Zilog announces ZAURA RF development kits featuring advanced MCU and wireless technology

MILPITAS, USA & BIEL, SWITZERLAND: Zilog, a wholly-owned subsidiary of IXYS Corp. and a trusted supplier of application-specific, embedded microcontroller (MCU) system-on-chip (SoC) solutions for industrial, power management and consumer applications, has introduced its new RF wireless platform.

The platform is integrated in a module that targets the needs for wireless connectivity for control, sensing and metering to provide a much more location-independent digital wireless solution. The ZAURA RF Wireless Module is a cost-effective, high-performance radio system on a module designed for the wireless transmission of digital information. It contains the Zilog MCU with important analog peripherals that make the module very flexible for a variety of applications.

ZAURA is available in both the 868 MHz and 915 MHz standard radio frequency bands. The Module can be easily mounted on a two-layer PCB with minimal external connections. It is a small-footprint (1.61" by 1.02") wireless modular system that can be designed into any number of monitoring and control applications in order to allow digital wireless control. The ZAURA Module “Product User Guide” document describes its specifications, schematics and software commands, and provides a procedure for quickly getting started with development.

The ZAURA Modules are shipped preloaded with a demo program which includes a command line interpreter for control of the Wireless Modules via the UART. The ZAURA Module features interface options, including two four-wire UART ports, an I2C Controller and 27 general-purpose port pins, plus an 8-channel 10-bit ADC.

“Very little RF knowledge is required to use the ZAURATM Module because Zilog provides the complete development environment for controlling the module. This new platform helps to shorten time to market for a wide range of wireless applications,” said Steve Darrough, Zilog VP of Marketing. “We have deployed it in our wireless lighting control solution that is based on our occupancy motion sensing products, in order to provide a totally wireless energy saving lighting solution, thus, it is a field proven development or product kit.”