Pie, which can check health indicators beyond weight monitoring.
The nRF52832 SoC is ideal for ultra-low-power wireless applications.

Nordic Semiconductor announces that South Korean technology startup Bagel Labs has selected Nordic's nRF52832 Bluetooth LE SoC to power the wireless connectivity of its smart tape measure, the PIE.
The Smart Tape Measure Pie not only allows consumers to go beyond simple weight monitoring to check overall health indicators, but also provides business customers, such as clothing manufacturers, with a quick and efficient way to measure and record body measurements.

This smart ruler has a form factor of 80mm x 65mm x 24mm and uses fiberglass tape that can measure both curved objects and straight lines. It has a digital display that can display measurements with an accuracy of ±0.5 mm over a range of up to 1500 mm, and supports mm, cm, and inch units.

The Pie uses an on-axis magnetic rotary position sensor for reading accuracy, and Nordic's nRF52832 SoC provides wireless connectivity between the smart tape measure and the Pie for Healthcare app for iOS and Android running on the user's Bluetooth 4.0 (or later) smartphone or tablet. The app allows users to set goals and track and record their body measurements over time. Users can also view their size changes graphically and share their data with family, friends, coaches, or healthcare professionals.

The Pi is powered by a 400mAh lithium polymer battery that provides 20 hours of use between charges, thanks to the ultra-low power characteristics of the nRF52832 SoC. The nRF52832 SoC is designed to minimize power consumption, with peak RX/TX currents of just 5.5mA for the 2.4GHz radio and a fully-automatic power management system that can reduce power consumption by up to 80% compared to Nordic's nRF51 Series SoCs.

Nordic's nRF52832 SoC is a multiprotocol SoC ideal for Bluetooth LE and 2.4GHz ultra-low-power wireless applications. The nRF52832 features a 64MHz, 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4F processor, a 2.4GHz multiprotocol radio (Bluetooth 5, ANT, proprietary 2.4GHz RF software), -96dB RX sensitivity, 512kB flash memory, and 64kB RAM.

This SoC is equipped with Nordic's S132 SoftDevice, a Bluetooth 5-certified RF software protocol stack for implementing Bluetooth LE applications. The S132 SoftDevice features Central, Peripheral, Broadcaster, and Observer Bluetooth LE stacks and can support up to 20 concurrent connections. Nordic's unique software architecture facilitates product development by clearly separating the RF protocol software from the developer's application code.

“Nordic’s nRF52832 SoC offers high design flexibility, a powerful Arm processor, flash memory allocation, and cost efficiency,” says Myungjong Kim, senior manager at Bagel Labs. “While the battery life of a smart tape measure is not as sensitive as that of a smartphone, power efficiency is always a key consideration, so using a chip with excellent power efficiency is crucial.”