Würth Elektronik offers its Proteus-III-SPI Bluetooth Low Energy 5.1 module. This variant of the Proteus-III employs an SPI instead of a UART interface. The new module, based on the Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 chipset, uses the possibilities of the Bluetooth Low Energy 5.1 standard — with noticeably higher performance. With a payload of up to 964bytes, the module provides four times the throughput of most Bluetooth low-energy modules. As the SPI enables a significantly higher data rate than the UART, with 1.5 times the end-to-end data throughput, the SPI variant bypasses possible bottlenecks on the application side.
The variant, identical in terms of hardware, is the first option for applications in which no free UART interface is offered or if the data throughput of the UART interface is insufficient. Another advantage: The SPI variant is more power-efficient. The integration workload is slightly higher with SPI, but the company offers a convenient wireless connectivity SDK for this task.
With its Bluetooth module, measuring only 8mm x 12mm x 2mm, with integrated antenna, encryption technology and six configurable IO pins, it provides an attractive solution for IoT and M2M applications in radio-based maintenance interfaces and sensor networks. A particular feature of the innovative device offers a good alternative to the SPP mode for serial data transmission, which is no longer included in the standard but is very useful for industrial applications. A long-range mode is included.