The 6LoWPAN (stands for: IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks) software stack enables you to transmit/receive data over wireless mesh networks using standard IPv6 adressing. In practice this means that you can communicate with Lobaro hardware over well known IPv6 networks and UDP-sockets.
With our SDK you can build your custom embedded firmware running on the low power STM32F103 ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller inside our devices. In contrast to our “ready to use” CoAP solutions you define the application layer completely by yourself when using raw udp sockets. This gives you flexibility but also means much more engineering work to do with the danger of “reinventing the wheel”…
One important part of your firmware will be the 6LoWPAN stack, which enables you to send data over UDP sockets, encrypt transmissons or do basics like sending out some text on the uart. The stack itself is supplied from the vendor of the internal radio module, which is “Zentrum Mikroelektronik Dresden AG” (ZMDI). This “piece of software” comes in pre-compiled “C” object code & header files for use with the free “GCC ARM Embedded“-Toolchain. Please note: The 6LoWPAN stack is royalty-free, but not open source.
You program and compile your own firmware targeted for the interal STM32F103RC microcontroller runing the 6LoWPAN stack in the background. The API is well documented, see the document ZWIR451x_ProgGuide_Rev_1_90.pdf. Additionally you might want to download the schematic of our “IPv6 Universal Box” device in which you can find the connection options for e.g. attaching external sensors.
Lobaro also provides you with an skeleton project which you should use as a starting point for firmware programming. If you use the free “CooCox” IDE (Windows only) it’s one click on the project file to get a running development enviroment with debug support (requires ST/LINKv2 debugger).
Please consider also our “higher-level” CoAP solutions which are not necessary to do embedded programming at all!