July 5, 2021: In line with the transformative Chrysalis upgrades to the IOTA Foundation’s Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and infrastructure, STMicroelectronics has announced the completion, validation, and availability of a fresh new version of the X-CUBE-IOTA1 expansion software package, including integrated IOTA C library, for the STM32Cube microcontroller software development ecosystem.
STM32Cube integrates low-level and middleware software in one library together with a configuration tool to generate initialization code for embedded applications running on any MCU from the popular STM32* microcontroller family. With more than 100 expansion packages, including the updated X-CUBE-IOTA1, STM32Cube is a dynamic development resource that welcomes additional software components to enable specific application use cases.
The expansion pack, which includes IOTA-specific middleware and sample implementations, lets developers benefit from the efficient performance and high feature integration of STM32 MCUs to build smart, connected transaction-handling devices leveraging the latest Chrysalis upgrades to the IOTA DLT.
The IOTA DLT – also called the Tangle – is a decentralized secure database that protects against data tampering. According to the IOTA Foundation, the new Chrysalis protocol upgrade is 60% more energy efficient than IOTA ’s original implementation. To achieve these gains, the Foundation upgraded its protocol to use atomic transactions, which register state changes more efficiently than “account-based models” that require updates of the whole account balance. These atomic transactions can be as small as 275 bytes/transaction, instead of the original 3500 bytes/transaction. An improved “tip” selection algorithm also allows for faster transaction validation and synchronization. IOTA Foundation says its systems can execute 600 million transactions using the same energy spent in 1 Bitcoin transaction.
The updated version of the X-CUBE-IOTA1 software runs on the B-L4S5I-IOT01A Discovery kit for IoT node, which features an STM32L4+ MCU and connects to the Internet through the integrated Wi-Fi interface. The package relies on the highly optimized and robust security algorithms provided by the STM32 Cryptolib, and includes:
- Middleware libraries featuring:
- IOTA Client API for interacting with the Tangle
- STM32 Cryptographic library for encryption, hashing, message authentication, and digital signing
- Transport-level security (MbedTLS)
- FreeRTOS
- Wi-Fi management
- Complete driver to access motion and environmental sensors on board
The X-CUBE-IOTA1 expansion software is available for download at ST.com.
You can also read our blogpost at https://blog.st.com/x-cube-iota1/
