TACTIGONBASIC – Multi-Sensor Bluetooth Board

Description

The Tactigon is a small board (46.9×15.2×5.5 mm) governed by a 32-bit ST microcontroller, equipped with a BLE transceiver, temperature and pressure sensors, a 9-axis IMU, RGB LED, charging regulator for the Li-ion battery it runs on, and 5 GPIOs.

Thanks to this board, it is possible to create a controller capable of detecting three-dimensional gestures and environmental parameters such as temperature and humidity, which is well suited for developing user interfaces for electronic games, management of industrial and service robots, machinery, drones, and advanced radio-controlled models. The board is ideal in general for motion capture and also for augmented reality.

The STM32 microcontroller used combines the low power consumption required for wearable and IoT devices with high computing power and memory: 32-bit architecture, 32 MHz, accompanied by 16 KB of EEPROM, 512 KB of program memory, and as much as 80 KB of RAM. For sensing, we have the LPS25HB absolute pressure and temperature MEMS sensor, which offers a range of 260–1260 hPa with 0.01 hPa resolution and can detect temperatures from -30 °C to +105 °C. The LSM6DS3 sensor handles the 3 axes of the accelerometer and gyroscope: it offers scales of ±2 / ±4 / ±8 / ±16 g in acceleration and ±125 / ±250 / ±500 / ±1000 / ±2000 dps in angular velocity. There is also a 3-axis magnetometer (LIS3MDL) that allows increasing the accuracy of the accelerometer and gyroscope. The range of this sensor is ±4 / ±8 / ±12 / ±16 gauss.

The Bluetooth Low Energy chip with antenna integrated in the PCB, configurable in Central and Peripheral mode, guarantees connections with smartphones, tablets, and PCs, or with BLE devices such as sensors, actuators, rovers, and drones that expose their Bluetooth service.

The micro USB port is mainly used for programming and serial debugging from the Arduino IDE, but also for recharging the connected lithium battery. Consumption is also reduced thanks to the USB interface integrated in the microcontroller, which avoids the need for an additional USB/UART converter.

The board is programmable via the most recent versions of the Arduino IDE (from 1.6.4, which allows importing third-party boards and hardware), and libraries are provided (by the manufacturer) for using BLE (Central and peripheral mode), the RGB LED, the IMU, and the other integrated sensors. The provided IMU library is able to return quaternions that are the result of a calculation performed on the values of the accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer.

The package includes the 155mAh Li-pol battery.

Technical specifications

• Connectivity: Bluetooth Low Energy – Micro USB

Documentation and useful links

• Download Sketch
• https://thetactigon.com/quick-start-guide
• https://thetactigon.com/arduino/doxygen/index.html