Seedling is a first of its kind solution and an optimized platform for wearables and Internet of Things (IoT) –devices developed by HitSeed. It enables launching connected hardware business with minimal custom effort from concept to a commercial product. The key differentiator for Seedling is the use of microcontrollers instead of microprocessors while still providing high performance, connectivity, full graphical user interface, and capacitive touch. Through the microcontroller, the other main components, and the lean and optimized software platform, Seedling offers a combination of cost efficiency, power optimization and platform flexibility that cannot be achieved with existing, computer-based derivatives like Android or Linux devices. The Seedling hardware solution can be dropped into a range of covers for industrial and home automation, smart watches, sports sensors and further.
Wristol SmartWatch is a reference product based on the HitSeed’s Seedling wearables and IoT –platform. The goal for Wristol is to demonstrate the capabilities of Seedling in wearables as well as to provide a generic reference design and end2end platform for HitSeed’s partners to enter the wearables business.
Seedling IoT platform is a microcontroller based platform, which intends to disrupt the microprocessor based IoT market from below. The latest microcontrollers have high enough performance to replace microprocessors for many use cases as their computing power is on the same level as mid-1990s PCs. For example, microcontrollers are able to drive small color displays with capacitive touch input, or pre-process sensor data needed e.g. in household appliances, sensors, and industrial controls. Therefore, in many cases Seedling based IoT platform could replace microprocessor based IoT solutions with similar performance, but significantly lower unit costs. In addition, low power consumption enables totally new use cases, because usage time with a battery is potentially several times longer than on microprocessor based solutions, leading potentially into a fully mobile, “fire-and-forget” type of device types not possible before.
Seedling platform consists of:
- A hardware solution, including Seedling hardware board based on microcontrollers, a developer extension board to allow new sensors and other components to be prototyped, and a set of flex adapter boards for different displays
- Software platform including FreeRTOS-based operating system and adaptation and device drivers to the Seedling hardware as well as corresponding system architecture and core user interface and communication mechanisms
- Seedling reference applications for mobiles (IOS, Android), IoT communication gateways and cloud to provide Bluetooth-based companionship with mobile functionality and for cloud-based data processing e.g. for IoT sensors, and
- Software development tools including GCC and Eclipse -based open source developer tool chain with on-board debugging, and Seedling platform libraries for application development.
Download the White Paper for Seedling Internet of Things (IoT) and Wearables Platform.