What internal electronics does LEGO Boost use?

Question

What specific electronic components are present inside the Boost Move Hub?

Answer 1

Here's what the main board in the Move Hub looks like from the top:

And bottom:

The Move Hub includes the following hardware:

Motors

The two built in motors are fairly standard DC motors. They include optics in the early stage of the gearing for rotation counting.

There are two LB1836 motor drivers on the board. They are dual channel parts, so presumably one is for driving the internal motors (A and B), and the other is used for driving the external ports (C and D).

Communications

Boost uses a BlueNRG Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) processor from STMicroelectronics for communication with the control device. More information is available here:

http://www.st.com/en/wireless-connectivity/bluenrg.html

This processor is fairly powerful in it's own right. Internally, it includes a 32 MHz ARM Cortex M0 with 12KB RAM and 64KB flash. This chip is significantly more powerful than the main processor in the RCX line.

CPU and Memory

The main CPU in Boost is an STM32F070 RBT6 from STMicroelectronics. This includes and ARM Cortex M0 internally. It has the following specs:

• 48 MHz clock
• 16 KB RAM
• 128 KB Flash

This part is in the same neighborhood as the CPU used for NXT in terms of clock speed and available storage.

Other features

There is a single push button present on the board to turn the device on and a single RGB LED that can be programmed via the Boost app. The battery box hold 6 AAA batteries providing 9V.