Recap of 2018 Platform and Service Enhancements

General
1

Dear Electric Imp Customers, Developers and Partners,

2018 came and went fast … throughout the year the Electric Imp team was busy working on a whole host of new technologies, products, tools, and improvements … so many, in fact, that it’s easy to lose track. With 2019 being in full swing now, we thought it would be useful to provide a brief recap of the top platform and service enhancements delivered in 2018.

Feel free to post questions on any of these. We’re looking forward to seeing many new and improved connected products built with Electric Imp in 2019!

Best regards,
– Terrence

Technology & Devices

  • impCellular(™) general availability, with built-in industry-leading features like carrier-independent global support for maximum reliability and coverage
  • impC001 cellular module shipping in volume production (for a customer example, see https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190212005011/en/Electric-Imp-Pitney-Bowes-Provide-Generation-Cellular)
  • Integrated Bluetooth on imp004m (pre-approved WiFi/BLE radio and stack)
  • Audio support on imp004m (DFSDM & PWM)
  • impOS 38 rolled out and impOS 40 in early access, delivering many new device features, enhancements, and performance improvements

Security

  • UL 2900-2-2 Cybersecurity annual recertification
  • Extended crypto functionality in devices
  • RS256 support in cloud agent to support JWT and other authentication modes
  • Continous security monitoring and maintenance as part of our service

Cloud Deployment

  • Azure public cloud for All-Azure IoT solutions
  • Azure private cloud support in production for large public customers
  • Proxy support for sites that require fixed IP address whitelisting
  • Improved scaling, performance, monitoring, and resilience of cloud services

Cloud Integrations

  • Native MQTT support in cloud agent
  • Native AMQP support in cloud agent
  • Azure – New enterprise-grade integrations for IoT Hub and IoT Central, including Device Twins and DPS (Device Provisioning Service)
  • Google GCP – New enterprise-grade integrations for PubSub and IoT Core, updated Maps and FireBase support
  • AWS – New and updated integrations for Lambda, Kinesis Firehose, DynamoDB, DRS, Alexa Skills, SNS, SQS, SES, Cloud Watch Logs
  • Salesforce – New integrations for Heroku and Salesforce IoT
  • PTC ThingWorx – New integration
  • Losant – New integration
  • TreasureData – New integration
  • for a full list, see: https://developer.electricimp.com/libraries/webservices

Manufacturing

  • Support for picocells in factories for testing mass-produced cellular devices
  • Improved manufacturing performance in Asia with servers located in-region
  • Improved support of label printers commonly used in production flows

Development Tools and Workflows

  • impCentral Core – Account tiers, multi-factor auth, collaborators, test zones, and more
  • impCentral UI – Many UI improvements, device blinkup in IDE, device dashboards, and more
  • impCentral V5 API – Revamped API with support for all impCentral features
  • impWorks impt – Scriptable command-line tool wrapper for impCentral API
  • impWorks impTest – Flexible automated end-to-end application testing framework
  • impWorks Builder – Code preprocessor with expression language
  • Sublime Text Plugin – Developer productivity with impCentral integration
  • BlinkUp in JavaScript – Provision devices from a browser and the IDE
  • BlinkUp mobile app – Updated for Azure cloud, impCellular, and more
  • for more details, see: https://developer.electricimp.com/tools

Development Libraries and Device Integrations

  • OAuth 2 + JWT (new) – security semantics for GCP and other cloud services
  • Promises (updates) – patterns for event-driven programming
  • Rocky framework (updates) – custom REST integrations made easy
  • Bluetooth (BLE) API + BLE BlinkUp (new) – easy-to-use BLE support
  • Modbus-RTU for RS-485 / RS-232 and Modbus-TCP (updates) – industrial connectivity
  • GPS UART driver and Ublox M8N driver (new) – flexible, low-power location services
  • USB framework and example drivers (updates) – easily integrate USB devices into your designs
  • Application-level AES crypto (new) – Application data crypto with customer keys
  • CometD/Bayeux for Salesforce IoT Platform Events (new) – bi-directional events
  • ConnectionManager (updated) – simplified connectivity management
  • MessageManager (updated) – easy & reliable bi-directional application messaging
  • LPS22HB Pressure Sensor (updated) – updated air pressure monitoring
  • QL720NW and similar Label Printer support (updated) – improved printing support
  • MAX17055 Fuel Gauge (new) – fuel-gauge for battery-powered designs
  • BQ2589M Power Management (new) – optimized charging for Li-Ion and Li-Polymer batteries
  • Si702x Temp/Humidity Sensor (updated) – updated temp/humidity monitoring
  • SoftwareSPI (new) – bit-bang SPI devices
  • Scheduler (new) – device-side event scheduling
  • SPI Flash FileSystem and Logger (updates) – persistent, fail-safe storage
  • for full list, see: https://developer.electricimp.com/libraries/utilities and https://developer.electricimp.com/libraries/hardware

Demos and Examples:

  • Azure IoT Hub PLC demo (new)
  • Azure IoT Central Asset Tracking demo (new)
  • Step-by-step examples added to many libraries (new and updated)
  • Developer guides (new and updated)
  • Squirrel examples repository (new)
  • Many documentation improvements