The Avnet Azure Sphere MT3620 Starter Kit supports rapid prototyping of highly secure, end-to-end IoT implementations using Microsoft’s Azure Sphere. The small form-factor carrier board includes a production-ready MT3620 Sphere module with WiFi connectivity, along with multiple expansion interfaces for easy integration of off-the-shelf sensors, displays, motors, relays, and more. The downloadable getting started tutorial guides developers through the development steps from board setup to application coding.

Avnet Azure Sphere MT3620 Starter Kit 

The production-ready Sphere MT3620 module is based on the MT3620 SoC, which includes built-in Microsoft security, WiFi connectivity and the combined versatility and power of an Arm® Cortex™-A7 processor with the low overhead and real-time guarantees of two Arm Cortex-M4F microcontrollers. A suite of on-chip peripherals, real-time clock, Flash, and RAM are also available. In addition to the MT3620, the 33 x 22 mm module includes a dual-band WiFi chip antenna and system clock. Up to 27 configurable GPIOs and three configurable serial ports (UART, I2C, or SPI) are provided as I/Os on the module.

The carrier board connects the Sphere module I/Os to two MikroE Click sockets, an I2C Grove connector, a connector supporting the addition of a 128 x 64 OLED graphical display, a 3D accelerometer, 3D Gyro, temperature sensor, and an ambient light sensor. Debugging is accomplished through a USB-to-UART interface, which also provides the necessary 5V power for the board.

User applications for the embedded Sphere controller are developed in C using Microsoft’s Visual Studio IDE and the Azure Sphere SDK. Visual Studio provides a powerful, yet easy-to-use development environment for compiling and debugging application code. The combination of Visual Studio, the versatile carrier card, and the production ready Sphere module delivers a powerful starting point for IoT developers interested in learning, prototyping, and deploying Azure Sphere based solutions.