Texas Instruments has sponsored the following story
If you are thinking about connecting your internet of things (IoT) design to the cloud, you are not alone. Connecting to the cloud creates countless opportunities for design. Some examples include monitoring residential and commercial sites, vehicle tracking, smart solutions, biomedical instrumentation, and gaming.
To ease the design burden for these sorts of applications, Texas Instruments' (TI) has developed a new addition for their low-cost development ecosystem that will make your designs "cloud ready" right out of the box.
Tiva C Series Connected LaunchPad Evaluation Board
LaunchPads are rapid prototyping evaluation kits from TI that have microcontrollers built-in. TI offers a wide variety of development kits to ease development efforts. The Tiva™ C Series Connected LaunchPad is designed to help get IoT projects running.
With TI's Tiva C Series Connected LaunchPad Evaluation kit, you can connect with over 15 TI BoosterPacks (and countless 3rd party ones) to add an abundance of features. TI also offers software, and online workshops to help develop, debug and download your project.
The Evaluation kit has the following features to pique the interests of developers, engineers, and DIYers:
- TM4C1294NCPDT MCU – 120MHz, 32-bit ARM Cortex-M4 with floating point
- 1MB Flash
- 10/100 Ethernet MAC+PHY
- Temperature sensor
- USB H/D/O
- Dual stackable BoosterPack XL connection sites
- In-circuit debug interface
Available Software Tools and Instructions
TI has other tools so you don't feel lost developing your cloud ready solution. First, here is a "read-me file" you'll actually want to read - Tiva_Connected_LP_ReadFirst.pdf. It outlines the four steps to download a Project to your board that you can then edit to suit your needs.
On board emulation means you can program and debug your projects without the need for additional tools. However, if you need them, there are additional applications that can help such as TivaWare that comes with preconfigured examples designed for your board and BoosterPacks. Energia is an open source software framework that allows you to read in sensor data and control things like lights and motors. Finally, Code Composer Studio (CCS) allows you to add more power and flexibility to the project. It has true debugging capabilities like code pauses, register reads and errors tracking.
If these tools still leave you looking for answers, TI offers online workshops including an Intro to TM4C Devices, LaunchPad and Cloud Services.
Educational BoosterPack
BoosterPacks are plug in modules that fit directly into the LaunchPad board. These various plug-in models add a wide array of functionality to projects. Some of my favorites are:
- Educational BoosterPack - with RGB and white LEDs, potentiometer, microphone and speaker, an analog accelerometer, and a 2x16 character LCD
- Sensor Hub - with InvenSense MPU-9150, 9-axis MEMS motion tracking, 3-axis gyro, 3-axis accelerometer 3-axis compass, and pressure/temperature/infrared sensors
- L298 Motor Control - bi-directional motor control
With TI's Tiva C Series Connected LaunchPad, BoosterPacks and resources, developers have an easier on-ramp to the Internet of Things. Home and industrial applications can include remote monitoring, electronic point-of-sale or test & measurement of just about anything.
Texas Instruments has sponsored promotion of their industrial communications solutions on ENGINEERING.com. They have no editorial input to this post - all opinions are mine. – Christine Halsey