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  • Author Author: rscasny
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Poll: Are You Interested in Roadtesting Bluetooth Dev Board with a mikroBUS™︎ expansion socket?

The BGM220 Explorer Kit is an ultra-low cost, small form factor development and evaluation platform for the BGM220P Wireless Gecko BluetoothRegistered Module. The BGM220 Explorer Kit is focused on rapid prototyping and concept creation of IoT applications. It is designed around the BGM220P Module, based on the EFR32BG22 System-on-Chip, which is an ideal device family for developing energy-friendly connected IoT applications.

BGM220-EK4314A EXPLORER KIT, BLUETOOTH LOW ENERGY, SOC ROHS COMPLIANT: YES

Target device

  • BGM220PC22HNA
  • Secure Bluetooth 5.2 module
  • 76.8 MHz, ARM Cortex-M33 with 512 kB of flash and 32 kB RAM
  • Bluetooth 5.2 Radio with supported for direction finding and LE coded PHY
  • 38.4 MHz HFXO crystal
  • 32.768 kHz LFXO crystal
  • 2.4 GHz matching network and a chip antenna

 

On-board Board controller

  • J-Link debugger
  • SWD physical layer
  • Packet trace over UART/async protocol
  • Virtual COM with hardware flow control

 

User interface features

  • 1x button (with EM2 wake-up)
  • 1x LED

 

Mini Simplicity Debug Connector (SLSDA001A compatible) with access to

  • AEM
  • PTI
  • VCOM
  • SWD

 

Third-party add-on connectors

  • mikroBus socket
  • Qwiic connector

 

Additional Information

  • in reply to baldengineer

    Secure Bluetooth usualy means that chip have accelerator for AES128 which can be used for encryption of all BLE communication. But soft implementation also do not cause any significant performance issue. Mobile phones, laptops and so on supports it. In fact, almost every nowadays BLE device supports it.

     

    Direction finding loks good at the first look but it is more complicated. It is not a Silicon Labs unique feature. It is part of BT 5.1 specification. Some other (not all) vendors like Nordic Semiconductor also support this but usually not in all chips. For example roadtested Arduino Nano 33 BLE looks that it does not support this. Some details you can find at https://www.silabs.com/products/wireless/learning-center/bluetooth/bluetooth-direction-finding or at similar Nordic website at https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Low-power-short-range-wireless/Direction-finding. You allways need multiple devices to use this feature. Concept is designed in a way that devices cooperate to locate target device. Accurancy wary much. If you want to test it you need multiple other BLE devices and I am not sure about possiblity to implement it within roadtest deadline without further previous advanced BLE knowledge. I recomend checking quality of SDK and examples before applying for evaluate this.

     

    I think that while offered BGM220-EK4314A is pretty cheep Randal may try negotiate roadtesting multiple of these devices (ie. selected roadtester would recevie 3pcs of this board for example) which should be enough to evaluate direction finding but as I mentioned, roadtester must have enough time to test this.

  • The direction finding technology, cost $1000+ per node, less than five years ago : ) Integrated in wireless access points. Now it's just a few $ integrated in BLE.

    Silicon Labs BLE is really nice tech in general. I tried the last generation BLE module from Silabs for an 'IoT Lamp' - I didn't get a chance to write it up, but there's a demo video below.. in brief it was controllable via TV sticks.. in this demo it is synchronized to a movie for auto-lighting effects (Philips Hue has a similar feature but implemented differently - their version does more, but costs $250+.

    I believe this would be a popular RoadTest (or should be, for anyone interested in or planning to use BLE).

     

  • in reply to baldengineer

    The silabs.com website has some good info about direction finding. For example they have this handy quick start guide: https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/quick-start-guides/qsg175-direction-finding-solution-quick-start-guide.pdf

     

    Note that for direction finding, or using the AoA (Angle of Arrival) or AoD (Angle of Departure) feature, the RX device (in the case of AoA) or the TX device (for AoD) needs to have multiple antennas and a RF switch. You cannot simply use two off-the-shelf BLE 5.1/5.2 modules with chip antenna for direction finding.

  • Two features on the list stand out to me:

    1. Secure Bluetooth 5.2 module
    2. Bluetooth 5.2 Radio with supported for direction finding and LE coded PHY

     

    It would be great if there was documentation that explained how to test/use those features. And ideally, any additional hardware (modules, eval board) needed to test them. For example, does Secure Bluetooth require another Bluetooth device? (or are there common devices like mobile phones that already support it.)

     

    More importantly of those two, to me, would be the direction finding. Same question, would a specific module be required to test that or is there off-the-shelf common hardware available?