From Nordic: "Bluetooth Low Energy-powered hand gesture recognition device enables hands-free smartphone operation and audio control whether on the road or in the home"

Nordic Semiconductor today announces that Taiwan-based gesture control solutions developer, H.P.B HI-TECH CORP., has selected Nordic’s nRF51822 Bluetooth® Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) System-on-Chip (SoC) to provide the wireless connectivity for its ‘HPBWAVE1S’, a hand gesture recognition device that enables hands-free audio playback, volume adjustment control, and smartphone operation.

To get started, the device is paired to the user’s Bluetooth 4.0 (and later) Android smartphone running the ‘HPB Wave’ app. Once paired, the user can control certain smartphone functionality via the HPBWAVE1S using a range of hand gesture profiles. For example, in ‘cellphone mode’, waving a hand up in front of the device will answer an incoming call, or waving down will hang up or reject the call. In ‘music mode’, waving up will begin or pause audio playback, while a clockwise or anticlockwise rotation of the finger will either increase or decrease volume. Waving right will skip to the next song, while waving left will play the previous selection.

The device integrates an array image sensor and a low power infrared LED to capture the user’s hand gestures, which are in turn relayed to the user’s smartphone using low latency Bluetooth LE wireless connectivity provided by the Nordic SoC, enabling hands-free smartphone operation in the home or while driving.

The HPBWAVE1S is powered by two AAA alkaline batteries, providing between two to three months battery life between replacement under normal operating conditions, thanks in part to the ultra low power characteristics of the nRF51822 SoC which has been engineered to minimize power consumption.

Nordic’s nRF51822 is a powerful and flexible multi-protocol SoC ideally suited for Bluetooth LE and 2.4GHz ultra low-power wireless applications. The nRF51822 is built around a 32-bit Arm® Cortex™ M0 CPU, 2.4GHz multi-protocol radio, and 256kB/128kB Flash and 32kB/16kB RAM. The SoC is supplied with Nordic’s S130 SoftDevice, a Bluetooth 4.2 qualified concurrent multi-link protocol stack solution supporting simultaneous Central/Peripheral/Broadcaster/Observer role connections.

“The Nordic SoC’s powerful Arm CPU was key to our decision to select the nRF51822 SoC, and the feedback during development was both quick and helpful,” says Holmes Shen, Director, H.P.B HI-TECH CORP.