STMicroelectronics announced its Open.MEMS program to boost time-to-development with quick and easy single-node evaluation licensing, which went live on November 11, 2014, and will be expanded regularly with additional low-level drivers, middleware/libraries and application-layer code.
To encourage broad use of its Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and sensors to all the customers and open-community developers, the program makes freely available to Open.MEMS licensees drivers, middleware, and application software, beginning with sensor fusion for three-axis accelerometer, three-axis gyroscope, and three-axis magnetometer, considered vital for many portable and wearable applications.
ST anticipates continuing expansion of the Open.MEMS program with additional and complementary software libraries, including, for example, blocks for pedometers, tilted compasses, gesture-recognition, activity monitoring and pedestrian dead reckoning.
“ST has grown to be the leading supplier of MEMS and sensors for consumer, mobile, and telematics and infotainment automotive applications by providing outstanding and innovative products to most of the industry’s top companies,” said Benedetto Vigna, executive vice president and general manager of the Analog, MEMS and Sensors Group, STMicroelectronics. “The ‘S’ in MEMS has traditionally been associated with (micro-electro-mechanical) Systems, and now it also represents our software, which is ready to enable people all over the world to express their creativity through ST’s exciting Open.MEMS program.”
The Open.MEMS program is supported by ST’s STM32 Open Development platform, an open, affordable, and extensible platform for product prototyping and development based on the company’s STM32 ARM® Cortex®-M processor-core microcontrollers and integrating a wide range of other ST components for various sense, control, connectivity, power, audio, and other functions.
After acquiring an STM32 Nucleo development board and an STM32 Nucleo Sensor Expansion board, developers only need to download and install STM32Cube development tools, STM32 Nucleo expansion software and additional value-libraries. Once they have agreed to an online, click-through license agreement, they will quickly receive a unique key for their STM32 Nucleo development board. Copying the key into the software will automatically unlock all application programming interfaces (APIs) in each ST value-library, and in as little as five minutes, they can be working on their prototype.