Bluetooth Low Energy smartwatch delivers detailed health and fitness monitoring

Do Intelligent Technology’s ID205G sleek smartwatch employs Nordic’s nRF52840 to process and relay multi-sensor data to smartphone app

Nordic Semiconductor today announces that Shenzhen DO Intelligent Technology, a Shenzhen, China-based smart wearables company, has selected Nordic’s nRF52840 Bluetooth® Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) advanced multiprotocol System-on-Chip (SoC) to provide the core processing power and wireless connectivity for its ‘ID205G’ smartwatch with integrated GPS. 

Ample computational power

Featuring a 1.3 inch TFT-LCD color touchscreen display and an in-built heart rate sensor, accelerometer, and gyroscope, the wearable is designed for users demanding detailed health and fitness monitoringhttps://www.semiconductorforu.com/bluetooth-low-energy-smartwatch-delivers-detailed-health-and-fitness-monitoring/ data in a sleek smartwatch form factor. The nRF52840 SoC’s 64MHz, 32-bit Arm® Cortex® M4 processor with floating point unit (FPU) provides ample computational power to run the complex sensor algorithms allowing the smartwatch to precisely track and calculate movement and activity data. Integrated GPS enables the user to measure how far they have travelled when exercising outdoors, without the need to also carry their smartphone.

Once paired to the user’s Bluetooth 4.0 (and later) iOS or Android smartphone using Bluetooth LE connectivity provided by the Nordic SoC, Do Intelligent Technology’s ‘VeryFitPro’ app allows the user to not only review their activity and health data and trends, but also modify the smartwatch’s settings and functions. For example, the watch can be programmed to provide alerts and notifications as prioritized by the user, such as incoming phone calls, text messages, weather forecasting, and reminders to get up and move.

The ID205G smartwatch employs a 210mAh Li-Poly battery providing between five- and seven-days operation in standard use, and up to 40 days in standby mode between recharge, thanks in part to the ultra low power characteristics of the Nordic SoC. The nRF52840 SoC has been engineered to minimize power consumption with a fully-automatic power management system that reduces power consumption by up to 80 percent compared with the nRF51 Series.

The nRF52840 SoC’s Arm Cortex M4 processor is combined with a 2.4GHz multiprotocol radio (supporting Bluetooth 5.2, ANT™, Thread, Zigbee, IEEE 802.15.4, and proprietary 2.4GHz RF protocol software) and a generous 1MB Flash and 256kB RAM memory allocation. A new radio architecture with on-chip PA provides

-95-dBm RX sensitivity (at 1Mbps Bluetooth LE), a maximum output power of 8dBm, and a total link budget of 103dBm. The SoC is supplied with Nordic’s S140 SoftDevice, a Bluetooth 5-certified software protocol stack for building long range and high data throughput Bluetooth LE applications. The S140 SoftDevice offers concurrent Central, Peripheral, Broadcaster, and Observer Bluetooth LE roles, and supports high throughput and long range modes as well as advertising extensions.

Development made easy

“When we were selecting an SoC, the main considerations were size, usability, and excellent power consumption, and that is why we chose the nRF52840,” says Ryan He, CEO and Head of R&D, DO Intelligent Technology.

“It was straightforward to develop our application code using Nordic’s development kits and examples, and if we did have a problem Nordic’s technical engineers provided quick and helpful support to solve the issue.”