With the release of their PSoC 4 BLE kit, Cypress is doing something intriguing. We spoke with Gagan Luthra from Cypress Semiconductor about the Cypress PSoC range and the projects they’ve brought here to Maker Faire.
If you’ve been using a combination of different boards in your project — perhaps an Arduino, or one of the many Arduino-compatible boards, in combination with a Raspberry Pi alongside a Bluetooth LE (BLE) board or USB dongle — then the PSoC 4 BLE should be of interest to you.
If you’re a Maker, one of the first things you’ll notice when you pull the boards that come with the kit out of their packaging is that the baseboard comes with Arduino-compatible headers. While it’s not going to be software compatible with your Arduino shields, you do have hardware compatibility, which means that a lot of your existing prototyping hardware can get reused with the new board.
However, the real advantage of the PSoC 4 BLE module is when it comes off the baseboard — when you start putting together your own PCBs to carry the module, or go further and take the PSoC chip off its board entirely. That’s because the PSoC is probably the only chip around that has the MCU, a BLE radio, four OpAmps, two comparators, an IDAC, a SAR ADC capable of 12 MSpS, and programmable digital logic all integrated into a single piece of silicon.
ADVERTISEMENT
