BL-63B - A smaller BL602 IoT module that sells for $1.5

Bouffalo Labs BL602 is a low-cost, low-power RISC-V microcontroller that offers 2.4 GHz WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0 LE connectivity for IoT projects for about the price of ESP8266. We first discovered it last year, together with a development board.

Pine64 created its own PineCone board fitted with the $2 PineNut module, and some reverse-engineering work has started on BL602 SDK. But there’s now another smaller BL602 module with “Machine Intelligence” (that’s the company name) BL-63B that sells for $1.5 on Taobao in China, as well as on LCSC Electronics albeit you’d need to purchase 1000 pieces to get that price, and single-unit pricing is currently $2.5.

BL-63B WiFI & BLE module specifications:

SoC – Bouffalo Labs BL602 32-bit RISC-V processor @ up to 192 Mhz with 276KB RAM, 128KB ROM, 1Kbit eFuse, WiFi and BLE
Storage – 2MB flash
Wireless
- 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n WiFI 4 1×1 SISO up to 65 Mbps (802.11n) or 26 Mbps (802.11g)
- Bluetooth LE 5.0
- PCB antenna
11 pads and through holes with
- Up to 5x GPIO, UART, ADC, DAC, PWM, I2C, SPI, IR
- Reset
- 3.3V and GND
Additional test pads for GND (2x), IO8 and IO5
Supply Voltage – 3.0 to 3.6V
Dimensions – 17.3 x 15 x 3mm (DIP-11)
Temperature Range – -30°C to +85°C
FCC ID – 2AVTT-BL63B (But it does not show up on the FCC website yet)

There are also reference to TYWE2S with BL-63B module. TYWE2S appears to both be a module form factor and an “RTOS platform that integrates all function libraries of the Wi-Fi MAC and TCP/IP protocols”, and is also used on Tuya‘s ESP8285 module, so BL-63B BL602 module might just be a drop-in replacement with the same pinout and firmware.

Via Lup Yuen Lee (MisterTechBlog)

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.

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3 Comments

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wanderer_

3 years ago

oooh, shiny!

I want one (or 10!)

William Barath

This may be a physical drop-in for the BL-8285 but it cannot accept firmware from BL-8285 as this is a 32-bit RISC-V-based MCU and the BL-8265 uses an Tensilica L106 32-bit Extensa ISA RISC core.

The price is right. My buddy Allen will probably buy some of these for his various home wireless projects. If this had a few more pins broken out it would be superior to the RP2048. If the core has the same performance as the ESP-8285 then there should be about 80% of the core’s performance available for application use.

Alain Hirsch

One thing that they really did right with this module is that they used a pluggable pcb edge connector instead of those lousy castellated holes (or other solder-only options) that most other modules have and that require the module to be soldered down onto the application board… or to a carrier board, which is equally lousy and just shifts the problem. With an edge connector, you can use a small wireless module as an optional addon card for Bluetooth and/or wifi… AND: it has the huge advantage that you can keep your different application boards clear of any wireless stuff that… Read more »