ACKme produce various boards but only the Seabass (the most expensive) seems appropriate for use with the latest 3.1.1 Broadcom SDK. The cheaper ones like the Mackerel seem to stick ACKme’s own WiConnect environment between you and the BCM943362.
Similarly I don’t think SwitchScience’s breakout can be used with the WICED SDK.
Hmm… now if try ordering them I quickly find:
the SwitchScience board isn’t available outside Japan.
the Inventek board won’t ship outside the US.
the ACKme boards don’t seem to be actually available and similarly won’t ship outside the US anyway.
the Ayla Design Kit won’t ship outside the US either.
Maybe this is to do with regulatory approval?
So as I live in Switzerland I’m left with only one choice that’s definitely for sale here - Broadcom’s own board.
I guess that makes things simple! Does anyone have any experience with this, or like to comment?
Are there other interesting development boards that I’ve missed?
Look forward to digging into this
Usually I’d worry that a company mightn’t take kindly to you delving into pieces of their product before its launch - but Spark seem very cool about this.
I remember them reacting enthusiastically when @BDub soldered up two Sparks in mid '13, months before the production ones shipped
@ghawkins it’s time to get excited all over again! Broadcom’s own development board would be a good choice, however it tends to run about $90. We use those internally among other custom boards we’ve developed
I second @BDub - the broadcom evaluation boards are nice, and no need for a programmer. The WICED SDK is based on Eclipse, downloadable for free after registration.
Although, those EVBs could do with a RGB led or two!
The WICED is a nice SDK to work with, very well thought through for the most part, although the documentation is a little dated or lacking in some areas, so you just have to dive into the code.
Fun times! Let us know what you might build with it!
@BDub and @mdma - thanks for the feedback Sorry for being so slow in replying.
Eclipse and the no extra programmer requirement sounds perfect for me.
$90 is indeed a bit steep for a dev board, I guess I’ve been spoiled by pricing from people like TI and STM ($10 for their 512KB ARM M4 Nucleo boards amazes me).
But still I’ll order a BCM943362WCD4_EVB - and as the BCM943341WCD1 module seems to be soldered down I guess I’ll also order a separate one of those too (though even the module alone is pretty steep at $55).
I’m going to hook it up with BLE. I don’t know if that sounds odd - BLE and wifi are usually presented as alternatives - either one or the other for a particular application. But I’m coming to think the two can complement each other really nicely in IoT devices.
Obviously there’s the model where you see a command module, with wifi and BLE, interacting with slave modules, with BLE only. We’ve seen in various products, e.g. McThings or Wunderbar, but I think there are other interesting setups for the two to play together.
I’d like to have a demo of some of my ideas ready before Photon launches (though my projects always take way longer than I expect so if I aim for next March I’ll probably hit March 2016!).
I see there are Broadcom chips with wifi and BLE combined in the same kind of segment as the BCM43362, e.g. the BCM43341 or BCM4339, but I don’t see any dev boards for them (one seems to be on the way for the BCM43341 but not in the stores yet). I’ll probably go with an nRF8001 for my BLE connectivity.
Will keep you informed how things go. I love the way Spark employees really sound excited about the things they’re working on - may it long continue like that
There is a 3-pin Bluetooth Coexistence interface on the WM-N-BM-09 that allows Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to take turns communicating in a controlled fashion that will be useful for adding BT.
