Nordic Semi nRF5340 Dual Arm Cortex-M33 SoC Supports Bluetooth 5.1/Mesh, NFC, Thread & Zigbee

After introducing nRF52833 WiSoC with Bluetooth 5.1 direction-finding support last month, Nordic Semiconductors has now launched another multi-protocol wireless SoC with nRF5340 featuring two Arm Cortex-M33 cores and supporting Bluetooth 5.1, Bluetooth Mesh, NFC, Thread & Zigbee. One of the Cortex-M33 is an application core incorporating  1 MB Flash and 512 KB RAM, as well as Arm CryptoCell-312, Arm TrustZone technology, and Secure Key Storage for the highest level of security, and the other Cortex-M33 core is used for networking functions.  The company also announced nRF5340 PDK to get started with the new WiSoC. nRF5340 Dual-Core Multiprotocol SoC Key features and specifications: CPU Application core  – Arm Cortex-M33 @ 128/64 MHz with 1 MB Flash + 512 KB RAM, 8 KB 2-way set associative cache; CoreMark: 510/255; CoreMark/mA: 65/76 Network core –  Arm Cortex-M33 @ 64 MHz with 256 KB Flash + 64 KB RAM, 2 KB instruction cache; CoreMark: […]

Blip Nordic nRF52840 Dev Board Includes STM32 Black Magic Probe Programmer & Debugger (Crowdfunding)

The Latest Electronut Labs Nordic nRF52840 Based Dev Board Electronut Labs has started its Crowd Supply campaign for Blip, a Nordic nRF52840 based development board. With many onboard sensors and systems, the boards are aimed at prototyping and projects in a wide variety of BLE and 802.15.4, wireless application scenarios.  It has a programmer and debugger built-in. Past Articles  Electronut Labs has a series of Nordic Semiconductor SoC projects previously reported on including  Papyr, a Bluetooth E-Paper Display and Bluey, a BLE Development board using the Nordic nRF52832, and CNXSoft also published an article comparing several of the Nordic SoC available in development boards for Bluetooth 5 (BLE5). The Features the Stand Out Blip has a Black magic Probe compatible programmer and debugger built-in, along with a temperature/humidity sensor, ambient light intensity sensor,  and a three-axis accelerometer.  The board is designed to prototype very low power devices and an ability […]

PineTime Smartwatch Specifications Released, Availability Scheduled for H1 2020

PineTime Charging Cradle & Heart Monitor

A couple of weeks ago, we covered PineTime smartwatch for PinePhone Linux smartphone that should be launched next year for around $25. At the time we had limited information from a Tweet as well as information provided by TL Lim, founder of Pine64 community, such as the watch would be based on Nordic Semi nRF52832 or nRF52840 multi-protocol WiSoC.  But we now have much more details about specs and other details can be found in the Wiki. PineTime specifications: SoC (undecided, one or the other. See differences between nRF52832 and nRF52840 for details) Nordic Semiconductor nRF52832 Arm Cortex-M4F MCU @ 64 MHz with 512KB Flash, 64KB SRAM, Bluetooth 5 (no long range) Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 Arm Cortex-M4F MCU with 1MB flash, 256KB flash, Bluetooth 5 (long range), 802.15.4 (e.g. for Zigbee), Arm Trustzone, etc… Storage – 8MB SPI NOR Flash (final product may use 16MB flash instead) Display – 1.3″ […]

Nordic Thingy:91 Cellular IoT Prototyping Platform Comes with 16 Sensors

Nordic Thingy:91

Nordic Semiconductor launched the Nordic Thingy:52 back in mid-2017 in the hopes of bringing app and web developers into the hardware ecosystem as fast and easy as possible.  The Nordic Thingy:52 was a Bluetooth 5 IoT sensor development kit based on the company’s nRF52832 WiSoC. Although the Nordic Thingy:52 kit is still very much available for purchase and support always available, Nordic Semiconductor has gone further launching a new development kit called the Nordic Thingy:91 targeting cellular IoT applications. The Nordic Thingy:91 is a cellular IoT prototyping platform with support for LTE-M, NB-IoT plus GPS option. Even though IoT connectivity standards like LoRaWAN, BLE, WiFi, ZigBee, and others are very much growing and expanding, Nordic Semi is fully backing cellular technology, something that has very much been available and most likely will still keep been available, and the adoption of 5G is another testimony to that. Cellular is here, and […]

