Cypress’ PSoC 63 MCU gets into new IoT development platform
Dubbed Sequana, the platform includes a main controller board and a sensor daughterboard for measurement of indoor pollutants, humidity, and visible and infrared light. Created by Future Electronics’ Centre of Excellence for embedded engineering in Gdansk, Poland in collaboration with Cypress Semiconductor and Arm, the new development platform is the first to feature a Cypress PSoC 6 MCU running the Arm Mbed operating system for IoT devices. The dual-core architecture of the PSoC 6 supports power-optimised partitioning between the PSoC 63’s ultra-low power Arm Cortex-M0+ core and its high-performance Cortex-M4 core. The Mbed software is an open-source real-time OS for IoT devices, and includes drivers and security, storage and networking functions.
At the heart of the Sequana main board is a PSoC 63 MCU module, which includes an on-chip Bluetooth 5.0 radio. The module includes an antenna and RF peripherals, and is supplied with FCC, CE and Bluetooth certificates. The PSoC 63 offers the ability for customers to use three levels of hardware-based isolation to construct their secure application. It offers integrated secure element functionality, including hardware-accelerated cryptographic functions such as AES, 3DES, RSA, ECC and SHA. In Sequana, reference examples of these capabilities are provided by the Mbed OS’s support for partition management, cryptography and Transport Layer Security (TLS) for authentication and confidentiality.
The main board is supplied with a choice of ROHM Semiconductor MEMS motion sensors to support the development of machine condition monitoring and predictive maintenance applications. It also includes Arduino and mikroBUST headers for easy integration of function-specific boards. The Sequana platform may also be supplied to customers with an optional Sequana environmental plug-in board, which features an array of sensors from ams, IDT, Murata, Sensirion and STMicroelectronics.
Discussing the new product launch, Etienne Lanoy, Director of the Future Electronics Centres of Excellence, explained eeNews Europe how such ready-made platforms were a key ingredient to raise the profile of devices such as the PSoC 63 for specific application domains. Tailored for environmental sensing applications, the platform offers a clear streamlined BOM, which would not be the case for a more comprehensive and certainly more expensive evaluation board trying to leverage every possible features of the device. Every year, Future’s European Electronics Centres of Excellence design between 4 and 5 new platforms, always targeted at specific applications, often with numerous expansion boards so as to make them more appealing and versatile. When designing such solutions, the distributor also takes into consideration component availability and sourcing, making sure it will be able to deliver the individual components in volume, should the prototype be productized.
Future Electronics – www.FutureElectronics.com