Wiliot's Battery-Free Energy-Harvesting IoT Pixel Tags Get a Bigger, Battery-Assisted Stablemate
New tags use the same core technology — including the 1MHz Arm Cortex-M0+ processor core — but can be read by any BLE device.
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) specialist Wiliot is looking to expand on its battery-free energy-harvesting IoT Pixel line, which aims to drive the "Internet of Everyday Things," with a new variant — adding a battery to the formerly battery-free devices to create what it calls the Battery-Assisted IoT Pixel.
"Wiliot was founded on the mission to transform industries by embedding everything with cloud intelligence using our IoT pixel tagging technology," claims Wiliot chief financial officer Roee Zeiler. "We began by tackling this challenge with battery-free technology, which significantly reduced barriers to IoT adoption and will scale the IoT from billions to trillions."
Now, though, the company is adding a battery into the mix — though alongside, rather than to replace, its existing battery-free technology. "We’ve always understood that certain applications are best addressed with battery-assisted technology," Zeiler claims. "Now, with a portfolio that includes battery-free and battery-assisted Pixels, we’re one step closer to achieving our goal of creating an Internet of Trillions of Things (IoT2)."
The company launched a starter kit for its battery-free IoT Pixel range earlier this year, offering a quick-start for integrating the technology — which includes an Arm Cortex-M0+ core running at 1MHz, 1kB of non-volatile memory, and antennas for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communication, optional sub-gigahertz support, and energy harvesting technology supplied by partner Energous — into products as mundane as a disposable coffee cup.
The Battery-Assisted IoT Pixel packs the same technology, but where its predecessor scaled down to the size of a postage stamp the battery bulks things out to a business card footprint. Despite this, the company claims they're thinner, lower-cost, and more physically flexible than rival Bluetooth tags. They also require very little in the way of infrastructure: They can be accessed, the company claims, with any device capable of Bluetooth Low Energy communication.
Wiliot has partnered with Identiv on the launch, and plans to launch the Battery-Assisted IoT Pixels later this year at an as-yet unconfirmed pricing. Additional information is available on the Wiliot website.