Learn About PSoC and BLE in Upcoming Online Tutorials

Make: Basic Arduino Projects author Don Wilcher recently dove into the PSoC Maker pool, acquiring a PSoC 4 BLE Pioneer Kit from Cypress Semiconductor. This new development board is the core component of our current PSoC Pioneer Challenge presented by Cypress and Arrow Electronics. This contest will award one lucky maker with $2,500 for travel to Maker Faire Bay Area’s special 10th anniversary event in San Mateo, California, in mid May. While Wilcher doesn’t plan on competing in the contest himself, he does plan on sharing his experience with the PSoC 4 BLE kit with you.

Whether you are just getting started with PSoC (or BLE for that matter), or if you are looking for a bit of last-minute guidance and advice before entering the Challenge, or if you’re simply looking to fill your days with online tutorials, Wilcher will be teaching one 45-minute session each weekday next week, starting at 2pm EST. The online lectures will be accompanied with PowerPoint presentations (which you can easily open with free software LibreOffice – available for Linux, Mac, and Windows). The classes will be hosted over at Design News, where Wilcher is also a moderator, and the full lecture series descriptions are screenshot below.

Expect to hear about PSoC in everything from automotive to industrial to light control applications, alongside project topics including fan control, temperature sensing, power control, and touch sensing (aka CapSense, a recent favorite of mine).

I don’t know if Wilcher will include this project in his lecture series — which I’ll also be attending — but in the looping video below he demos a CapSense proximity control robot (the result of the whiteboard diagram seen up top) powered by the PSoC 4 BLE dev board:

The piece of looped black wire connected to the bottom-center of the board is acting like a proximity sensor; when the other wire (or person’s hand) comes near it, it activates the sensor and moves the bot. With this setup, you can imagine making projects that are much more focused and embedded than your typical distance or PIR sensor can be. The PSoC boards are of course programmable, allowing for design changes while also integrating Bluetooth out-of-the-box.

All of which makes me ask: Are you ready to enter the PSoC Pioneer Challenge?

Enter the PSoC Pioneer Challenge and you could win $2,500 for travel to Maker Faire Bay Area in May. Projects should include the PSoC 4 BLE kit from Cypress Semiconductor. This new development board includes Bluetooth and CapSense, along with a software IDE that makes building for the IoT both challenging and fun .