Hardware update – stacking boards

WiSense hardware architecture supports stacking. A typical stack will have these boards –

• A single micro-controller board (MSP430G2955 or MSP430G2553)
• A single radio board (Chip antenna, Whip antenna or PCB antenna)
• One or more sensor boards
• One battery board with rechargeable coin/button cell and associated with DC-DC converter (if required) and solar cell connector.  The other option is a simple 3 Volts Lithium coin cell.

We recently built and tested our first stacked node with two boards. One is a controller board with the MSP430G2955. The other is a radio board with a chip antenna. The MSP430 talks to the cc2520 transceiver over the SPI bus and a few GPIOs.  This SPI bus is available to all boards in the stack (not just the radio board) . For example, we can plug in a sensor board equipped with the  “MPL115A1” barometer sensor. This sensor has an SPI interface.

All “stackable” boards have two 2×10 self nesting connectors. The boards can be plugged in any order (radio board on top of the controller board or vice versa).

 

Radio board with chip antenna

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Controller board (top side)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Controller board (bottom side)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stacked node (radio board plugged into controller board)