News

Bluetooth LE Smartwatch Development Platform

May 25, 2018 by Paul Shepard

Nordic Semiconductor announced that MMT SWISSCONNECT, a Geneva, Switzerland-based innovative technology company, has integrated Nordic's nRF51822 Bluetooth® Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) System-on-Chip (SoC) to support its ‘MMT SWISSCONNECT Smartwatch Platform'.

The Smartwatch Platform (SP) offers a turnkey solution for smartwatch manufacturers with limited RF design expertise to build connected smartwatches and accelerate time-to-market. It comprises the watch module and watch firmware, iOS and Android apps, Cloud management, manufacturing, and service applications.

SP brings the benefits of smartwatch technology to watch manufacturers that have limited or no wireless connectivity experience. The product makes it easy for watch manufacturers to incorporate features and functions such as always-on-time technology, activity tracking, sleep monitoring, active coaching, smart alarms, support for outdoor sensors (for example, compass, UV indicator, and temperature), activity/sleep display, Cloud backup and restore of user data.

The platform also supports Bluetooth LE connectivity between smartwatch and apps hosted on Bluetooth 4.0 (and later) smartphones or tablets. Through these SP companion apps, users are able to access their personal data and sensor information, as well as configure their watch features and Cloud account.

Nordic's nRF51822 Bluetooth LE SoC is supplied in 6 x 6-mm 48-pin QFN package and 3.83 x 3.83mm ultracompact wafer-level chip-scale packages (WL-CSP) particularly suited to wearable devices.

Nordic's nRF51822 is a powerful and flexible multiprotocol SoC ideally suited for Bluetooth LE and 2.4GHz ultra low-power wireless applications. The nRF51822 is built around a 32-bit ARM® Cortex™ M0 CPU, 2.4GHz multiprotocol radio, and 256kB/128kB Flash and 32kB/16kB RAM. The SoC is supplied with Nordic's S130 SoftDevice, a Bluetooth 4.2 qualified concurrent multi-link protocol stack solution supporting simultaneous Central/Peripheral/Broadcaster/Observer role connections.

"The Nordic SoC offers the ideal wireless connectivity solution for our Smartwatch Platform by providing low power consumption, powerful CPU capabilities, an ultra compact package, and a software architecture that simplifies application code development," says Philippe Fraboulet, CEO of MMT SWISSCONNECT.

"In turn, that enables us to offer the only complete turnkey solution for connected smartwatches to prestigious brands such as Frederique Constant, Alpina, and others.

"As a company, Nordic has provided outstanding support, good application engineers, and fast response times throughout the prototyping and development process," adds Fraboulet.

MMT is now porting its platform to Nordic's nRF52832 SoC in order to improve power autonomy, processing power, and RF connectivity.