OpenBeacon USB 2





Introduction
For mobile OpenBeacon applications the OpenBeacon USB 2 can be used. The device contains a freely programmable and power saving 32 bit Cortex M3 ARM controller. It can be reprogrammed without special tools over USB with a free gcc toolchain. This new design allows stand alone operation due to the Micro USB chargeable battery. An integrated Bluetooth interface allows wireless connectivity to your computer or PDA. We added 4 megabyte of flash memory for data logging. A 3 axis accelerometer to allow 3D orientation detection and 3 buttons allow simple user interfaces. The new design is highly extensible via the 11 pin 2.54mm spaced feature connector.

Bluetooth Terminal
By attaching the device to your computer for charging and pressing the middle button (reset) to bring the device into high power operation mode, the Bluetooth console can be enabled. By unplugging the device again, the device automatically resets itself and goes back to low parer data gathering mode.

Linux
First scan for visible Bluetooth devices: As you can see the tag id is encoded into the Bluetooth device name (in this case F392). YOu can now check which of the available devices is connected to your computer for charging: Using rfcomm you can connect to the Bluetooth device to /dev/rfcomm0: rfcomm bind rfcomm0 00:13:43:00:F5:41 If a device is already at /dev/rfcomm0, you can release that device by typing: rfcomm release rfcomm0 You need to make sure tah your current user is allowed to access the serial Bluetooth console by being part of the group dialout: You can add your user to the group dialout if needed: usermod -G dialout -a meri

Bluetooth Terminal Example
As you can see in the example below, after pairing the computer tries to detect a possible modem for that Bluetooth connection. At least for Fedora Core 13-15 this only happens the first time this device is created (once per boot). If Bluetooth gets stuck during the first communication attempt after pairing, just press the middle button (reset) and try again. To establish a connection with a computer you could use PuTTY on Windows, or any command line tool on Unix-like OSes (Linux, Max OSX), like 'cu': >cu -lttyUSB0 -s 115200 The settings to establish a connection are:
 * baud rate: 115200bps
 * no parity check
 * no flow control

After the console is established you can press h or ? for getting the console help screen.

Firmware Update
You can upload a new firmware on the tag following the instructions below. Remember that if you develop your homebrew firmware (e.g. you have compiled yourself the sources in the git repository) and you want to test it on the device, you must add the CRC in the binary image created during compilation. To achieve this, run lpc-flash on the created binary image, like so: This command will create the openbeacon-usb2.crc.bin file with the CRC value embedded, that is the firmware binary image that can be deployed on the tag. This is necessary any time you want to distribute a firmware to be uploaded by other users on their tags.

Microsoft Windows

 * Reset the tag into firmware update mode as described in our tutorial video on the right: "Flashing your OpenBeacon USB II tag via USB"
 * Download openbeacon-usb2-firmware.bin and rename to firmware.bin. Use it to overwrite the file firmware.bin file on the drive that appeared in the previous step.

Linux
Due to an implementation fault of the LPC134x in Linux the firmware needs to be copied using the following tool:

Firmware Installation

 * Reset the tag into firmware update mode as described in our tutorial video on the right: "Flashing your OpenBeacon USB II tag via USB"
 * Download openbeacon-usb2-firmware.bin and rename to firmware.bin. Use it to overwrite the firmware.bin file on the drive that appeared in the previous step by using the flash tool we installed in the previous section:

Design Features

 * nRF24L01+ 2.4GHz OpenBeacon
 * Bluetooth SPP (Serial Port Profile) interface - easy programming on host side
 * LPC1343 ARM Cortex-M3 CPU
 * processor running at up to 72MHz
 * 32KB flash for code
 * 8KB SRAM data memory
 * USB 2.0 full-speed device
 * 8-channel 10-bit ADC
 * LPC1311/13/42/43 32-bit Cortex M3 CPU Product data sheet
 * Architecture Guide for LPC1311/13/42/43 and user manual
 * 4MByte external flash memory
 * Lithium-Ion Polymer battery charger over MicroUSB interface
 * 3 axis accelerometer for 3D orientation detection in space
 * 3 mechanical buttons
 * Micro USB type B socket for data transfer and re-flashing
 * unbrickable USB ROM boot loader
 * appears as a USB mass storage device for flashing firmware - no 3rd party driver installation needed
 * 11 pin feature connector with PIO's, Serial Port and SPI bus