Smart home
Low power wireless connectivity solutions for smart home
Nordic-powered Apple HomeKit with Thread smart air purifier captures and analyzes air quality data
Nordic nRF52840 SoC brings concurrent Bluetooth LE and Thread connectivity to Airversa Purelle (AP2) for smartphone control and data analysis
Connected appliances manufacturer, Sleekpoint Innovations, has released the ‘Purelle (AP2)’ under its Airversa brand, which specializes in creating air treatment products that improve the quality of the air we breathe. The smart air purifier takes advantage of Apple HomeKit® with Thread Accessory Protocol.
The air purifier uses a 3-Stage True HEPA Filtration system which is claimed to capture up to 99.97 percent of airborne contaminants and can filter out particles down to 0.3 microns (0.003 mm). The product is designed for compact tabletop use in small-to-medium sized rooms, and can be plugged into most household sockets via its AC adaptor.
Keeping air pure
The air purifier includes a built-in PM2.5 sensor that detects potentially harmful contaminants smaller than 2.5 microns. The nRF52840 SoC’s powerful 64 MHz, 32-bit Arm® Cortex® M4 processor with floating point unit (FPU) analyzes the sensor data which is then wirelessly transmitted by the associated Airversa ‘Sleekpoint’ app on the user’s smartphone. The data can be used to generate daily/weekly/monthly charts to help consumers track long-term air quality. Purelle (AP2) also incorporates a built-in ambient light sensor to automatically adjust the brightness of the control panel and air quality ring surrounding the panel.
We received excellent constructive and responsive support from Nordic, especially regarding HomeKit related issues
Felix Liu, Sleekpoint Innovations.
Thread is a standards-based IPv6-based mesh networking protocol developed for directly and securely connecting products around the home to each other, to the internet, and to the cloud. Thread’s approach to wireless networking offers a secure and reliable mesh network with no single point of failure and support for low-power end devices. Every HomeKit with Thread accessory concurrently supports Thread and Bluetooth LE. Bluetooth LE is used to add a new accessory to a network and as a fallback option if there is no home hub supporting the Thread interface.
Concurrent wireless connectivity
The nRF52840 SoC’s Dynamic Multiprotocol feature supports concurrent wireless connectivity of not only Thread and Bluetooth 5.3 but also Zigbee and other protocols.
“The combination of the nRF Connect SDK and Zephyr [RTOS] made the development procedure [of Purelle AP2] much easier,” explains Felix Liu, President and CEO of Sleekpoint Innovations.
“Additionally, we received excellent constructive and responsive support from Nordic, especially regarding HomeKit related issues. Unlike other top-tier chipset makers, Nordic’s corporate culture never overlooks the potential of a start-up, and has offered incomparable support throughout the process,” says Liu
