Mobile accessories - Releasing the full potential of smartphones and tablets

 

 

Smartphones have become the mobile hub of our connected lives with the ability to enrich, enhance, and safeguard almost everything that we do. Wireless technologies such as Bluetooth® low energy and ANT+ enable a plethora of possibilities from sports & fitness, through entertainment and home automation, to healthcare and security.

 

Developing products to interact with mobile phones used to be challenging due to dependencies on built-in phone support, but that has changed with user applications (apps) on smartphones having the ability to support all kinds of 'smart' applications through the addition of simple wireless hardware accessories (otherwise known as appcessories).

 

Mobile accessories can now be an accessory to a specific application running on the mobile device. These accessories typically need to be small, energy-efficient, light-weight, reliable, and cost-effective. Bluetooth low energy and ANT provide profiles for specific types of applications that ensures vendor interoperability. However, both ANT and Bluetooth low energy offer mechanisms that enable user-defined device profiles to be created for a specific application's needs and multi-vendor interoperbility is not a requirement.

 

Typical products in this segment can be

• Sports and fitness
• Healthcare and wellness
• Security and Alert
• Proximity and Location
• Smart Home - light, temperature, humidity, pressure etc.
• Assisted living
• Remote controlled toys

 

Quick start tools

 

The following tools are available to speed up your mobile phone accessory designs

nRFready Demo Apps for smartphones

 

While the range of accessories is only limited by the imagination, they all have to be paired with an App running on a mobile device. Nordic Semiconductor provides a range of demo Apps for smartphones. There is currently a differing level of native support for Bluetooth low energy and ANT+ on different mobile platforms. The nRFready demo apps work with a wide range of the most popular ANT+ and Bluetooth® smart accessories such as wireless heart rate straps, foot pods, bike speed-distance, cadence, and power sensors, temperature, proximity tags, weight scales, blood pressure monitors and blood glucose monitors. These apps complement Nordic's series of ANT and Bluetooth Smart solutions to offer a complete end-to-end product development solution.

 

Please go to the nRF product pages that are linked from the device selector table further down to read about development tools and software support for each relevant nRF product.

 

 

The Nordic competitive edge

 

Nordic Semiconductor's ultra low power (ULP) wireless solutions support brand new types of mobile phone peripherals by offering:

 

• Ultra-low power consumption – Up to years of battery life running from a single coin-cell
• Multi-protocol SoCs - Single chip solutions capable of running more than one protocol on-chip including Bluetooth low energy and ANT
• Pin compatible SoCs - Pin compatible SoC's across Bluetooth low energy, ANT, and 2.4 GHz enables you to make one PCB design for a range of products
• Protocol/Application independence - The nRF51 series' unique software architecture enables you to develop, compile, and test your application separately from the embedded protocol stack.
• Small size – The combination of compact packaging options and support for tiny coin-cell batteries supports the smallest wireless designs like sensors, watches, and key tags/fobs

 

 

Nordic offers the following wireless technologies for mobile accessories

 

 

ANT+

ANT+ is a very popular standard for ultra-low power wireless connectivity in sports and fitness equipment. There are a number of smartphones with built-in ANT+ support and a wide variety of dedicated hub devices to connect ANT+ sensors with. ANT+ supports a wide range of device profiles, offering over 20 profiles for a wide range of applications.

 

More information about ANT+, visit www.thisisant.com

 

 

Bluetooth® low energy

Bluetooth low energy (branded as Bluetooth Smart and Bluetooth Smart Ready) is an exciting technology that is becoming a standard feature in mobile devices. Bluetooth Smart Ready devices form the hub of our personal area networks, these include smartphones and tablets as well as dedicated hub products. Bluetooth Smart devices are the peripheral sensors that typically capture data and relay data to and from the hubs. Bluetooth low energy profiles are already available for a range of applications.

 

For more information about Bluetooth low energy visit www.bluetooth.org

 

 

Nordic IC offering

 

nRF51 Series

The nRF51 Series is Nordic's latest generation of ULP wireless System on Chip IC's that again sets the benchmark in this field. The nRF51 Series is based on the 32 bit ARM Cortex-M0 CPU and Nordic's leading multiprotocol radio and supports Bluetooth low energy, ANT and 2.4 GHz proprietary solutions. Across the range pin-compatibility allows for drop-in replacement of device types where application requirements differ with no requirement for redesign of circuit layout. The innovative software architecture ensures an absolute separation between application code and protocol stacks, and enables you to maintain one code base for products using the different wireless technologies.

 

nRF8000 Series

The nRF8000 range of devices offer a connectivity solution and a simple ASSP for Bluetooth low energy applications. These devices have a focus on design-in simplicity and flexibility. The nRF8001 offers a complete, qualified Bluetooth low energy for peripheral applications. The nRF8002 is a dedicated device for proximity and alert applications and features an integral state-machine and profile set for such applications.

 

 

Device Selector Table for Mobile Accessories

 

Device	Bluetooth low energy	ANT	2.4GHz	Multi-protocol capable	Series pin-compatible	nRF24L Series compatible	nRF24AP2 Series Compatible
nRF51422		x	x	x	x	x	x
nRF51822	x		x	x	x	x
nRF8001	x
nRF8002	x