Course Description

The future of the 8051-legacy upgraded for the Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the latest buzzword driving the industry for any number of low-power interconnected things. However, the IoT encompasses an incredible number of different types of things ranging from edge objects, namely smart or wearable devices which are battery powered with sensors and wireless connectivity, through aggregation nodes, namely hubs, routers and gateways for data aggregation, up to information processing servers in the Cloud to handle the data pushed by edge objects.

This implies making the appropriate choice of a microcontroller (MCU) or microprocessor (CPU), of their subsystem modes and power management network, per application requirements.

While 8 or 16-bit MCUs, such as 8051 and 80251 microcontrollers, can be sufficient for entry-level edge objects with minimum security, more and more IoT objects with embedded RTOS and upgradable firmware need the enhanced computing capabilities of 32-bit MCUs due to the increasing integration of sensors along with the necessary security-related processing.

What will you learn?

In this, you will learn the importance of IoT in society, the current components of typical IoT devices and trends for the future. IoT design considerations, constraints, and interfacing between the physical world and your device will also be covered. You will also learn how to make design trade-offs between hardware and software. We'll also cover key components of networking to ensure that students understand how to connect their device to the Internet.

You will be able to:

1. The term “Internet of Things”

2. The technological trends which have led to IoT

3. The impact of IoT on society

4. What an embedded system is in terms of its interface

5. The components of an embedded system

6. The interactions of embedded systems with the physical world

7. The core hardware components most commonly used in IoT devices

8. The interaction between software and hardware in an IoT device

9. The role of an operating system to support software in an IoT device

10. The use of networking and basic networking hardware

11. The structure of the Internet

12. The meaning of a “network protocol”

13. MANETs and their relation to IoT

Prerequisites

Good knowledge of Python, C and C++ for embedded device programming and also should have the patience to work with hardware.