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Qualcomm® Developer Network Developer of the Month Joseph Chiu has created two excellent Hackster.io projects to help you connect hardware to the cloud. Joseph’s projects include creating a smart speaker using the Snapdragon® 212 processor on an APQ8009 board, as well as a guide to connecting the Snapdragon 212 processor to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.
We caught up with Joseph to ask why he chose to develop with the Snapdragon 212 processor, and what tools helped him along the way.
Can you tell us about your Hackster projects?
We’re using the projects on Hackster to demonstrate Inventec’s IoT original design manufacture (ODM) service. We’ve had a lot of IoT product development requests since 2015, and these projects can help our customers understand what we can do with the Snapdragon 212 processor - for instance, highlighting its audio capabilities.
How did you start getting to know the Snapdragon 212?
The release of Amazon Alexa inspired us to bring voice to our IoT products. The capabilities of the Snapdragon 212 processor and support from Qualcomm Technologies Inc. made it the obvious choice.
What advice would you give to other developers learning to connect cloud services with dev boards like the APQ8009?
It depends on the cloud service they want to connect with. The APQ8009 can upload MQTT to a cloud service provider, for example Microsoft Azure or AWS. APIs from these vendors can help to quickly get an idea up and running.
Are there any other Qualcomm related Hackster projects you have found helpful?
This project on configuring the general input output pins of the APQ board.
Share with us a fun fact about yourself?
I have ten years of experience in ODM and in that time, I’ve extended from purely embedded systems to IoT applications that communicate with cloud services. I love to study new tech tools and platforms.
What do you love about embedded and IoT development?
When I started out in embedded systems I was working with different microcontrollers.The capabilities of hardware have come so far both in terms of processing power and applications. For me, this is best illustrated within IoT - it is incredibly exciting!
Where do you get inspiration for your work?
I check out projects on GitHub as well as Hackster.
Who is your technology hero?
Elon Musk, since some of my friends work with him. Apparently, he is very professional when their team has coding issues!
When enduring a long day, how do you and your team stay energized? (e.g. energy drinks, chocolate chip cookies, power naps, etc.)
We usually have a couple of beers...
Where do you see the IoT industry in 10 years?
IoT changes fast, everyone is talking about the smart home and smart city, but this is from an IT point of view. I believe we should be looking at the small steps. Voice assistants were announced in 2015 and we only saw them really being showcased in products at CES in 2017. More and more products will have a camera connected to the cloud this year. Who can say what we will see in five years? Let’s focus on the progress to be made in 2017!
What other projects are you working on using Qualcomm technologies?
Currently we have different projects which execute on Snapdragon. Most of them are using the APQ series of boards. We’re using APQ8009 for smart home projects, the APQ8053 as a ‘bridge’ solution, APQ8096 for virtual reality product development. This year we will upgrade our APQ8009 solutions to use the APQ8017.
What Qualcomm technologies are featured in your projects?
We used Fluence Pro for multi-mic echo cancellation (EC) and noise suppression (NS). It has ECNS support for 8, 16, 32 & 48 KHz sampling rates, plus support for 3 or 4 mic configurations.
Why did you choose the Qualcomm board for your projects?
We can test customer requests quickly with Snapdragon, and the support is good.
Did using Qualcomm technology speed up your development process?
Since we can easily download the BSP from Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. building is quick. We can validate our solution with tools from Qualcomm Developer Network, too.
Check out our community on Hackster and find out more about the Snapdragon mobile platforms here.
