Shimmer Research Launches New Span Platform
Shimmer Research is proud to announce the launch of the new Span platform – a USB access point for the Shimmer’s low power 802.15.4 (base layer of Zigbee) solution.
The Span platform is a 2.4GHz IEEE 802.15.4 radio module that plugs into the USB port on computing devices, to realise a low power radio transmitter, access point, or receiver in a wireless system with devices like Shimmer. It will work with a laptop and many smaller mobile devices, and the platform has received FCC, ETSI, Industry Canada and CE Certification. Span uses the popular combination of an MSP430 processor and a CC2420 radio transceiver. Dedicated FTDI USB UARTs are utilised for communication and programming.
The Span platform will facilitate users to established and realise the full benefit of Shimmer’s on board 802.15.4 radio for low power communications, and power conscious applications. This plug and play set-up will allow for rapid deployment in mesh networks, wireless sensor networking, wireless medical devices, on body data acquisition, inertial sensing, and education.
Key Features:
The Span platform adds low power 2.4GHz 802.15.4 radio communication to computing devices, and has an open source software library. Due to its attractive and sleek enclosure, Span doesn’t block adjacent USB ports when in use, and there is a FTDI UART driver support in Windows, Linux, Mac and other popular operating systems. Shimmer supports the mainstream TinyOS CC2420 radio stack and our own IP-over-802.15.4 stack.
For more information – visit our product page here.