Freescale’s WaRP unleashes design innovation for new products

To help systems designers more easily navigate the quickly evolving consumer wearables market, Freescale Semiconductor has introduced an open-source, scalable reference platform that gives OEMs the building blocks they need to rapidly develop a wide range of wearable product designs from a common platform.
 
Unlike other wearable solutions, the new platform is not limited to just one form-factor or product category. The highly flexible, system-level design kit supports embedded wireless charging, incorporates processors and sensors within a hybrid architecture for scalability and flexibility, and comes with open-source software. The wearables reference platform (WaRP) is engineered to unleash design creativity for multiple vertical segments such as sports monitors, smart glasses, activity trackers, smart watches and healthcare/medical applications.
 
“Wearables represent one of the ultimate edge node sensors for the Internet of Things, and hold tremendous promise for equipment makers, service providers and consumers alike. This new solution is engineered to dramatically streamline the design and development of exciting new wearables products. It allows designers and OEMs to go from concept to prototype as quickly as the market is changing,” said Rajeev Kumar, Director of Worldwide Marketing and Business Development for Freescale’s Microcontrollers business.
 
The wearables reference platform kit includes the main board, a daughter card, an LCD display battery and a micro USB cable. Availability is planned for Q2 2014.