Global partnership for next-gen BLE in advanced IoT device development

Laird Connectivity has announced a new addition to its Bluetooth portfolio via the extended development partnership with Silicon Labs. The forthcoming Lyra 24 Series of flexible BLE modules, USB adapters, and development kits provides meaningful features and performance enhancements ideal for scalable, next-generation BLE development.

The new series joins all the benefits of Silicon Labs hardware, software, and tools offerings with Laird's added value application software, certification, services, and support capabilities. This seamless partnership continues to offer customers multiple software development options suited to their resources and skillsets in BLE-enabled product development.

Based on Silicon Labs EFR32BG24 SoC, the series provides the silicon's key features, including a powerful Cortex-M33 with 1,536kB Flash and 256k RAM, Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity, Secure Vault High, AI/ML hardware accelerator, high sensing ADCs and an extended industrial temperature rating.

"We are pleased to continue our partnership with Silicon Labs by expanding on the successful Lyra Series, bringing major performance and feature enhancements to our portfolio with the new Lyra 24 Series," says Jonathan Kaye, VP of Product Management, Laird Connectivity. "Together through this partnership, customers can scale up their Bluetooth LE design for tomorrow's connected world."

From a software perspective, the series enables customers to select from two firmware options for their application development, supporting either hosted or hostless operation. This includes Laird Connectivity's AT Command Set, developed from years of extensive BLE experience and readily portable from original Lyra implementations. The extensible AT option offers robust, simple, easy-to-use firmware for any customer regardless of their BLE expertise or host MCU. Alternatively, full SDK and stack access for C code development with integrated support for Lyra 24 devices is included in Silicon's Simplicity Studio IDE.

"Partnerships with Laird Connectivity help to expand the usability and simplify the development process for our users," says Anders Pettersson, director of Mass Market at Silicon Labs. "Our goal is to make it so developers can use the tools they're comfortable and familiar with to build cutting-edge IoT applications on Silicon Labs SoCs, and our partnership with Laird Connectivity is a key step in providing that to our customers."

The series is excellent for many battery-powered IoT device applications, including professional lighting, asset tags and beacons, secure medical peripherals, and industrial IoT sensors. Modular FCC, ISED, EU, UKCA, MIC, KC, and Bluetooth SIG approvals extend to OEM designs with no new testing, allowing faster time to market and reducing development risks.