Bluetooth Low Energy Solutions From Cypress With Expanded Memory Enable Over-The-Air Firmware Upgrades

Cypress Semiconductor Corp announced its highly integrated, single-chip Bluetooth Low Energy solutions for the Internet of Things and other wireless applications now offer double the memory capacity. The PSoC 4 BLE Programmable System-on-Chip and PRoC BLE Programmable Radio-on-Chip solutions each now have options with 256KB of flash and 32KB of SRAM, giving designers added flexibility by enabling over-the-air (OTA) firmware upgrades without the need for external memory. The new offerings are pin-to-pin compatible with Cypress’s original Bluetooth Low Energy solutions, simplifying upgrades.

Cypress’s easy-to-use PSoC Creator integrated design environment (IDE) supports the new 256KB Bluetooth Low Energy solutions. Cypress has added support for multiple new Bluetooth Low Energy profiles in PSoC Creator, further streamlining design of a broader range of applications, including Glucose Monitoring, Environmental Sensing and Apple Notification Center Service.

“These new PSoC 4 and PRoC BLE offerings demonstrate our commitment to expanding our portfolio of Bluetooth Smart solutions to better serve our customers’ needs,” said John Weil, Vice President of Marketing for Cypress’s Programmable Systems Division. “The expanded memory capacity of our new solutions further increases the design flexibility by allowing changes to firmware via OTA field updates.”

Cypress’s customizable Bluetooth Low Energy solutions deliver unprecedented ease-of-use and integration for IoT applications, home automation, wireless Human Interface Devices (HIDs), remote controls, healthcare equipment, sports and fitness monitors, and other wearable smart devices. PRoC BLE is a Bluetooth Smart microcontroller with Cypress’s industry-leading CapSense capacitive touch-sensing functionality, while PSoC 4 BLE offers expanded design versatility by adding intelligent analog and programmable digital blocks. Both solutions integrate a Bluetooth Smart radio, a high-performance 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 core with ultra-low-power modes, 256KB flash memory, 36 GPIOs, and customizable serial communication blocks, timers and counters. This combination of technology delivers unmatched system value for Bluetooth Smart products, with prolonged battery life, customizable sensing capabilities, and sleek, intuitive user interfaces. Additionally, both solutions have an on-chip balun that simplifies antenna design while reducing board size and system cost.

Designers looking to create Bluetooth Smart products currently must use software tools from multiple vendors and develop complex firmware to meet wireless specifications. Cypress has simplified the Bluetooth Low Energy protocol stack and profile configuration into a new royalty-free, GUI-based BLE Component—a free embedded IC within PSoC represented by an icon—that can be dragged and dropped into designs using PSoC Creator. The IDE enables complete system design in a single tool, slashing time-to-market. Alternatively, users of Eclipse and other ARM-based tools can customize their own Bluetooth Low Energy solutions on PSoC Creator and export the design to their preferred IDE.

Application details for Cypress’s BLE Component are embedded in PSoC Creator with examples of all supported Bluetooth Low Energy profiles and hundreds of example projects, including OTA, for mixed-signal system designs. Additional new profiles in the BLE Component include:

• User Data
• Weight Scale
• Body Composition
• Bonding Management
• Wireless Power Transfer

Cypress is offering new low-cost BLE development kit modules featuring the 256KB chips. The modules plug into the existing $49 CY8CKIT-042-BLE Development Kit, which gives users easy access to the Cypress Bluetooth Low Energy devices, while maintaining the design footprint from the PSoC 4 Pioneer kit. The development kit includes a USB Bluetooth Low Energy dongle that pairs with the CySmart master emulation tool, converting a designer’s Windows PC into a Bluetooth Low Energy debug environment.

The new CY8C41x8-BL PSoC 4 BLE and CYBL10x7x PRoC BLE solutions are currently sampling in QFN and CSP packages.