Embedded Lab

Microchip provides an application note describing a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) enabled pedometer example that uses an MSP430F5229 reference pedometer design  is a portable electronic device that uses PIC16LF1718, a cost effective 8-bit microcontroller with extreme low power (XLP), the Microchip RN4020 Bluetooth 4.1 Low Energy Module,
and the Bosch Sensortec BMA250E digital triaxial accelerometer. The pedometer can be worn on the wrist like a bracelet/watch and the on-board RN4020 BLE module allows the pedometer demo to communicate with a smartphone or tablet on which the user’s exercise progress can be tracked. The pedometer demo is powered by a single 3V coin lithium battery (CR2032).

BLE-enabled pedometer

The Microchip pedometer demo uses a Bosch 10-bit triaxial digital accelerometer (BMA250E) to detect the motion of the wearer. The Microchip pedometer demo firmware running in the PIC16LF1718 microcontroller contains a step detection algorithm library developed by Bosch Sensortec. A step detection function in this library is called
periodically by the user application. The microcontroller will read the acceleration data of X/Y/Z axes from the accelerometer via an I2C™ interface when the step detection function is called. The step detection function then analyzes the accumulated acceleration data and determines the number of steps taken by using pattern recognition. The accumulated number of steps can be shown on the three digit 7-Segment LED displays or a BLE application running in a smartphone/tablet that is paired with the RN4020 BLE module.