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Reference design suits home and building automation systems

Silicon Laboratories has released an energy-efficient wireless sensor node solution, which is powered by a solar energy harvesting source. The company claims that the turnkey energy harvesting reference design enables developers to implement self-sustaining wireless sensor networks for home and building automation, security systems, industrial control applications, medical monitoring devices, asset tracking systems and infrastructure and agricultural monitoring systems. The wireless solution is based on the Si10xx wireless microcontroller family and can perform control and wireless interface functions at ultra-low power levels.The reference design includes wireless network and USB software and a complete circuit design with RF layout, bill of materials, schematics and Gerber files. The design consists of three components, namely a solar-powered wireless sensor node, wireless USB adapter, and a wireless sensor network GUI (graphical user interface). The sensor node measures temperature, light level and charge level by using the wireless microcontroller. The USB adapter connects the wireless sensor node to a computer for displaying sensor data. It features the company’s Si4431 EZRadioPRO transceiver and an EZMac wireless software stack. The network GUI has the ability to display data from a maximum of four sensor nodes.