"With the development of low-power Bluetooth technology, some mature products such as anti loss device, wearable step bracelet and Bluetooth smart bulb have gradually entered the public's vision. Moreover, thanks to many excellent low-power Bluetooth communication solutions contributed by design house at home and abroad, it is very easy for more and more individuals or manufacturers to enter this field, This also makes the update iteration of intelligent Bluetooth products faster, more cost-effective, and more fashionable and beautiful.
Far from it, the low-power Bluetooth products evaluated or disassembled by Aiban in recent times include a variety of products, such as bracelets, bulbs, anti loss devices, etc. friends in need can read the following articles.
Wearable Bracelet:
Add or subtract Remove the weeds and save the turnip to see all kinds of smart bracelets in the world
The scheme is here. Where are the users—— It's not easy to say I love you
Accurate step counting and intelligent algorithm -- experience lianai intelligent Bracelet
Flashy but not practical -- evaluation and disassembly of flashclip pedometer of "smart" wearable device
Bluetooth smart bulb:
It's all 179 yuan. Which is the best Bluetooth smart bulb? - Comparative analysis of yeelight blueii and imagic magic color smart bulbs
Internal and external repair, obvious improvement -- second generation disassembly of imagic Bluetooth smart lamp
Smart home new partner -- imagic smart LED lamp evaluation and disassembly
Bluetooth loss preventer:
Accelerating Bluetooth product development -- evaluation of Broadcom wise sense development kit
The thing that makes you fall in love at first sight -- disassembly of intelligent Bluetooth lost finder tile
Apple another disruptive innovation ibeacon—— Estimote disassembly evaluation
Low power technology based on Bluetooth 4.0 -- evaluation and disassembly of object finder
In this "innovation" based on low-power Bluetooth technology, of course, many smart companies have adopted a compromise approach. Instead of rashly launching the final product, they have launched a development board based on low-power Bluetooth and provided all-round data and code support. Just like the low-power Bluetooth development board fireble of firefly team obtained by Aiban this time, It's not the final product, but it's better than a product. The main purpose is to help engineers carry out rapid secondary development of products. Let's get to know the board first.
Fireble development board
Fireble uses imitation wooden packaging box, which looks simple, actually very exquisite and feels good. If users have used firefly team products, they will not be unfamiliar with this kind of packaging (Firefly rk3288). When you open the box, you can see that the fireble card is well protected by an electrostatic bag.
The accessories in the box include a fireble development board, a microusb cable, and screws and nuts used to support the board.
Fix the screws and nuts on the board. Take a closer look. It's very stylish. The size of the brown PCB is only 80mm * 45.5mm, which is smaller than the general business card.
The first impression of the fireble board is that it is simple. The IC devices are "neatly" arranged on the whole PCB, which can be regarded as a style of the firefly team (the same is true for the firefly rk3288). The circuit of the board does not look complex, which makes people feel very easy to use. In addition, it is also very careful in the details. There are silk screen prints of corresponding functions at some interfaces, Not even the positioning hole（ (next page)
Let's take a closer look at the onboard resources of fireble:
Fireble onboard resources:
Ble core module fs-qn9021 module × one
Six axis acceleration sensor mpu6050 × 1 (mpu6050 data manual)
Joysticks five way key × one
Programmable LED × three
Klj1230 buzzer × one
On board USB to serial port
JLINK 10PIN simulation interface, supporting SWD online simulation
Button battery interface
I2C bidirectional level conversion
OLED screen interface
Support 22 pin IO port expansion, including UART, SPI, I2C, PWM and GPIO
Although the fireble development board looks simple, it has many functions. From the most basic led and buzzer programming control, it is equipped with the world's first integrated 6-axis motion processing component mpu6050 (6-axis G-sensor), plus low-power Bluetooth communication and 22 expandable IO ports, it can realize many functions, such as the popular entry-level Wearable bracelet Bluetooth anti loss device and other applications.
Fs-qn9021 Low Power Bluetooth module
Of course, from the name of fireble board, we can also know the key point of the board - low-power Bluetooth module fs-qn9021.
The size of the whole ble module is only 17.8mm * 12.8mm. The core is a low-power single-chip Bluetooth communication solution qn9021 based on NXP (NXP). This is an SOC including arm Cortex-M0 processor and single-mode Bluetooth 4.0ble (as shown in the hardware system block diagram below). It adopts a compact qfn32 package with a size of 5mm * 5mm. It is obvious from the module that the Bluetooth communication solution can be built with only a small number of external components, which not only saves the cost, but also greatly reduces the space layout of PCB.
