FeatherWing developer boards take flight
Development boards engineered for the Feather development system by Adafruit have been unveiled by Würth Elektronik. The four FeatherWings are compatible with the Feather form factor and stackable on Adafruit’s Feather microcontroller boards. The boards bring brings wireless modules, sensors and power modules to the Feather ecosystem. Würth Elektronik also provides documentation, C/C++ drivers and code examples to facilitate the development of applications.
The Sensor FeatherWing combines four sensors for temperature, absolute pressure, humidity and three-axis acceleration, all of which are connected via a common I²C bus. In addition to the Adafruit Feather form factor, Würth’s developer board with MEMS sensors is also compatible with the QWIIC connection system from SparkFun.
The Thyone-I Wireless FeatherWing enables wireless connections of up to 500 meters range with a proprietary 2.4GHz radio module. This can be used, for example, to set up mesh networks for IoT applications. The module has an integrated security / authentication IC and provides AES128 encryption of communications with other Thyone-I modules or the Thyone-I USB wireless stick. The WE-ProWare radio protocol can be configured for individual purposes with simple commands.
The third option is the Calypso WiFi FeatherWing. This is a low power WLAN interface for stacking on a Feather using commonly used networking applications such as SNTP, DHPv4, DHCPv6, mDNS, HTTP(S) and MQTT. The Feather ecosystem is powered by USB or a lithium-polymer battery and for these battery-powered applications, the Calypso WiFi FeatherWing has a power saving mode. The module can handle 2.4GHz Wi-Fi connections according to IEEE 802.11 b/g/n and supports IPv4 and IPv6 as well as encryption via TLS.
Würth Elektronik has also included its MagI³C power modules, offering the MagI³C Power FeatherWing with the DC/DC converters with integrated regulator IC, inductor and capacitors. The FeatherWing converts input voltages from 6.0 to 36V into a constant output voltage of 5.0V and thus covers the typical industrial bus voltages. A second MagI³C module on the PCB can reduce the output voltage even further to 3.3V. Alternatively, the module can be operated at 5.0V via a common USB connection. The MagI³C Power FeatherWing can operate as the 5.0 and 3.3V power supply for the FeatherWing ecosystem and expands the possibilities for using it to build prototypes for industrial applications, said Würth Elektronik.
