RoadTest: CY8CKIT-044 PSoC® 4 M-Series Pioneer Kit
Author: dougw
Creation date:
Evaluation Type: Evaluation Boards
Did you receive all parts the manufacturer stated would be included in the package?: True
What other parts do you consider comparable to this product?: PSoC4 Prototyping Kit PSoC5 Prototyping Kit
What were the biggest problems encountered?: There were no significant problems with this product. I had some trouble understanding how the accelerometer software was interpreting acceleration data, but this is mainly due to my lack of experience with this language.
Detailed Review:
I had posted my review in a blog before figuring out I should post it here, so here is a link to that review:
CY8CKIT-044 PSoC 4M Pioneer Kit Road Test
The CY8KIT-044 PSoC 4M Pioneer Kit is a very flexible module capable of interfacing to an extremely wide variety of popular industry standard modules, such as arduino shields, or a Raspberry Pi, or Digilent Pmods. It also has extensive functionality directly built-in, with 5on-board sensors, 2 switches, 5 LEDs, 5 capacitive sensing pads and 2 capacitive proximity connectors. The sensors are 3 accelerometers, a temperature sensor and a light sensor. It also has a FRAM chip which is can be used for non-volatile data storage.
The Cypress Semiconductor web site for this product is here: PSoC 4M Pioneer Kit
This is the unboxing video:
This is a video of the demo software installed on the PSoC 4M Pioneer Kit:
The next 2 videos are a quick introduction to the PSoC Creator development environment:
While waiting for the kit to arrive, I designed a Bluetooth and LCD interface card to incorporate into the road test.
This is a video of the Sensor Hub demo program slightly modified to output over Bluetooth instead of UART:
This is a video demonstrating the LCD in action:
This is a video demonstrating reading sensors and displaying their values on the LCD:
Here is a picture of the 3D printed case I designed for the PSoC 4M Pioneer Kit - it is translucent to allow LEDs to shine through:
This road test was great fun - thanks to element14 and Cypress Semiconductor for the PSoC 4M Pioneer Kit.
The Cypress Semiconductor PSoC Creator development environment really makes it easy to develop applications for their PSoC products - as the PSoC Creator has a powerful drag-and-drop / point-and-shoot interface for system design and configuration, plus it generates large portions of bug-free API software based on what application functionality is selected. The PSoC 4M Pioneer Kit has a lot more interface capability and built-in features than I managed to cover in this road test, but I hope it has helped others understand at least some of the potential of this very capable little module.