Silicon Labs Introduces New Biometric and Environmental Sensing Development Kits

New biometric and environmental sensing development kits offered by Silicon Labs help in accelerating the design of a myriad of Internet of Things (IoT) products, including weather stations, smoke detectors, smart thermostats, home security systems, and wearable products such as heart-rate earphones, fitness bands and smart watches.

Measuring temperature, relative humidity, UV index, blood oxygen level and heart rate becomes easier now with the new biometric sensing development platform from Silicon Labs. The platform consists of the BIOMETRIC-EXP-EVB expansion card equipped with Silicon Labs’ Si701x/2x humidity and temperature sensors and Si114x optical sensors.

The sensor card can be directly plugged into the EFM32 Wonder Gecko MCU starter kit offered by Silicon Labs. A wearable-form-factor HRM-GGG-PS board is also available as an option to support wrist-based heart rate monitoring and can be integrated to the biometric sensor card using an I2C mini-flex cable.

SLSTK3201A, the new environmental sensing development kit from Silicon Labs facilitates the IoT product development for sensing human gestures, proximity, ambient light, ultraviolet light, temperature, and relative humidity. The development kit features an EFM32™ Zero Gecko microcontroller (MCU) starter kit and a sensor expansion board.

A gesture-controlled weather station application is also featured in the kit to track UV index, temperature, and relative humidity. The application development time is shortened, thanks to the availability of the complete source code in Silicon Labs’ Simplicity Studio™ development platform.

Like all other MCU and sensor IC products offered by Silicon Labs for battery-operable wearable and IoT applications, the biometric and environmental sensing kits consume very low power and can be operated on coin-cell batteries. Silicon Labs’ TS3310 boost dc/dc converter is featured in each sensor expansion card for low power consumption.