When it comes to bringing your idea to a working prototype, nothing beats Silicon Labs' Giant Gecko STK. Here you get a complete lab on its own. The simplicity toolchain speeds up planning, coding and profiling phases, and when connected to your computer, the built-in energy monitoring and profiler system shows you code specific current consumption, in real-time and without the need to connect oscilloscopes or multimeters.

Check out the videos on planning, coding, and profiling, found here:

Step 1 - "energyAware™ Battery Estimator"
Step 2 - "energyAware™ Designer for EFM32 microcontrollers HD"
Step 3 - "energyAware™ Profiler for EFM32 microcontrollers enables energy efficient Cortex-M3 code"

The EFM32 Giant Gecko STKs are also equipped with light, metal, and touch sensors. These enable designers to investigate the Gecko's unique LESENSE low energy sensor interface, which allows passive acquisition of data from 16 sensors without host CPU intervention. The hardware feature set is completed with a USB plug, 32 MB on-board NAND Flash, LCD, and a variety of LEDs and push buttons.

The EFM32-GGSTK3700 is based on the EFM32GG990F1024 microcontroller. With ARM Cortex-M3 CPU, this is the industry's only energy-friendly MCU with 1 MB on-chip Flash and 128 KB RAM memory. The generous range of memory options gives designers the opportunity to implement complex embedded designs while maintaining best-in-class energy efficiency. EFM32 Giant Gecko MCUs can directly control a TFT display and feature a USB driver that supports the host, device, and on-the-go (OTG) protocols.

Features
Advanced energy monitoring v2 Supported by simplicity studio Light, LC and touch sensors USB interface for host/device/OTG Real-time energy and power profiling		Free evaluation compiler versions SEGGER J-Link debugger LESENSE demo ready Backup cap for RTC mode