Bluetooth LE sensor and gateway solution enables track and trace, asset tracking, condition monitoring, safety, and indoor navigation

Nordic Semiconductor today announces that Niruha Systems, a Pune, India-based technology company, has selected Nordic’s nRF52832 Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) System-on-Chip (SoC) as the main processor and low power wireless connectivity solution for its ‘nible’ ecosystem, a beacon/sensor and gateway combination solution designed primarily for use in asset tracking, condition monitoring, workforce safety, and indoor navigation applications. 

Niruha Systems has launched a suite of solutions including ‘nible’ and ‘nibleWay’. nible is a 25g, 40 by 30 by 10mm form factor IP67-rated Nordic nRF52832 SoC-powered industrial grade beacon that can integrate a range of different sensors including motion, vibration, temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure depending on user requirements. It is available in three variants; nible, ‘nibleSense’, and ‘nibleSense+’. nibleWay is a 370g, 160 by 160 by 60mm form factor IP65-rated gateway that receives the data from the nible beacons via the Nordic-enabled Bluetooth LE connectivity. The gateway then uses Bluetooth LE mesh, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, or cellular connectivity to send the data to the Cloud where the information can be reviewed and managed from ‘APT’, an integrated platform comprising a web-based dashboard and iOS- or Android-compatible smartphone app. Two variants, ‘nibleWayMax’ and ‘nibleWayMini’, are also available should the user require more or less Cloud connectivity options respectively. nible can be activated and configured using the nRF52832 SoC’s on-chip NFC-A tag, enabling the device to be simply commissioned via any NFC-enabled smartphone.

nible uses a CR2032 lithium battery providing approximately two years of battery life before replacement when all sensors are deployed, or up to five years of battery life without sensors, thanks in part to the ultra low power characteristics of the Nordic SoC as well as Niruha Systems power efficient design and firmware. The nRF52832 has been engineered to minimize power consumption with features such as the 2.4GHz radio’s 5.5mA peak RX/TX currents and a fully-automatic power management system that reduces power consumption by up to 80 percent compared with Nordic’s nRF51 Series SoCs.

 

Nordic’s nRF52832 multiprotocol SoC combines a 64MHz, 32-bit Arm® Cortex® M4 processor with floating point unit (FPU), with a 2.4GHz multiprotocol radio (supporting Bluetooth 5, ANT™, and proprietary 2.4GHz RF protocol software) featuring -96-dB RX sensitivity, with 512kB Flash memory and 64kB RAM. The nRF52832 SoC is supplied with Nordic’s S132 SoftDevice, a Bluetooth 5-certifed RF software protocol stack for building advanced Bluetooth LE applications. The S132 SoftDevice features Central, Peripheral, Broadcaster and Observer Bluetooth LE roles, and supports up to twenty connections. 

 

“In addition to good RF capabilities, the Nordic SoC’s Arm processor architecture and low power consumption were key features in our decision to use the chip for nible and nibleWay,” says Sujay Gawand, Director at Niruha Systems. “Our positive past experiences working with Nordic and the powerful overall performance of Nordic chips aided our decision to employ the company’s Bluetooth LE solution.”