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SiFli SF32LB52J big.LITTLE Arm Cortex-M33 Bluetooth MCU powers the Core Time 2 smartwatch

SiFli SF32LB52J block diagram

SiFli SF23LB52J is a Bluetooth 5.3 microcontroller part of the SF32LB52x family with two Cortex-M33 in big.LITTLE configuration with a 240 MHz high-performance core for user application/GUI and a 24 MHz low-power core to manage the Bluetooth part. A few months ago, Eric Migicovsky, the founder of the smartwatch company Pebble, and now Core Devices, introduced the Core 2 Duo and Core Time 2 smartwatches running PebbleOS open-source firmware that were mostly relaunches of the never-released Pebble 2 and Pebble Time 2 with some tweaks. We already knew the Core 2 Duo would be based on a Nordic nRF52840 Arm Cortex-M4F microcontroller, however, the one for the Core Time 2 was kept secret. That’s until today, as Eric has just announced that the Core Time 2 would be based on the SiFli SF23LB52J MCU, since the smartwatch required an MCU with more RAM and processing power, and SiFli also offers […]

Bluetooth 6.1 specification introduces randomized RPA updates for enhanced privacy and power efficiency

Bluetooth 6.1

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has just adopted the Bluetooth 6.1 Core Specification with the addition of the randomized Resolvable Private Address (RPA) Updates feature and several errata. The Randomized RPA updates feature is designed to enhance privacy and power efficiency in Bluetooth devices by randomizing the timing of address changes to make it much more difficult for third parties to track or correlate device activity over time, and offloading the address change operation to the Controller to help the Bluetooth device extend its battery life. That’s about all there is for Bluetooth 6.1, except some errata like “Pause Encryption should be mandatory to support with encryption”. You’ll find the latest specification on the Bluetooth website, as well as a page specific to Randomized RPA Updates. None of the usual silicon vendors like Silicon Labs, Nordic Semi, or NXP have announced any updates to Bluetooth 6.1. One of the […]

Adafruit Sparkle Motion – An ESP32-based addressable LED controller with four outputs, 100W USB-C power, and WLED/xLights support

Adafruit Sparkle Motion

The Adafruit Sparkle Motion is an ESP32-based LED controller board designed to drive addressable LEDs, including WS2812B, APA102, SK6812, LPD8806, UCS2904, and SM16704. It supports both WLED and xLights projects and features an onboard 100W USB-C PD port to drive even high-voltage LED setups. The board includes dual power input options (USB-C PD with 5/12/20V selection and 2.1mm DC jack), a 5A fuse, and level-shifted output terminals for controlling addressable LEDs. The board also features a built-in I2S digital microphone, IR receiver, Stemma QT I2C port, USB-serial with auto-reset, GPIO breakout pads, onboard NeoPixel and status LED, and multiple JST and terminal connectors for sensor and control integration. It comes pre-assembled with terminal blocks for easy wiring, making it suitable for applications such as wearable electronics, home decor lighting, audio-reactive displays, and remote-controlled installations. Adafruit Sparkle Motion Specifications: SoC – ESP32-S3 dual-core Xtensa LX7 MCU @ 240MHz with 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and […]

SPARK Microsystems SR1120 UWB ultra-low-power transceiver delivers up to 41 Mbps throughput

SPARK SR1120 UWB transceiver

SPARK Microsystems SR1120 is the company’s second-generation ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless transceiver capable of up to 41 Mbps throughput at ultra-low power and up to 100 times lower power ranging than UWB competitors. The Canadian company also highlights the outperformance of their UWB solution over Bluetooth with the new SR1120 offering 40 times higher data rates than Bluetooth chips, while consuming 25 times less power than Bluetooth and offering 60 times lower latency. However, readers should note that Bluetooth LE is supposed to support up to 2 Mbps, so it should (only) be up to about 20 times faster, and Bluetooth HDT is coming soon with data rates of up to 7.5 Mbps to further narrow the gap. SPARK SR1120 key features and specifications: Compliant with the upcoming IEEE 802.15.4ab low-energy UWB PHY standard Dynamically reconfigurable UWB spectrum 6.2–9.5 GHz band Up to 3 dBm TX power RX sensitivity of -81 […]

