Overview

Blend Micro is Red Bear Labs' first integrated development board, they "blend"ed Arduino with Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy (aka BLE or Bluetooth Smart) into a single board. It is targeted for makers to develop low power Internet-Of-Things (IoT) projects quickly and easily.

It features a an Atmel ATmega32u4 microcontroller, and a Nordic nRF8001 BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) chip. Blend Micro runs BLE as a peripheral role only.

It works with iOS 7 devices, and should work with most Android 4.3+ devices that have Bluetooth 4.0 hardware.

PC requirements:

Windows 8.1 with Bluetooth 4.0 hardware

Apple OSX 10.9.2 with built-in Bluetooth 4.0 hardware

Linux with BlueZ 5.1 with Bluetooth 4.0 hardware

Features

• First BLE + Arduino device in the Arduino At Heart program
• Works with Nordic Bluetooth Smart SDK for Arduino
• Software development using the arduino IDE
• Over-the-air download of code (coming soon)
• Supported by Red Bear Labs' Android and iOS Apps

Specifications

• Microcontroller: Atmel ATega 32u4
• Wireless Chipset: Nordic nRF8001
• Operating Voltage: 3.3V
• Supply Voltage: 5V (USB), 3.3-12V (VIN) (mutually exclusive)
• Clock Speed: 8MHz
• Communications:
  • Bluetooth 4.0 BLE
  • micro USB
  • Serial UART
  • I2C
  • SPI
• Flash Space: 32kb (4kb used by bootloader)
• RAM: 2.5kb
• EEPROM: 1kb
• Power consumption: 2mA (using interrupt mode)
• # of I/o pins: 24

Resources

• Addon for Arduino IDE
• Nordic nRF8001 SDK for Arduino
• Red Bear Labs' nRF8001 Library
• Signed Drivers for Windows
• Red Bears Labs Blend Micro Page