An Introduction to the Silicon Labs Blue Gecko BGM111 Bluetooth® Smart Module and Development Kit

The BGM111 Blue Gecko module from Silicon Labs quickly adds Bluetooth^® connectivity to your applications with a fully integrated, pre-certified Bluetooth® Smart certified module, software stack, and intuitive scripting language for development, giving developers the fastest path to low-power wireless connectivity for the IoT.

Blue Gecko BGM111 Bluetooth^® Smart Module

The Silicon Labs Blue Gecko BGM111 Bluetooth Smart module simplifies Bluetooth Smart design by integrating a next generation wireless SoC with a complete Bluetooth Smart software stack and antenna to provide a complete, pre-certified plug-and-play Bluetooth Smart solution, saving months of engineering effort and testing. It delivers best-in-class integration, flexibility, energy efficiency, and toolchain support with an easy migration path to Blue Gecko system-on-chip (SoC) solutions.

The BGM111 module’s ultra-low power operation enables Bluetooth Smart systems to be powered from a standard 3 V coin cell battery or two AAA batteries. The SoC’s integrated ARM® Cortex®-M4 processor-based MCU consumes 59 µA/MHz in run mode and only 1.7 µA down to 200 nA in sleep mode. The SoC’s on-chip Bluetooth Smart transceiver consumes only 7.5 mA in peak receive mode and 8.2 mA @ 0 dBm in peak transmit mode. The transceiver also provides the industry’s most flexible transmit power, configurable up to +8 dBm and supporting exceptional line-of-sight RF range of up to 200 meters.

Blue Gecko BGM111 Bluetooth^® Smart Module Wireless Starter Kit

The Blue Gecko Bluetooth Smart Module Wireless Starter Kit is the easiest and fastest way to start evaluation and development of your own Bluetooth Smart applications. The wireless starter kit comes with the Bluetooth Smart module radio board, a main board with coin-cell battery holder, USB and Ethernet connections, display and connections to all the modules peripheral interfaces as well an extension board with additional peripherals like an accelerometer.

With the kit you also get Silicon Labs’ Bluetooth Smart software SDK, with example applications, documentation, and other resources to get started with your own development.

Blue Gecko BGM111 Bluetooth^® Smart Module Features

Bluetooth:

• Bluetooth 4.1 compliant
• Upgradable to Bluetooth 4.2
• Central and peripheral roles

Radio:

• Configurable TX power up to +8 dBm
• Integrated high performance chip antenna
• Range up to 200 meters

Microcontroller:

• ARM Cortex M4 with FPU up to 40 MHz
• 32 kB RAM and 256 kB Flash
• Advanced cryptography support

Flexible Peripheral Interfaces:

• UART, SPI and I²C serial interfaces
• PWM, GPIO with Interrupts
• 12-bit ADC and DAC
• 32-bit RTCC
• Watchdog timer

Low Current Consumption:

• RX peak: 7.5 mA
• TX peak: 8.2 mA @ 0 dBm
• MCU: 59 uA/MHz
• MCU sleep: 1.65 uA down to 200 nA

Dimensions:

• 13 mm x 15 mm x 2.2 mm

Environmental & Qualifications (pending):

• Temperature range: -40 C to +85 C
• Bluetooth qualified
• CE
• FCC and IC
• Asia Pacific

Integrated Bluetooth® Smart Software:

• Up to 8 simultaneous connections
• Any GATT based Bluetooth Smart profile
• Flexible, easy-to-use APIs
• Free Software Development Kit
• Field Upgradable

For more information about Blue Gecko or Silicon Labs, call Symmetry at (310) 536-6190 or contact us online.