Antenna hack more than doubles the range of cheap ESP32-C3 USB-C boards

ESP32-C3 board antenna hack

There are plenty of small ESP32-C3 IoT boards with a USB-C connector on the market, and while they all look very similar, antenna designs differ, and less thought-out ones may severely impact the WiFi and Bluetooth range. Peter Neufeld decided to hack one of those cheap ESP32-C3 boards by adding a custom antenna, and this resulted in the board having more than twice the range and almost three times in some cases. Those tiny boards are cramped, so there’s very little space around the ceramic antenna typically used, leading to poor RF performance. To work around that issue, Peter added a 31mm long antenna made of silver-plated wire, making a loop of about 8mm in diameter outside of the board and soldered on the ceramic antenna’s solder joints, and the rest of the wire (about 15mm) points upwards. As you can see from the photo above, he didn’t remove the […]

Shelly launches Gen4 multi-protocol smart switch family with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Matter

Shelly Gen4 smart switch family

Shelly Group has just launched its Gen4 multi-protocol smart switch family supporting Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Matter protocols for the Smart Home. The company specifically introduced five new products: the Shelly 1 Gen4 one-channel, dry contact smart switch, the Shelly 1PM Gen4 smart switch with power monitoring, Shelly 1 Mini Gen4 compact smart switch for lights and small appliances, the Shelly 1PM Mini Gen4 compact smart switch with power metering, and the upcoming Shelly EM Mini Gen4 energy meter. Let’s have a quick at each product. Shelly 1 Gen4 smart switch Shelly 1 Gen4 specifications: Wireless SoC – ESP-Shelly-C68F Based on ESP32-C6 RISC-V SoC Storage – 8MB flash Wireless – 2.4 GHz WiFi 6, Bluetooth 4.2, and 802.15.4 radio for Zigbee and Matter Wireless parameters WiFi 6 Max. RF power – < 20 dBm Range – Up to 30m indoors, 50m outdoors Bluetooth 4.2 Max. RF power – < 4 […]

The Pebble Smartwatch is back with the Core 2 Duo and Core Time 2 models running PebbleOS open-source firmware

Pebble 2025 Core 2 Duo Core Time 2

The Pebble Smartwatch was first introduced in 2012 with a black and white e-Paper display, a week of battery life, and an amazingly successful Kickstarter company that raised over 10 million dollars. It was followed by the Pebble Time with a color display in 2015, and the Pebble 2 & Time 2 watches followed in 2016. But then it all went south from there, and Pebble’s assets were purchased by Fitbit in December 2016, all projects were canceled that year, and cloud services were discontinued in June 2018. Since then, the community has taken over working on the Rebble project to keep existing watches running, and Google acquired Fitbit in 2021. However, the project is slowly coming back to life. First, Google released the source code for the Pebble smartwatches and Pebble’s founder, Eric Migicovsky, and a team of engineers worked on reviving the project which now culminates with the […]

Panasonic PAN B511-1C Bluetooth 6.0 and 802.15.4 module features castellated holes and LGA footprint

Panasonic PAN B511 1C Bluetooth 6.0 and 802.15.4 module

Panasonic industry has recently introduced the PAN B511-1C Bluetooth 6.0 and 802.15.4 module based on the Nordic Semi nRF54L15 SoC and designed for ultra-low-power wireless communication. The compact module integrates a chip antenna, 32MBit flash memory, two Crystals, and the Nordic nRF54L51 which provides a 128 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller with Bluetooth 6.0 (LE), Thread, Zigbee, and Matter, along with multiple peripherals such as SPI, UART, I2S, PWM, and ADC. The PAN B511-1C also implements security features to support secure boot, secure firmware updates, cryptographic acceleration, and tamper detection, making it suitable for a range of IoT, industrial automation, smart home, medical (wearables), and battery-powered applications. PAN B511-1C module specification: SoC – Nordic Semiconductor nRF54L15 MCU cores Arm Cortex-M33 with Arm TrustZone @ 128MHz RISC-V coprocessor for software-defined peripheral Memory – 256KB SRAM Storage – 1.5MB non-volatile memory Wireless Bluetooth 6.0 Data rates – 2Mbps, 1Mbps, 500kbps, 125kbps Features AoA / […]

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