Latest ARIS kit simplifies development of compact, mobile TFT display products
Arrow Electronics has extended its Arrow Renesas IoT Synergy (ARIS) platform for the development of internet of things (IoT) devices, with the ARIS-Edge-S3 development kit. It increases compute performance and can enable the developer to add a compact user interface.
Arrow’s ARIS-Edge connects developers with the Renesas Synergy platform giving access to an optimised operating system, qualified stacks, consistent software libraries, and application programming interfaces (APIs) that streamline IoT-device development and lower total cost of ownership, says Arrow.
The Arm Cortex-M4-based 48MHz Renesas Synergy S3A3 group of microcontrollers is combined with rich context sensing and the multi-protocol wireless subsystem used in other ARIS-Edge boards. The ARIS-Edge-S3 lets developers add extra sophistication to connected objects, for example connecting a small-form-factor TFT-display. They can also take advantage of tools and software to create a graphical user interface (GUI) for an extra level of user interactivity, advises Arrow.
The on-board sensors include the Bosch Sensortec BNO055 nine degrees of freedom (9-DOF) application specific sensor node (ASSN) absolute orientation sensor, which contains a MEMS accelerometer and gyroscope, a geo-magnetic sensor, and a 32-bit microcontroller running Bosch Sensortec BSX3.0 FusionLib software. This sensor is used in robotics, augmented and virtual reality, drones, gaming, and other industrial applications. There is also the BME280 environmental sensor, also from Bosch Sensortec. This combines temperature, humidity and pressure sensing, while a separate MEMS microphone and an ambient light sensor can be used for contextual awareness.
The radio module has built-in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE 4.1/4.2), Thread, and ZigBee stacks. These connectivity standards can be applied for home automation, smart meters, smart lighting, wearable electronics, medical monitors, industrial sensing, and other IoT sectors.
Arrow works with Reloc to design the ARIS board family. The Italy-based Renesas design house designs and integrates consumer IoT and industrial machine-to- machine applications, specifically in distributed sensing, location solutions and radio identification. Customers can also contract Reloc to get their products designed quickly and first-time-right.
Arrow and Renesas jointly work with Draupner Graphics to add the TouchGFX GUI to the kit in Q2 2018. TouchGFX is suitable for battery-operated, portable products, as it keeps resource requirements low enough to often use the S3A3 microcontroller in single-chip mode, which in turn keeps power consumption and cost very low, explains Arrow.
