Posted by Katie Morgan
Nordic Semiconductor have just announced their new mbed-enabled nRF51822-mKIT development kit:
This kit is based on the Nordic nRF51822 that combines a Bluetooth v4.1-compliant radio and an ARM® Cortex®-M0 processor along with SPI, I2C, ADC, PWM and GPIO on a single chip. And the chip is only about $2 in volume!
Add to the mix that we now successfully have mbed running on it, including the Bluetooth Smart APIs we've been adding to the mbed SDK, and you now have a really productive way to create a Bluetooth Smart based device that can be manufactured incredibly cheaply!
If you haven't yet come across Bluetooth Smart, it is quickly becoming a key communication component for IoT devices as it is already supported in modern smartphones and tablets, and is designed for enabling short-range wireless connectivity to things like coin cell-powered accessories. This opens the door to things like Appcessories, but also a whole host of applications for interacting and configuring devices, where instead of a clunky and expensive embedded UI, you can embed a Bluetooth Smart chip, bring your own device (BYOD) and have a much cheaper and better user experience.
You can read Nordic's full press release here:
If you are interested in creating Bluetooth Smart applications, you can take a look at it in more details and pre-order the kit here:
Read the full entry at the mbed blog