The Wiliot Vision

The Wiliot Vision

Wiliot is a SaaS company whose platform connects the digital and physical worlds using its IoT Pixel tagging technology. IoT Pixels are computers the size of a postage stamp that power themselves in revolutionary ways. Our vision is to expand the Internet of Things to include everyday products, adding intelligence to plastic crates, pharmaceuticals, packaging, clothes, and other products, connecting them to the internet and changing the way things are made, distributed, sold, used, reused, and recycled.

Wiliot's mission is to bring efficiency, safety, and sustainability to the entirety of the supply chain. This creates a new paradigm where every product, every object, every ‘thing’, has something to say.

The Internet of Things can scale and start to offer real value as we understand where products are, who is using them, and when they need replenishing. Apparel and pharmaceutical packaging can become connected to the cloud. Manufacturing, supply chain, and inventory can be optimized. Makers of products and retailers can flourish in the face of disruption from online retailers.

A change that Wiliot is helping to accelerate is being described as a shift from supply chain to demand chain management. Demand chains are enabled by demand signals flowing in real-time from products in stores and homes, reducing the capital tied up in inventory, driving lift in sales, enhancing the customer experience, and reducing companies’ carbon footprint. The way products are made, distributed, sold, used and recycled, are being redefined thanks to insights and automation from the Wiliot Platform.

Seamless Continuous Connectivity + Low Cost of Production

Wiliot was conceived with the idea of scaling the internet of things to billions. Instead of making more IoT devices, Wiliot brings intelligence and connectivity to products and packaging. The pre-existing infrastructure of Bluetooth is an invaluable communication network to tap into - Bluetooth radios are built into our smartphones, smart speakers, access points, and even in the many lighting infrastructures. Beyond the radios, Bluetooth has deep hooks into the operating systems we use every day. This connectivity is seamless and doesn't require the user to take action. For this technology to be realistically integrated into products, Wiliot had to also think about the form factor. Wiliot IoT pixels are hyper-thin and can be embedded or applied with ease as a sticker. By reducing what was once on a printed circuit board to a single chip, and eliminating the need for a battery, Wiliot IoT Pixels can be manufactured by industry-established, high-speed processes to enable the lowest cost production. This, in turn, results in affordable, high-quality tagging and sensing technology. Wiliot technology includes sensing, ubiquitous connectivity. Data is protected, analyzed, and curated by the Wiliot Cloud, and made available insights can be delivered to Works with Wiliot solutions via MQTT and Restful API web services and to end users and Enterprises via Wiliot’s Automation Platform Playbooks. The Automation Platform will be launching in the coming weeks.

The chip, at the heart of Wiliot's IoT Pixel, consists of 5 main components: an energy harvester that captures ambient RF energy, an integrated sensing unit, a security unit, a processing unit, and a Bluetooth transmitter. It has three CPU cores, an ARM processor, has ROM, RAM, SDRAM, inputs, and outputs - it's a computer.

• Technology: CMOS 40 nm process
• Pinout: GPIO and Sensor Pin
• MCU: ARM Cortex M0+
• Memory: Flash /RAM (2 KB), ROM (64 KB)
• Protocol support: Wiliot Ephemeral ID 
• Default Package: Inlay 
• Antenna: Printed/Etched
• Security: AES-128 bit Encryption/Authentication

Energy Harvesting & Data Transmission

Wiliot IoT Pixels use the energy that propagates in space through Radio Frequency waves. Specifically, we harvest Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and other 2.4 GHz connectivity technologies from devices such as Bluetooth to Wi-Fi Gateways and BLE-enabled Wi-Fi APs.  Other versions of the Wiliot IoT Pixel are multi-band, meaning they will harvest from 2.4 GHz and 800/900 Mhz. The specific bands supported are a function of the design of the harvesting antennae.

In order to receive Wiliot IoT Pixel data, two functions need to be addressed: providing energy for the Pixels to harvest from, and receiving data packets to send them to the Wiliot cloud. In most cases, one device can provide both of these functions. This includes Bluetooth to Wi-Fi gateways, multiband gateways, or even BLE-enabled devices like smart appliances or smart home systems. In certain applications, one device can be used to provide energy, while another such as a smart phone can receive the data packets and route them to the cloud. The vision as Wiliot continues further into its technology development is for IoT Pixels to harvest from and transmit to existing infrastructure and/or smart phones.

Product Portfilio

Range can vary depending on the radio environment and the material upon which the tag is mounted. Our main limiting factor is the energy harvesting range. Single Band IoT Pixels have a range of up 2-5m from suitable 2.4 GHz sources, and with our Dual Band IoT Pixels, over 10m with a strong sub-GHz source

Privacy + Access Control

Data sent by Wiliot IoT Pixels use the Wiliot Ephemeral ID format, encrypted with a 128-bit AES-based scheme that allows anonymity, confidentiality, and authentication. We have two layers of encryption to enable the safe transit of packets to infrastructure while maintaining the privacy of the application data. 

Sensing