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Our new dual band WiFi/bluetooth module

Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2016 10:12 pm
by Builty
Hi All,

We are a small Australian company, who recently worked with a Broadcom partner to develop a module that runs:
- a ST Micro STM32F205RG Arm micro
- a USI BM-13 SIP module (http://www.usish.com/english/products_wm_ban_bm_13.php) which has a Broadcom BCM43341 combo chip in it.

It's packaged very similarly to the EMW3162 (https://www.seeedstudio.com/EMW3162-WiF ... -2122.html#) and is mostly pin compatible.

Photo of module: https://www.dropbox.com/s/i992ub1exvbaf ... i.jpg?dl=0

This gives us dual band WiFi plus Bluetooth, running on the Cypress (formerly Broadcom) WICED platform (http://www.cypress.com/internet-things-iot)


We created this primarily for use inside our other products, but are now considering making it a separate product for sale.
Dual band WiFi and Bluetooth puts it a fair way ahead of most other IoT products, like the ESP8266.

The WICED SDK is mature and well featured, supporting:
- choice of LwIP, NetX, NetX_Duo, or no TCP/IP stack
- choice of FreeRTOS, ThreadX, or no RTOS
- over the air firmware updates (our module has 8MB flash memory to support this)
- extensive library of drivers (audio, bluetooth, flash etc), protocols (DNS, HTTP, SMTP, Xively etc), daemons (DHCP server, HTTP server, tftp etc)

We would like to get a port of Micropython going on this module. Probably keeping it running on the WICED platform, but running Mpy in an RTOS thread.
We would like to reach out to the community to see if anyone is interested in helping out with the port. We will provide free hardware.

Please post here your expression of interest.
Thanks for reading.

Re: Our new dual band WiFi/bluetooth module

Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2016 5:15 am
by nickovs
This certainly sounds interesting. I would love to have a reasonably powerful MicroPython device with a Bluetooth interface and API stack. Do you have an idea what sort of price you would sell this at? The WM-BAN-BM-13 has NFC functionality too; is this connected in the device that you created?

Given that you created this for use in other products rather than as a retail item you might consider delegating fulfilment of retail sales either to someone like Amazon, or through maker-focused retailers like Adafruit.

I don't have a ton of time to work on porting MicroPython to this but I hope that you can find someone to do it. I would be up for buying a few if you do!

Re: Our new dual band WiFi/bluetooth module

Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2016 12:31 pm
by Roberthh
It might be worth to have a look here: https://github.com/redbear/micropython
The redbear duo device is very similar to what you have built. The port is not very recent, but a good baseline.

Re: Our new dual band WiFi/bluetooth module

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 1:30 am
by Builty
Nicovs, we haven't decided about pricing yet, but likely it would be competitive.
We didn't expose the NFC functionality of the BM-13, as we didn't have a need for it and it would have required a larger microcontroller and probably larger board also.

Roberthh, thanks for the tip, will investigate.

Re: Our new dual band WiFi/bluetooth module

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 4:56 am
by mcauser
Adafruit is in the US. If you want to delegate sales through Aussie businesses, Little Bird Electronics, Tronixlabs, Core Electronics, Freetronics, or even Jaycar may be more suitable.

Breadboard friendly and 5G wifi, neat :D