An extreme-low-power Bluetooth SoC with built-in energy harvesting for batteryless IoT devices!

On the other side of the ipXchange stand’s back wall, Atmosic had some incredible technology on show at Embedded World 2023. In this in-depth conversation, we chat with Nick Dutton about Atmosic’s ATM33e Bluetooth SoCs, but this certainly seems like an oversimplified categorisation of a very impressive chip.

As Nick explains, one hundred batteries are thrown away per second in the current world of IoT. This is, obviously, not a sustainable solution, especially with IoT as a growing sector in the technology industry. Atmosic decided to address this issue at the chip level.

Unlike most low-power Bluetooth SoCs, Atmosic’s ATM33e devices also incorporate both internal and external energy harvesting and management, with the ultimate goal of removing the need for batteries in many devices. Innovative power management systems also enable the ATM33e SoCs to only wake-up elements of the chip that are required for a given task, further reducing the power consumption and allowing some end devices to operate directly on harvested energy that has never been stored. Of course, excess energy can be delivered to a storage component for later use.

After further explaining the capabilities of this ARM Cortex M33F-based device, Nick shows us some examples of market-available products that use Atmosic’s technology. This includes an eco-friendly keyboard and mouse from Targus, solar-powered remote controls with well-concealed PV cells, small computers for medical and cycling applications, and asset tracking devices.