BM71 Static Configuration (UI Configuration Tool)

Connect to BM71

Connect the BM71 PICtail board to your PC via the USB connector (bottom-side of the board) using the supplied USB Cable. Ensure the jumpers J3, JP8, and J1 (all yellow in this photo) are set as shown:

COM Port

Open the Device Manager window by going to the Start Menu > Control Panel > Hardware and Sound and then selecting Device Manager. Once open, check which COM Port has been assigned to the BM71 PICtail. In this case, it is COM18. Please note that yours will probably be different.

Place the module in Test mode by setting SW7 in the ON position, then press SW5 (reset) to reset the module.

Launch the User Interface Configuration Tool

After extracting the files from the UI Configuration Tool ZIP file, double click on the application file called IS187x_102_BLEDK3_UI v100.132.exe to launch the utility.

Immediately after launch, the Start Menu window will pop up. Before we can do anything with this tool, we must load a UI parameter table. One way to load the UI parameters is by using an existing UI text file.

Click on Load in the Start Menu window.

Load Text File

Selecting Load Text File will open up another window. Choose the IS1871SF_102_BLEDK3_UI v100.132(BM71) default text file and click Open.

Edit Text File

Once the text file has been loaded, the edit button will be enabled. Click on Edit.

When you press the edit button to start editing UI parameters, the Main Feature window will pop up. This window is where the user will select the target application. BLEDK3 supports all Bluetooth^® Low Energy (BLE) operations, while the Beacon mode is used for non-connectable advertising only. If BeaconThings is selected, the module will support both BLEDK and Beacon operations.

For this demo, we will only select BLEDK 0x01: BM71 and then click OK.

System Setup Window

Immediately after we click OK, we will see the Function Settings window pop up. It is in this window that most module parameters can be configured. As we can see, there are a few different tabs, each with different settings we can change. The first tab, System Setup, is where we find all the system configurations. We can change our device’s name, change the UART’s settings, select between Manual and Auto Pattern modes, change security settings, etc.

In the second tab, System Setup2, we find the GPIO Configuration table as well as more system configuration settings. The I/O pins on the BM71 can be configured as either a control or an indication signal. The GPIO Configuration table shown on the System Setup2 tab provides configurable I/O pin assignment details for the control and indication signals of the BM71 BLEDK3 application.

Feel free to browse the tabs and explore the different settings that can be configured to best fit your application. Below is a brief explanation of the rest of the tabs.

• LE mode Setup: This tab contains the LE mode settings.
• Generic Attribute Profile (GATT) Service Table: In this tab, the user can build their own GATT service table.
• LED Setup: This tab is the P0_2/LED0 configuration page. This is a fixed-function status output in BLEDK3, and it indicates what state the module is currently in via the LED Flash pattern.
• Beacon Setup: This tab contains all the iBeacon configurations.

Device Name

Usually, the first setting customers choose to change is the Name Fragment under the Device Information section of the System Setup tab. This allows you to easily identify your device on a smartphone during general discovery. In this case, we chose to name the module "DeveloperHelp".

UART RX IND

Another important setting on this tool is the UART RX_IND. To reduce current consumption, BLEDK3 will automatically enter Low-Power mode if UART RX_IND is enabled and the UART_RX_IND pin is assigned. When in the normal power mode of operation, the module runs a 16 MHz clock; in Low-Power mode, the module runs a 32 kHz clock. The Low-Power operation mode also disables the module UART section and thus the host MCU has no way to communicate with the module. If the host MCU needs to send/receive data/commands to the module, then the only way to do it is to pull the UART_RX_IND pin low. By default, the UART_RX_IND pin is enabled, but for this lab, we will disable it, therefore preventing the module from entering Low-Power mode.

Operation Pattern

Using this UI Tool you can also select whether the BM71 will operate in Auto Pattern mode or Manual Pattern mode. Refer to the "BM71 Operating Modes" page to learn more about Auto and Manual Pattern modes.

Go ahead and select the mode you wish to use.

Save Settings

After we have made all the desired changes, we need to write these new configuration settings into our module. Click on Finish.

After that window closes, select Save on the Start Menu to save the configuration settings to a text file on your computer. You will now have a starting point for further editing of your static parameters.

Write Settings

Next, select Write on the Start Menu to write the settings to the module.

On the window that opens, select the correct COM port that has been assigned to your BM71 PICtail, and for Baudrate select 115200. Then click on the Write button.

Finish

You will see a window asking if you are sure you want to write to the EFLASH, select Yes.

Lastly, you will see a window letting you know the write has been successful. Click on OK.

You can now close the Start Menu window.