RF-star Chengdu team has traveled to the Western Sichuan Plateau in July. The impressive natural landscapes with snow-covered mountains, endless grass landscapes, countless yak herds, and local monasteries leave us literally speechless! 

With the advent of the Internet information age, mobile and portable smart products have drove countless enthusiasts crazy as soon as they were launched. Wearable devices have gradually developed from MP3 to wireless Bluetooth headsets and VR devices. The rapid growth of the wearable device market is closely related to the development of Bluetooth technology. With the popularization of Bluetooth 4.0 technology and the rise of mobile Internet, the application of Bluetooth technology has also developed from portable devices such as mobile phones and tablets to the Internet of Things, medical and other fields. The development of solutions based on Bluetooth technology is getting better and better. It brings new opportunities to the Internet of Things market. When talking about Bluetooth, we often hear words such as BLE, Beacon, iBeacon, Eddytstone, etc. What are the connections and differences among them? The following is a detailed explanation of the Bluetooth technology involved in common Bluetooth technical terms and applications. 1. Explanation of Bluetooth Technical Terms BLE: Bluetooth Low Energy. Beacon: Beacon is based on Bluetooth low energy proximity sensing by transmitting a universally unique identifier picked up by a compatible app or operating system. iBeacon: iBeacon is the name for Apple’s technology standard introduced in 2013, which allows Mobile Apps (running on both iOS and Android devices) to listen for signals from beacons in the physical world and react accordingly. Eddystone: Eddystone is a BLE format developed by Google in 2015. It’s opensource and multiplatform, so you can use it with both Android and iOS. The Bluetooth that we often say in our daily life usually refers to BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy). As the name shows, the current Bluetooth technology consumes very low power consumption. The power consumed by turning on Bluetooth on the phone for a long time is negligible. 2. The Origin and Classification of BLE The original specification was developed by Nokia in 2006 under the name Wibree. The company developed a wireless technology adapted from the Bluetooth standard which would provide lower power usage and cost while minimizing its differences from Bluetooth technology. The results were published in 2004 using the name Bluetooth Low End Extension. Wibree is a new radio frequency technology that can work alongside Bluetooth but using just a fraction of the power. The technology was marketed as Bluetooth Smart and integration into version 4.0 of the Core Specification was completed in early 2010. The BLE protocol stack is shown in the figure below. BLE is a set of protocols different from Classic Bluetooth, and the corresponding device does not implement backward compatibility. Therefore, BLE has formed three device types. 1) Bluetooth devices - Pre-4.0 devices - Bluetooth BR/EDR (Classic Bluetooth). A Classic Bluetooth device is able to communicate with other Classic Bluetooth devices and Bluetooth Smart Ready devices. ...

Sales of electric vehicles have been witnessing dramatic growth in recent years as their prices keep dropping while range keep rising. The trend further boosted the demand for EV charging piles. Unfortunately, in such a mega trend, some drawbacks of traditional charging piles were brought to attention. Just to name a few: 1) many installed charging piles are from well being utilized; 2)some of them are vulnerable to environmental interference; 3) and some impose risk to undermine safety use. Some vendors consider to have Bluetooth embedded to shake away the hassles mentioned above. RFstar’s RSBRS02ABR BLE module is such a product for this application with solid track record in this arena. This model enabled quite many OEMs in China and abroad to streamline design and assembly operations. By introducing RF-star’s BLE module RSBRS02ABR into charging pile solution, OEMs can significantly reduce the wiring work while achieving higher flexibility, incurring less installation cost, and effectively meet the demand for flexible distribution of charging stations.Furthermore, adding the Bluetooth module shake off the hassle of cable networking in charging pile installation. It can transmit data from the charging pile to your mobile through Bluetooth. After the mobile phone is connected to the Internet, the data can be uploaded to the cloud. In this way, it achieves excellent convenience to locate the charging pile, and complete transaction.

