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Atmel Brings Improves WeChat's IoT Capability

By Frank Griffin November 17, 2015

As more of the things around us become smarter, the information they transmit must be secured to protect the data. One of the largest social media communication platforms, WeChat, is coming together with Atmel to access next generation Internet of Things (IoT) applications in the cloud with a secure platform.

The IoT market has been forecasted to reach up to $19 trillion by 2020, with tens of billions of connected devices around the world. Smart cities, homes, cars, appliances and other things will be part of an ecosystem that will introduce many new opportunities for monetization. This includes health, security, infrastructure and monitoring services that will require connectivity features that are secure.

WeChat is going to be adopting the Atmel SMART SAM W25 SmartConnect Module that will be integrated with the ATECC508 CryptoAuthentication to give service providers and developers of smart connected devices a solution for connecting seamlessly to the cloud. This includes the support for the latest Airkiss 2.0 Protocol for Wi-Fi provisioning and service discovery.

The Atmel SMART SAMW25 module is based on low-power 2.4GHz IEEE 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi ATWINC1500 SoC (System on Chip) along with the ARM Cortex-M0+ based microcontroller technology from Atmel. The integrated system has application and security protocols available through the Atmel Studio 6 integrated development environment (IDE).

The security feature is enhanced with the Atmel ATECC508A CryptoAuthentication, which integrates ECDH (Elliptic Curve Diffie–Hellman) security protocol along with ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) sign-verify authentication for IoT. This type of security allows for home automation, industrial networking, accessory and consumable authentication, medical, mobile and more that require confidentiality, data integrity and authentication to systems with MCU or MPUs running encryption/decryption algorithms.

The move by WeChat to connected services is going to be delivered through its Weixin app, which is being used in China as an all-in-one platform. Users can carry out a variety of services, including paying utility bills, shopping, hailing a taxi and more. With a combined 650 million active monthly users between WeChat and the Weixin app, the potential for delivering IoT related services can be very profitable.

"Weixin is one of the leading providers of IoT cloud services and a fully integrated provider with a host of capabilities ranging from simple texting to payment, portal and more. IoT developers and manufacturers using the Atmel SmartConnect SAM W25 evaluation board on the Weixin IoT Platform will have access to one of the largest user communities currently available for cloud services," said Pierre Roux, Director of Wireless Solutions, Atmel Corporation.




Edited by Ken Briodagh
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Contributing Writer

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