This means Nordic customers can now build and ship commercial Zigbee products using the nRF52840 SoC and nRF5 SDK for Thread and Zigbee. This includes products that would benefit from both Zigbee and Bluetooth 5 / Bluetooth Low Energy (concurrent) operation
Nordic Semiconductor announces that its nRF52840 multiprotocol System-on-Chip (SoC) and Nordic Zigbee software solution has been formally certified as a Zigbee Compliant platform to the current Zigbee PRO (R21) and Green Power proxy specification by the Zigbee Alliance.
This means Nordic customers can now build and ship commercial Zigbee 3.0 products by using the nRF52840 together with the nRF5 SDK for Thread and Zigbee. And, as with Nordic’s other mesh solutions, concurrent Zigbee and Bluetooth® 5/Bluetooth Low Energy operation is also supported.
What’s great about this solution is that the concurrent Zigbee and Bluetooth 5 / Bluetooth Low Energy operation allows Zigbee networks to benefit from all the features of a Bluetooth network including connecting to smartphones
Pär Håkansson, Nordic Semiconductor
During the Zigbee Compliance certification process using the latest nRF5 SDK for Thread and Zigbee and its integrated S140 v6.1 SoftDevice (or ‘stack’), the nRF52840 was concurrently connected to a Bluetooth 5 / Bluetooth Low Energy network the entire time.
“We announced in April this year that we planned to offer a certified Zigbee Compliant platform during the second half of 2018, and am delighted to say here it is,” comments Pär Håkansson, Product Marketing Manager, Nordic Semiconductor.
“What’s great about this solution is that the concurrent Zigbee and Bluetooth 5 / Bluetooth Low Energy operation allows Zigbee networks to benefit from all the features of a Bluetooth network including connecting to smartphones. This would allow you to perform firmware upgrades, for example, or control the Zigbee network directly from a smartphone or even remotely.”
