ONiO.zero: ultra-low-power wireless MCU using energy harvesting technology

The harvester(s) are of course built in. There are some pasives - one resistor for a master bias and a handful caps. The antenna is taken directly in - or solar cell type.<p>How low power is it - it all depends is the correct answer. The chip is tuned for a few different application scenario:<p>1. DVFS mode: Here you select a clock speed&#x2F;voltage your application require - and you will get the associated voltage&#x2F;clock speed in return. You can doctor your code with calls to have various performance levels.<p>2. Deadline based: You select a deadline for the work to complete within - and the device will throttle by setting clock speed to match this requirement. The voltage is matched for the selected clock speed.<p>IO voltage is maintained from a seperate regulator - so internal logic voltage can vary with stable IO voltage.<p>Mask rom + flash...why? Maskrom for some secure boot stuff, stdlib and math - it is less energy per fetch from mask rom vs. flash. Ideally everything should be in ROM - but that makes it hard for the end user to add his&#x2F;her application

Hmm, without a datasheet, its very difficult to asses how useful it is.<p>Does it have the RF harvesting bits built in? or is it a bunch of passives that I have to add after.<p>How low power is it? are we talking microamps per mhz(I know we&#x27;re not...) How much useful time do you have per charge cycle?<p>the articles section seems to be full of generic health mumbojumbo, which isnt a good start... <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.onio.com&#x2F;article-list.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.onio.com&#x2F;article-list.html</a>

&gt; 1KB of mask ROM (stdlib, math etc). 2KB RAM. 8&#x2F;16&#x2F;32KB ULP Flash. 100k Writes. Read supported down to 850mV.<p>Even 32kB of rom is going to be very tight to fit a wireless stack like BTLE. It’s not clear if their BTLE peripheral includes the stack or just the radio. I would hope it’s the latter.

Would love to peek at the datasheet without going through their email harvester.

The combination of a mask rom and reprogrammable flash on the same product surprised me. Why would you want a customizable mask rom if you’ve already got 8x or more of flash? Is it a power consideration: are mask roms lower-power to read from?

Seeing as they hail from Norway, is it a spin-off of Nordic?

If this comes out and is affordable, it&#x27;ll have some really cool applications. As per datasheet, it also has UWB support so you could make a &quot;where&#x27;s my keys????&quot; (or inventory tracker) without having to worry about dead batteries or limited range of RFID.

Would love to know if this is going to capitalise on the 5G rollout .. I seem to remember a few years ago someone making claims that once 5G was deployed, ULP sensors would be more feasible ..

Have any hobbyists ever done something similar in a approachable manner? Obviously this could be great for some iot tasks.

&quot;Product under development&quot;. Might be a complete pipe dream.

Very interesting.<p>They have open positions on their career page: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.onio.com&#x2F;career.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.onio.com&#x2F;career.html</a><p>Seems like a great time to join this company and help make this product come alive after years of work. I would guess they are an efficient and driven team where everyone knows everyone else.<p>I am not affiliated with them, but working at companies when they start to gain traction and to feel how proud everyone is at getting a product out with a relatively small team is great fun!