Embedded Linux Conference (ELC) Europe 2019 Schedule – October 28-30

Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2019 Schedule

I may have just written about Linaro Connect San Diego 2019 schedule, but there’s another interesting event that will also take place this fall: the Embedded Linux Conference Europe on  October 28 -30, 2019 in Lyon, France. The full schedule was also published by the Linux Foundation a few days ago, so I’ll create a virtual schedule to see what interesting topics will be addressed during the 3-day event. Monday, October 28 11:30 – 12:05 – Debian and Yocto Project-Based Long-Term Maintenance Approaches for Embedded Products by Kazuhiro Hayashi, Toshiba & Jan Kiszka, Siemens AG In industrial products, 10+ years maintenance is required, including security fixes, reproducible builds, and continuous system updates. Selecting appropriate base systems and tools is necessary for efficient product development. Debian has been applied to industrial products because of its stability, long-term supports, and powerful tools for packages development. The CIP Project, which provides scalable and […]

Linaro Connect San Diego 2019 Schedule – IoT, AI, Optimizations, Compilers and More

Linaro Connect San Diego 2019

Linaro has recently released the full schedule of Linaro Connect San Diego 2019 that will take place on  September 23-27. Even if you can’t attend, it’s always interested to check out the schedule to find out what interesting work is done on Arm Linux, Zephyr OS, and so on. So I’ve created my own virtual schedule with some of the most relevant and interesting sessions of the five-day event. Monday, September 23 14:00 – 14:25 – SAN19-101 Thermal Governors: How to pick the right one by Keerthy Jagadeesh, Software Engineer, Texas Instruments With higher Gigahertz and multiple cores packed in a SoC the need for thermal management for Arm based SoCs gets more and more critical. Thermal governors that define the policy for thermal management play a pivotal role in ensuring thermal safety of the device. Choosing the right one ensures the device performs optimally with in the thermal budget. […]

Icarus IoT Board Features nRF9160 GPS + NB-IoT SiP in Adafruit Feather Form Factor

The new Icarus IoT board from Actinius, uses the Nordic nRF9160 SiP, a powerful yet low power system in a package designed for use with GPS and LTE-M & NB-IoT cellular data, also found in Ruuvi node which we covered a few months ago. The board’s purpose is for mobility and ease of project tracking anywhere, and can be found in application scenarios such as fleet management and security, cargo tracking, or asset monitoring, and many more. The board has power inputs for solar panel, USB or LiPo/Li-Ion Battery, which widens the boards mobile nature, and on-site, in-the-field capability. Since the form factor follows Adafruit Feather, the Icarus board benefits of additional component options for prototyping and DIY electronics projects. The nRF9160, by Nordic Semiconductor, is a SiP (System in a Package) that carries an extensive line of embedded software and hardware. As we had reported the nRF9160 SiP low-power […]

HiFive1 Rev B Board Gets FE310-G002 RISC-V Processor, WiFi & Bluetooth Module

HiFive1 Rev B

SiFive launched what may have been the very first RISC-V development board in 2016 thanks to their HiFive1 Arduino compatible board powered by Freedom E310 (FE310) open source RISC-V processor. The company has now launched an upgrade version of the processor and board. Meet FE310-G002 processor and HiFive1 Rev B development board. HiFive1 Rev B development board specifications with new features highlighted in bold or stricken-through: MCU – SiFive Freedom E310-G0002 32-bit RV32IMAC processor @ up to 320+ MHz (1.61 DMIPS/MHz) Storage – 32 Mbit SPI flash (was 128 Mbit in the first version) Connectivity – ESP32-SOLO-1 WiFi & Bluetooth module I/Os 19x Digital I/O Pins 19x external interrupt pins 1x external wakeup pin 9x PWM pins 1/3 SPI Controllers/HW CS Pins I/O Voltages –  3.3V or 5V supported; note: bidirectional level shifters removed so FE310-G002 can drive the I/O pins directly at 3.3V only. USB – 1x micro USB […]