1. Purpose
This data sheet provides a high-level overview of the Emcraft Thingy-9151-Lite hardware and software platform.
NOTE: Any information presented herein is of a preliminary nature, subject to change by Emcraft with no notice.
2. Thingy-9151-Lite Platform
The Emcraft Thingy-9151-Lite is a hardware and software platform centered around the Nordic nRF9151 SiP (System-In-Package) device. The nRF9151 is a new Nordic radio MCU for highly integrated and compact System-in-Package (SiP) solutions, specifically designed for cellular IoTapplications. The nRF9151 offers unparalleled performance and versatility by leveraging low power LTE technology, advanced processing capabilities, robust security features and support for 3GPP release 14 LTE-M/NB-IoT.
In addition to the nRF9151, the Thingy-9151-Lite platform includes an optional Nordic R5340 SiP, with the BLE and USB gadget functions. When the R5340 is included in a design based on the platform, the two MCU’s communicate via a dedicated inter-processor communication interface allowing the exchange of data and health checks of the peer MCU.
The Emcraft Thingy-9151-Lite platform makes use of the Nordic nRF1300 PMIC device to provide appropriate power rails to the platform. Working with the nRF9151, the nRF1300 PMIC serves as battery controller for the rechargeable 3.7V Li-Poly battery.
The platform provides an I/O extension interfaces, supporting various I/O add-on functions.
The platform provides a debug interface, allowing access to the Zephyr serial consoles from a development host as well as integration with the host-side development IDE with advanced debug capabilities.
3. Platform Components
The Thingy-9151-Lite platform is comprised of the following key components:
Hardware reference design, ready for integration into customer’s designs based on the nRF9151
Thingy-9151-Lite Starter Kit, which provides a reference platform for initial software development and prototyping
Zephyr OS BSP (Board support package), providing off the shelf-support RTOS support, with advanced software capabilities, for the Thingy-9151-Lite hardware platform and Starter Kit
Integration with the host-side development IDE
Emcraft’s Consulting Team supports the Thingy-9151-Lite platform with customization services and porting support to customer designs.
4. High-Level Block Diagram
The following is a high-level block diagram of the Emcraft Thingy-9151-Lite platform:
5. Feature List
The following is the high-level summary of key features available with the Emcraft Thingy-9151-Lite hardware platform:
The nRF9151 is the host MCU, with an integrated multimode modem supporting LTE-M, NB-IoT and GPS/GNSS. The cellular connectivity is supported with a SIM card (Nano/4FF SIM card slot, supporting (e)SIM) and an u.FL antenna). The nRF9151 integrates an SPI Flash (16MB) and I2C RTC.
The nR5340 is the optional MCU, with embedded BLE, NFC, and USB gadget functionalities. The nR5340 can also be used to offload support for additional I/O interfaces, as well as additional computational tasks from the host MCU.
When the nR5340 is instantiated in a customer’s design, the two MCU’s communicate via an inter-processor communication interface, which includes:
2 UART interfaces with flow control,
Several cross-MUC GPIO's.
The nRF1300 PMIC is connected to the nRF9151 via a dedicated I2C bus and GPIOs. Together with the host MCU, the PMIC serves as a battery controller for the Rechargeable 3.7V Li-Poly battery with 1350 mAh capacity. The USB Type-C interface provides the main power source as well as the source for battery charging. Both the nRF9151 and the nR5340 can power cycle the entire system via a dedicated power switch, thus allowing a self-recovery mechanism for software. Additionally, the user can power cycle the system using the reset button. The power LED serves to indicate various power states.
The platform supports low-power mode where the Zephyr BSP brings the various platform components into appropriate low-power states, with ability to wake-up from various time- and I/O-based triggers. The kit provides a current measurement connector for measuring the power consumption of the following domains:
nRF1300 PMIC + nRF9151,
whole board.
The platform includes the I/O extension interface, comprised of the breadboard area (available for both the nRF9151 and nRF9151 MCU’s) and two MikroE Click connectors (connected to the nRF9151), allowing additions of various off-the-shelf and custom Click cards for development of add-on I/O capabilities, including:
Various sensors, including: IMU, Temp and others
NFC reader
eInk display
GPIO (LEDs, buttons)
Various radio interfaces, including: Wi-Fi, BT and others
Emcraft TPM card, allowing for hardware-assisted data encryption and secure boot.
The platform includes the debug interface, comprised of:
In addition to providing a power option, the USB Type-C interface is used to bridge two UART serial consoles, one for = the nRF9151 and one for the nR5340 MCU, via a 2-channel USB-UART bridge
Two SWD connectors for programming and debugging of nRF9151 and nR5340 with the external J-Link probe. TBD: If possible, use an FTDI chip with 2 UART channels and 2 SWD channels.
The EmCraft Thingy-9151-Lite platform SDK provides device level drivers, inter-processor communication primitives, an AI subsystem, basic system level services, OTA, data logging, filesystem, calendar, asynchrounous wakeup, battery charging and management and low-power operation support. The platform SDK will be expanded to support Matter, Zigbee, UWB, ROS2-bridging as well as interoperability with Emcraft smart cameras and robot brain designs, all as a comprehensive SDK. Customer specific firmware applications would be developed outside the scope of this product offering.