Qn9021 features include:
True single chip ble SOC solution:
Integrate ble RF, ble protocol stack and application configuration files
It supports master-slave mode. In the master mode, it supports up to 8 slave devices to connect at the same time
RF parameters:
-Receiving sensitivity of 95 DBM (non DC-DC mode)
-93 DBM reception sensitivity (DC-DC mode)
TX output power: - 20 DBM to 4 dBm
Fast and reliable RSSI and channel quality display
Compatible with global radio frequency specifications
Very low power consumption:
2.4 V to 3.6 V power supply
Integrated DC-DC and LDO
two μ A deep sleep mode
three μ A sleep mode (on a 32 kHz RC oscillator)
RX current: 9.25ma (DC-DC)
Tx@0 DBM current: 8.8ma (DC-DC)
micro controller:
Integrated 32-bit arm Cortex-M0 processor
64 kb of system memory
User controllable code protection
System resources:
4-channel 10 bit general purpose ADC
Two general analog comparators
Up to 31 GPIO pins and GPIO pins can be used as interrupt sources
Four general timers, 32kHz timer, watchdog timer, real-time clock
Two channel programmable PWM, two SPI / UART interfaces, I ² C master / slave interface
Undervoltage detector, battery monitor and temperature sensor, AES-128 safety coprocessor
16 / 32 MHz crystal oscillator, low power 32 kHz RC oscillator, 32.768 kHz crystal oscillator
In addition, the author also compares with several mainstream single-chip low-power Bluetooth chips on the market. It is found that qn9021 is in a leading position in receiving sensitivity and GPIO expansion, and the power consumption is about 50% lower than that of ordinary low-power Bluetooth chips (except da14580)（ (next page)
(click the picture to enlarge)
Fireble power on
According to the instructions provided by the official, the board has burned the firmware of the simple anti loss device before leaving the factory, so we just need to plug in the microusb for normal power supply (of course, 3V external power supply can also be used). As shown in the figure below, the power prompt light is always on after power on.
At this time, when the five-way rocker key is turned up, you can see that the LED1 light flashes, indicating that it has entered the power on fast broadcasting state (turning up again will cancel the broadcasting state). In addition, the left and right directions of the five-way rocker key can control the lighting of LED2 and LED3 respectively, and the downward direction is to remove the lighting of LED2 and LED3.
Of course, we can more intuitively understand the response of keys through the serial port tool. The fireble board carries the PL2303 chip to realize the function of USB to serial port. For engineers, this driver is not strange (PL2303 driver download), which may have been installed before.
After installing the PL2303 driver, you can see the corresponding serial port in the device management of the computer.
Then we can intuitively view the key response operation with the help of serial port tools. The baud rate here should be 9600, as shown in the figure below.
When the fireble development board enters the fast broadcast, how to establish a connection?
We know that low-power Bluetooth is very different from traditional Bluetooth. It is a new technology. It is not connected through system Bluetooth. It needs to install a specific app to connect and operate ble.
The official websites of fireble are Android users (simple_ Test. APK) and IOS users (where applications) provide simple test apps (including alarm, loss prevention and other functions). Those interested in learning more can refer to the Bluetooth loss preventer products (pally, tile) evaluated by Aiban. The specific app functions and operations are similar. I won't repeat them here.
How is fireble developed
Preparatory work: (the order doesn't matter)
Step 1: choose a familiar development environment, such as IAR and keil
Step 2: install the latest SDK of kuntianke as qblue1.3.5. The SDK contains many development tools, documents and routines.
Step 3: prepare a j-link simulator for downloading and debugging, and install the j-link driver.
Because the author's computer has ide tools such as IAR and KEIL, skip the first step and proceed to the second step. Find SDK qblue1.3.5 (the latest) to download and install on the official website of firefly. During the installation process, you will be prompted to download and install the link address of j-link driver and the database of qn9021 for IAR or keil ide tools. It is very considerate and humanized.
After installation, open the qblue interface, as shown in the figure below
Qblue studio contains a wealth of documents, routine source code, drivers and other materials. The details are as follows:
Tools：
Qtool is a debugging tool for ble development on PC with qdongle.
Qnispstudio qn902x series serial port burning tool
Qnnvdsconfigurator qn902x series NVDs (non volatile data storage) burning tool.
Qndrivertools qn902x series multiplex pin configuration tool
MCU DB library establishment tool of qndevdb for development environment
Document：
Hardware doc hardware related documents
Software doc software development related documents and tutorials
Project：
Ble example Bluetooth project routine
Driver example driver routine
Ble example contains a wealth of Bluetooth project routines. At present, there are 23 in total.
Each routine here provides the source code of IAR and keil ide tools for engineers to choose. Take keil as an example to load routines.
After compilation, it can be downloaded directly through the j-link simulator.
If there is no j-link emulator on hand, engineers can also use the ISP tool provided by qblue studio to load keil compiled files and download them through the serial port, as shown in the figure below. After configuring the COM port and the corresponding download file path, click start to download.
You need to press the reset key of the fireble board to establish a download connection. After downloading, you can see the board running a new program.
Of course, this part is only for the development of fireble board. If it is the research and development of the whole low-power Bluetooth project, it inevitably also includes the development of app. This part also provides brief instructions on the firefly official website (including Android and IOS systems). If you are interested, you can click to view it.
Summary
This paper introduces the characteristics, functions, power on use and development environment of fireble, a low-power Bluetooth development board launched by firefly team. The fireble development board is based on NXP's low-power Bluetooth single chip solution qn9021. Compared with similar products, this chip has very high receiving sensitivity, up to 31 scalable GPIO ports, and the control of power consumption is also at the leading level, Coupled with the support of all-round and complete documents, routine source code and other materials, engineers can carry out secondary development very quickly. Do you want to DIY a bracelet? Or anti loss device? Fireble development board can quickly help you turn idea into a product.
reference material
Fireble development board materials
Fireble development board Getting Started Guide
Construction of fireble development board development environment
Original statement: This article is original by Aiban. Reprint is declined“
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