Base board features native Bluetooth low energy wireless connectivity and NFC Touch-to-Pair

Nordic Semiconductor announced that Arduino has specified the Nordic Semiconductor nRF52832 Bluetooth low energy System-on-Chip at the heart of its latest product - a low cost IoT-targeted programmable single board computer (or 'base board') called the 'Arduino Primo'. The base board features native Bluetooth low energy wireless connectivity and also includes Near Field Communication, Wi-Fi and infrared technologies. Previously users were required to add shields to the base board to upgrade to Bluetooth low energy wireless connectivity. In addition to being able to wirelessly connect to a wide array of Bluetooth low energy sensors, the board can act as a fully-functional TCP/IP Internet client and server over Wi-Fi, using the devices SoC's integrated NFC for secure authentication and 'Touch-to-Pair', and has embedded IR for traditional remote control. It features a 64 MHz, 32-bit ARM Cortex-M4F processor which delivers up to 60 percent more generic processing power compared to competing solutions, while offering ten times the floating point and twice the digital signal processing performance. The device’s 2.4 GHz multiprotocol radio is also fully compatible with the Bluetooth 4.2 specification and features -96dB RX sensitivity and 5.5mA peak RX/TX currents. It also features 512 kB Flash memory and 64kB RAM, plus a fully-automatic power management system to optimise power consumption. In addition to controlling the Bluetooth low energy RF protocol software and application code, the SoC's ARM processor has ample computational overhead to supervise and control the on-board accelerometer, temperature, humidity, and pressure sensors. For all but the most advanced projects, programming will be done via the established Arduino Integrated Development Environment programming interface that they say is designed to make electronics design easy for everyone regardless of experience, technical knowledge, and age. Professional developers and Makers who want to access the most advanced features and functionality the Arduino Primo has to offer will also be able to use any Nordic nRF52 Series-compatible Software Development Kit (SDK) or programming tools.