Electronics

FireBeetle Board-328P With BLE4.1

AED 104.75

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Description

The DFRobot FireBeetle series is a low-power controller designed specifically for the development of the Internet of Things (IoT). This Bluetooth controller combines low energy Bluetooth 4.1 and an Arduino controller, providing similar functions to the previous Bluno series, but with lower power consumption.
FireBeetle BLE 4.1 is compatible with the Bluno series (BLE 4.0), the effect is better. Equipped with a more stable DIALOG Bluetooth 4.1 chip, it supports up to 4Kbyte/s transmission speed and low power consumption (25uA POWER DOWN). It can be directly applied to low-power applications, such as portable and smart tools. The also supports multiple Bluetooth cascades, KISS connections (closely connected) and is compatible with the Bluno series. You can establish a connection by pressing and holding BOOT on the host and moving to the target peripheral device.

Features

  • Support Arduino IDE program
  • Support BLE 4.1 central and peripheral switch
  • Support Bluetooth serial port data transmit
  • Support Bluetooth peer to peer (P2P) wireless programming
  • Support Bluetooth 4.1 multiple device cascade (maximum:4)
  • Support Arduino Bluetooth library (support multiple Bluetooth connections)
  • Support low power consumption Bluetooth (standby current: 25uA; enabled interrupt current: 70uA)
  • Double interruption to wake up:
    • BLE4.1 awake Atmage328P by D2 (high level awake)
    • Atmage328P awake BLE4.1 by D3 (low level awake)
  • Support KISS connection(approach connection)
  • Support Bluetooth firmware update
  • Support USB charge
  • Support lithium battery power supply
  • Equipped with status LEDs

Specification

  • Processor: ATMEGA328P
  • Bootloader: Arduino Pro or Pro Mini, ATmega328 (3.3V, 8MHz)
  • Operating Current: 3.3V
  • VCC I/O Voltage: 3.7V~5.5V
  • Lithium Battery Voltage: 3.7V
  • Support maximum 4Kbyte/s transmission rate (more device, the lower rate)
  • Support low power consumption: 25uA (POWER DOWN); 70uA (enabled interruption)
  • Support maximum discharge current: 600mA (LDO-3.3V OUTPUT)
  • Support maximum charge current: 400Ma
  • Digital Interfaces: 14
  • Analog Interfaces: 6
  • SPI: 1
  • I2C: 1
  • UART: 1
  • LED_BUILTIN: D13
  • Interface Mode: 2.54mm (Pin/Female header), soldering free in default
  • Dimension: 58 * 29 mm/ 2.28 * 1.14 inches

Board Overview

Fig1: FireBeetle Board-328P with BLE4.1 PinOUT

LED indicators

  • RX: Serial data receiving indicator, light up when receiving serial data
  • TX: Serial data transmitting indicator, light up when sending serial data
  • chG: Battery charge indicator: Flash without lithium battery; Light ON in charging; Light OFF when full charged
  • LINK: a Bluetooth connect indicator; when Bluetooth connects to the device successfully, LINK will light for 3s and blink for every 3s, light OFF when disconnected.

Buttons

  • BOOT: Bluetooth firmware update; enable KISS connection (approach connection).
    • Firmware update: please press and hold the BOOT button and power up (plugin USB), turning to the firmware update mode. For any inquiries, please refers to the part: Firmware Update.
    • Approach connection: please hold the central BOOT button when it is in working mode, approaching the peripheral Bluetooth device, and connect.
  • RST Arduino Reset button


NOTE: VCC is the output voltage of the power supply (USB power supply: 5V, lithium battery power supply: 3.7V)

Arduino Tutorial

choose a suitable Arduino board

Considering low power consumption, we select Arduino Pro Mini @3.3V 8MHz as a Bootloader for FireBeetle BLE4.1 microcontrollers.

SPECIAL NOTE: Pro Mini uses 8MHz OCXO. Its processing speed is relatively slow for 115200-baud rate. The high baud rate may lead to unreadable code and packet loss etc. 9600-baud rate is recommended.Fig2: FireBeetle Board-328P with BLE4.1

Low Power Consumption Mode

BLE 4.1 switches to low power consumption mode with AT command: AT+LOWPOWER=ON. The Bluetooth can still broadcast and connect in the low power mode. When the Bluetooth received data, it will awake automatically and send an interrupt signal to the chip: 328p. The interrupt pin here should be connected to D2 of 328p which is interrupt 0 in the code.

void wakeup(){
 sleep_disable();
 delay(2000);
}
void lowpower(){
 ADCSRA &= ~(1<

  • In the low-power mode, the whole power consumption of the FireBeetle Board-328P with the BLE4.1 board is about 70uA.
  • Turn off the interrupt and other peripherals, the whole power consumption of the FireBeetle Board-328P with BLE4.1 board is about 25uA.

AT Commands

AT commands are communication instructions used to configure Bluetooth parameters. AT is the abbreviation of ATtention. Every command line starts with "AT" and ends with a carriage return character and a linefeed character.

Note:  only stands for carriage return and linefeed character, not part of the AT command.

AT Commands Set

AT commandFunctionsParameter
AT+ROLE=set Bluetooth mode"?"query the current BLE mod;e "ROLE_CENTRAL" set to center mode; "ROLE_PERIPHERAL" set to node mode
AT+NETWORK=set network mode"?"query the current network; "P2P" set to p2p network; "STAR" set to star network
AT+MIN_INTERVAL=set the minimum communication interval"?"query the minimum communication interval(10~99999ms)