Kit aims to ease development of bluetooth-enabled products

6th August 2014

Staff Reporter

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Datasheet

Aiming to ease the development of Bluetooth-enabled products, Microchip has released the PIC32 Bluetooth Starter Kit. The kit features a PIC32 MCU, HCI-based Bluetooth radio, Cree high-output multi-colour LED, 3 standard single-colour LEDs, an analogue 3-axis accelerometer, analogue temperature sensor and 5 push buttons for user-defined inputs.

Eliminating the need for an external debugger/programmer, USB connectivity and GPIOs, the incorporated PICkit On Board (PKOB) allows for the rapid development of Bluetooth SPP, USB and general-purpose applications. The starter kit also features a plug-in interface for an audio CODEC daughter card which is set to be released at a later stage in order to support Bluetooth audio.

The PIC32MX270F256D MCU runs at 83 DMIPS with 256 KB Flash and 64KB RAM, with a rich feature set including USB, I2S/SPI, mTouch capacitive touch sensing and an 8-bit Parallel Master Port. Reducing software development time, the kit offers a free Bluetooth SPP stack optimised for the on-board PIC32 MCU. This allows for the setting-up of emulated serial port connections between two peer Bluetooth devices.

Supported by the company's MPLAB X IDE and MPLAB Harmony Integrated Software Framework, a free Quick Start Package is now available featuring an Android application development environment. It also includes a free SDK with the application source and binary code for the company's Bluetooth SPP library. Both are optimised for the on-board PIC32 MCU

Targeted at low-cost applications in the consumer market, the kit is suited to applications such as Bluetooth thermostats and wireless gaming controllers. In the medical and industrial markets, applications include blood glucose meters, wireless diagnostic tools, Bluetooth GPS receivers, Bluetooth serial adapters and cordless barcode scanners.