Hello everyone.
Some time
ago I took part in Webinar “EFM32 MCU and Sensors ideal for Internet of Things”
organized by Silicon Labs. It was very good presentation about their products.
I recommend to visit their site silabs.com/IoT, soon I will upload some
documents form webinarium. I think it will be very usefull for those who want
to start develop devices for IoT or for those who are looking for some sensors
for their devices.
Silicon
labs got many starter kits. The one which aroused my interest was
EFM32ZG-STK3200. Silicon Labs presenters also was talking about it during
presentation. Heart of the kit is really low power Cortex M0+ mcu. On board we
also find 1.28-inch SHARP Memory LCD-TFT, 2 buttons and 2 capacitive touch
pads. There are also 2 user leds, cr2032 battery holder, expansion header and
of course Integrated SEGGER J-Link USB debugger.
That’s enough for those who starts with Cortex M0+ adventure, but there
is one more thing that can not stay overlooked! It’s AEM - Advanced Energy
Monitoring system used for precise current tracking, great future which makes
EGM32ZG-STK3200 ideal platform for developing low power systems – really LOW
power! In my opinion that’s the best future that almost every kit should have,
and Silicon Labs showed that they understand user needs. Most time I was
working with
Cortex M0+
and Zero Gecko Starter kit in my project? Why not!
I’m going to
build simple weather station, and EFM32ZG-STK3200 contains everything what I
need and even more! Silicon Labs was giving starter kits to all qualified
attendants of webinar. So I got one EFM32ZG-STK3200
and also i got Sensor EXP CARD.. GREAT!!!
Sensor EXP
card is expansion card for EFM32 zero gecko starter kit. It has Si701x/2x Relative Humidity and
Temperature Sensors
and Si114x UV Index, Ambient Light,
Proximity and 3D Gesture Sensors. Great future is proximity and 3d gesture sensor. Normally you can
switch off the device when there is nobody infront of the screen, and turn on
when someone appear.
What is in the box?
In the box
you will find:
- EFM32ZG-STK3200 Starter Kit
- USB mini cable
- DVD with IAR Embeeded Workbench for SiLabs
In sensor EXP card you will find expansion card with Sony CR2032 3v
battery.
EFM32ZG-STK3200 Starter Kit looks solid and it’s very well made, it
should serve long time. You will pay for
it 69$ dollars. In the kit you will find two user tact switch (+ one reset), two user
leds, two capacitive touch buttons, battery holder and Sharp Memory LCD (cost
about 18$) and ofcourse AEM (Advenced Energy Monitoring)!. With Sensor Exp card
you will get humidity, temperature and optical sensors. This kit is great
platform for those who want to start adventure with low power embedded systems.
Someone would say that 69$ is too much, but remember in this price you got
platform with arm microcontroller, AEM, good LCD display, user buttons etc, in
one starter kit. I just add that every kit
Let’s get started!!!
Here you got Weather demo presenting
Sensor EXP Card YouTube Video
I've started recording after restart mcu, after short period of initialization you can see that power consumption significantly increased. When hand was moved over 3d sensors, you can see rugged trace of power consumption. In this test, hand was moved 3 times. Average current consumption is 4mA!!! Cortex M4F with basic configuration (ALU + one port enabled) consumes 15 mA. Before intialization, power consumption was 219.23 uA.
Future plan
As i mention i'm
going to build simple Weather station which in the near future will be
connected to home monitoring system. It looks like the EFM32 ZG kit is the best
choice for this application. It's a pity the kit doesn't support code
profiling, it would be greate to have 100% abilities to create software really
low power, but using AEM in this installment should be enough to
manage.
