Other Parts Discussed in Thread: CC2640, CC3100, MSP432E401Y
Hello,
I have some difficulties to fully understand which product fits my use case. As an software engineer, I am new to electrical engineering, so please excuse obvious questions.
At my company we are developing a digital sensor using an MSP430 based design. The circuit board used is relatively small, smaller than what I found on the Internet so far - so maybe we are using a custom design and only using the MSP430 to drive it. The circuit board is connected to analog sensors and, using the firmware on the MSP, sends the analog sensors' readings over USB (as a serial port). 4 pins are soldered to that USB cable, so I suspect that I will only ever have 4 ports for communication.
There is a software on the PC to receive and store serial port data.
We are now trying to extend this to ethernet, wifi, bluetooth and nfc, with bluetooth being the most important technology. Each design should be on its own chip/solution.
The following things are unclear to me:
1) For the current design, we are soldering a USB cable to some of the pins and a cable with UART ports to other pins. Would that also be necessary for the device here : http://www.ti.com/product/MSP432E401Y/
description, I thought that MSPs like the MSP432P401V supported Wifi and Bluetooth out of the box. Do they? If not, what is the benefit in buying a MSP432 instead of the MSP430?
3) What exactly is a launchpad? As far as I understood, it makes life easier, in that I don't have to solder USB and UART to the board myself and it also exposes some pins.
4) The current solution is programmed using IAR studio. Can I use IAR studio to program launchpad-MSPs, too?
5) Also, currently the MSP430 USB API is used for the project. Are there also such APIs for Wifi, Bluetooth or Ethernet? If so, do those only exist for CC2640/CC3100?
6) The current product has half the size of a pen. So while it might be ok to use a launchpad and the CC2640/CC3100 to test if sending works, the actual product must be small. I also found some bluetooth modules like that one: https://www.reichelt.de/bluetooth-modul-fuer-nibobee-nibo-bee-blue-p129272.html?&trstct=pos_0 will not work on this or similar modules? Are there any bluetooth modules other than the CC2640/CC3100 that have been tested with the MSP? Are there APIs that I can use to control the hardware? How much time would it take to control those modules without an API, based on your experience?
7) On a higher level, are there APIs for the communication stacks of bluetooth, wifi or ethernet? For USB, no such protocol was needed, but wifi/ethernet need TCP/IP and bluetooth surely also has a protocol.
Summing up, I am overwhelmed with information here and I need a bit of guidance. My goal is: I want to send arbitrary data (arbitrary for the beginning, later it should be sensor data) via wifi, bluetooth or ethernet, the later product must be small (but might be large for testing) and if the testing system (launchpad...?) differs from the product, I want as much code as possible shared between them. Some general words of advice to clear up my confusion are well appreciated!
Best regards,
Max
MSP432E401Y