Part of the firm’s SimpleLink range, the module is pre-certified for FCC, IC, CE and TELEC regulations.

“TI also offers certified software stacks for the Bluetooth specification,” said the firm. “Additionally, developers have the flexibility to use the module as a single-chip solution or as a wireless network processor to add Bluetooth low energy to IoT applications.”

Called CC2650MODA and based on the CC2650 2.4GHz wireless MCU, the device can also run ZigBee and 6LoWPAN and ZigBee RF4CE applications.

On-board is a 48MHz ARM Cortex-M3 processor (CoreMark=142) and peripherals including a low-power sensor controller. “This sensor controller is good for interfacing with external sensors or for collecting analogue and digital data autonomously while the rest of the system is in sleep mode,” said TI.

The Bluetooth LE controller and IEEE 802.15.4 MAC are embedded in ROM, and are partly running on a separate Cortex-M0 processor. “This architecture improves overall system performance and power consumption and makes more flash memory available,” said TI.

Bluetooth low energy stack and the ZigBee stack are available free of charge.

Using different firmware configurations from TI’s BLE-Stack 2.2 software development kit (SDK) allows the module to function stand-alone – controlling everything in the system, or as a wireless network processor that adds Bluetooth connectivity to an existing MCU.

“TI created the simple network processor (SNP) firmware configuration to allow system designers the ability to write a service-level Bluetooth low energy application on the host MCU that focuses on the data exchange with a smartphone.,” said the firm. “This is accomplished by incorporating a lightweight API library on the host MCU that uses a UART interface to the module. The Bluetooth low energy functions, such as managing a connection with the smart phone, are taken care of by the SNP firmware on the module with the user data exchanged with the host processor.”

Applications are expected in industrial, consumer and medical products which, for example, connect to a phone to allow a product to use the phone’s user-interface.

Applicable kits:

• Bluetooth low energy CC2650MODA BoosterPack plug-in module
• Wi-Fi CC3200 module LaunchPad™ development kit
• Wi-Fi CC3100 module BoosterPack plug-in module
• Dual-mode Bluetooth CC2564MODA module BoosterPack plug-in module
• WiLink™ 8 Wi-Fi + Bluetooth module development boards:
• –    WL1835MODCOM8B evaluation module
• –   WL1837MODCOM8I evaluation module
• –   WL18XXCOM82SDMMC evaluation module