Wearable Platforms Make Waves at CES 2015

Intel’s new Curie and the Freescale-enabled ARM-based WaRP give developers solid options in this burgeoning market.
By Joe Desposito, Senior Editor
Wearable technology proved a strong force at the International CES in January, not only by showing a plethora of wearables on the show floor, but also by the announcement of a new wearables platform from Intel and an Innovation award for a Freescale-enabled platform.
During his Keynote speech at CES, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich announced the Intel Curie wearables platform. About the size of a small button, the Intel Curie module is a complete low-power solution designed for companies interested in developing wearable technology solutions. At its core is Intel’s first purpose-built wearable SoC, the Intel Quark SE SoC, which can run for extended periods from a coin-sized battery (see Figure 1).

To speed the development of wearable products based on the Curie module, Intel is providing a complete software solution that includes a small and efficient real-time operating system (RTOS) together with reference wearable applications called Intel IQ Software kits. The Intel IQ Software kits include the embedded software that runs on this module together with companion smartphone applications and associated cloud capabilities.
The module is scheduled to ship in the second half of this year and includes the low-power, 32-bit Intel Quark SE SoC, a Bluetooth low-energy radio, 384kB Flash memory, 80kB SRAM, a low-power integrated DSP sensor hub with a proprietary pattern matching accelerator, 6-axis combo sensor with accelerometer and gyroscope, and battery charging circuitry (PMIC).
“This product just came fresh from our labs, so to show you that it’s working, we created a simple app,” Krzanich said to the CES audience. He then demonstrated how the button-sized Intel Curie module was measuring his steps and sending that data to an app on his smartphone. Krzanich went on to say that Intel will again sponsor the Intel Make it Wearable challenge later this year. Last year’s challenge awarded a prize of $500,000 to Christoph Kohstall and Jelena Jovanovic for the Nixie, as the first wearable camera that can fly. Nixie rests on your wrist like a bracelet, then unfolds and takes flight on cue to take a photo of you in the moment. Intel’s 2014 Make it Wearable challenge was a worldwide competition to encourage inventors to create innovative wearables using Intel’s Edison technology, a platform Intel designed specifically for wearables and Internet of Things devices.

Meanwhile, the Freescale-enabled WaRP was selected as a 2015 CES Innovation Award Honoree in the embedded technologies category (see Figure 2). The hardware, called the WaRPboard, implements a hybrid architecture to address the evolving needs of the wearables market. The platform consists of a main board and an example daughtercard with the ability to add additional daughtercards for different usage models. In this hybrid architecture, the main part of the design is done on the main board with Freescale’s i.MX 6SoloLite applications processor – based on a single ARM® Cortex®-A9 at speeds up to 1 GHz. A secondary microcontroller, Freescale’s Kinetis KL16 MCU, is implemented on the daughtercard, which is used as a sensor hub as well as a wireless charging MCU. The platform also features Freescale’s Xtrinsic MMA9553 turn-key pedometer and FXOS8700 electronic compass (see Figure 3).

At its introduction, Rajeev Kumar, director of worldwide marketing and business development for Freescale’s Microcontrollers business, said, “Wearables represent one of the ultimate edge node sensors for the Internet of Things, and hold tremendous promise for equipment makers, service providers and consumers alike. This new
solution is engineered to dramatically streamline the design and development of exciting new wearables products. It allows designers and OEMs to go from concept to prototype as quickly as the market is changing.”
The wearables reference platform kit includes the main board, a daughter card, an LCD display battery and a micro USB cable. It is available for pre-order at www.WaRPboard.org and BoardZoo.com for $149 MSRP.