Atmel offers flexible IEEE 802.15.4-compliant bundles, making it easy to create a tailored solution optimized for specific requirements. Simply choose the Atmel MCU that is best-suited to a particular application and combine it with one of our versatile RF transceivers.
“For example, gas and water meters are a rapidly-growing market as the smart grid gains maturity,” an Atmel engineering rep told Bits & Pieces. “RF communication is key for gas and water meters, because of the increasing availability of the AMI architecture, with the smart electricity meter often acting as the gateway to the utility for meter reading.”
When paired with an Atmel-powered 8- or 16-bit microcontroller that offers ultra-low power and integrated LCD segment drive support, developers can rapidly build an application which is ideal for the growing metering market.
“More specifically, we offer several RF bundle solutions that let you combine selected microcontrollers with an RF transceiver: AT86RF212 for the regional 700/800/900 MHz bands, and AT86RF230 and AT86RF231 for the worldwide 2.4GHz frequency band. These transceivers are true SPI-to-antenna solutions that comprise the only requirement for the MCU to feature SPI Serial Interface,” the engineering rep continued.
“Our flexible solutions let you to pick the microcontroller that is best-suited for your target application and combine it with the RF transceivers that features your RF requirements. The three RF transceivers are pin-compatible, making it easy when RF requirement change to replace the RF transceiver and reuse the microcontroller application.”
On the capacitive touch side, developers can choose one of Atmel’s bundles or combine any of the Atmel QTouch Library supported tinyAVRs, megaAVRs, AVR XMEGAs or AVR UC3 devices with the Atmel transceivers – easily adding capacitive touch functionality to RF applications.
Interested in learning about Atmel’s wireless packages for the IoT? Be sure to check out our detailed device breakdown here, specifically the RF212B and RF233.
Atmel | Bits & Pieces 