Smick: A Smart Brick for IoT

25th February 201919th February 2020 Harshvardhan Mishra

What is Smick ?

Smick is a Wi-Fi-enabled microcomputer designed for IoT development. Smick connects sensors and actuators. You can easily and quickly build smart transducers that interact, through the Internet, with things and people around the world by using Smick. It connects to the Internet via Wi-Fi and uses the MQTT protocol for message exchange. It has a K language interpreter for programming and an archive (file system) to store thousands of configurations and programs K (called sketches).

1. MQTT Protocol

MQTT is a lightweight messaging protocol based on a publish/subscribe mechanism that makes interconnected nodes independent. Communication is handled by an Internet server called an MQTT Broker.

2. Initial Configuration

To connect to the Internet, simply sign up for any MQTT Broker and configure your credentials and Wi-Fi routers in Smick. Various configurations can be stored on Smick to be used in case of variation of operational context.

3. K Language Interpreter

K is an event-driven language in which the flow of the program is determined by the events. To implement the logic of a system, define events, commands, and rules (i.e. the relationship between events and commands). When an event occurs, for each satisfied rule, the associated commands are executed. If you model the behavior of a system through finite state automata, its implementation in K becomes natural.

4. How to Make a Smart Transducer

Connect one or more transducers to I/O PINs and write a sketch K to define the examples below:

I/O connections (relay::d8, Temp::D3)
The variables for data (max, min)
The events generated by the sensors (Hot, Cold)
The commands for controlling actuators (off, on)
Rules for local and autonomous system behavior (Hot -> off, Cold -> on)

smick1

grams K (called sketches).

Schematics

Useful links

You can use Smick with Alexa and Google Home. Smick’s goal is to put IoT technology in everyone’s hands. Smick is designed for anyone who wants to build interconnected objects but does not have the skills to do so. With the simplicity and power of the K language it’s easy to create complex logic and exchange data with the Internet.

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Smick: A Smart Brick for IoT