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Unboxing STWIN SensorTile Wireless Industrial Node Kit

Predictive Maintenance or PdM is a technique that is commonly used to identify potential failures that can occur in expensive industrial assets such as pumps, compressors and motors. The downtime caused by the failure of these machines can cost billions to companies.

But luckily, we are seeing more and more embedded solutions that can implement predictive maintenance in the real world and significantly reduce the likelihood of failure. And the product we are focusing on in today’s video does just that and does that very well.

The STWIN SensorTile wireless industrial node (STEVAL-STWINKT1B) (210-2301) is a development kit from STMicroelectronics that features a range of industrial-grade sensors, ultra-low-power microcontroller from STM32L4+ series, multiple wired and wireless connectivity options as well as a rich set of software packages – all to help to quickly build and test condition monitoring and predictive maintenance applications.

The STWIN kit comprises of:

  • Hardware Board
  • 480 mAh Li-Po battery + plastic case for field testing
  • STLink-V3MINI + cable for programming

Block diagram

Block diagram of the evaluation kit

Sensing

The board features a range of sensors specifically for industrial applications. They can be broadly categorized into three categories.

Motion sensors:

The first category covers multiple motion sensors, including the new IIS3DWB ultra-wide bandwidth, 3-axis digital vibration sensor (201-0404) , ISM330DHCX iNEMO IMU (193-5451) with 3D acc. + 3D gyro and machine learning core, IIS2DH (111-6451) ultra-low-power high-performance MEMS motion sensor and IIS2MDC (193-5447) ultra-low-power 3-axis magnetometer.

The data from these sensors allow performing vibrational analysis over specified frequency ranges and identify what kind of fault might be present in the equipment.

Acoustic sensors:

However, for the faults that can only be detected in the high frequencies, ultrasound analysis is usually performed. The STWIN kit has both analog and digital microphones on the board. There is IMP23ABSU (208-5071) analog MEMS microphone with a frequency response up to 80kHz followed up by TS922 (124-0655) dual operational amplifier as well as IMP34DT05 (193-5449) industrial-grade digital MEMS microphone.

Environmental sensors:

Lastly, the kit features several environmental sensors for temperature, humidity and pressure sensing.

  • HTS221 relative humidity and temperature sensor (166-0935)
  • LPS22HH digital absolute pressure sensor (111-6455)
  • STTS751 low-voltage digital local temperature sensor (190-7646)

Processing

The microcontroller on the core system board is based on the ultra-low-power STM32L4R9 MCU (164-7008) based on ARM Cortex-M4 that can operate at a maximum frequency of 120 MHz. Some of the features of this MCU are summarized as below:

  • Single-precision floating-point unit (FPU), DSP (digital signal processing) and a memory protection unit (MPU)
  • Supports 640 Kb SRAM and up to 2Mb of Flash memory
  • Several internal clock sources
  • It also features standard and advanced communication interfaces such as I2C, SPI, UART, CAN, etc.

For more information on specific features, please follow the datasheet for STM32L4R9ZI (attached).

Features of the Evaluation Board

Connectivity

The STWIN kit offers multiple connectivity options. Starting with the wireless solutions, the board features the Bluetooth Low Energy BlueNRG-M2 module (201-4414) , which is compliant with the latest Bluetooth v5.2 specifications. It is based on the BlueNRG-2 wireless system-on-chip and integrates an embedded antenna and high-frequency oscillators into a tiny form factor, offering a complete solution for enabling BLE technology.

On top of that, the STEVAL-STWINWFV1 WiFi expansion board (193-9796) is available for purchasing separately which adds 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi connectivity to your sensor node. The expansion board can be plugged into the STWIN core board through CN3 connectivity expansion connector.

Lastly, wired connectivity can be implemented with an STR485LV (201-4489) low power differential line transceiver that can reach transmissions speed up to 20Mbps.

Security

Security is a big concern nowadays for IoT devices and networks, especially in an industrial environment. STMicroelectronics offers STSAFE-A secure element ICs that can be embedded into devices and peripherals at the IoT node to provide authentication and secure connection services. The STWIN kit incorporates STSAFE-A110 secure element (206-6106) which seamlessly integrates with STM32 and other general-purpose MCUs.

Power Management

The battery supply voltage (VBAT) may be provided by connecting the 480 mA LiPo battery included in the STWIN kit to the dedicated battery connector, or by supplying an external voltage through the J4 connector.

Block diagram showing the Power Circuits

The STWIN core system board can receive power from different sources:

  • V_USB: through micro USB connector [5 V]
  • Vin: through J5 connector [4.8-5.5 V]. The current on this port needs to be limited to 2 A
  • VBAT: lithium-ion polymer battery (3.7 V, 480 mAh), STBC02 (877-2860) battery charger integrated in the board

Apart from the battery charger, there is a low noise LDO to provide 2.7V that is required to power the analog mic and op-amp, and a step-down switching regulator for powering the components such as a microcontroller, various sensors and Bluetooth module. You will also find various power protection components on the board, including EMI filter and ESD protection solutions.

These and other products can be found on ST's Predictive Maintenance and Condition Monitoring solutions page.

Downloads

I am an electronics engineer turned data engineer who likes creating content around IoT, machine learning, computer vision and everything in between.
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