New Industry Products

Bluetooth Low Energy for Industrial and Lighting

August 26, 2015 by Jeff Shepard

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. announced its highly-integrated, single-chip Bluetooth® Low Energy solutions are now available in new packaging and temperature range options. The PSoC® 4 BLE Programmable System-on-Chip and PRoC™ BLE Programmable Radio-on-Chip solutions each now have an option for a micro-ball Chip Scale Package (CSP) optimized to bring Bluetooth Smart connectivity to secure credit card applications. The package is only 0.38-mm thick, making the reliable and fully Bluetooth-certified solutions ideal to replace chip-on-board devices.

Cypress also offers solutions with an extended industrial temperature range option with operation from -40 degrees C to +105 degrees C. This ensures consistent product performance throughout this temperature range for industrial, automotive and lighting applications that must operate in extreme climates. Both the micro-ball CSP package and extended industrial temperature options will be available for the 128KB and 256KB flash versions of the PSoC 4 BLE and PRoC BLE solutions. The new offerings are pin-to-pin compatible with Cypress's original Bluetooth Low Energy solutions, simplifying upgrades.

"Bluetooth Low Energy is quickly expanding its market reach and Cypress is continually innovating to address requirements for a diverse set of emerging applications," said Eran Sandhaus, Vice President, Wireless Product Family at Cypress. "These new CSP and temperature options bring the ease-of-use, programmability and robust, low-power performance of our PSoC 4 BLE and PRoC BLE solutions to an even broader range of customers."

Cypress's customizable Bluetooth Low Energy solutions deliver ease-of-use and integration for IoT applications, home automation, wireless Human Interface Devices (HIDs), remote controls, healthcare equipment, sports and fitness monitors, and other wearable smart devices. PRoC BLE is a Bluetooth Smart microcontroller with Cypress's CapSense® capacitive touch-sensing functionality, while PSoC 4 BLE offers expanded design versatility by adding intelligent analog 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, up to 256KB flash memory, 36 GPIOs, and customizable serial communication blocks, timers and counters. Additionally, both solutions have an on-chip balun that simplifies antenna design while reducing board size and system cost.

Additionally, Cypress offers the small-form-factor, Bluetooth Smart, EZ-BLE PRoC module, which integrates PRoC BLE, two crystals, an on-board chip antenna, metal shield and passive components, all in a compact 10-mm x 10-mm x 1.8-mm form factor. It includes Bluetooth 4.1 qualification and worldwide regulatory certification, greatly simplifying design and cutting time to market. Cypress is a supplier for silicon, software, firmware and module hardware, streamlining the customer support required to develop remote controls, health and fitness equipment, home appliances, toys and other wireless applications. This combination of technology delivers unmatched system value for Bluetooth Smart products, with prolonged battery life, customizable sensing capabilities, and sleek, intuitive user interfaces.

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

Cypress offers the $49 CY8CKIT-042-BLE Development Kit, which gives users easy access to the Bluetooth Low Energy devices, while maintaining the design footprint from the PSoC 4 Pioneer kit. The development kit includes a USB Bluetooth Low Energy dongle that pairs with the CySmart master emulation tool, converting a designer's Windows PC into a Bluetooth Low Energy debug environment.

Cypress also offers two production-ready, reference design kits (RDK) that enable customers to get to market faster: the CY5672 Remote Control RDK and the CY5682 Touch Mouse RDK. The 128KB flash versions of the new PSoC 4 BLE and PRoC BLE solutions are sampling now. Samples can be obtained by contacting Cypress sales or via Cypress's franchised distributors.