The Bluetooth® low energy Pioneer Kit from Cypress Semiconductor enables customers to evaluate and develop Bluetooth 4.2 compliant solutions using the PSoC® 4 BLE and PRoC™ (programmable radio-on-chip) BLE devices.

Bluetooth SMART™ or Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a full-featured, layered, communication protocol that includes a 2.4 GHz radio, a link layer, and an application layer. However, the user does not need to understand the complex protocol to implement projects using PSoC 4 BLE or PRoC BLE. The Cypress BLE solution, which includes the device, the BLE component, and the BLE firmware stack, will take care of it. The Cypress BLE firmware stack is royalty free.

There will be two software tools to use, PSoC Creator™ and CySmart™ Central Emulation Tool, to develop and debug the BLE project. PSoC Creator is Cypress’ standard integrated design environment (IDE). The BLE protocol has been abstracted into an easy drag-and-drop BLE component in PSoC Creator. The CySmart central emulation tool is a host tool for Windows PCs which provides an easy-to-use GUI to enable customers to test and debug their BLE projects.

The BLE Pioneer Kit offers footprint compatibility with Arduino™ shields as well as with 6-pin Digilent® Pmod™ daughter cards. In addition, the kit features a CapSense® slider, an RGB LED, a pushbutton switch, an onboard programmer/debugger and the USB-UART/I²C bridge functionality block (KitProg), a coin cell battery holder, and a Cypress F-RAM™. The BLE Pioneer Kit supports 1.9 V, 3 V, 3.3 V, or 5 V as operating voltages. The BLE Pioneer Kit supports two devices:

• The PSoC 4 BLE is a 32-bit, 48 MHz, ARM® Cortex®-M0 BLE solution with CapSense, 12-bit analog front end (1x SAR ADC, 4x low-power opamps, 2x low-power comparators, and 2x current DACs), 4x TCPWM1, 2x SCBs2, 4x UDBs3, LCD4, I2S5, and 36 GPIOs. The PSoC 4 BLE provides a complete solution for sports and fitness monitors, wearable electronics, medical devices, home automation systems, and sensor-based low-power systems for the Internet of Things (IoT).
• The PRoC BLE is a 32-bit, 48-MHz, ARM Cortex-M0 BLE solution with CapSense, 12-bit ADC, 4x TCPWM1, 2x SCBs2, LCD4, I2S5, and 36 GPIOs. The PRoC BLE provides a complete solution for BLE connectivity, HID, remote controls, and toys.