Seeed Studio Announces Availability of LinkIt ONE Hardware Development Kit for Wearables and Internet of Things

SHENZHEN, China, Sept. 22, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- To make Wearables and Internet of Things (IoT) hardware technology accessible and device development a breeze, Seeed Studio has released LinkIt™ ONE, the first development board for the MediaTek LinkIt Development Platform which makes the prototyping of wearable and IoT devices easy and cost-efficient.

In the era of Wearables and IoT, much of the innovation will come from creative and driven pioneers in the developer and maker community. Their creativity needs a robust yet flexible development platform and this need is fulfilled by the LinkIt Development Platform. The LinkIt ONE development board provides the hardware component of that platform. A co-design product by Seeed Studio and MediaTek, LinkIt ONE benefits from Seeed's knowledge in open hardware and MediaTek's industry leading reference designs for the Wearable and IoT market.

The LinkIt ONE development board is one of the most feature-rich development boards on the market. It is based on MediaTek Aster (MT2502), the world's smallest commercial SoC for Wearables, and integrates GSM, GPRS, Bluetooth EDR/BLE, Wi-Fi, GPS, SD Card, and MP3/AAC/AMR Audio features.

To support rapid hardware prototyping, LinkIt ONE provides similar pin-out to the popular Arduino boards. This includes 4-pin Grove standard plug-and-play peripheral interfaces offering support for more than 120 modules, making it easy to build sophisticated prototypes by combining a wide range of sensors and peripherals with LinkIt ONE.

Key LinkIt ONE Features:

• All-in-one development board, including ARM7 EJ-S^TM, GSM, GPRS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth (EDR/BLE), GPS, microSD Card Slot and Audio out
• Pin-out similar to Arduino UNO, including Digital I/O, Analog Input, PWM, I2C, SPI, UART, Li-Battery power supply and 4-Pin Grove Standard Interfaces
• Open source LinkIt Hardware Board Reference Design, including schematic, layouts, and pin details , enabling developers to create their own projects using Seeed Studio's Fusion PCBA Service.

"At the heart of LinkIt ONE is MediaTek Aster, a highly-integrated system-on-chip design which gives designers access to the full range of communication and location acquisition features available in a single board", says Marc Naddell, Vice President of MediaTek Labs at MediaTek. "This simple, all-in-one package will allow anyone from hobbyists to professional makers and designers to easily create high performance and low power consumption Wearables and IoT devices." 

"MediaTek has very competitive solution for computation and communication, while makers still use traditional industrial components for new connected objects. With LinkIt ONE, we are excited to help Makers bring prototypes to market faster and more easily," says Eric Pan, CEO of Seeed Studio.

Other tools that developers need are supplied by MediaTek Labs, a central hub for developer offerings, including software development kits (SDKs), technical documentation as well as technical and business support. LinkIt software development is supported by a Developer's Guide and comprehensive API References. And when makers, device manufacturers, students, DIY hobbyists, programmers, engineers, and developers have used these tools to turn their innovative ideas into practical prototypes, the LinkIt Hardware Board Reference Design enables them to make their products a reality with the Seeed productization and agile manufacturing service.

Makers and developers can download the LinkIt SDK (for Arduino) by registering at MediaTek Labs, http://labs.mediatek.com, and order the LinkIt ONE HDK from Seeed Studio at http://www.seeedstudio.com/linkitone .

About Seeed Studio

Seeed is a hardware innovation platform to help makers grow inspirations into differentiating products. By working closely with technology providers of all scales, Seeed provides accessible technologies with quality, speed and supply chain knowledge. When prototypes are ready to iterate, Seeed helps productize 1 to 1,000 pcs using in-house engineering, supply chain management and agile manufacture forces. Seeed also teams up with incubators, China tech ecosystem, investors and distribution channels to help Maker startups grow exponentially. For more information, please visit www.seeedstudio.com.

SOURCE Seeed Studio