Blend Micro - an Arduino Development Board with BLE

This Product has been discontinued.

Blend Micro is our first integrated developement board, we have "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.

The micro-controller unit (MCU) is Atmel ATmega32u4 and the BLE chip is Nordic nRF8001. Blend Micro runs as BLE peripheral role only, it allows BLE central role devices to establish connection with. 

Current supported BLE central devices:

iOS 7

• iPhone 4s
• iPhone 5 (all models)
• iPod touch 5
• iPad 3/4/mini/Air

Android 4.3 or above (4.4 recommended for stability) with Bluetooth 4.0 hardware support

• Nexus 4
• Nexus 7
• (please report any other Android devices supported)

Windows 8.1 with built-in Bluetooth 4.0 or USB dongle

Mac OSX 10.9.2 with built-in Bluetooth 4.0 or USB dongle

Linux with BlueZ 5.1 with built-in Bluetooth 4.0 or USB dongle

Features

• First BLE + Arduino board under Arduino AtHeart program
• Works with Nordic Bluetooth Smart SDK for Arduino
• Software development using Arduino IDE
• Over-the-Air download of sketch to Blend Micro (available soon)
• Supported by our free Android App and iOS App

Technical Specification

Microcontroller

Atmel ATmega32u4

Wireless Chip

Nordic nRF8001

Operating Voltage

3.3V

Input Voltage

5V (USB) 

3.3-12V (VIN)

Note: Use either one power source at a time. 

Clock Speed

8MHz

Connectivity

Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy

micro-USB

Serial (TX/RX) 

I2C 

SPI

Flash Memory

32KB (of which 4 KB used by bootloader)

SRAM

2.5KB

EEPROM

1KB

Dimensions

43.6 x 18.4 x 4.3mm (83 x 58 x 25mm with packaging)

Weight

4g (19g with packaging)

Power Consumption

2mA (average - using Interrupt mode)

I/O Pins

24

Document

• Add-on for Arduino IDE
• Get Nordic nRF8001 SDK for Arduino
• Get RBL nRF8001 Library (added some simple APIs) 
• Download the signed driver here for Windows (includes up to Windows 8 PC)

Find more information on http://redbearlab.com/blendmicro.