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Bluetooth Low Energy wireless smart toothbrush detects specific areas brushed, areas missed, and other brushing activity to help improve dental habits
Joint Chinese’s ‘Teethcare Smart Toothbrush’ employs Nordic’s nRF52832 SoC to wirelessly sync teeth brushing data collected via an in-built gyroscope sensor with a user’s smartphone
Nordic Semiconductor today announces that Joint Chinese, a Shenzhen, China-based smart technology company, uses Nordic’s nRF52832 Bluetooth® Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) System-on-Chip (SoC) to provide wireless connectivity for its ‘Teethcare Smart Toothbrush’. The Teethcare Smart Toothbrush is a connected toothbrush incorporating sensor technology to track where the user has cleaned within 16 designated zones.
Supported by the Nordic SoC, the brush uses Bluetooth LE to wirelessly connect to the user’s (or parent’s) Bluetooth 4.0 (or later) iOS or Android smartphone, on which the Teethcare app shows the user how effectively they have cleaned their teeth, and highlights any specific areas missed using data collected via the device’s built-in gyroscope. In addition, the companion app displays information such as total brushing duration, brushing frequency, and brush head condition, as well as recommendations based on the user’s brushing habits over the past day, week, or month.
An 800mAH Li-ion rechargeable battery provides the Teethcare Smart Toothbrush with approximately 25 days of battery life when used for four minutes per day, thanks in part to the ultra low power characteristics of the Nordic SoC. The nRF52832 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 that reduces power consumption by up to 80 percent compared with Nordic’s nRF51 Series SoCs.
Supported by the Nordic SoC, the brush uses Bluetooth LE to wirelessly connect to the user’s (or parent’s) Bluetooth 4.0 (or later) iOS or Android smartphone, on which the Teethcare app shows the user how effectively they have cleaned their teeth, and highlights any specific areas missed using data collected via the device’s built-in gyroscope. In addition, the companion app displays information such as total brushing duration, brushing frequency, and brush head condition, as well as recommendations based on the user’s brushing habits over the past day, week, or month.
An 800mAH Li-ion rechargeable battery provides the Teethcare Smart Toothbrush with approximately 25 days of battery life when used for four minutes per day, thanks in part to the ultra low power characteristics of the Nordic SoC. The nRF52832 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 that reduces power consumption by up to 80 percent compared with Nordic’s nRF51 Series SoCs.
We have been using Nordic technology for quite a long time so we are very familiar with Nordic’s excellent Software Development Kits, which help speed up the whole development process
Kathy Zhao, Joint Chinese
The Teethcare Smart Toothbrush delivers a dynamic cleaning action with vibration capacity of up to 40,000 brush strokes per minute, and features five brushing modes—clean, white, polish, soft, and sensitive—allowing the user to tailor their brushing activity in accordance with advice from a dental health professional.
Nordic’s nRF52832 multiprotocol SoC combines an 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 -96-dBm RX sensitivity.
The SoC is supplied with Nordic’s S132 SoftDevice, a Bluetooth 5-certifed 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.
“We selected Nordic’s Bluetooth LE solution to take advantage of technical features such as the powerful Arm CPU capability, 512kB Flash memory and 64kB RAM, which in future will allow us to provide even greater detection and tracking functionality by adding more sensors inside the Teethcare Smart Toothbrush,” says Kathy Zhao, Sales Director at Joint Chinese.
“We have been using Nordic technology for quite a long time so we are very familiar with Nordic’s excellent Software Development Kits, which help speed up the whole development process.”
