Building on the momentum of its recently announced Airborne Wireless LAN Node Modules, DPAC Technologies today announced the availability of the Airborne Evaluation and Development Kit for OEM developers seeking to capitalize on DPAC's line of highly integrated Wi-Fi modules. The Airborne modules quickly and cost-effectively provide local area network (LAN) and Internet connectivity to a wide range of industrial, scientific, medical and automotive applications. The new Evaluation Kit includes everything that an OEM developer will need to incorporate the Airborne module into their product in 6 weeks.
Unique features of the Evaluation board:
- Direct access to UART signals on the development board allows the developer to immediately incorporate the Airborne module into the target OEM application
- Battery operation makes the board portable for easy wireless evaluations
- All I/O are brought out to a prototyping area, and to access connectors with adjacent headers for developing applications and analyzing signals
- The board is designed to accommodate custom mezzanine cards
- Standard SMA connector facilitates evaluation of different antennas
The 6" x 9" Evaluation board ships complete with an Airborne 802.11b Wireless LAN Node Module and features a series of switches and LEDs used for LAN interaction to indicate power, RF link, link activity and the status of several other functions of the Airborne module. The board includes a battery and holder that enables portable evaluation of the Airborne module in a variety of locations and physical circumstances, such as outdoors, in a factory, or in office environments behind cubicles and around walls. Typical evaluation criteria might include: receive signal strength, selected bit rate, actual data rate, bit error rate and lost packet count. These can be observed and recorded for later review. A high-gain monopole antenna can be attached and is included with the kit.
Designed as an evaluation platform for the module, the Evaluation Kit has a variety of exposed interfaces offering flexible options for connection to OEM applications and test configurations. Among the I/O connections are digital and RS232 UART port, multiple GPIO ports, analog input ports, and an optional SPI bus port.
Accompanying the Evaluation Kit is a CD containing the Evaluation Utility, and comprehensive module and kit documentation. All of the necessary hardware, software, and documentation are provided to quickly power-up and operate the module. The easy to follow User's Guide provides all of the information needed to set up, configure, and operate the Evaluation Kit and software. The Evaluation Software provides a unified user interface with a rich set of evaluation and performance measurement functions. This is an excellent tool that makes it quick and easy to evaluate the features and benefits of the Airborne Wireless LAN Node Module.