Powered by ST's STM32L4 ARM Cortex®-M4 microcontroller, which features 1 MB of Flash memory and 128 KB of SRAM, along with security features, the new Avnet Silica board enables customers to rapidly develop smart sensor applications that can utilize various connectivity options. These options include Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity, allowing for easy connection to smartphones, and 6LoWPAN sub-GHz connectivity for long-range communications.
Key hardware on the new board includes the highly integrated ST SensorTile module, measuring only 13 x 13 mm. This module integrates the STM32L4 MCU, along with ST's ultra-low-power BlueNRG-MS single-mode Bluetooth Low Power (BLE) network processor, and a wide selection of ST environmental sensing devices, including an accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, barometer, and microphone. The sensor-node board also offers additional ST sensors that provide support for humidity, temperature, proximity, and ambient light.
The board also offers additional connectivity:
- Sub-GHz connection via the SPSRFR-888 Spirit low-power programmable sub-GHz RF transceiver module.
- The TESEO-LIV3, a GNSS receiver module, which supports major global satellite navigation systems for location services, including GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, BeiDou, and QZSS.
Finally, a dynamic NFC/RFID tag provides easy pairing and configuration via any NFC-enabled smartphone.
Additional features of the mbed-compatible board include the ST Qi 1.0 wireless battery charger and an integrated ST-LINK interface for programming and debugging.
In addition to the integration of ARM mbed OS 5, the board also supports STM32Cube middleware and is further supported by software demos and libraries provided for both mbed OS and STM32Cube.
