COMMUNICATION SOLUTIONS

Experimenter Board Allows Development of Wireless Applications

The new MSP430FG4618/F2013 Experimenter Board from Texas Instruments includes two of the company's MSP430 series ultra low power microcontrollers. It is compatible with Texas Instruments' latest wireless evaluation modules, allowing designers to quickly and easily start to develop products such as portable industrial or security related applications, remote utility meters and other connected appliances.



This versatile Experimenter Board is based around one MSP430F2013 and one MSP430FG4618 device, providing nearly every combination of peripherals available from the MSP430 family. Two JTAG headers are accessible, allowing independent programming and debug of each controller and facilitating communication to external devices or between the two MSP430s. Power may be supplied via the USB FET or from the included AAA batteries.

Programming and debugging of the board can be achieved via a Texas Instruments Flash emulation tool, such as the MSP-FET430UIF. The integrated TI wireless evaluation module header and the large amount of RAM on the MSP430FG4618 makes it a highly suitable platform for wireless applications. Its wide range of integrated peripherals and hardware connectivity allows an extremely wide variety of development possibilities.

Each member of the MSP430 family of devices is configured with a distinctive peripheral set, tailored to a specific class of applications. Generic features across the range include several optimisations that extend battery life in applications such as portable monitoring. These include five low power modes backed with a Digitally Controlled Oscillator (DCO) that allows wake up to active mode in less than 1µs(F2013) or 6µs (F4618). The devices feature a powerful 16-bit RISC CPU, 16-bit registers and constant generators that contribute to maximum code efficiency.

The MSP430FG4618’s tailored peripheral set includes two 16-bit timers, a high performance 12-bit A/D Converter (ADC) supporting up to 200ksps, dual 12-bit D/A Converters (DACs), three configurable operational amplifiers, a Universal Serial Communication Interface (USCI), a Universal Synchronous/Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (USART), DMA, 80 I/O pins and a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) driver with regulated charge pump. In addition, the FG4618 features the most advanced version of the Enhanced Emulation Module (EEM) for efficient code development. This module allows most complex triggers to set, provides a trace buffer and allows intelligent clock control e.g. to continue ADC conversions or ongoing PWM generation whilst code execution is already stopped.

The MSP430F2013 is a tiny device with integral 16-bit timer, ten I/O pins, a powerful 16-bit sigma delta ADC with Programmable Gain Amplifiers (PGAs) and the Universal Serial Interface (USI) supporting SPI and I²C links.

Features

• Experimenter board equipped with two microcontrollers: MSP430FG4618 and MSP430F2013
• Board includes:
  • Microphone, buzzer, headphone jack
  • LCD
  • Capacitive touch pad, two push buttons
  • Prototyping space
  • RS232 interface, two JTAG programming interfaces
• Integrated microcontroller peripherals
  • Comparator
  • 12-bit Digital-to-Analogue Converter
  • 12-bit successive approximation Analogue-to-Digital Converter
  • 16-bit sigma delta Analogue-to-Digital Converter
  • Operational amplifiers
  • DMA
  • Hardware multiplier
  • Multiplier
  • LCD controller
  • Communication via SPI, UART, I2C, IrDA
• Compatible with TI wireless CCxxx0EMK evaluation modules, such as the CC2500EMK
• Code examples

Applications

• IEEE802.15.04 or ZigBee based networks
• Wireless sensor networks
• Remote metering
• Security and building control
• Portable medical devices
• RF front end

For further information, including a copy of the MSP430 Users Guide, please click here