Top 5 Development Tools - September 2021
Mouser offers one of the widest ranges of development kits immediately available off-the-shelf to help designers get started. Here, Mouser's Technical Marketing Manager, EMEA, Mark Patrick, presents his 'Top 5 Pick' of recently released dev kits.
Smart City; Smart Utility
Silicon Labs' Wi-SUN 868MHz- 915MHz wireless starter kit (WSTK)
The Wi-SUN WSTK features the BRD4170A radio board, and provides all necessary tools for developing a Silabs wireless application. The kit is configured to evaluate the EFR32'" Mighty Gecko wireless SoC.
Wireless Smart Ubiquitous Network (Wi-SUN) is the leading IPv6 sub-GHz mesh technology for smart city and smart utility applications, enabling interoperable, multi-service, and secure wireless mesh networks. Wi-SUN can be used for large-scale outdoor loT wireless communication networks in a wide range of applications covering both line-powered and battery-powered nodes. Wi-SUN hardware is certified by the Wi-SUN
Alliance. Built to scale with long-range capabilities, high-data throughput, and IPv6 support, Wi-SUN simplifies wireless infrastructure for industrial applications and the evolution of smart cities.
The BRD4170A plug-in board is a complete reference design for the EFR32MG12 Wireless SoC, with 19dBm output power, a PCB antenna for the 2.4GHz band, and an SMA connector, and a wide-band matching network for operation in either the 868MHz or the 915MHz band.
Safety First
NXP KITFS4508CAEEVM eval board
This eval board is a demonstration and development platform for the FS4508 Safety Power System Basis Chip (SBC). The MC33FS4508 is a multi-output power supply integrated circuit, with support for CAN Flexible Data (FD). The FS4508 SBC features advanced functional safety measures to target ASIL B or D applications.
The board includes a pre-installed FS4508 in an LQFP48 package and provides full access to all of the device's features. A Kinetis® MKL25Z MCU USB controller enables access to the FS4508 through a USB connection. The Evaluation Board can be connected to a host computer via USB. The FlexGUI Graphical User Interface (GUI) software can then be used to exercise the functions of the FS4508.
KITFS4508CAEEVM includes a CAN FD bus, along with connectors allowing easy access to digital signals.
Crowd Supply Eduponics Mini Kit
Crowd Supply's Eduponics Mini Kit is designed to help people study the loT and smart agriculture. The board comes with a built-in sensor and supports both C programming language in the Arduino IDE environment and MicroPython in Thonny IDE. This Eduponics mini kit includes: Eduponics mini ESP32 board; STEMinds soil moisture sensor (short); a contact-less water quantity sensor, a screwdriver for adjusting the potentiometer on the water-quantity sensor; a 12V submersible water pump; a 12V / 2A DC power supply; USB Type-C data cable; a hose for the pump and a water regulator.
Watching the Detectives
Fingerprints' BM-Lite dev kit
The BM-Lite kit is designed for the BM-Lite module, a complete biometric fingerprint solution, ready to be used out of the box. The module has simple serial commands that are used to enrol and verify. It combines superior biometric performance and a high standard of quality components to offer a comprehensive embedded solution for increased security and enhanced user convenience.
The kit includes one BM-Lite module, an FPC5832 FTDI USB adapter, adapter board and flex cable. The module has a standard ten-pin 0.5mm pitch flat flex connector as the main interface.
The adapter board is a breakout board and the FPC5832 is a USB-SPI adapter using an FTDI FT232H converter. The CN3 connector is pin-compatible with CN2 on FPC5924, and CN4 is pin-compatible with CN3 on FPC5924.
I'll Take The LoRaWAN
DIGI XON-9-Ll-KIT-001 starter kit
This kit is a complete device, gateway, and cloud loT platform for developing end-to-end LoRaWAN solutions. It includes a multi-sensor device, a multi-channel gateway, and an X-ON'" cloud loT free trial. The X-ON cloud demonstrates automated provisioning for devices and gateways. The Digi
LoRaWAN starter kit provides a cloud application using the X-ON industrial loT platform. It also provides a highly scalable microservices platform for large-scale LoRaWAN solutions. Each gateway supports 1.5 million messages per day delivered to the X-ON cloud.
The included HXG3000 gateway offers high receive sensitivity and up to 27dBm transmit power to deliver long range, non-line-of-sight, two-way communications over LoRaWAN. The starter kit provides LoRaWAN Class A and Class C for both low-power battery and always-on real time cloud-to-device control applications, respectively.
Looking for more?
If you enjoyed this rundown of development tools then why not subscribe to the monthly Mouser’s Electronics Information Update newsletter? It's packed full of
news from the electronics industry, expert insights, industry articles, and in-depth technical reports as well as regular updates on new products and supplier news.
As Mouser Electronics’ Technical Marketing Manager for EMEA, Mark Patrick is responsible for the creation and circulation of technical content within the region — content that is key to Mouser’s strategy to support, inform and inspire its engineering audience. Prior to leading the Technical Marketing team, Patrick was part of the EMEA Supplier Marketing team and played a vital role in establishing and developing relationships with key manufacturing partners. In addition to a variety of technical and marketing positions, Patrick’s previous roles include eight years at Texas Instruments in Applications Support and Technical Sales. A “hands-on” engineer at heart, with a passion for vintage synthesizers and motorcycles, he thinks nothing of carrying out repairs on either. Patrick holds a first class Honours Degree in Electronics Engineering from Coventry University.
Leave your feedback...