Last November, we announced the latest additions to our family of Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) solutions: the DA14531 SmartBond TINY™ SoC and module. While the SoC was released to the market at the time of the announcement, the module wasn’t slated to hit mass production until the first half of this year. Today we’re excited to announce that the SmartBond TINY module is now ready and available for customers to begin incorporating into what will ultimately be the next billion IoT devices.
Here’s why that’s a big deal.
Reducing time to market
Like the TINY SoC, the SmartBond TINY module is designed to accelerate an IoT device’s time to market, cutting down the costs and resources that typically go into a development cycle.
How does that work? The hand-solderable, stamp-type design of the module leverages a 12.5mm x 14.5mm size, integrated antenna and nine GPIOs to bring the cost of adding Bluetooth LE functionality to an IoT system in high volumes to as low as $1 – a price point unmatched by any of our competitors. Additionally, because all external components – passives, XTAL, antenna and FLASH memory – are integrated into the module’s design, customers don’t need to source these individual components separately, eliminating further levels of development costs and time.
Perhaps most importantly, the SmartBond TINY module boasts a highly configurable, easy-to-use design that empowers customers to quickly and intuitively create highly functional connected devices: remote controls, proximity tags, toys, weight scales, home appliances, low-power wireless sensors, not to mention adding Bluetooth LE capability to existing products and designs. This is all thanks to two unique software features that remove the complexity traditionally associated with Bluetooth LE development – i.e., the coding itself.
Open to anyone, regardless of coding skill
The SmartBond TINY module utilizes a unique, configurable Dialog Serial Port Service (DSPS) software and our new Codeless software to take complex coding out of the equation for IoT device designs.
- DSPS emulates a universal asynchronous receiver-transmitter (UART) serial port over Bluetooth LE. With this feature, customers can connect the module to a host microcontroller unit’s serial port without having to write any Bluetooth software themselves.
- Codeless builds on this by substituting the complex code you’d typically have to program into a device with a simple series of human-readable ASCII commands for creating customer applications. This industry standard Hayes AT-style command set allows developers to easily configure and operate the module without having to engage in any kind of intense Bluetooth software coding.
Taken together, these features ensure that the SmartBond TINY module takes a coding-free approach to IoT development cycles, removing the typical costs, time and difficulty that come with programming robust IoT devices – not to mention, removing the barrier of entry for developers, anyone, regardless of their coding skills, can take advantage of the module’s capabilities.
Fully certified for worldwide use
The SmartBond TINY module is both FCC-certified for the Americas and CE-certified for Europe, eliminating another task that customers used to have to take on: certifying the platforms themselves. Out-of-the-box certification again reduces time, money and manpower that normally gets baked into IoT device design cycles. Furthermore, because the module is already certified across these regions, it can be easily deployed without the hassle or cost of extra certifications. No RF knowledge is necessary; the hard part has already been taken care of.
No assembly required
That’s the SmartBond TINY module in a nutshell: Bluetooth coding, external components, platform certifications, all the usual pitfalls that drain time and money in a typical IoT development cycle. All of that has been eliminated with our new module. We’re not just breaking barriers in terms of costs and ease of use for IoT devices, but – thanks to a futureproofing combination of Bluetooth 5.1 compliance and over-the-air software updates – we’re enabling customers to build the next generation of connected devices and bring them to market faster than ever.
Both the DA14531 SoC and module are sampling now and are available via Digi-Key. Get all the details on both SoC and module – including how to order from their product pages on our website.