Combined low power MCU and RF transceiver looks like elegant solution

At MLE we're always keeping our beady eyes out for cool new products we can use in our designs, and at the moment we're eagerly surveying one of the latest offerings from Texas Instruments, the CC430, due out soon. This promising little SoC combines a low power MSP430 microcontroller and some RF magic (based on the ChipCon CC1101 transceiver) into a single package measuring less than one square cm.

All the talk is of this device operating for years on a single battery - well, we'll wait and see whether it can really live up to that claim while still doing RF transmissions at a rate frequent enough to be really useful - but any steps taken to reduce power consumption and increase system integration have got to be good ones.

This device is so low power that TI see a future for it in the energy harvesting market - imagine a series of remote sensors wirelessly communicating with each and transmitting data back to base, with no need to traipse around replacing or recharging their batteries, because all the energy they need is being harvested from their local environment. Or how about a load of sensors monitoring different aspects of body health, forming your own body area network (BAN) that links into your personal or home area network (PAN or HAN), and giving you a continuous real-time health check-up that can flag up an alert to a medical professional as soon as anything looks a bit iffy.... Now that sounds pretty cool to us - and we're itching to get our hands on a few of these devices soon to try them out for real!

By Anna

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MLE Creative Electronics

Combined low power MCU and RF transceiver looks like elegant solution