Nordic-powered wireless gaming mice deliver ultra-fast response times

The Hati ACE computer peripherals employ Nordic’s nRF52840 SoC and Low Latency Packet Mode to support high performance e-sports applications

Gaming technology company, G-Wolves, has released a series of Nordic Semiconductor-powered dual-mode (wired and wireless) gaming mice that provide users with ultra-low latency performance and low power consumption in a lightweight form factor. The ‘Hati ACE’ series mice integrate Nordic’s nRF52840 advanced multiprotocol System-on-Chip (SoC) to provide 2.4 GHz proprietary wireless connectivity between the user’s peripheral device and PC for fast response in gaming and e-sports applications.

Low Latency Packet Mode benefits

To ensure fast and stable response times the Hati ACE series mice employ Bluetooth® Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) wireless’ Low Latency Packet Mode (LLPM). LLPM is designed for applications in which the interface response time is critical for the user, such as a gaming mouse, keyboard, or virtual reality (VR) headset. LLPM has been extensively tested at Nordic and reduces the report rate down to 1ms, at the same time providing low power, robust radio performance in ‘noisy’ RF environments. Users can also tune and optimize the technology to their unique end-product requirements. In the case of the Hati ACE, LLPM enabled the connection interval to be ten times faster than previously possible, according to the G-Wolves.

The most important reasons why G-Wolves uses the nRF52840 are its excellent power consumption, CPU performance and stability

Xiu Lin Zhang, G-Wolves

The seven button, plug-and-play wireless gaming mice are equipped with Pixart’s PAW3370 sensor, powered by the nRF52840 SoC’s 64 MHz, 32-bit Arm® Cortex® M4 processor with floating point unit (FPU). The processor is designed to support the Floating Point (FP) and Digital Signal Processing (DSP) computations typical of high-end advanced gaming wireless applications

Long battery life

To provide an ergonomic and comfortable user experience and to reduce the overall weight of the design (58 g ±2 g), the 113 by 61 by 40 mm Hati ACE series mouse employs a 170 to 200 mA lithium battery to achieve a battery life of approximately 40 hours between recharge, thanks in part to the ultra low power operating characteristics of the Nordic SoC. The nRF52840 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 previous Nordic SoCs.

Nordic’s nRF52840 advanced multiprotocol SoC combines the Arm processor with a 2.4 GHz multiprotocol radio (supporting Bluetooth 5.3, Long Range, Bluetooth mesh, ANT™, Thread, Zigbee, NFC, and proprietary 2.4GHz RF protocol software), featuring 8 dBm output power -95 dBm RX sensitivity for a link budget of 103  dBm, with 1 MB Flash memory and 256 KB RAM. The SoC features 12 Mbps Full Speed USB that enables low-latency and high-bandwidth communication with a range of host devices. The nRF Connect SDK [Software Development Kit] is recommended for nRF52840 software development. The nRF Connect SDK integrates the Zephyr RTOS, supports applications using Bluetooth LE, Bluetooth mesh and Thread, and includes examples, Bluetooth LE profiles and driver support for all peripherals.

“The most important reasons why G-Wolves uses the nRF52840 are its excellent power consumption, CPU performance and stability,” says Xiu Lin Zhang, CEO of G-Wolves. “These excellent characteristics have been proven countless times within the industry.

“Along with the professionalism of the Nordic team, their technical services, and regularly optimized reference designs, we were not only able to speed up our product launch but also improve the product’s stability.”