GPS is available for outdoor positioning, what about indoors? There is a positioning technology that is more accurate than GPS: UWB. The technology offers positioning accuracy within 10cm which greatly compensates for the shortcomings of the indoor RSSI positioning of past IoT products.
UWB technology is a wireless carrier communication technology that uses a frequency bandwidth above 1 GHz. It does not use a sinusoidal carrier but uses nanosecond-level non-sinusoidal narrow pulses to transmit data and occupies a large frequency spectrum, hence the name “Ultra-Wideband”, or UWB for shorts. Besides positioning, UWB can also be used for data transmission with a rate of hundreds of megabits per second.
BU01 development board features
- MCU – STMicro STM32F103 Arm Cortex-M3 microcontroller
- UWB module – Ai-Thinker BU01 module
- 50 I/O pins exposed for functions.
- Sensors – Onboard acceleration sensor, temperature, and humidity sensor
- Misc – User buttons and LED
- Power Supply – 5V via Micro USB port
BU01 application scenarios
Virtual electronic fence
Indoor positioning
Anti-loss, asset tracking
Distance measurement (aka ranging)
BU01 AT command set
| Instruction | Description |
|---|---|
| AT | Test instruction |
| AT+switchdis=1 | Start ranging |
| AT+interval=5 | Ranging interval (5-20m) |
| AT+version? | Query version |
| AT+RST | Software reset |
| AT+tem_hum | Temperature and humidity acquisition |
| AT+xyz | Three-axis acceleration acquisition |
| AT+anchor_tag=0 | Set module communication role and custom ID |
Questions & Answers
Q1: What’s the range of the module? How accurate is it?
A1: Point to point ranging up to 50m+ (depending on Anchor/Tag placement and angle), the accuracy is about 10 cm.
Q2: How does it work?
A2: Anchor and Tag communication mode; Module A serves as an Anchor (base station) and module B serves as a Tag. For positioning, module A can transmit position information to module B.
Q3: What else can be done besides ranging and positioning?
A3: In addition to positioning and ranging, Ai-Thinker BU01 module can also be used as a data transmission module for wireless transmission equipment.
Q4: What is the use of STM32 chip on the development board?
A4: STM32F103 microcontroller is the host device responsible for code controlling BU01 module. If you need the source code, please contact our business and explain the project requirements
Q5: How to use the onboard temperature, humidity, and acceleration sensors?
A5: The factory firmware support AT commands to retrieve data from the temperature & humidity sensor, and the accelerator.
We also have the test demo and documents about this product. Please feel free to contact us on LinkedIn to get more details and/or order samples on Alibaba.
This account is for paid-for, sponsored posts. We do not collect any commission on sales, and content is usually provided by the advertisers themselves, although we sometimes write it for our clients.
Support CNX Software! Donate via cryptocurrencies, become a Patron on Patreon, or purchase goods on Amazon or Aliexpress. We also use affiliate links in articles to earn commissions if you make a purchase after clicking on those links.
