New Project Guidance & How the Maple Will Work Better

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New Project Guidance & How the Maple Will Work Better

(19 posts) (6 voices)

Started 4 years ago by fkatzenb
Latest reply from gbulmer

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fkatzenb
Member

Evening! (or Morning!)

I could use some guidance. I am looking to take an idea of mine, use the arduino or Maple, keeping with the open source hardware/software initiative, and market it for a specific group of people. I do want to capitalize on the idea by the services offered on my website by allowing folks to upload, store, and share their data and experiences and even receive SMS messages for data alerts or look at the data on their smartphone via an app. The whole concept will be open source even the website half, so it can be used for other hobbies, etc.

I had asked folks over on Arudino what I could do since SSL and DSA keys are not possible with the Ardunio since it is only 8-bit. Could the MAPLE pull this off easier? What about username, password, and a makeshift key that the Maple could handle? What about performing updates via SD memory? Is it possible?

I like the idea of using a MAPLE more than my collage of Arduinos because it is faster, could provide better security, be able to handle SD and wifi, while reading in my sensors, and showing providing a simple sunlight compatible LCD.

Thanks,
Frank

Posted 4 years ago #
robodude666
Member

Personally, I think the Beagle Board looks like a better board for your needs than the Maple.

However, with that said.. There is an official Encryption 128-bit AES/TDES library available from STM/Keil/IAR.

The Arduino's SdFat library has also been ported to Maple and works decently, though a more optimized (i.e. faster) library can be written.

Posted 4 years ago #
poslathian
LeafLabs

Sounds like you have your work cut out for you. On a linux system, like beagle board or equivalent, you can write in python and take advantage of all zillion libraries.

On Maple there are a lot of great security features, like locked flash pages, and privileged processor modes (overkill....), but you will have to work to use them or find a library. For encryption, there do exist libraries, as robodude pointed out, but it will likely be work to bring them up and running.

That said, all projects require some effort - thats what makes them fun. Ambitious projects are the most fun. Happy hacking! We would love to see some encryption work happen on Maple! Its definitely capable.

Posted 4 years ago #
fkatzenb
Member

Well I am not looking for encryption at that level. I am merely wanting to find a secure method of communicating the data from any given board to the server that is sitting on the internet. This is to prevent hackers from finding vulnerable areas on the server.

Thanks,
Frank

Posted 4 years ago #
robodude666
Member

What kind of security are you looking for? 128-bit AES is the minimum standard I've seen used for SSL keys, etc. Anything less simply feels like you're false security.

I'm very confident that your project would gain great benefit from the BeagleBoard-xM's 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor, 512MB RAM, 10/100 Ethernet, microSD card slot, Real Kernel + OS, etc.

While I'm sure you can pull "something" really great off with the Maple - I mean, the Arduino's little 16MHz 8-bit MCU can handle serving web content via the Ethernet Shield/Wifi Shield, read/writing to an SD card, and sampling sensors - it won't be anything compared to what you'd be able to accomplish for your project with a BeagleBoard or equivalent.

I love LeafLabs and Maple, but when reading your requirements I simply hear like you need more. A Maple would work, but it would limit what you can do or how quickly you can do it -- unless that's the challenge you're specifically looking for.

Posted 4 years ago #
fkatzenb
Member

Thanks for the information. I think it is overkill on this project. Here is a better breakdown....

Read in 3-4 sensor values every 5 seconds
Every minute, send the following to the website at that minute
- The sensor values at that minute
- The 1 and 10 minute running average
- The max and min over the last minute
Display those values on a simple character LCD

Sending entails sending to a PHP based server where the information is logged, graphed, and processed. If the data exceeds certain user parameters, he can be alerted via a SMS message OR his Android application and has the joys of being monitored anywhere in the world. All of this is configured thru the PHP based website. The service on the website won't be free, as web space costs money (which was causing headache over on the Arduino forums), but whatever.

However for those who don't want to use the website service, the Android app will poll over local your local area network and will grab that same information and do it's own processing just like the website does but of course has it's limitations.

So as you can see, the box is pretty dumb and could use logins without SSL provided a an experienced programmer doesn't leave in any vulnerabilities.

The reason for my cryptic nature is that I don't want the commercial world to capitalize on the idea of using the website. Their are products now that do similar, but do so over bluetooth, are limited, and cheap. I want to offer people a way to do something right, not over priced, and give them freedom.

