NBT’s Prometheus employs Nordic’s nRF9160 SiP for IoT and GNSS

Photo: Next Big Thing

German venture studio Next Big Thing AG (NBT) has launched the Prometheus internet of things (IoT) sensor-based development platform designed to simplify prototyping and speed time-to-market for developers of cellular IoT- and cloud-based solutions.

The Prometheus platform is powered by Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF9160 low-power system-in-package (SiP) with integrated LTE-M/NB-IoT modem and GNSS. The platform supports development across a wide range of industrial applications including the manufacturing, pharmaceutical and logistics sectors.

The nRF9160 SiP’s 64-MHz Arm Cortex-M33 dedicated application processor provides sufficient computational power to not only supervise the LTE-M/NB-IoT modem’s cellular connectivity, but also all other product functionality. The SiP’s 1MB Flash and 256kB RAM supports fast response and complex application software.

In addition to the Nordic SiP, the CE-certified development platform features a wide range of sensors and interfaces, a stable embedded software stack, fully encrypted communication, mesh connectivity for short-range communication, automatic switching between NB-IoT and LTE-M cellular IoT connectivity, and advanced provisioning tools. The solution is optimized for low power consumption and provides an industrial temperature range of –40 to +85° C.

NBT’s IoT development platform comprises two main components:

• the hardware and embedded software platform (Prometheus)
• the cloud-based software platform (NBT software platform).

The standard configuration of Prometheus consists of a range of sensors, for example a temperature sensor (analog and digital), accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, air quality sensor, ambient light sensor and humidity sensor.

The extended version of Prometheus also includes Nordic’s nRF52832 Bluetooth 5.2/Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) general purpose multiprotocol system-on-chip (SoC) to provide support for Bluetooth LE connectivity, as well as USB, GPS, radar, an adjustable antenna tuner and extended temperature range.