.

Emergency Planning and Recovery – IoT implementation for emergency management can turn out to be one of the biggest game-changing trends. With IoT sensors and alarm systems, troves of real-time data can assist in active monitoring and review. Supports businesses in making crucial decisions. 

For example, IoT sensors can adequately monitor the increase in levels of harmful gases in particular industry segments and automatically shuts down the system with a raised alarm. Analytics solutions devised on this critical data can afford opportunities or measures to avoid the probability of a disaster taking place, thereby saving plenty of lives.

Summary

A custom IoT dashboard grants easy data distribution, straightforward data analysis, and better IoT asset control and management. What’s more, it approves businesses to make more effective real-time business decisions, exposes new growth possibilities, and finds acumens that would be hidden.

Many Businesses are combining IoT assets with AWS services and driving analytics through machine learning solutions. AWS IoT Suite offers a center of services to connect, monitor, and control numerous IoT devices. Likewise, data-based real-time and predictive analytics formulated through ML solutions are benefitting Enterprises with informed decisions. Take advantage of AWS IoT consultants and Analytics experts to securely connect IoT assets, analyze critical data, and present insights to the customers – in the way to drive business growth.

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