TeleShield

This is an RF interface board for use with Arduino systems. It provides the equivalent of a TeleDongle plus Bluetooth, plus a microSD socket for data storage.

The RF filter components are set for use in the vicinity of 435 Mhz.

These are photos of the first prototype:

For the latest TeleShield firmware and related software, please visit the AltOS page on this site.

Features

User View

• can be used as an Arduino shield or as a USB peripheral
• 70cm ham-band transceiver compatible with Altus Metrum products, programmed for 38k4 GFSK data rate with forward error correction
• Bluetooth
• micro USB interface
• 4 pin Tyco MicroMaTch connector for debug and flash programming
• 8 pin Tyco MicroMaTch connector supports serial or SPI interface
• micro SD socket for Arduino data storage (not connected to CC1111!)

Developer View

• TI CC1111F32 Low Power RF System-on-Chip
  • Sub-1Ghz transceiver
  • 8051 MCU
  • 32k Flash
  • 4k RAM
  • USB 2.0
  • 6 12-bit analog inputs (11 bits with single-ended sensors)
  • 2 channels of serial I/O
  • digital I/O
  • interfaced to Arduino via async serial plus two handshake pins
• Rayson BTM-182 (Bluetooth SPP module) using async to CC1111
• micro SD card socket interfaced to the Arduino via SPI
• 150mA 3.3V LDO regulator
  • can take input from either USB or the unregulated Arduino input
  • input and output appear on 8-pin companion connector
• Software Features
  • Written mostly in C with some 8051 assembler
  • Runs from on-chip flash, uses on-chip RAM
  • USB serial emulation for data interface
• Tools Used
  • gEDA for schematic capture and PCB layout
  • SDCC compiler and source debugger
• Licenses
  • The hardware is licensed under the TAPR Open Hardware License
  • The software is licensed GPL version 2

Artifacts

There is a single manual for all Altus Metrum products, which is available in html and pdf formats.

The hardware design current gEDA files are available from git.gag.com in the project hw/teleshield.

Future Plans

The prototype v0.1 boards work fine. Feedback from showing them at the Arduino mini-conference at LCA 2012 resulted in elimination of the Bluetooth interface. Updated boards have not been built yet, but schematic and artwork files are available for review and comment.

No significant interest in this design ever materialized, so we have no plans to make any more at this time.