STMicroelectronics advances tools and connected-sensor design of its WiSE Studio

STMicroelectronics’ WiSE Studio — a free-of-charge Integrated Development Environment (IDE) dedicated to the BlueNRG system-on-chip (SoC) product family — is accelerating the design of smart, connected devices that leverage the latest Bluetooth technology.

Featuring a user-friendly and customizable development environment with an extensive list of ready-to-build examples, the new IDE helps both expert and inexperienced users jump-start their projects.

Using WiSE Studio to learn, explore, and build applications and prototypes, developers can take advantage of the powerful Bluetooth LE 5.2 features available in devices, such as ST’s flagship BlueNRG-LP SoC. This includes 2Mbps on-air for faster data transfer, long-range communication, multiple concurrent connections, and mesh networking — all with extremely low dynamic energy consumption, down to 18µA/MHz, for longer battery lifetime.

WiSE Studio allows seamless integration of ST BlueNRG SDK packages. The complete working environment can be installed in just a few clicks, free-of-charge. In seconds it offers a comprehensive workspace complemented with all the required drivers, libraries, and advanced sample code to build IoT nodes and create original solutions for industrial, smart-home, wearable, and gaming applications by bringing together ST’s Bluetooth LE devices and MEMS sensors.

The workspace supports BlueNRG evaluation kits out-of-the-box, including onboard ST’s 6-axis inertial module (LSM6DSOX) with machine-learning core, finite state machine, and advanced digital functions or the pressure sensor (LPS22HB) or digital microphone (MP34DT05-A).

Examples and snippets included in the workspace help users easily start projects such as beaconing, multiple connections, long-range communication, connected sensors, serial port emulation over-the-air, HID, security features, remote control, and Firmware-Over-The-Air Update (FOTA). Extensive documentation and quick-start guides help newcomers begin designing professional IoT solutions or quickly evaluate new ideas.

WiSE Studio is targeted at developers of wireless solutions for IoT applications that use Bluetooth LE connectivity for data transfer, such as from a machine-learning enabled MEMS sensor, or for networking multiple sensor devices in a smart-building or home-automation system or for location services, including asset tracking applications.

Different network topologies can be chosen, either gateway-centered to exploit the multiple concurrent connection capabilities of BlueNRG-LP, or scalable across any distance and number of nodes with the readily supported BlueNRG-Mesh for quickly creating mesh-like connected sensors and building-automation nodes.

Based on Eclipse, the world’s best-known open-source C/C++ development environment, WiSE Studio provides a complete graphical, user-friendly workspace powered by the GNU Arm Toolchain that comprises the GCC compiler and GDB/OpenOCD programmer and debugger. The IDE is scalable, with extra Eclipse plug-ins that draw on the support of the large Eclipse developer community. Plug-in software can be found online or installed directly from within the WiSE Studio environment.