Thunderboard Sense 2 Overview

The Thunderboard Sense 2 has onboard sensors that include relative humidity and temperature sensors, a UV index and ambient light sensor, a Hall-effect sensor, an indoor air quality gas sensor, a 6-axis inertial sensor, a Barometric pressure sensor, and a MEMS microphone.

The update on the Thunderboard features 4x more Flash (1024 kB) and RAM (256 kB) compared to the original Thunderboard, and has added advanced BLE capabilities, giving it a wide range of IoT capabilities. It has a 2.4 GHz ceramic chip antenna for communication and four high brightness controllable LEDs/push buttons.

Figure 1: Thunderboard’s sensors and its 2.4 GHz radio example. (Source: Silicon Labs) 

It’s easy to get started with this board, as all you need to do is download the free Thunderboard app to your Android or iPhone, power up the board, and connect it to your smartphone to start analyzing and sharing real-time data with the free cloud analysis tool.

Thunderboard Sense 2 Features:

Wireless Gecko EFR32™:

• Wireless SoC with multi-protocol radio and 38.4 MHz operating frequency

• ARM® Cortex® M4 core with 256 kB RAM and 1024 kB Flash, Low Energy Consumption

• Flexible MCU peripheral interfaces

• 2.4 GHz ceramic chip antenna

On-Board Sensors:

• Relative Humidity and Temperature Sensor

• UV and Ambient Light Sensor

• Pressure Sensor

• Indoor Air Quality and Gas Sensor

• 6-axis Inertial Sensor

• Digital Microphone

• Hall-effect Sensor

I/O, Misc. Control, and Other Features:

• High brightness LEDs

• Segger J-Link Integrated Debugger

• USB CDC virtual serial port

• 8 Mbit SPI ultra-low power NOR flash for local storage

Mobile App Features:

• Android and iOS compatible

• Beacon notifications

• View sensor data

• Control LEDs and detect button pushes

• Stream sensor data to the cloud