SparkFun’s MicroMod Family Gets New Members – a Nordic nRF52840 Processor and a Weather Carrier Board

29 January, 2021

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It was just around the last quarter of 2020 that SparkFun announced the MicroMod family — a new modular development ecosystem designed to take popular embedded devices and make them plug-and-play modular. “MicroMod makes exploring different microcontrollers easy,” said the Founder of SparkFun. You can plug various microcontrollers into various carrier boards according to your project requirements.

At first, when MicroMod was launched, three processors and four carrier boards were confirmed: an Artemis Processor Board, an ESP32 Processor Board, a SAMD51 Processor Board, an Input and Display Carrier, a Machine Learning Carrier and an ATP Carrier. Added to the list now is a new processor module based on the Nordic nRF52840 and a weather carrier board with three on-board sensors.

“The MicroMod nRF52840 Processor offers a powerful combination of ARM Cortex-M4 CPU and 2.4 GHz Bluetooth transceiver in the MicroMod form-factor with the M.2 MicroMod connector to allow you to plug in a compatible MicroMod Carrier Board with any number of peripherals.”

says SparkFun.

“The Bluetooth transceiver included on the nRF52840 boasts a BT 5.1 stack and supports Bluetooth 5, Bluetooth mesh, IEEE 802.15.4 (Zigbee & Thread) and 2.4Ghz RF wireless protocols (including Nordic’s proprietary RF protocol) allowing you to pick which option works best for your application.”

The processor also features a rich set of peripherals for nearly every need that you would want it to serve.

Features and Specifications of the nRF52840 Processor include:

ARM Cortex-M4 CPU with FPU (floating point unit)
1MB internal Flash
256kB internal RAM
Integrated 2.4GHz radio with support for Bluetooth LE, Bluetooth 5, ANT and, Nordic’s proprietary RF protocol
3x UARTs
2x I2C Buses
2x SPI Buses
2x Analog Inputs
2x Dedicated Digital I/O Pins
2x Dedicated PWM Pins
11x General Purpose I/O Pins
PDM Audio Processing, and,
Real-time clock

The MicroMod weather carrier board that was launched alongside, was designed to be used with any of the MicroMod processors. In their words, the weather carrier board is a “periphery for the MicroMod ecosystem that allows you to create your own weather station with one of a multitude of processors.”

The MicroMod Weather Carrier Board Features:

A BME280 Barometric temperature/pressure/humidity sensor
A VEML6075 UV light sensor
An AS3935 lightning detector
A 3-pin Latch Terminal to connect Soil Moisture sensor, and,
2x RJ11 connectors to connect Wind/Rain sensors, and,
A microSD card slot that allows you to plug in an SD card to log all the weather data using any of the MicroMod processor.

Both the MicroMod nRF52840 Processor and the Weather Carrier Board are available and can be purchased from the company at $14.95 and $44.95 respectively.

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