Small Arduino board can Implement an Industry 4.0 Framework
By: Don Wilcher
Tags: Industry 4 0, Snapcircuits, Bluetooth, Electronics, Arduino

Industry 4.0 encapsulates eight primary technological areas for Advanced Manufacturing innovation. The eight technological areas include: The Internet of Things (IoT), Smart Sensors, Advanced Robotics, Big Data Analytics, 3D Printing, Augmented Reality, Cloud Computing, and Location Detection. The main building block that is central to Industry 4.0 is the use of digital technologies. With the microcontroller development cost being low, an embedded electronics platform can be used to explore these technological areas. The embedded electronics platform that can be used for Industry 4.0 experimentation is the Arduino Nano 33 Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Sense.

Industry 4.0 Framework: Image source: Medium.com

The Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense

The Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense is the design evolution of the popular Arduino Nano. The Nano 33 BLE Sense is pin compatible with the original Arduino device except for the onboard peripherals. The Nano 33 BLE Sense has eight embedded sensors. The embedded sensors include: an inertial measurement unit (IMU), a digital microphone, a combination gesture, light, proximity sensor, barometric pressure, temperature, and humidity devices. Also, the traditional LED wired to pin 13 of the Nano 33 BLE Sense is provided for quick communication test and setup.

A significant change from the traditional Arduino Uno family of embedded electronics platform devices is the microcontroller. On a standard Arduino Uno or Nano, the Microchip Atmega328 microcontroller provides the computation power of the low-cost development platform. The Atmega328 is an 8bit microcontroller. The Nano 33 BLE Sense uses a 32bit ARM® Cortex™ M4 Central Processing Unit (CPU) for sensing and controls applications. Also, the a 1Megabyte (MB) of flash memory is provided within the Nordic Semiconductors nRF52840 microcontroller. The nRF2840 microcontroller has a 64Megahertz (MHz) clock operating speed. Such a clock operating speed allows data collection sensing applications for machine monitoring. Monitoring machine parameters such as temperature and vibration can be accomplished using the Nano 33 BLE Sense as an advanced electronic sensor.

The Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense development platform. Image source: Arduino.cc

In addition, the nRF52840 microcontroller has 256Kilobytes (KB) of Static RAM (SRAM) for storing data. The slight disadvantage to using SRAM is its volatility. A constant power supply voltage source of 3.3V is required to store the data within SRAM. Therefore, the underside of the PCB has two copper pads for connecting an external 3.3V battery to maintain the data stored in SRAM. Besides memory storage capacity, all the Nano 33 BLE Sense digital and analog I/O pins are 3.3V compliant. Applying voltages higher than 3.3V to these pins will damage the microcontroller.

Applications

With the Industry 4.0 Framework as a conceptual design guide, a variety of applications can be explored with the Nano 33 BLE Sense. Applications like wearable devices, electronic motor drivers, and physical computing controls can be developed with the Nano 33 BLE sense. In addition to sensing and control devices, the Nano 33 BLE Sense can run Edge Computing based AI applications using the Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML) platform. Tensorflow Lite™ is the coding platform for developing TinyML based applications.

Edge Computing AI applications development with the Nano 33 BLE Sense: Image source: Don Wilcher

Another Industry 4.0 framework application concept that can easily be developed is IoT. With an off the shelf STEM educational technology (EdTech) kit, a transistor-controlled relay, and the Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense, a basic IoT concept device can easily be prototyped. Electrically wiring the devices, the BLE capabilities of the Arduino platform can be demonstrated.

Block diagram of an IoT device using off the shelf components and the Nano 33 BLE Sense. Image source: Don Wilcher.

The prototype IoT Word Fan Controller: Image source: Don Wilcher.

As with the traditional introduction of bringing a new microcontroller into the world, a slight variation to the output LED has been replaced with a programmable word fan. Additional specification of the Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense can be found here. Prototyping project ideas can be found on the Arduino website.