BLE solutions for the IoT offer double the memory capacity

18th June 2015

Siobhan O'Gorman

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Cypress Semiconductor has announced its highly integrated, single-chip BLE solutions for the IoT and other wireless applications now offer double the memory capacity. The PSoC 4 BLE Programmable SoC and PRoC BLE Programmable RoC solutions each now have options with 256KB of flash and 32KB of SRAM, giving designers added flexibility by enabling OTA firmware upgrades without the need for external memory. The offerings are pin-to-pin compatible with the company’s original BLE solutions, simplifying upgrades.

Cypress’s easy-to-use PSoC Creator IDE supports the 256KB BLE solutions. The company has added support for multiple new BLE profiles in PSoC Creator, further streamlining design of a broader range of applications, including glucose monitoring, environmental sensing and Apple notification center service.

Cypress’s customisable BLE solutions deliver ease-of-use and integration for IoT applications, home automation, wireless HID, remote controls, healthcare equipment, sports and fitness monitors, and other wearable smart devices. PRoC BLE is a Bluetooth Smart MCU with the company’s CapSense capacitive touch-sensing functionality, while PSoC 4 BLE offers expanded design versatility by adding intelligent analogue and programmable digital blocks. Both solutions integrate a Bluetooth Smart radio, a high-performance 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 core with ultra-low-power modes, 256KB flash memory, 36 GPIOs, and customisable serial communication blocks, timers and counters. This combination of technology delivers unmatched system value for Bluetooth Smart products, with prolonged battery life, customisable sensing capabilities, and sleek, intuitive user interfaces. Additionally, both solutions have an on-chip balun that simplifies antenna design while reducing board size and system cost.

Designers looking to create Bluetooth Smart products currently must use software tools from multiple vendors and develop complex firmware to meet wireless specifications. Cypress has simplified the BLE protocol stack and profile configuration into a royalty-free, GUI-based BLE component that can be dragged and dropped into designs using PSoC Creator. The IDE enables complete system design in a single tool, slashing time-to-market. Alternatively, users of Eclipse and other ARM-based tools can customise their own BLE solutions on PSoC Creator and export the design to their preferred IDE.

Application details for Cypress’s BLE component are embedded in PSoC Creator with examples of all supported BLE profiles and hundreds of example projects, including OTA, for mixed-signal system designs

Cypress is offering new low-cost BLE development kit modules featuring the 256KB chips. The modules plug into the existing $49 CY8CKIT-042-BLE Dev Kit, which gives users easy access to the Cypress BLE devices, while maintaining the design footprint from the PSoC 4 Pioneer kit. The Dev Kit includes a USB BLE dongle that pairs with the CySmart master emulation tool, converting a designer’s Windows PC into a BLE debug environment.

“These PSoC 4 and PRoC BLE offerings demonstrate our commitment to expanding our portfolio of Bluetooth Smart solutions to better serve our customers’ needs,” said John Weil, Vice President of Marketing, Programmable Systems Division, Cypress. “The expanded memory capacity of our solutions further increases the design flexibility by allowing changes to firmware via OTA field updates.”

The CY8C41x8-BL PSoC 4 BLE and CYBL10x7x PRoC BLE solutions are currently sampling in QFN and CSP packages.