WeChat kit enables developers to quickly add energy-efficient Bluetooth connectivity

Dialog Semiconductor has announced its support for WeChat’s communications protocol, with the launch of the WeChat SDK kit. The kit enables developers to quickly add energy-efficient Bluetooth connectivity between WeChat apps and wearables or other IoT devices. WeChat is now the world’s largest stand-alone messaging app with an estimated 600 million users at the end of Q2/2015, according to analyst Statista. Its dramatic growth, both in China and other countries, is due in part to the many third-party apps that have been developed, making WeChat much more than just a messaging platform. Dialog’s development kit is available now and includes a protocol stack for the WeChat communication layer. The SDK is based on the DA1458x family of SmartBond SoCs (System-on-Chip) and enables developers to reduce the overall development time for connecting their products wirelessly to WeChat apps. WeChat users can then control wearable devices via the app and share information with friends over the platform, says the company. “Dialog is committed to supporting our customers’ continued growth and innovation into exciting new products and markets across all major IoT platforms”, said Sean McGrath, senior vice president and general manager, Connectivity, Automotive & Industrial Business Group at Dialog. “WeChat worked closely with us to create a reliable and robust protocol stack that is already being enthusiastically received by the embedded developer community.” DA1458x SoCs are highly-integrated devices that combine a Bluetooth low energy radio with an ARM Cortex-M0 application processor. Intelligent power management circuitry is included and processor resources can be accessed via 32 GPIOs. This facilitates the development of fully hosted applications. The devices can be as small as 2.5mm x 2.5mm (WLCSP package) and they offer the lowest power consumption for Bluetooth Smart devices in production today, maximising battery life in every application. Peak current is less than 5mA. The SmartBond WeChat software development kit enables efficient coding, due to the optimised power profiler. It comes with the company’s SmartSnippets software development environment, which is based on Keil µVision tools.4.