Enable Your Sensor Systems with PSoC® Technology

Consumer devices have recently been integrating sensors in order to create better user experiences, from adding accelerometers in mobile phones to adding water vapor sensors in microwaves. System designers that previously worked only in the digital domain now have to interface with analog sensors. A sensor’s analog signal needs to be digitized to be used by the system, and the signal path needs to go through several stages: amplification, filtering and digitization. Each of these stages usually involves a component surrounded by passives to perform properly for the given application.

An ideal device for interfacing with sensors is Cypress’s PSoC® programmable system-on-chip. The PSoC integrates more analog functionality than a traditional microcontroller. At the heart of PSoC is a microcontroller core, but the PSoC’s configurable digital and analog blocks enable advanced features.

The digital and analog blocks allow for configurable peripherals, referred to as User Modules, which include, but are not limited to counters, PWMs, UART, SPI, amplifiers, filters, ADCs, and DACs. Because of this level of configurability, the user only needs to select a PSoC that has the required amount of program memory; then the rest can be configured by the user. The PSoC also has the ability to be dynamically reconfigured, which means that User Modules can be swapped out and be replaced by different ones on a time division basis. This can allow a user to consume more than 100% of the analog and digital resources on the PSoC. All of these abilities enable the PSoC to far exceed the functionality of competitive microcontroller solutions, especially when interfacing with sensors.

Cypress’s PSoC reduces the complexity of quantifying the sensor’s signal by integrating the amplification, filtering and ADC stages into a single device. Additionally, the PSoC also has an analog MUX that can be used to allow multiple sensors to be connected concurrently. The PSoC mixed signal array is an ideal solution to interface with sensors for a wide variety of industrial and consumer applications.

 

Try it out yourself!

The just released CY3271-EXP1 (MSRP $99.99) is an expansion kit for the CY3271 PSoC FirstTouch Starter Kit with CyFi Low-Power RF. Included in the kit are two boards: the Weather Station Expansion Board (atmospheric pressure, humidity, temperature and ambient light) and the Pigtail Thermistor Expansion Board. The Sense and Control Dashboard (SCD) from the CY3271 kit lets users quickly set up and monitor a wired or wireless sensor network through an intuitive visual dashboard. Easily demonstrate features such as data logging, data aggregation, alarms and sensor calibration for nearly any type of sensor.

 

CY3271-EXP1

 

 

 

 Featured Products

Part Number		Description	Data Sheet	App. Notes
CY3271-EXP1		Environmental Sensing Kit for the PSoC FirstTouch with CyFi Low-Power RF

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