Creator Ci40 Kit from Imagination Technologies is an Internet of Things (IoT) kit intended to get you quickly up and running with connected applications. It comes in a thin, brown cardboard box containing:
 
  • Creator Ci40 board
  • 6LowPAN clicker boards (2x)
  • Relay click
  • Motion click
  • Thermo 3 click
  • USB-A to micro cable
  • Nylon stand-off + nut (4x)
  • 5-way 90 degree pin header (2x)
 
The kit contains no documentation, just a URL pointing you to www.creatordev.io.

 
Creator Ci40 IoT kit unpacked
The CPU board is branded Imagination,
the click and clicker boards are from mikroElektronica.

The Ci40 board has at its heart a cXT200 dual-core, dual-threaded 550 MHz MIPS InterAptiv processor. Connectivity is key and the board supports several low-power wireless and wired protocols, including 802.15.4 6LoWPAN, 802.11 ac 2×2 Wi-Fi, Bluetooth (LE & Classic) and Ethernet. Besides networking interfaces the board features a Raspberry Pi-compatible connector, two mikroBUS ports and, of course, I/Os like UART, GPIO, SPI, I2C, ADC, etc. Being targeted at IoT, the board also has a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) to provide extra security. Memory is quite abundant with 2 MB of boot NOR Flash, 512 MB of NAND Flash, 256 MB of DDR3 SDRAM and an SD card slot.

The Ci40 comes pre-installed with OpenWrt, and works with the online Creator Device Manager for IoT development.

Getting started


Since the Ci40 board has components on both sides we start by mounting the stand-offs to improve its mechanical stability, then we go to the URL mentioned on the purple booklet in the hope to find useful information. Here we are welcomed by two buttons; we click the one labelled “Start with an IoT kit” since that is what it says on the box we received. The page that opens shows a photograph of the stuff we have lying on our desk, confirming our choice, and so we click “Get Started”. Now we have access to a Quick Start Guide which tells you to power the board from an external power supply, (9VDC, 3A, 400mA minimum), not from a USB port on your computer.