CSR will offer two mbed expansion boards, also known as shields, to the IoT developer community. One shield solution combines Wi-Fi and Bluetooth based on the CSR6030™ and CSR8311™. The other offers Bluetooth Smart connectivity based on CSR1010™. These shields will be released in early 2015. They are designed to work seamlessly with the ARM mbed OS which was announced in October 2014 and will be available to developers in early 2015. The two systems will provide the fundamental connectivity required for all IoT devices. With an easy to implement choice of connectivity solutions, developers can optimize the technology to achieve the right performance for each device.
Anthony Murray, CSR’s Senior Vice President, Business Group, said: “By combining ARM’s processing engine with CSR’s connectivity solutions, mbed OS will significantly ease developers’ efforts to cost effectively speed their connected devices to market. This is vital in the fast changing and highly competitive consumer IoT marketplace.”
He added: “A full-stack platform enables the easy reuse of blocks on a variety of hardware which helps mbed OS extend ARM’s great work to support the development community and takes bringing IoT devices to market one step further.”
“For the IoT to work at scale we need to give developers an array of interoperable hardware and software solutions that help to advance ideas seamlessly from proof of concept to prototype and on to mass production,” said Krisztian Flautner, general manager, IoT business, ARM. “CSR’s portfolio of connectivity and location solutions will accelerate this development path and they are a key partner for ARM in supporting the rollout of our mbed IoT Device Platform. The components from CSR will be highly valuable in enabling the 70,000-strong ecosystem of mbed developers to bring the IoT to life at a commercial scale.”
CSR joined the ARMmbed platform as a component partner in February as part of its ongoing commitment to provide developers with a comprehensive set of tools to bring new products to market. To add location capabilities along with connectivity, CSR will make a GPS board available to mbed developers that is based on the proven SiRFStarV platform. The location board will be complete with source code and reference designs, and available from CSR distributors by year-end.
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