Date: 26/06/2012

GainSpan’s Wi-Fi connectivity capabilities showcased at FTF 2012

GainSpan Corporation has showcased the capabilities for its Wi-Fi connectivity solutions at the Freescale Technology Forum Americas (FTF) held on June 18-21, 2012, in San Antonio, Texas. The capabilities include Serial to Wi-Fi, Limited Access Point (AP) and sensor native apps. The demonstrations are made using a Freescale Tower System with a Kinetis processor and to be run on an iPhone.

GainSpan is demonstrating soft AP capabilities, called limited AP, that allows Wi-Fi enabled smartphones, tablets or PCs to connect directly to a GainSpan Wi-Fi enabled product. The Limited AP functionality allows a Tower System mounted sensor board with temperature, light and accelerometer sensors and LEDs to connect directly to a smartphone for monitoring the sensors and controlling the LEDs.

The demonstration uses a Freescale TWR-WIFI-G1011MI Tower System module with GainSpan's GS1011MIP Wi-Fi module on-board, a TWR-SENSOR-PAK sensor module and a Kinetis K60 processor module. The Kinetis MCU collects sensor data and transmits it via a serial connection to the Wi-Fi Tower System module. The module, acting as a Wi-Fi Access Point, can get connected to the smartphone. With the help of GainSpan’s sensor app, sensor values and graphics can be displayed on the smartphone and LEDs on the sensor board can be turned on and off.

The GS1011MIP module mounted on the TWR-WIFI-G1011MI module supports all Wi-Fi functionalities, the networking stack and services including application security (SSL/ TLS), embedded servers (HTTP, DHCP and DNS servers), service and device discovery (mDNS and DNS/SD) and XML parsing. In addition to the customer application, a small driver or reference code of a few Kbytes is running on the Kinetis K60.

"As microcontroller vendors develop lower power MCUs for Internet of Things applications, such as the Freescale Kinetis L series, our Wi-Fi modules, with their unique and extended networking stack and services, can serve as the ideal companion chip to enable long life battery operated devices," said Bernard Aboussouan, vice president of marketing, GainSpan. "Our focus is to continually evolve innovative Wi-Fi connectivity solutions designed to meet the needs of our customers."
Author: Srinivasa Reddy N