Folks will be able to add to it, whether additional things to monitor, utilize some of the outputs for control, etc. I plan on developing an API similar to Munin to allow for that flexibility for those using the website.

The open source hardware and software will allow people to expand to their wishes, reduce cost to them, and apply the entire concept to other hobbies. I just want to offer it for this particular hobby first. :) Also my reason about the SD was to provide a place for login, passwords, keys and to possibly allow folks who don't know Arduino/Maple that well to just put the .bin file on to update their unit.

Thanks,
Frank

Posted 4 years ago #
robodude666
Member

Ah. If you're sending stuff to the server only once per minute, then the Maple will certainly handle that - even if the encryption takes a couple seconds (which is unlikely to be that slow).

Communicating with the SD card is not difficult, however you'll need to, of course, encrypt/decrypt the files yourself. Just store them as raw encrypted binary files and you'd be good.

Posted 4 years ago #
fkatzenb
Member

Excellent. I think I will be ordering a Maple here real soon and adding to my range of Arduinos. I am looking forward to having one.

So let me ask this. I know the MAPLE is faster, but is it better when it comes to reading things like the A/D? The Ardunio wastes so much time doing trivial things like that. For another project, we ended up grabbing an SPI ADC chip to gain clock cycles back... ALOT of them.

Thanks,
Frank

Posted 4 years ago #
robodude666
Member

The Maple's STM32F103RB's claims 1 million samples per second. Is that fast enough for you? Users haven't reported of fully reaching this performance level, from what I gather, but you can get rather high. The STM32 also has a dual capture mode (or something like that) which effectively doubles performance. In addition to hardware features like DMA, you can capture analog samples without wasting your CPU time on them. This would allow you to continuously capture ADC samples and store them in a buffer, and process them behind the scenes.

Just keep in mind that the performance you see from the wirish library, that aims to provide arduino-like functions and compatibility, is not the true performance of the Maple or STM32 (not that I'm saying the wirish library is bad; I'm saying that any APIs that make things look pretty incur overhead). If you access the hardware on a low-C level you'll get splendid results.

Posted 4 years ago #
poslathian
LeafLabs

My advice to anyone concerned about performance is always the same - if you are uncertain, dont optimize until you need to. On Maple that usually follows this sort of trend:

Use Wirish (the Arduino compatibility layer...with all of its SerialUSB.print, and SPI.write() )

if you need improvement, try punting work to the hardware, with hardware spi, hardware i2c, DMA, interrupts, etc.

if something still needs improvement drop down to libmaple (the low level libs, like gpio_write_bit, and usb_write_bytes)

if you still need improvement drop down to bare C register banging (like GPIOA->BSRR = 1)

if you STILL need improvement drop down to assembly.

Posted 4 years ago #
poslathian
LeafLabs

Oh and to specifically address your question about SPI - there are two completely hardware spi (with library support) onboard maple, so you can read and write spi without hardly wasting any cycles at all.

Posted 4 years ago #
robodude666
Member

And from what I gathered on the forums so far... "and if you STILL need improvement get an Oak." Imagine implementing AES encryption, ethernet/Wifi, and SD/FAT on a FPGA with VHDL.

Posted 4 years ago #
fkatzenb
Member

LOL. Thanks guys. I was mostly curious because of how sucky the Arduino was when trying to do enough engine knock samples to actually get a representative sample to call something knock.

Posted 4 years ago #
poslathian
LeafLabs

Interesting project, can you say more about the end application? Last time I heard anyone talk about detecting engine knocks was on a submarine!

Posted 4 years ago #
becker
Member

The DSOnano device uses a 1Msps rate with the STM32. There is even a hack that does 2M per second, albeit only claiming 8 bit effective resolution. I'm guessing that they base their clock tree around running a single ADC at 14MHz (or 28MHz for the "8 bit", rather than using a chip with 2 ADCs and interleaving).

The second generation DSOnano switched to using a high speed external ADC and a gate array. Because no matter what tweaks or slightly improved chip, you won't get a 10x bandwidth improvement.

The AVR doesn't need to use much processor time for A/D conversion. But it is awfully slow. And you have to slow it down even more because if the widely spaced clock divisors. Note that you can usually double the speed by looking at the resolution you are actually getting/need, and running the A/D clock faster than the "for maximum resolution" speed.

Posted 4 years ago #

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