From Nordic: "Digital writing pad employs Nordic Bluetooth Low Energy solution for low-latency wireless transfer of notes and sketches to user's smartphone or tablet"
About Symmetry Electronics Team
Nordic Semiconductor today announces that Royole, a Shenzhen, China-based human-machine interface (HMI) technology company, employs Nordic’s nRF52832 Bluetooth® Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) System-on-Chip (SoC) in its ‘RoWrite’ smart writing pad.
RoWrite incorporates Royole’s proprietary advanced flexible sensor technology, allowing the sensor to accurately track the position of RoWrite's ballpoint pen on a conventional sheet of paper secured to the digital notepad. The positional information combines with the RoWrite pen’s built-in pressure sensor circuitry to monitor 2048 pressure points and precisely capture every pen stroke.
As the user produces each pen stroke, the low-latency, Nordic-powered Bluetooth LE link wirelessly transfers the information to a paired Bluetooth 4.0 (or later) iOS or Android smartphone or tablet to reproduce the image digitally allowing it to be saved.
The saved image can be edited, enhanced, or erased using the smartphone hosted RoWrite app, then immediately shared with friends, colleagues, or clients. In the absence of a receiver the digital notepad can store the work locally on the device thanks to a 16MB external memory, allowing the user to download the data to a mobile device at the next opportunity.
RoWrite uses a micro-USB charging interface and offers 30 days of battery life in standby mode and 8 hours of battery life for continuous usage, thanks in part to the ultra-low power characteristics of the Nordic SoC. The nRF52832 SoC has been engineered to minimize power consumption with features such as the 2.4GHz radio’s 5.5mA peak RX/TX currents, and a fully-automatic power management system.
Nordic’s nRF52832 multiprotocol SoC combines a 64MHz, 32-bit Arm® Cortex® M4F processor with a 2.4GHz multiprotocol radio (supporting Bluetooth 5, ANT™, and proprietary 2.4GHz RF protocol software) featuring -96dB RX sensitivity, with 512kB Flash memory and 64kB RAM.
The SoC is supplied with Nordic’s S132 SoftDevice, a Bluetooth 5-certified RF software protocol stack for building advanced Bluetooth LE applications. The S132 SoftDevice features Central, Peripheral, Broadcaster and Observer Bluetooth LE roles, supports up to twenty connections, and enables concurrent role operation.
“One of the key reasons for selecting Nordic’s Bluetooth LE solution over alternative wireless protocols was the low power consumption that helps extend RoWrite’s battery life,” says Amy Cai from the product team at Royole. “Longer standby time means users can avoid the frustrating experience of losing power at a critical creative moment.”