The advent of smart home hubs that act as central points of control, often using voice commands and feedback, is accelerating growth in this sector. Products in the connected home include control of lights, heating and thermostats, and connectable appliances. Bluetooth connectivity and mesh networks can improve efficiency and costs and bring better safety and security with simplicity and ease of use. Nordic has an extensive product lineup of multiprotocol SoCs that support the key technologies such as: Bluetooth Low Energy, Bluetooth mesh, Thread and Zigbee.
Multi-mode connectivity options: Short-range: Bluetooth Low Energy, Thread, Zigbee, Bluetooth 5, Bluetooth mesh. Longer range: LTE Cat-M/NB-IoT. HomeKit support, Cortex-M4 processing performance, Robust security options with ARM CryptoCell, Extensive peripherals and interfaces
Connected appliances | Blinds | HomeKit | HVAC | Metering | Smart locks | Entry control | Personal hygiene | Remote controls
Connected appliances offer some of the most exciting opportunities in the IoT. Not only do they offer incredible convenience and expanded use cases, they also have the potential to significantly improve energy efficiency and safety. Connected appliances come in all types, from washing machines to toasters, from TVs to doorlocks. The Nordic nRF52 Series SoCs lineup offers baseline, mid-range and top-end devices to match most requirements in this sector.
Automated blinds benefit from Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity allowing more flexible user interaction and better automation. Blinds can connect to smartphones as a means of control or to dedicated controllers that benefit from better range than tradition IR systems.
HomeKit is the Apple standard for developing a wide selection of connected home products for use with the Home app on iOS devices. It offers the highest levels of security and ease of use. Nordic Semiconductor offers the nRF52 Series SoCs and a fully featured HomeKit SDK to assist development of a host of HomeKit connected products.
Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) is an industrial term for building climate control. However most domestic homes also incorporate heating and ventilation systems of some sort. Modern connectivity standards such as Bluetooth, Thread and Zigbee address the needs of these systems to integrate them into a building or home network. The nRF52 Series wireless SoCs are ideally matched to such applications supporting as they do the key relevant wireless technologies.
Domestic metering of water, electricity, gas and other utilities are increasingly switching over to connectable wireless systems. This allows for convenient and efficient up to date reading of utility usage. This application area makes use of both short range wireless such as Bluetooth, Zigbee and Thread and also longer range LPWAN technologies such as cellular IoT using LTE Cat-M and NB-IoT.
Smart connected door locks bring unprecedented levels of security and peace of mind. They can feature user identification, allowing only those who should enter to enter, can lock and unlock automatically based on proximity. When used with a smart home router they make it possible for you to control access to your home from pretty much anywhere. The nRF52 Series can support such applications with some variants also supporting integration into a home mesh with technologies such as Thread, Zigbee and Bluetooth mesh.
Personal connected products have moved beyond entertainment and communication. We have seen the rapid growth and adoption of personal fitness and health devices such as sports watches with heart rate monitoring and activity trackers. But using connectivity for improving well-being doesn't end there. Toothbrushes, eating utensils, furniture these all have a role to play in our staying fit, fresh and healthy. Technologies such as Bluetooth Low Energy allow these products to become smart and monitor and encourage improvements in how we live our lives.
Remote controls are necessary for most connected applications. In some cases the smartphone will act as the remote control, but often a dedicated remote control is desirable also. These remote controls can be for almost any device there is. The nRF52 Series are perfect for such designs with their excellence in features, energy efficiency and small form factor. Nordic supply a complete, richly featured dedicated remote control reference design for all manner of remote control products.
