Nordic Semiconductor has announced that Globalstar, a Covington, Louisiana-based satellite and commercial IoT communications company, has selected Nordic’s award-winning Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) nRF52832 System-on-Chip (SoC) to provide the Bluetooth LE wireless connectivity for its ‘STX3 Development Kit’. The development kit allows companies to rapidly develop and test solutions based on the company’s ‘STX3 Satellite Transmitter’ module, a transmitter for sending data to Globalstar Satellite Network.
The inclusion of the nRF52832 SoC in the STX3 Development Kit provides Bluetooth LE wireless connectivity between the module software application under development and Bluetooth 4.0 (and later) smartphones and tablets via an iOS or Android Globalstar app. From the app the user can configure the STX3 module, monitor the status of the application under development, as well as acquire data from or send data to the module. For example, during field testing, the developer can connect the module to the STX3 Development Kit, and, via the accompanying Bluetooth LE connected app, issue commands to instruct the module to send accelerometer, humidity, temperature, and/or customized user data readings from the module’s onboard sensors to the satellite network. The readings can also be displayed on the developer’s smartphone, simplifying product testing.
Nordic’s nRF52832 Bluetooth LE SoC, a member of Nordic’s sixth generation of ultra-low power (ULP) wireless connectivity solutions, combines an ARM microprocessor with a 2.4GHz multiprotocol radio (supporting Bluetooth 5, ANT, and proprietary 2.4GHz RF software) featuring -96dB RX sensitivity, with 512kB Flash memory and 64kB RAM. When launched, the SoC was the world’s highest performance single-chip Bluetooth LE solution. The SoC is supplied with Nordic’s S132 SoftDevice which supports Central, Peripheral, Broadcaster and Observer Bluetooth LE roles, as well as accommodates up to 20 connections, and enables concurrent role operation.
Developers working with the STX3 module wanted the ability to easily interface with their application whether it’s to configure, test, or monitor a product under development making the Nordic nRF52832 SoC a perfect choice for this product.
