RedBear Duo: A small and powerful Wi-Fi + BLE IoT board

The Duo is a thumb-size development board designed to simplify the process of building Internet of Things (IoT) products. The Duo provides everything you need—Wi-Fi, BLE and a powerful Cloud backend, all in a compact form factor that makes it ideal for your first prototype, a finished product, and everything in between.

We’re also introducing the RBLink, an expansion board for the Duo that allows you to attach additional sensors and modules without any soldering. You'll have all the tools you need to get your prototype up and running in no time.

Wi-Fi + BLE

The Duo is your Bluetooth gateway to the Internet of Things. It allows you to communicate with your projects both over the web and with your phone, enabling a wide range of cool interactions. Would you like to build a front door lock that can be opened using a phone and whose settings can be changed wirelessly to give access to additional people? Maybe connected lights that turn on as your phone comes in range but can also be controlled when you’re miles away from home? Wi-Fi + BLE also means you can do make your wearable products extra interesting by adding things like beacons and data collection. Oh and robots! Whether you’re in the same room or halfway around the world, the Duo gives you all the connectivity you’ll need to control, interact, monitor, and play with your awesome new creations.

Wi-Fi & BLE Bridge Demo
RedBear Duo connects with eight BLE Peripherals as BLE Central and iPhone via Wi-Fi, background information available on our website.

Features

There are a few things that are important to all connected devices—here are a few details:

Connectivity: How does the Duo communicate with the outside world?

The Duo contains both Wi-Fi and BLE capabilities. This means your project can communicate locally with Bluetooth enabled devices and can also connect to your local Wi-Fi network to interact with anything else on the web. The Duo is built around the Broadcom BCM43438, a Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n plus Bluetooth 4.1 (Dual Mode) combined chipset. They share the same 2.4GHz antenna and can run at the same time. This gives you the flexibility to utilize the most suitable wireless technology(s) for your project.

Development: How do I program the Duo?

The Duo gives you four development platforms/languages to choose from:

Arduino IDE - The most popular development platform used by makers, it's easy to learn and comes with plenty of references guides.

Particle Web IDE, Dev and CLI - A development platform that allows you to program your Duo online and wirelessly.  You can be miles away and still be able to do your tweaking of your Duo.

JavaScript - Yes. If you know JavaScript already, you are ready to go! We are porting an open source JavaScript interpreter for microcontroller to the Duo. You could control all the I/Os, Wi-Fi and BLE connections with JavaScript only and without the need of compilation.

Broadcom WICED SDK - An advanced development platform where you can do low-level tweaking.  With the WICED SDK, Duo can support Classic Bluetooth which you can build audio or streaming data devices. If you have Apple MFi license, you can even develop your Apple HomeKit project with Duo and WICED.

We will also provide sample projects and sample code for both Android and iOS on our website and our GitHub page.

Live Programming Demo
No special effects: Arduino IDE, JavaScript and Particle WebIDE.

Cloud: What about the Cloud?

Thanks to our partner, Particle, every Duo will come out of the box with built-in Cloud service. With just a few clicks you will be connected to the Cloud seamlessly. Not only that, the Cloud service is FREE for the lifetime of your Duo*. You can push any changes and data via Cloud right from the start.

Add-Ons: How do I use the Duo with modules such as LED lights or sensors?

With the RedBear RBLink you can easily attach modules from the Seeed’s Grove System to your project. No need to pull out your soldering iron--just attach your sensors and actuators with jumper wires to the RBLink and you’re ready to go. Looking to attach your own sensor or peripheral? The Duo is breadboard and solder friendly, so you’re never limited in what you can connect to the web.

Apple HomeKit Support

The Broadcom WICED SDK supports HomeKit and makes it easy to integrate instant connectivity with HomeKit into product prototypes. (**MFi license is required)

Open Source

Software: All libraries and code by us will be open sourced, we have already published some early code and information for beta testers on our GitHub page.

Design: The final hardware design of the Duo will be made publicly available.

Hardware

Duo

• STMicroelectronics STM32F205 ARM Cortex-M3 @120MHz, 128 KB SRAM and 1MB Flash
• Broadcom BCM43438 Wi-Fi 802.11n (2.4GHz only) + Bluetooth 4.1 (Dual Mode) combo chip
• On-board 16 Mbit (2 MB) SPI Flash
• Integrated chip antenna with the option to connect external antenna
• 18 I/O pins
• RGB status LED
• Small single-sided PCB for easy mounting on other PCB boards
• Duo comes with headers soldered
• 20.5mm x 39mm

RBLink

• Running ST-LINK/V2
• Broadcom WICED SDK for Internet of Things compatible
• Apple MFi authentication coprocessor support (**MFi license is required)
• USB MSD interface - enabling programming Duo by drag and drop of bin file
• USB CDC Virtual Serial port
• STM32 ST-LINK Utility software compatible
• 8x Seeed Grove compatible connectors
• 53.5mm x 53.5mm

Grove Starter Kit

• Grove Base Shield
• Button
• Buzzer
• Rotary Angle Sensor
• Temperature Sensor
• Light Sensor
• Chainable RGB LED
• 3-Axis Digital Accelerometer (±1.5g)
• 4 Digit Display
• Vibration Motor
• User's Manual

Rewards

You are able to pledge for a variety of combinations of rewards. We'll be delivering a small first batch of rewards in January with the rest to follow one month later. The Duo is already tested and functional and we are confident that the first batch of boards will be ready to ship to backers in January 2016.