Telecoms, Datacoms, Wireless, IoT


Design kit for solar-powered sensor beacon

5 October 2016 Telecoms, Datacoms, Wireless, IoT

Cypress Semiconductor introduced a new kit with a complete reference design for a tiny, battery-free sensor beacon for a broad range of fast-growing Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The CYALKIT-E02 solar-powered BLE sensor beacon reference design kit provides an easy-to-use platform for the development of a solar-powered wireless sensor node (WSN) that can sense the temperature and humidity around its location and transmit the data using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connectivity.

The reference sensor beacon, which is 25 mm in diameter, can be placed and left to operate without maintenance for battery changes, making it ideal to monitor environmental conditions in smart home, commercial building, factory and agriculture settings.

The WSN IoT device market is expected to grow to more than 5 billion units by 2020, putting a premium on battery-free implementations to reduce cost and maintenance problems. The placement of a WSN may limit its size and the amount of light available, thereby limiting the size and power output of the solar module and the startup power available.

The tiny new reference design integrates Cypress’s energy harvesting power management integrated circuits (PMICs), EZ-BLE PRoC BLE module and a 15 by 15 mm solar cell that enables operation using as little as 100 lux of ambient light – less light than a typical warehouse aisle receives.

The kit contains the solar-powered BLE sensor beacon, a BLE-USB bridge and a debug board that can be connected to a host PC via a USB interface to receive sensor data and for on-chip debugging of the sensor beacon. Cypress also offers the CYALKIT-E03 expansion pack, which includes five solar-powered BLE sensor beacons.

The CYALKIT-E02/03 kits come with the Cypress BLE-Beacon app for iOS, Android and PCs, enabling users to receive and visualise sensor data transmitted by the sensor beacon as a 2D/3D graph visualisation or to export the data.

For more information contact Mattheus van Emmenis, Arrow Altech Distribution, +27 (0)11 923 9600, [email protected], www.arrow.altech.co.za



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