Nordic Semiconductor has introduced a new wearable football sensor product

     Nordic Semiconductor announced that Zepp Labs, a California-based wearable sports technology company, has introduced a new wearable football sensor product. Use Nordic nRF52832 system-on-chip (SoC) to support challenging Bluetooth low energy (formerly Bluetooth Smart) applications while meeting low power needs.

     The Zepp Soccer sensor is aimed at all levels of soccer players, strapped to the player's calf to record running and sprinting distance in a game, superior performance, and left-foot/right-foot preferences. With a Bluetooth-enabled iOS or Android smartphone running the Zepp Soccer app, the coach or "host" will also be able to record game times and capture player videos. After the match, sensor data is automatically synced to a smartphone via a Bluetooth low power wireless link, and the Zepp Soccer app generates match reports as well as group and individual highlight videos for post-match review and analysis. Depending on the data the host wants to enter into the app, more detailed reports can also be included in post-match stats, such as shot conversion rates and goals scored.

     Zepp Soccer has a high demand for low-power Bluetooth SoC devices, such as applications that need to support more than 30 sensors and provide enough bandwidth between the sensor and the smartphone to handle more than 100 times the data generated by the heart rate monitor. In addition to this challenge, Zepp Labs also required low power features in both "work" and "standby" modes.

     Nordic's nRF52832 Bluetooth Low Energy SoC is a member of Nordic Semiconductor's sixth generation ultra-Low Power (ULP) wireless connectivity solutions. Combined with a 64MHz, 32-bit ARM Cortex M4F processor and a 2.4GHz multi-protocol radio (fully compatible with Bluetooth Version 4.2 specification, ANT™, and proprietary 2.4GHz RF software), it features -96 dB RX sensitivity, 512 kB flash, and 64 kB RAM. This SoC device is the world's highest performing single-chip Bluetooth Low energy solution, offering 60% more general-purpose processing power, 10x floating-point performance, and twice the DSP performance than competing solutions.

     Zepp Labs requires a Bluetooth Low Energy SoC with high performance while maintaining up to 15 hours of play time between charges using Zepp Soccer's 125mAh lithium-ion battery. The nRF52832 SoC has been manufactured to minimize power consumption, featuring a 2.4GHz radio with peak RX/TX current of 5.5mA and a fully automated power management system, reducing power consumption by up to 80% compared to Nordic's nRF51 series SoC devices. The result is a low-power Bluetooth solution with 90 CoreMark/mA performance and up to twice the power of competing devices.

     Dong Li, Director of Hardware Research and Development at Zepp Labs, explains: "We needed a Bluetooth low power solution with a powerful CPU for excellent floating-point performance and DSP performance to perform data processing, and a large RAM capacity to buffer all the information collected by multiple sensors. Moreover, we also need to minimize power consumption to ensure coaches and athletes can achieve adequate game time analysis before the product needs to be recharged. For these reasons, the nRF52832 Bluetooth Low Energy SoC is a logical choice for Zepp Soccer."

     Stale "Steel" Ytterdal, Director of sales and Marketing for Nordic Semiconductor Asia Pacific, said: "The nRF52832 SoC device designed by Nordic uses a space - and cost-saving single-chip package and delivers better power consumption than the company's previous ultra-low power devices, providing a powerful Bluetooth Low power solution for demanding applications. The Zepp Labs Soccer sensor demonstrates the type of application we envisioned when developing this SoC device, so we are pleased that the company has selected the nRF52832 device in a highly competitive market."