Low power sample code for Silicon Labs Thunderboard Sense 2

Hi,

Thunderboard Sense 2 is a very nice board with a load of sensors for only 20 Euros IoT Development Kit - Thunderboad Sense 2 - SLTB004A - Silicon Labs. It al supports Edge Impulse AI models.
However Silicon Labs Simplicity Studio is a bit different from the IDEs I commonly use. Could you post a sample code to interface this boards sensor readings with the Notecard?

regards,

Ivan

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Hey @iarakis, sure, we can do that! I will grab a couple of the boards, take them for a spin and get a sample written up. Please give us a couple of weeks, since we need to wait for the hardware to arrive.

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Thanks! I think it is difficult to find a low power board with all these sensor for just 20 Euros. So, a good fit for the Notercard.

Regards,

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Hi! Did you make any advance connecting the Notecard with Thunderboard?

Thanks!

Hey @iarakis we haven’t forgotten about this, it’s just taking more time than anticipated because the docs for SiLabs Simplicity Studio are… sparse, as I am sure you know. :smiley: I’m hoping to dedicate some time to this tomorrow or over the weekend and get you something next week.

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Hey @iarakis I’ve not forgotten about this, but I am still working on it between other projects. I think I have a better sense of the layout and structure of simplicity studio, but need to dedicate some more time to understanding how to read from the onboard temp/hu sensor and how to wire-up the Notecard over UART. I’ll work on this further when I can, and thanks for your patience.

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Hi, just for reference. My aim is to use a Notecard an the Thunderboard Sense 2 for an escalator vibration anomally detection demo. http://www.ermuaiot.com/

I am planning to use Edge Impulse to build a suitable model. Advises are wellcome.

Regards

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Ooh, nice looking board @iarakis, can’t wait to see it in action!

Hi, did you have time to make any advance in communicatin the Notecard and Thunderboard?

Regards

Hi @iarakis, I’ve been working on this off and on over the last several weeks, but I’ve not made any substantive progress with Simplicity Studio and the Thunderboard Sense 2 board. This has taken far longer than I originally anticipated, and at this time, we can’t dedicate the resources to take this any further. For the time being, we do not plan to offer formal support or samples for Simplicity Studio.

To be completely candid, given quality of their documentation, samples, and online forum, I would not recommend using this IDE for a project. That said, if you are keen to continue the exploration yourself, you are welcome to reference our STM32 Samples which use the similarly eclipse-based STM32CubeIDE. The key piece you’d need to figure out when porting one of these samples to Simplicity Studio would be how to configure their SDK and HAL for both reading from the temp/hu sensor on the board and I2C comms with the Notecard. I was disappointed to find that the SiLabs team provides no basic samples for understanding their SDKs, nor samples that actually compile out of the box. If you have the option of choosing a different host for your project, I would recommend you do so.

Sorry again that we can’t provide any further guidance at this time.

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Hello,

Just in case anyone still looking for code examples for Thunderboard Sense 2, you can start by checking at this peripheral examples repository provided by Silicon Labs. Since Thunderboard Sense 2 is powered by the EFR32MG12 chip, you can look at the series1 directory on that repo.

Disclaimer: I am not working for Silicon Labs, but I am currently learning how to program this device using Simplicity Studio 5.

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Thanks @alwin, and welcome to the community, we’re glad you are here! If you end up creating a sample for the Sense 2 with the Notecard and feel comfortable, please share it with us here!

I successfully created a working code (I will share it later), but it’s using the UART1 instead of LEUART (low energy). It turns out the LEUART is connected to the PA0 and PA1 as mentioned in this example. These pins are connected to the USB virtual COM port. It might work if you are not using the PA0 and PA1 to communicate with your computer.

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Looks great!! Looking forward to see your code. Thanks for sharing.

That’s great to hear @alwin! Please do share here when you’re comfortable doing so.

Hi, were you able to upload the sample code for Thunderboard Sense 2?

Hi, here you can see the largely modified final project.

Its a Digital Twin for public elevators. You can have a look:

https://ermuaio.carrd.co/
User: demo
Password: Twin2022

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Very cool @iarakis thanks for sharing the demo and your Hackster project!