3TwoOne

Sigfox provides chip manufactures such as ATMEL, ON SEMICONDUCTOR, SILICON LABS and TEXAS INSTRUMENTS its communication protocol to create transceivers and SoC (System on Chip) devices with Sigfox connectivity. These devices are certified through the Sigfox Ready certification programme to ensure automated set-up on the Sigfox network. Certified devices are able to connect the Sigfox network without any paring. Therefore, the 3TwoOne framework treats Sigfox ready devices as discrete hardware units which can either be programmed or communicated to by another hardware unit.

Integrating Sigfox and 3TwoOne (Downlink)

At the time of the post, the main platform supported platform of 3TwoOne is the Raspberry Pi. To integrate Sigfox connectivity we begin by created a block called "SigFox_AT_Unidirectional_UART". This block supports uplink messages for Sigfox through the UART interface via AT commands (see link).

This block has 3 ports:

data_bytes - (integer array): 12 bytes of data payload to send

send - (boolean): trigger to send the payload ('1' - true or '0' - false)

uart - (char array): the uart filename (i.e., '/dev/ttyACM1')

Each time the block receives a true value on its send port it will notify the Sigfox devices via UART using AT commands to send a 12 byte payload. To demonstrate this block we have implemented a simple example which periodically send temperature updates to Sigfox.

Sigfox example

Devices required:

A) Raspberry Pi and Grove Pi module

B) Grove – Temperature and Humidity Sensor

C) Sigfox module – Ti LaunchPad & BoosterPack

Required components

To program the example we will need the following 3TwoOne components:

The GrovePi_IO port block - selects which pin the sensor is connected to (i.e, PINA0)

A Timer block - a timer to periodically trigger the send event (i.e., 15 seconds)

The Temperature_Humidity_Sensor block - the driver for the Temperature-Humidity sensor

Float->Bytes:32 block - convert the number value in float to bytes of data to be sent

SigFox_AT_Unidirectional_UART block - communication interface to the Sigfox module

Connects the blocks in accordance with this diagram and make sure that the pins and the uart filename is correct.

Screenshot of 3TwoOne workspace.

In order to correctly decode the temperature, go to the Sigfox website and modify the device type properties. Here you can set the display type for the data that is being sent. Choose "custom" and type in "temperature::float:32:little-endian".

temperature - the name given to the data received.

float:32 - means it is a real number represented using 32 bits

little-endian - represents the positioning of the bytes to used by the processor to represent the number



Once this is setup you should be able to receive the temperatures values from your device every 15 seconds as shown below.

As described above, you can significantly simplify the integration of Sigfox into your IoT application using 3TwoOne. Try it now.

Simplify integration of Sigfox with 3TwoOne Sigfox provides chip manufactures such as ATMEL, ON SEMICONDUCTOR, SILICON LABS and TEXAS INSTRUMENTS its communication protoc...

Objective:

Controlling a Z-Wave enabled light bulb with Vera, using a timer to toggle the light periodically.

You Need:

Z-Wave Light bulb

Vera contraoller

Raspbeery Pi

Access to 3TwoOne IDE

Method:

Follow the simple steps to use the graphical interface of 3TwoOne to complete the application in few minutes. See the video below.

Home automation: 3TwoOne and Vera Objective: Controlling a Z-Wave enabled light bulb with Vera, using a timer to toggle the light periodically. You Need: Z-Wave ...