Cypress provides wireless connectivity for Raspberry Pi Zero W board
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has selected Cypress’ CYW43438 to provide a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth combination for robust connectivity for the new Raspberry Pi Zero W boards.
The Cypress CYW43438 provides robust 802.11n Wi-Fi for developers to connect applications to the internet, with advanced co-existence algorithms enabling simultaneous Bluetooth 4.1 operations such as audio streaming and low-power Bluetooth low energy connections to smartphones, sensors and other low-power devices. Raspberry Pi’s original board with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, the Raspberry Pi 3, also uses a Cypress wireless device.
“With Cypress’ combo solution on board, Raspberry Pi Zero W allows designers to connect to the most pervasive Wi-Fi networks for infrastructure connections and offers Bluetooth to connect to smartphones and other low-power smart devices,” says Eben Upton, CEO of Raspberry Pi Trading. “The highly integrated Cypress solution enabled us to offer our boards at the right price points for wide-scale adoption by IoT developers, eliminating the need for them to purchase wireless dongles that can cost more than the boards themselves,” he adds.
“Raspberry Pi has grown to become the industry’s leading developer and maker platform for internet of things (IoT) applications, and we are pleased to have Cypress’ wireless contribute to that success,” said Michael Hogan, vice president of the IoT business unit at Cypress.
The Raspberry Pi Zero W features a 1GHz, single-core central processor unit (CPU), 512Mbyte RAM, mini-HDMI (high definition multimedia interface) and micro-USB ports, composite video and reset headers and a CSI (camera serial interface) camera connector, along with 802.11n wireless LAN (local area network) and Bluetooth 4.1 wireless connectivity.
Cypress’ CYW43438 integrates IEEE 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in a single chip to enable small form factor IoT designs. The CYW43438 provides up to 150Mbit/s PHY data rates and co-existence management for advanced Wi-Fi and Bluetooth streaming applications. The combination is supported on Cypress’ Wireless Internet Connectivity for Embedded Devices (WICED) software development kit (SDK), which provides code examples, tools and development support.
