What’s happening at Afero
Are you compliant with IoT regulations? Afero can help
The UK government recently released a Code of Practice for Consumer IoT Security. The aim of the Code of Practice is “to support all parties involved in the development, manufacturing and retail of consumer IoT with a set of guidelines…
The Thing about Smart Home Hubs
A recent article on Stacey-on-IoT brought up Smart Home Hubs, a topic that is very near and dear to my heart and was actually a subject of engineering projects here at Afero. (Scroll down to see the link to the article.)…
Major Update to Afero Software
Afero is delighted and proud to announce a major update to two key components of the Afero Platform: the Afero mobile app and the Afero Profile Editor. The Afero Profile Editor creates a secure glue between the sensor and the…
IoT Reading List
Here is an IoT Reading List based on what we have come across that we found useful. We do not mean to endorse everything you will see on these links but there is a lot of good material out there…
In a Good Bind with Afero
With the Afero GPIO system, you have up to four GPIOs that can be configured as inputs or outputs to help you get the job done. For example, a mousetrap might need an input to detect when the trap is…
A Momentary Switch Turns ‘Toggle’
Ever have a momentary switch that you would like to use to toggle something? Like for example, press it once and the light comes on, press it again and the light goes off? You could add some extra circuitry to…
A Simple Way to Connect
Up until the latest release, your only choice for connecting an MCU to an Afero device was through the SPI bus. SPI is a great interface but some of our customers were asking for a simple UART interface. We heard…
Random Is Good
Pick a number, any number! Was it 2348239324818238123492349052348238? Choosing a long, truly random number is very important for crypto functions and messing it up can cause a lot of problems. Recently, the country of Estonia had to withdraw all their…
Back Up Your Radio
Everyone loves Wi-Fi and with good reason. Most of the time it’s fast and often is freely available. Most of the time. But what happens to your IoT devices if the Wi-Fi goes down? With Afero, devices will fall back…
Low-Power Yet Highly Secure Devices
Low-power devices should not be left out of the IoT world, but how do you connect them and keep them secure? The Afero Bluetooth module, ASR-1, provides a secure, low-power solution. Inside every ASR-1 is a Hardware Security Module that…
Security at Birth – in the Factory
Storing security keys in flash memory is never a good idea. It becomes trivial to extract them and one of the best places to do that is in the factory where devices are made. A malicious actor could build up…
The Dreaded “Flashing” Orange Light
A few years ago, the CTO of a major Taiwanese OEM told me about the dreaded flashing orange LED that cost him dearly. Turns out this flashing LED was the top reason their users called Customer Care. If the LED…