Echelon and Marvell Spur Development of Interoperable Industrial-Strength Wireless Devices for the Industrial Internet of Things Market
Echelon's Open IzoT™ platform and Marvell's 88MC200 Wi-Fi Microcontroller platform will allow a fast path to creating highly reliable, large scale communities of devices for demanding industrial applications
Echelon Corporation and Marvell announced their collaboration to bring industrial-grade Wi-Fi® to applications in the emerging Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) market. To achieve this goal, Marvell will include elements of Echelon's new IzoT platform in its Easy Connect Software SDK for Marvell's 88MC200 Wi-Fi Microcontroller platform, and Echelon will add a range of Marvell-based Wi-Fi control modules to its catalog for the development of industrial-grade wireless devices.
Types of devices for the wireless IIoT will include sensors (devices that measure physical conditions), actuators (devices that take action such as closing a valve, reducing current flow, etc.) or controllers (devices with the intelligence to receive sensor data and tell various actuators what to do). In typical industrial environments, these devices have had to be wired due to safety, performance, security and reliability concerns. These devices will also have to meet unique requirements, such as the ability to withstand harsh (noisy, dusty, wet, high- or low-temperature) physical conditions, sustain loss of connectivity to the Internet, operate with little or no human interaction, and perform mission-critical tasks with extremely high availability. Echelon's Marvell-powered Wi-Fi control modules will complement Echelon's award-winning power-line and Free Topology wired options for the IIoT market giving industrial and commercial users greater flexibility in how they deploy such devices.
"For 25 years Echelon has been focused on what we are now calling the Industrial Internet of Things Market – rock-solid and scalable device connectivity with the industrial-grade qualities needed for mission-critical commercial and industrial environments," said Ron Sege, CEO and Chairman of Echelon. "By combining the capabilities of Echelon's IzoT platform with Marvell's innovative Wi-Fi solutions, developers can create wireless devices designed to work in challenging industrial environments."
Echelon's recently announced IzoT device software will be available as part of the Marvell Easy Connect software developer kit (SDK). Developers using Marvell's 88MC200 Wi-Fi Microcontroller platform and Easy Connect Software will be able to download the Echelon IzoT device software and build their device applications on top of it—thereby taking advantage of connectivity, control and interoperability services that are required by industrial-grade communities of devices within the IIoT.
In 2014, Echelon plans to introduce its own IzoT-optimized Wi-Fi modules based on the Marvell 88MC200 Wi-Fi microcontroller platform and the industrial-grade Marvell 8801 Wi-Fi chip with IIoT-specific I/O interfaces. By building on this pre-tested hardware/software module, Echelon customers who have long used Echelon's technology to build wired devices will easily be able to expand their portfolio to include wireless devices as well.
"I am very proud of Echelon's leadership in this big and growing 'Internet of Things' market with industrial grade security and reliability solutions. I am also very pleased that Marvell is able to support Echelon in its latest innovative products," said Weili Dai, President and Co-Founder of Marvell. "With Marvell's industry leading end-to-end capabilities from mobile communication to cloud infrastructure, storage, and video content delivery, I believe we will be able to support Echelon and other ecosystem partners to accelerate the rapid adoption of 'Internet of Things' in today's 'Connected Lifestyle'."