Renesas Electronics has announced the release of Quick-Connect IoT development platform that enables designers to reduce time-to-market and design complexities thereby significantly making the process of IoT system prototyping easy. The Quick-Connect IoT system combines modular and standardized hardware and software building blocks for MCUs and sensors. This enables designers to connect a wide range of sensors to MCU development boards easily and in a time-efficient manner. Additionally, this new system also delivers core software building blocks that are portable between boards thereby reducing coding requirements.
Renesas along with Digilent, Inc. created a new expanded I2C Pmod Interface, Type 6A to ensure wide coverage and added flexibility. The new Pmod 6A connector from Digilent has been standardized for new sensor Pmods and MCU development kits. This standardization offers flexibility in selecting the optimal combination for any IoT prototype design. Additionally, Renesas has also redefined the common software APIs (Application Program Interfaces) and HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) code for various sensors. Embedded into the Renesas e2 studio integrated development environment, the system eliminates the need of writing and testing hundreds of lines of driver code. The designers just need to graphically select their sensor and write a few lines of code.
The standardized hardware connectivity platform enables the customers to use compatible Pmods developed by third parties and other suppliers. The company further plans to expand its coverage to support more boards and devices in the future. As told by the company, initially the Quick-Connect IoT will include some of the new Renesas sensor Pmods and other modular boards including air quality sensors, flow sensors, bio-sensing, time of flight, temperature, and other sensing elements. While the more sensor Pmods are under development that will comprise of a variety of sensors and peripherals.
Customers can order development kits, sensors, and interposer boards through Renesas sales and sample channels and the Quick-Connect IoT design system is available through a wide range of hardware and software offerings from the company website.
