Beacons
Use Bluetooth to make environments more informative, engaging and safer
Bluetooth LE beacon turns low voltage track lighting into indoor navigation and proximity marketing solution for commercial applications
08
Aug
2019
2019
Oslo, Norway
iGuzzini has selected Nordic’s nRF52832 SoC to provide the wireless connectivity for its BLE BeCon Low Voltage Track beacon
Nordic Semiconductor today announces that iGuzzini illuminazione S.p.A, a Recanati, Italy-based lighting systems developer, has selected Nordic’s award-winning Bluetooth® Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) nRF52832 System-on-Chip (SoC) to provide the wireless connectivity for its ‘BLE BeCon Low Voltage Track’.
The BLE BeCon Low Voltage Track is a Bluetooth LE-powered beacon designed for easy installation on low voltage track lighting in commercial and municipal buildings, for example in shopping centres and museums. The beacon is invisibly mounted on the track lighting and integrates Rigado’s BMD-300 module - powered by Nordic’s nRF52832 SoC. The product supports indoor navigation and proximity marketing applications using Bluetooth LE wireless connectivity between the device and the end user’s Bluetooth 4.0 (and later) smartphone.
In our opinion the Nordic SoftDevice is one of the important market leaders in terms of reliability and ease of implementation
Massimo Gattari, iGuzzini
The beacon can be implemented based on either the iBeacon or Eddystone protocol, and is also equipped with a DALI interface enabling commands to be sent/received to and from the bus for ease of system integration.
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.
“In our opinion the Nordic SoftDevice [RF protocol software] is one of the important market leaders in terms of reliability and ease of implementation,” says Massimo Gattari, Innovation Lab Director at iGuzzini. “From a hardware point of view, we selected the nRF52832 SoC for the performance of the processor, while the technical information and fast response from Nordic’s field application engineers was also impressive.”
The BLE BeCon Low Voltage Track was developed in collaboration with Università Politecnica delle Marche for research activity, and with the university’s spin off company WiSense S.r.l for project development.
