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Bluetooth LE/Bluetooth 5 control device synchronizes smart lights to the sun’s cycle for health benefits
16
Jul
2019
2019
Oslo, Norway
Healthe’s SunLync control device employs Nordic’s nRF52840 SoC to wirelessly adjust brightness and intensity of smart lights
Nordic Semiconductor today announces that Healthe®, a leading U.S.-based provider of circadian and biological LED lighting solutions, has selected Nordic’s nRF52840 Bluetooth® Low Energy (Bluetooth LE)/Bluetooth 5 advanced multiprotocol System-on-Chip (SoC) and nRF52832 Bluetooth LE SoC to provide the wireless connectivity for its ‘SunTrac®’ smart lighting solution.
Through the Nordic SoC-enabled Bluetooth LE connectivity, the ‘SunLync®’ control device (which integrates the Bluetooth 5-enabled nRF52840 SoC) wirelessly synchronizes Healthe’s SunTrac and ‘Good Day&Night®’ smart lights (which integrate the nRF52832 SoC) to the sun’s cycle by adjusting the brightness, intensity, and other features depending on the time of day – sunrise, daytime, sunset, evening, and night. The device is engineered to automatically provide users with continuous optimal, healthy circadian lighting anywhere in the world. A built-in GPS sensor identifies local time and continuously broadcasts a system-wide mesh command to all Healthe wireless lights within a range up to 10m by line of sight. The lights then respond based on pre-configured settings.
The new radio architecture of Nordic’s nRF52840 SoC comfortably enables sufficient range for the SunLync control device to wirelessly control the connected smart lights. The chip features -95-dBm RX sensitivity (at 1 Mbps Bluetooth LE) and an on-chip power amplifier (PA) boosts maximum output power to 8dBm for a total link budget of >103dBm. In addition, the nRF52840 SoC’s support for Bluetooth mesh and additional Flash memory—1MB compared to 512kB Flash memory in the nRF52832 SoC—helps future-proof the SunLync solution for potential upgrades via over-the-air device firmware updates (OTA-DFU).
Through the Nordic SoC-enabled Bluetooth LE connectivity, the ‘SunLync®’ control device (which integrates the Bluetooth 5-enabled nRF52840 SoC) wirelessly synchronizes Healthe’s SunTrac and ‘Good Day&Night®’ smart lights (which integrate the nRF52832 SoC) to the sun’s cycle by adjusting the brightness, intensity, and other features depending on the time of day – sunrise, daytime, sunset, evening, and night. The device is engineered to automatically provide users with continuous optimal, healthy circadian lighting anywhere in the world. A built-in GPS sensor identifies local time and continuously broadcasts a system-wide mesh command to all Healthe wireless lights within a range up to 10m by line of sight. The lights then respond based on pre-configured settings.
The new radio architecture of Nordic’s nRF52840 SoC comfortably enables sufficient range for the SunLync control device to wirelessly control the connected smart lights. The chip features -95-dBm RX sensitivity (at 1 Mbps Bluetooth LE) and an on-chip power amplifier (PA) boosts maximum output power to 8dBm for a total link budget of >103dBm. In addition, the nRF52840 SoC’s support for Bluetooth mesh and additional Flash memory—1MB compared to 512kB Flash memory in the nRF52832 SoC—helps future-proof the SunLync solution for potential upgrades via over-the-air device firmware updates (OTA-DFU).
The maturity of Nordic’s Software Development Kit [SDK] and particularly the bootloader with OTA-DFU were key features that stood out to us
Matthew Regan, Healthe
Nordic’s nRF52840 multiprotocol SoC is Nordic’s most advanced ultra low power wireless solution. The SoC supports complex Bluetooth LE and other low-power wireless applications that were previously not possible with a single-chip solution. The nRF52840 is Bluetooth 5-, Thread 1.1-, and Zigbee PRO (R21) and Green Power proxy specification-certified and its Dynamic Multiprotocol feature uniquely supports concurrent wireless connectivity of the protocols. The SoC combines a 64MHz, 32-bit Arm® Cortex® M4F processor with a 2.4GHz multiprotocol radio (supporting Bluetooth 5, ANT™, Thread, Zigbee, IEEE 802.15.4, and proprietary 2.4GHz RF protocol software) with the Flash memory and 256kB RAM. The chip supports all the features of Bluetooth 5 (including 4x the range or 2x the raw data bandwidth (2Mbps)) compared with Bluetooth 4.2. Designed to address the inherent security challenges that are faced in IoT, the nRF52840 SoC incorporates the Arm® CryptoCell-310 cryptographic accelerator, offering best-in-class security.
The SoC is supplied with Nordic’s S140 SoftDevice, a Bluetooth 5-certified software protocol stack for building long range and high data Bluetooth LE applications. Nordic’s unique software architecture provides a clear separation between the RF protocol software and Healthe’s application code, simplifying the development and testing process and ensuring the SoftDevice doesn’t become corrupted when developing, compiling, testing, and verifying the customer’s code. The S140 SoftDevice offers concurrent Central, Peripheral, Broadcaster, and Observer Bluetooth LE roles, and supports high throughput and long range modes as well as advertising extensions. OpenThread and Zigbee stacks are available through Nordic’s nRF5 SDK for Thread and Zigbee.
“The maturity of Nordic’s Software Development Kit [SDK] and particularly the bootloader with OTA-DFU were key features that stood out to us when selecting Nordic’s low power wireless solution,” says Matthew Regan, Embedded Software Engineer at Healthe. “We developed our own application code and the SDK was of great assistance as we started our development from an example project.”
About Healthe, Inc.
Healthe is the technological leader in developing and deploying engineered spectrums for biological and circadian solutions that help regulate the body’s internal clock, boost performance, enhance sleep and improve air quality. Learn more at www.healthelighting.com and join us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
