PatternAgents Explained:

A tailor or dressmaker is very familiar with the concept of a "pattern"; they select a pattern for the style of garment that they want to make, and then size the pattern for the customers individual measurements. This yields a repeatable garment, and gives the tailor or dressmaker all the instructions they require to fabricate it over and over.

PatternAgents applies that same concept to the field(s) of hardware, software and systems design. Take an "electric motor controller" for example; the concepts are the same for a tiny cooling fan motor controller, or a huge electric truck motor controller. Just like garments, electric motors come in a variety of "styles", such as brushed, brushless, permanent magnet, inductive, reluctance, stepper, servo, etc. By combining a "size" and a "style" for electric motor control, a reusable design pattern can be specified to give repeatable results for any electric motor controller application.

PatternAgents has developed formal methods for implementing reusable design patterns, sizing and styling them to meet our customers requirements. PatternAgents products are useful and saleable examples of the application of those formal methods, yielding products that are available off-the-shelf (for standard sizes and styles). PatternAgents can also quickly customize those "design patterns" for specific customer requirements.

thingSoC Specification Release

We just released the second draft specification (Version 0.2) for thingSoC : Open Source Sockets for the Internet of Things, and several new thingSoC reference designs.

thingSoC is an exciting new development from PatternAgents - an open source socket standard that enables you to quickly and easily build complex new IoT systems by plugging together components that can communicate setup and provisioning information with each other. thingSoC components can communicate about what components are plugged in, and how to access them. thingSoC defines a physical, hardware socket system for inter-operable printed circuit boards, with a data centric firmware model for automatic device discovery, and a software API for interacting with the system.

One of the first thingSoC embedded module reference designs uses the popular ESP8266 Wi-Fi System-on-Chip from Espressif. The TSOC-ESP8266-EM board is a complete Wi-Fi Device and Access point, supported by the Arduino IDE. It places the popular ESP8266 Wi-FI System-on-Chip Device in a thingSoC Embedded Module Socket, and enables the ESP8266 to be used with any other thingSoC reference design, allowing it to be paired with a number of different host processors and peripherals.

For example, pairing the TSOC-ESP8266-EM with a Nine (9) Degree of Freedom sensor board, you can build a a Wi-Fi enabled Motion Sensor :
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We'll have more articles on the TSOC-ESP8266-EM later this month, and it will be available in the PatternAgents store in January 2016.

PatternAgents provides community and commerce for electronics designers, helping them to collaborate using shared patterns, practices, and resources; connect with others in the industry, conceptualize and create new ideas, commercialize their designs, and keep up on the latest technologies and concepts.

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