PRESS RELEASE Prototype faster and create wirelessly connected interactive objects as easy as making websites FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 14, 2014, Paris Contact: Sasa Klopanovic PR & Marketing sasa.klopanovic@we-io.net www.we-io.net @weionet
WeIO a Departure From Arduino Started Indiegogo Campaign And It goes Extremely Well! Alternative headlines Is This Arduino Killer on Indigogo? Arduino Killer Launched Campaign on Indiegogo and It Started Extremely Well Departure of Arduino Launched Indiegogo Campaign Excellent Subtittion for Arduino Indiegogo Campaign WeIO a Departure from Arduino, Programmable in Python and HTML5 un écran LED. With WeIO HW/SW platform you can prototype faster and make create wirelessly connected interactive objects, with WiFi integrated, and without additional dongles or shields, additional AD converter circuits, additional driver installations. Yes, everything is embedded on the board, in one place and everything runs on the WeIO. Programming? No more difficult programming of electronics in C, no more cross-compilation, no more board re-flashing before each run. WeIO uses only high-level languages like HTML5, JavaScript and Python instead, with zero installation on PC (all tools and IDE are served from the WeIO board itself). All you have to do is point the browser towards WeIO and you can start programming. You can attach it to a local area network for Internet access and interact with it using just a browser from any handy WiFi-enabled notebook. It is in fact Web page that can be viewed on multiple devices by simply accessing it s IP address from the WiFi enabled client device (smart phone, tablet or PC). WeIO is created by a French designer Uros Petrevski and a Serbian engineer Drasko Draskovic in Paris, France. Their start up is declared one of the five most promising in France and now they launched crowd funding campaign on Indiegogo. You can also meet them on New York Make Faire 21-24 September.
We asked Uros, designer at Nodesign.net & teacher of physical computing on the European Ivy-League school of design, The École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle, Ensci Les Ateliers is your board WeIO an Arduino Killer? Uros: We have been asked all the time this question and our answer is always the same: Guys we are in open source community, not in corporate-like business war. Cooperation and collaboration is natural air and essential for all of us who embraced this community and we adore it. Arduino was our inspiration. I personally know Massimo (Banzi, one of Arduino creators) who is excellent and wonderful guy, very supportive for us from the very beginning. We cannot stress enough what this incredible engineer and inventor did for large community interested in creating interactive objects. Our motivation was to give also significant contribution to this community, by creating a platform that will make possible the creation of the prototypes and wirelessly connected interactive objects easy as making websites with using only popular web languages such as HTML5 or Python. I wished to have a tool that will allow me to pass more time in creation of beautiful interfaces, experiment interaction and make desirable objects than pass my time in debugging and dealing with technical problems. I needed something simple but modern that just works. One more advantage of WeIO is that it can create real multitask applications. Thanks to WeIO s multi-process design, these smart objects can do multiple tasks simultaneously while sending and receiving messages at the same time. For Arduino fans who already know to program it, you can easily connect Arduinos with WeIO board, giving them WiFi connectivity and HTML5 GUIs. Further more we wanted to open door for mass mass-market products, to give everyone the possibility to quickly make industry-grade smart and connected objects that are practically ready for production and market. End product can be assembled easily as we carefully chosen only low cost components that are available on the market even in single unit quantities, Hardware schematics are provided and software components are open source and available free of charge. This way you can push your design to the mass market with very little effort. What about cloud, do you have any? Uros: When you buy WeIO you really own it. You don't need the Cloud to make it work because inside WeIO there is already a powerful Tornado, robust open-source server entirely written in Python and supported by Facebook. WeIO server uses modern WebSocket technology to push notifications from the physical world to all clients (phones, tablets, PCs) in real-time, so that you can be aware of every event happening (ex. a change in a temperature or light sensor change).
Could you tell us in short what s behind this capabilities? Drasko: As Uros said, we love prototyping boards, but we often had problems with missing HW or SW components that made us lose time and money. That's why we tried to incorporate all the things that we were missing into WeIO, so it can be extremely useful right away. We also wanted that electronic components can be sourced even in unit quantity for low price. Regarding hardware, board is running on a highly integrated AR9331-based WSoC (wireless system-on-achip) operating at 400MHz. It has 16 MB of Flash and 64 MB of DDR2 RAM. Then I want to emphasize additional ARM microcontroller (co-processor) which provides HW Realtime (not patched kernel, no bit-banging) execution, so for example very precise PWM is possible for servo-motor drives. There are a total of 32 general purpose I/O pins, with 8xADC (analog to digital conversion) for connecting analog sensors and 6xPWM for connecting servo-motors and led dimers. No need for additional AD converter circuits. The board operates at 3.3 volts with a supply voltage of 5 volts. The I/O pins are 5 volt tolerant, so you will not damage the board by connecting Arduino peripherals that are 5V (for RPI this is hazard). When it comes to software features, our main goal we wanted to achieve no need for drivers and zero installation on user's PC. Board runs on OpenWrt - although transparent to the user, Linux runs under the hub. This means plethora of SW components and drivers are available. Then, we created IDE on the WeIO board, with all necessary tools provided. Just point the browser to your WeIO. UI can be accessed from any device as content is HTML based. It is important to mention USB support. WeIO, contains support for standard USB storage drives, FAT, streaming video and USB webcams, audio and USB sound cards, ACM and FTDI drivers. And also, Linux support for great number of different peripherals that can be additionally added. So in the end how much WeIO will cost? Being created as all inclusive our early bird price for one board is $69 now on Indiegogo.