Mohammad Afaneh, Author at Novel Bits

Introduction In the previous post, Implementing Over-the-Air Device Firmware Update (OTA DFU) – Part 1, we gave an introduction to over-the-air device firmware update (OTA DFU) and went over the best practices for implementing secure and efficient firmware updates. In this second post in the series, we’ll go over the OTA DFU process used implemented…

Bluetooth Developer Academy The most up-to-date resource for experienced Bluetooth developers This month: CES 2020 + LE Audio + The new Bluetooth 5.2 specJoin Now! Realtek RTL8720DN Dual-Band WiFi & Bluetooth 5.0 IoT Modules Sell for $4 and UpThere are plenty of 2.4 GHz WiFi modules for IoT project based on processors ranging from Espressif Systems ESP8266…

Introduction One of the most important and critical features of wirelessly-connected devices is the capability of over-the-air device firmware updates (aka OTA DFU). You may be asking “why is this becoming an increasingly popular and in-demand feature?” Well, it’s due to many good reasons, some of which are: The increasing demand by end-users for new…

Bluetooth Developer Academy Practical Courses + Continuous Education + Private CommunityThis month: Exclusive CES 2020 & LE Audio coverageJoin Now! Ellisys Ready on Day One of Highly Anticipated Bluetooth® 5.2 Roll-OutEllisys, a leading worldwide provider of test and analysis solutions for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi®, Universal Serial Bus (USB), and other wired and wireless communications technologies, today…

What is the Zephyr Project? Zephyr is an open-source real-time operating system (RTOS) meant for use on resource-constrained embedded systems. This can range from simple sensor devices without connectivity to much more complex IoT devices such as smartwatches and medical devices. Zephyr is a Linux Foundation project that is backed by many members including Intel, NXP Semiconductors, Synopsys, Linaro, Texas…

Bluetooth Developer Academy Bluetooth Training + Continuous Education + Private CommunityThis month: Exclusive CES 2020 & Bluetooth LE Audio coverageLearn More Bluetooth LE Audio: multistreaming, new codec (but no lossless)Active noise-cancelling (ANC) headphones have been around for a number of years but in 2019, the technology made the leap to True Wireless Earphones (TWE). First came…

Introduction Bluetooth Low Energy was designed to provide considerably reduced power consumption and cost while maintaining communication ranges similar to Bluetooth Classic. However, that is no longer the case. With Bluetooth Version 5.0, a new “long-range” mode was introduced. You can now achieve ranges of over 1 kilometer using Bluetooth Low Energy! Long-range mode is…

Bluetooth Developer Academy Bluetooth Training + Continuous Education + Private CommunityThis month: Exclusive CES 2020 coverage & Bluetooth announcementsLearn More STMicroelectronics Unleashes Full Power of Bluetooth® Mesh to Enable Scalable Wireless Sensor NetworksWith the release of Bluetooth® mesh software stacks for the BlueNRG family of Bluetooth Low Energy chips and modules, STMicroelectronics will demonstrate the many…

Atmosic gets boost toward first product launchAtmosic Technologies has completed its Series B funding, with USD 28.5 million raised, in anticipation of its upcoming inaugural product launch. The latest injection of funding will be put toward the launch of Atmosic’s M2 and M3 series Bluetooth 5 system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions for commercial products in early 2020,…

Nordic Semiconductor samples nRF21540 RF Front End Module – a ‘plug and play’ range extender for its short-range wireless portfolioThe nRF21540 RF Front End Module is a range extender optimized to boost the link budget of Nordic’s nRF52 and nRF53 Series advanced multiprotocol wireless SoCs. When combined with an nRF52 Series SoC, the nRF21540 RF…

BtleJack: a new Bluetooth Low Energy swiss-army knifeBtlejack provides everything you need to sniff, jam and hijack Bluetooth Low Energy devices. It relies on one or more BBC Micro:Bit. devices running a dedicated firmware. You may also want to use an Adafruit’s Bluefruit LE sniffer or a nRF51822 Eval Kit, as we added support for these devices. Current version…

Bluetooth Low Energy Serial: A Valid Design Strategy?At some point in developing a connected product for BLE, you may have wondered, “Where is the serial profile?” Maybe you assumed that you missed it while scrolling through the long lists of profiles on the Bluetooth SIG’s website. Or, maybe you never looked, preferring the faster method of…

WISeKey, ON Semiconductor and Tatwah announce the release of the world’s first Secure IoT Beacon deviceWISeKey, a Swiss based cyber security company, ON Semiconductor (ON), a leading supplier of energy efficient semiconductor-based solutions, and Tatwah, a market leader in designing and manufacturing secure RFID tags and Bluetooth Low Energy beacons with a strong experience in…

VS Code + nRF52

Introduction When it comes to IDEs and advanced text editors we, developers, have so many choices… probably too many! But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Having these many choices can be overwhelming, and if you’re a tools geek like me, you end up spending hours and hours just exploring and trying out new tools…

As a continuation of last week’s tutorial (Prototyping BLE apps on the nRF52840 USB Dongle (Part A)), where we covered the following: Adding header rows to the USB dongle Mounting it on a breadboard Connecting an external LED and an external push button to the dongle Reuse and modify a Nordic template BLE peripheral example…

Prototyping with the nRF52840 USB Dongle Part A

In the previous post (The nRF52840 USB Dongle Tutorial (Part 1)), we explored how to use the new nRF52840 USB Dongle to enable nRF Connect PC applications such as the Bluetooth Low Energy application (central and peripheral emulator), the nRF Cloud Gateway application, and the RSSI Viewer application. More importantly, we also talked about how the dongle can be used…

nRF Connect + nRF52840 USB Dongle

When it comes to Bluetooth Low Energy modules, chipsets and development kits, prices are only getting lower. Take for example the new nRF52840 USB dongle. The dongle costs only $10 and can serve as a great development kit with a few I/O peripherals including one button, two LEDs (one green, one RGB), and 15 GPIO pins.…

In today’s tutorial: We’ll first take a step back and talk a little bit about interoperability and compatibility in Bluetooth mesh. Then, we’ll go through a demo of setting up a mesh network that includes a mix of off-the-shelf devices. Finally, we’ll go through the source code step-by-step and the changes needed to implement the…

Bluetooth mesh network

Now that we’ve covered the basics of Bluetooth mesh and also gone over how to run a simple example on the nRF52 platform, it’s time for us to dig deeper into the source code of each type of device/node involved in a mesh network. If you missed the previous posts in this series, you can find…

Bluetooth mesh network

In the last post in this series on Bluetooth mesh (found here), we provided a high-level overview of the nRF5 SDK for Bluetooth mesh. We also listed the different examples provided as part of the Nordic SDK. The most complete of these examples is the lighting example, and this is the one we’ll go forward…