Medical devices that send small amounts of data wirelessly will be able to run for months or even years on a coin cell battery when they use new Bluetooth Smart modules from Laird Technologies. Measuring the size of a dime (or a 20 cent piece in South African money), the devices are suitable for a broad range of devices including in-home medical devices, battery-powered sensors, data collection devices, and health and fitness equipment and applications.
The BL600 modules take advantage of Laird’s smartBASIC, an event-driven programming language that simplifies BLE module integration. According to Laird, even those with little software or Bluetooth expertise can develop fully functional applications in just days.
Those applications, along with a complete BLE stack, reside on the module itself and do not require an external microcontroller or memory. Based on the award winning Nordic Semiconductor nRF51822 system-on-chip, BL600 modules support a variety of ultra-low-power saving modes to achieve as little as 1 μA of current consumption in deep sleep mode and 10,5 mA when transmitting data at 0 dBm.
Each module version – with an integrated antenna, an IPEX MHF4 antenna connector, or trade pads for an external antenna – has a compact footprint of 19 x 12,5 mm, making it suitable for even the smallest portable devices. A BL600 module can connect to a wide array of external sensors via its I²C, SPI, UART, ADC and GPIO interfaces.
In addition to carrying FCC modular, IC, MIC and CE approvals, the new modules are fully qualified as Bluetooth End Products, enabling designers to integrate the modules in devices without the time and expense of recertification.
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