Nordic-powered Thread industrial gateway supports mesh network applications

HooRii Technology’s Hoo Max Industrial Gateway uses Nordic nRF52833 SoC for Thread mesh connectivity

The first industrial gateway certified by the Thread Group has been developed by China-based startup and new design partner in the Nordic Partner Program, HooRii Technology. The ‘Hoo Max Industrial Gateway’ provides native support for OpenThread applications in commercial and industrial scenarios - such as a mesh-enabled sensor network based on Thread, an open source wireless mesh RF software protocol with native support for IPv6.

Wireless protocol deployment

The highly scalable solution is designed to support high-density and low-latency applications and provide wireless protocol deployment possibilities for IoT scenarios with both massive and strict requirements. The gateway provides a solid foundation for OpenThread network redundancy deployment, ensuring high availability for mesh networks in demanding environments, according to the company.

The Nordic SoC-enabled Thread connectivity comes with key advantages including reliability, market maturity, multiprotocol support, low power consumption, and of course the Thread Certification

Licheng Zhu, HooRii Technology

The Hoo Max Industrial Gateway employs Nordic’s nRF52833 SoC to support Thread connectivity. For example, in buildings with a wide array of Thread connected lighting, sensors, and various controllers, the nRF52833 provides mesh connectivity between these devices and the gateway. From the gateway the data can then be relayed to the Cloud using Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and/or cellular connectivity.

The solution offers local network management and provides dynamic mesh network self-repairing capabilities – for example, if gateway fails, the terminal can still communicate through other gateways elsewhere across the network.

Thread connectivity

“The Nordic SoC-enabled Thread connectivity comes with key advantages including reliability, market maturity, multiprotocol support, low power consumption, and of course the Thread Certification,” says Licheng Zhu, CEO of HooRii Technology.

“We took advantage of Nordic’s rich development and debugging tools—such as the nRF Thread Topology Monitor and Power Profiler Kit II [PPK2]—while the nRF Connect SDK [Software Development Kit] provided out-of-the-box Thread examples.”

Nordic’s nRF52833 advanced multiprotocol SoC features a 64 MHz, 32-bit Arm® Cortex® M4 processor with floating point unit (FPU), and a 2.4 GHz multiprotocol radio (supporting Bluetooth® 5.3, Bluetooth Direction Finding, Long Range, Bluetooth mesh, ANT™, Thread, Zigbee, IEEE 802.15.4, NFC, and proprietary 2.4GHz RF protocol software). The Dynamic Multiprotocol feature uniquely supports concurrent wireless connectivity of the protocols. The nRF Connect SDK is recommended for nRF52833 software development and supports applications using Bluetooth LE, Bluetooth mesh, and Thread.