Has anyone taken a look at TI’s CC2560 or C1310 processors? They’re both based on an a Cortex-M3 processor clocked up to 48 MHz and work in the 2.4 GHz and sub-1 GHz bands respectively. I haven’t had a chance to read all the documentation yet but they appear similar to the CC2538, aside from one part, they both have a Cortex-M0 based “RF Core” softMAC supporting 802.15.4, 6lowpan, BLE, and ZigBee stacks…
Unfortunately, the datasheets state “The ARM Cortex-M0 processor is not programmable by customers.” While this may mean that it’s not possible to write a custom MAC or port RIOT’s to the M0 these could still prove to be useful chips. The documentation states that an image for the softMAC is stored in an chip ROM but it does seem to be field upgradeable but I’m not clear if this is only possible by patching the image stored in ROM each boot or if the patch is permanent opening a potential avenue for custom M0 firmware. The documentation doesn’t include complete register documentation for the M0 but it at least includes the names of the registers. I’m not sure if debug access is enabled on the M0 but I would be fairly surprised if it were.
Both chips also contain a “sensor controller” CPU that can be configured to monitor various peripherals even while the main processor is in standby mode which sounds like a nice way to further reduce power consumption. I haven’t had time to investigate how this processor is configured and programmed.
Anyways, even if the embedded softMAC isn’t user programmable these look like interesting chips. Seeing as they only cost US$29 I’ll probably buy TI’s CC2650 based “SensorTag”[1] dev platform and if I’m feeling especially adventurous give porting RIOT to it a try.
Just wanted to let you know that I want to use the CC2650 for my
BA-thesis and have hardware on the way.
-> nice to know somebody is also interested in having a port
The boards should arrive during the course of next week and I will have
a quick look.
I probably wont start porting until christmas, though.
But who knows?
I’m looking at the CC13xx and as far as I remember is has a Coretex-M3 running. I have 2 CC1350’s on my desk and will most likely start to run them in the next 2 weeks, If all is goes well with my current projects.
We are running Contiki on our MSP430 with CC1120 and CC1190 (PA) for our OpenWSN mesh network implementation. Debugging is a major issue on Contiki so I will be loading RIOT and see what is required in terms of porting
TI suggested that I wait for version 2 of the silicon of the CC1350 It should have been release end of Q3 of this year, I’m still waiting… The TI rep will be here today I hope …
we at Phytec offer the Evaluation board, described in the Wiki at [1], also with a CC2650 module. The yellow Board is the same as described in the Wiki, just the green PCB module differs by containing an TI CC2650 SoC instead of the Freescale KW2x SiP.
The board is currently available for 39€ + VAT. Just write the Phytec sales team at: contact@phytec.de
We don`t support RIOT on the CC2650 right now, but we are very interested in any effort to make RIOT available on the CC2650. Currently, we ship the board with an adapted version of the TI’s SensorTag BLE example.
If someone needs CC2650 hardware samples for porting or testing feel free to contact us.
We would be happy to support your efforts.
More a bastardized implementation. We are running RPL and implemented our own channel hopping on the CC1120 with 6LowPAN.
We started off many moons ago when Things Squared V1 was available open source and before they went commercial. After many implementations we found that the our current platform on Contiki and associated “libraries” is to difficult and time consuming to maintain in the long run. So we have to think in a different mode…so we are in an investigation phase to plot long term goals.
Has anyone taken a look at TI's CC2560 or C1310 processors? They're both
based on an a Cortex-M3 processor clocked up to 48 MHz and work in the 2.4
GHz and sub-1 GHz bands respectively. I haven't had a chance to read all
the documentation yet but they appear similar to the CC2538, aside from one
part, they both have a Cortex-M0 based "RF Core" softMAC supporting
802.15.4, 6lowpan, BLE, and ZigBee stacks..
For BLE and small stack implementation, I sumble over this the last days
[0].
Maybe the RIOT people can grab some stuff from there, just for leave a
notice about some small ble stack implementation, if RIOT doesn't has
already such implementation.
I was wondering, can you comment on the possibility of loading custom images for the M0 RF core? While I don’t doubt that the TI firmware would be sufficient for most uses the idea of loading an open source, RIOT based, MAC onto the M0 is interesting to me.
just the really low-level RF stuff is executed by the M0 RF core. I am not sure if the memory section that contains the code for the RF core is reprogrammable, the reference manual describes it as ROM [1, Chapter 1.1; 1.3.2.3]. From my understanding the code for the M0 RF core is stored in a pre-programmed ROM section. Chapter 7 [1] states that the ROM has a size of 115kB in addition to the 128kB Flash. This ROM section contains a Bootloader, a Driver Library and the RF stack (I assume both RF-versions at the same time). The reason is a cheaper price for ROM, compared to Flash, during silicon production.
In [1; Chapter 23.1.1] you see a block containing “Modem, frequency synthesizer, and RF interfaces”. An exact description of that block would be necessary to set up the RF-path (RF to Baseband conversion) according to the desired physical layer (BLE - 1Mbps GFSK, IEEE 802.15.4 - mostly O-QPSK with DSSS, any proprietary). You need to control the analog components (filter, PLL, RF-Demodulation and DSSS-Demodulation, ADC-sample rate) in order to get the Baseband signal, which is then digitalized by the CC26xx’s internal ADCs. I have not found any description of the components of the internal RF-path in the reference manual. The description of the Radio [1, Chapter 23] exclusively describes the interface between the M3 and the M0.
So I suggest to just use the default IEEE 802.15.4 PHY/MAC firmware for the M0 and implement a RIOT driver running on the M3 that uses the described interface to the M0 RF core. The features of the existing IEEE 802.15.4 configuration should roughly represent the features of common IEEE 802.15.4 transceivers (e.g. as in the KW2x or SAM R21).
