MENU

Scalable design kit for next-gen wearables

Scalable design kit for next-gen wearables

Technology News |
By Rich Pell



The new Wearable Development Kit (WDK1.0) consists of a DC-DC converter, battery charger and wireless charging front end. This is coupled with a Bluetooth Low Energy chip that includes a low power ARM Cortex-M microcontroller. 

“Despite the growing interest in wearable electronics, to date there is simply not a solution on the market that provides the scope needed by OEMs to help them develop feature rich designs that will attract strong consumer uptake,” said AJ ElJallad, senior manager, corporate strategy and business development at ON Semiconductor. “The WDK1.0 is a multi-faceted design asset that will allow wearable technology projects to be expedited – shortening time to market and curbing the associated investment in engineering by leveraging the extent of ON Semiconductor’s product portfolio.”

The heart of the design is the high efficiency programmable NCP6915 DC‐DC converter to handle the power management tasks. An NCP1855 battery charger IC, plus an LC709203F fuel gauge and a 10 watt (W) rated SCY1751 wireless charging front-end controller (supporting AirFuel compatible magnetic resonance charging) have also been incorporated. The kit’s sensors include the MEMS-based FIS1100 inertial measurement unit (IMU), with 3‐axis gyroscope and 3‐axis accelerometer operation enabling accurate multi-dimensional motion tracking, embedded temperature sensor and an LC898301 driver IC for initiating haptic feedback.

Wireless connectivity comes from ultra-lower power nRF52832 multi-protocol system-on-chip (SoC) from Nordic Semiconductor that supports Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and other relevant wireless technologies. The kit is complemented by a SmartApp which can be downloaded directly from Android PlayStore and Apple AppStore and an Eclipse-based IDE accompanies the kit.

This presents engineering teams with all the resources they need to rapidly create and subsequently debug code necessary for designs. A highly intuitive Project Wizard further facilitates the development process, by giving engineers access to numerous useful wearable-related project examples.

The WDK1.0 solution also has a 1.44-inch format, 128 x 128 pixel TFT display into which a capacitive touch screen is integrated. A 26‐pin expansion port complements all the other elements in the kit. Through this, there is ample provision for further additions to the system design, such as supplementary microcontroller, signal processing or GPS functionality, the inclusion of more sensors or the specifying of different display. Hardware schematics and Cadence EDA design files are also made available.

For more, see Has the Wearable Electronics Sector Been Restricted by the Scope of Available Design Platforms?

If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :    eeNews on Google News

Share:

Linked Articles
10s