The SMCube (Smart Micrel Cube) is a wooden cube case with a matrix of infrared emitter LEDs on each face and sensors inside. The SMCube can be considered a tilt-aware artefact, with intelligence on board to perform sensing, actuation, storage and processing of data.

It embeds a wireless sensor node that has a modular architecture divided in 4 layers: the Power Supply Layer, the Microcontroller & Sensor Layer, the Wireless Transmission Layer and the Actuation Layer. The main hardware components are the ATmega8 AVR RISC architecture, a MEMS digital tri-axial accelerometer and a Bluetooth 2.0 transceiver.

Micrel Cube Architecture

The SMCube is able to derive which of the six faces is the top or the bottom face at a certain instant. This information is both trasmitted wireless and translated in visual or tactile feedback. Visual feedback is obtained by a matrix of infrared LEDs emitter; tactile feedback is provided by a vibra motor.

a SMCube picture