The Application Board 3.0 from Bosch Sensortec simplifies the evaluation and prototyping of sensors for Industry 4.0, the Internet of Things (IoT), smart homes and wearables. The scalability of the sensors can be expanded with the new platform. The sensor is placed on a 'shuttle board' and connected to the application board. The software automatically recognizes which sensor is plugged in and starts the appropriate program. It is also easier to create prototypes: product developers can test different configurations for their applications. With compact dimensions of 47 x 37 x 7 mm³, the Application Board 3.0 is particularly suitable for sensors in portable applications. It is powered by a 3.7 V lithium-ion battery or a standard 5 V USB power supply.
The integrated development environment that Bosch Sensortec provides with the board works with a simple graphical user interface. This allows sensor parameters to be evaluated and tuned and sensor data to be recorded and displayed visually. The Application Board 3.0 is based on the Bluetooth low-energy module u-blox NINA-B302 and the nRF52840 chipset from Nordic Semiconductor with ARM Cortex-M4F CPU. The platform is certified and approved for several regions. It complies with CE, RoHS, China RoHS, FCC, IC, VCCI, SRRC and NCC.
"The Application Board 3.0 simplifies the configuration of projects with our sensors on a single platform," explains Dr. Stefan Finkbeiner, CEO of Bosch Sensortec. "This means that developers can concentrate fully on creating special applications and differentiating their products. They also benefit from the efficient support of our regional application engineers."
For fast configuration of various IoT applications, the new board has 256 KB RAM as well as internal and external flash memory with 1 or 2 GB for data logging. The platform can be connected to a host computer via full-speed micro USB 2.0 and BLE.
