Atmel Launches AVR-based 2.4GHz Wireless Evaluation and Development Platform

(Product News, 29 Feb 2008)

Atmel Corp. has released the AVR RZ Raven evaluation kit that provides designers a unique ready-to-use development platform in the rapidly growing low power wireless market for the 2.4GHz ISM frequency band available worldwide. Enabling easy evaluation of short range wireless connectivity with IEEE802.15.4, ZigBee, 6LoWPAN, etc., the kit utilizes the AVR picoPower technology in combination with the RF performance offered by the AT86RF230 2.4GHz ISM transceiver.

The RZ Raven kit comprises two Raven boards, one USB Stick and a selection of firmware application and software that will dramatically reduce time to market for designers considering short range wireless ISM band applications based on IEEE802.15.4, ZigBee or 6LoWPAN.

The Raven board can be used as a multi application wireless node with a LCD graphical user interface. It has two AVR picoPower microcontrollers: an ATmega1284P that can be used to control RF application stacks, and an ATmega3290P that controls the display and user interfaces. The Raven contains a custom LCD display, a 5 position joystick, a microphone and a speaker allowing the evaluation of a variety of user interactions that are appropriate in the target wireless applications.

To support application development the following functionalities are available: graphical user interface, communication ports, ATmega1284P port pins available on headers, on-board temperature sensor, voltage sensor, relay driver, boot loader and ISP support for programming.

The USB stick can serve as a PC gateway to the wireless network, or as the hardware platform for wireless protocol analyzer. It is based on the AT90USB1287 AVR microcontroller and the AT86RF230 transceiver.

The firmware provided includes low level drivers and application stacks enabling simple point to point communication, IEEE 802.15.4 compliant solutions, and more complex applications based on ZigBee and 6LoWPAN.

The AT86RF230 features one of the industry's best RF performances with a link budget of 104dB, and gives up to three times the range of competitor radios. This results in an outdoor range of up to 700m with the high gain PCB antenna used on the Raven board. Current consumption in active mode is only 15mA and down to 20nA in sleep mode.

AVR picoPower devices consume as little as 340µA in active mode at 1.8V running from the internal RC oscillator at 1MHz. In power-save mode it is 500nA with a real time counter running, and 100nA in power-down mode. picoPower AVRs are pin-, performance-, and code-compatible with existing AVR microcontrollers giving designers flexible hardware options for small, medium sized and complex wireless networks.

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