New (to me) Bluetooth module (CC2540-A1)

Before the last Charlotte IoT meetup, which was about building stuff with BLE Beacon, I wanted to experiment some and see if I could get it working before the meeting and I went out and ordered some new toys – complete with a total non-understanding on what I really needed.  I have a better idea now that the meetup has happened.

In the process, I found this pretty cool looking BLE module on Amazon the other day for 8$ each (of course, it is now out of stock)…

The Product description was super helpful or at least very technical looking but missed a few details that would be nice – like a link to a datasheet or schematic, or pinout…

Eventually I found the company that manufactured it – and the specs are light on their website, too – same as the Amazon page, really… (http://en.szrfstar.com/product/2/BLEmodule/93.html)

This is fine – I’m used to a minor amount of detail on the Amazon page, but there is almost always a ton of data sheets on the web… except… for… this… module.

I spent the better part of a week of random attempts looking for the pinout diagram or a list or SOMETHING so I could figure out how it was supposed to be hooked up.

I still haven’t searched for the control details… but I did at least find something of a pinout and some related details from this site: http://www.cnblogs.com/szsammy/archive/2013/05/14/szsammy.html, which required a bit of translation to read it.

That looks pretty close to the original, and it is by the same company – model number matches and the spec look pretty corresponding, so that’s good.

We have a pinout from the site… it has most of our numbers in here, looks sane as well.

So far, I have checked continuity on the Ground and VCC pins, and they check out as expected.

Next up, solder some wires on and see if I can get a connection… and maybe even some data.

I’ll update here as I have more info

1 Comment

• 

  debra galley April 13, 2015 3:33 AM

  cool stuff