New development platform for battery-free wireless sensors and actuators

Farsens unveils the MEDUSA, a development platform for battery-free wireless sensors and actuators The Medusa development platform allows developers to design components driven by RF energy harvesting The Medusa, from Farsens, is a new development platform for UHF RFID battery-free devices. The Medusa includes an ANDY100 chip with EPC C1G2 communication and a MSPG2233IPW20 microcontroller from Texas Instruments for communication with developers’ circuits. Users can now develop their own wireless sensors or actuators without requiring batteries on the tag. The Medusa harvests energy from the RF field created by the RFID reader to power up the ANDY100 IC, the microcontroller and the circuitry and devices attached to it. The ANDY100 chip included works under standard EPC C1G2 commands so no proprietary or custom commands are needed. Any commercial UHF RFID reader can be used just by programing with the correct standard commands. Farsens designs and manufactures full passive RFID sensor solutions. The company’s proprietary UHF RFID IC allows it to develop long-range solutions for asset tracking - via the unique ID - and monitoring - via the attached sensor - without the need of any battery on the tag, says the company.