When the moon hangs in the sky, we know that the Mid-Autumn Festival is around the corner. With the strong sweet-scent of the osmanthus was waved to us by the breeze in the streets and lanes in Chengdu city, the Mid-Autumn Festival is coming. On the occasion of the festival, RF-star would like to give you our best wishes here for a happy holiday. And on this special day, all staff of RF-star gathered here to participate in the lantern riddles and mooncake cooking activities to celebrate for the coming traditional Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival. Let’s enjoy this happiness and rejoice together. Years come and go, but the moon in the Mid-Autumn night remains in our hearts forever. Guessing lantern riddles is a traditional folkloric entertainment activity for the Chinese. There is infinite wisdom and fun in the little riddles. From the animal names to the names of the objects, from the person names and place names to the rivers or mountains, everything can be included in the riddles and be a question or answer, which makes the riddle bring infinite extreme fun. Look, the activity has not begun yet, everyone is eager to have a try and some people roll up their sleeves to get ready to be the first person who gives the answer. With the host announced the kickoff of the activity, one after another answer being called out with the intermingled cheers and laughter, which pushes the activity to its climax. As the guessing riddles activity comes to an end, the host unveiled to move on to another activity named ”making mooncakes”. All staff brims with full of happiness and rejoice. Sweet-style mooncakes are one of the popular styles of mooncake for Chengdu people. Take one portion from each 3 colours of dough and combine them into a round. Flatten out the dough and center the filling. Seal and shape into a ball. Lightly coat the surface with prepared cooked glutinous rice flour. Press each into mooncake mould and then push lightly out on a serving plate. Each member of RF-star is busy chit-chatting and making mooncakes, which brings pleasure and warm atmosphere. After a while, several plates of crispy and delicious mooncakes come to the table. About Us Shenzhen RF-Star Technology Co., Ltd., founded in 2010, is a world leading Internet-of-Things (IoT) solution provider. RF-Star has the vision of a connected world with widely deployed IoT technology, such as BLE/BT, Wi-Fi, LoRa, ZigBee, Sub-1GHz, NB-IoT, RFID, which makes RF-star focus on creating innovative products and services, empowering industries to run intelligently and providing people a better life.

With the continuous evolution of the fourth technological revolution, the development of the Internet has also entered a new era of the "Internet +". In this era, many things will be connected to the Internet and become intelligent. Many emerging industries will open up huge markets. IoT technologies such as the Internet of Vehicles, smart logistics, and artificial intelligence have received widespread attention. And indoor positioning is one of them. Since the concept of Industry 4.0 was came out, the intelligence level of the manufacturing industry has been continuously improved, and the development of the Internet has also entered a new era of "Internet +". Many devices can access the cloud and become intelligent. Emerging industries are booming. IoT technologies such as the Internet of Vehicles, smart logistics, and artificial intelligence have received widespread attention. And indoor positioning is one of them. Indoor positioning is a huge market that has gradually been paid attention to in recent years. Because indoor scenes are very important for people's daily production and life, and location data is one of the most basic data dimensions. According to data provided by Nokia, people spend 87%-90% of their time indoors. The indoor space structure becomes complex, people have higher requirements for real-time and accuracy of the location. For example, it is becoming more and more difficult to find a car in a parking lot, find specific items, and locate relatives who have separated. The demand for indoor positioning has never been higher. With the outbreak of the epidemic, the spread control of the virus has become the goal of epidemic prevention measures. How to master the closure and mobility of personnel has become the focus. The demand for indoor positioning of personnel has ushered in another climax. Therefore, the indoor positioning market has potential explosion opportunities. Especially in recent years, with the advancement and popularization of communication technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, UWB, and RFID, the application of indoor positioning has gradually spread. 1.The indoor positioning market is growing rapidly Global indoor positioning market distribution In the global indoor positioning market, North America has a 32% market share. Due to significant R&D and technological progress in indoor positioning technology, North America is expected to continue to lead the indoor positioning market in the future. Therefore, some North American companies are strategically adopting different levels of indoor positioning technology to gain a leading position in the market. The high-precision UWB technology and low-cost Beacon technology are developing rapidly in overseas markets. Europe and the Middle East account for 28% and 22% of the indoor positioning market respectively. The Asia-Pacific region accounts for only 18% of the market share, of which the vast majority of the market is in China. It is entirely due to the rapid eco...

Embedded RF-star's Bluetooth module RF-BM-4044B2 to your smart digital lock to assure that you can control or monitor your lock with your smartphone. Key Features: Secure Wireless Handshake Integrated with Control Althorithm

The CC2640R2L recently launched by TI (Texas Instruments) is a 2.4 GHz wireless microcontroller (MCU) supporting Bluetooth® 5.1 features: LE Coded PHYs (Long Range), LE 2-Mbit PHY (High Speed), Advertising Extensions, Multiple Advertisement Sets, as well as backwards compatibility and support for key features from the Bluetooth® 5.0 and earlier Low Energy specifications. CC2640R2L and CC2640R2F both use a single-core software development kit (SDK) and a rich tool set to share a common and easy-to-use development environment. The low-power wireless microcontrollers CC2640R2F and CC2640R2L, both launched by Texas Instruments, can transmit and receive radio frequency signals with a larger range. CC2640R2L, as a low-cost version of CC2640R2F, is lower in price. Judging from the Bluetooth protocol supported by the chip, CC2640R2F supports BLE 5.0 protocol, and CC2640R2L supports BLE 5.1 protocol. CC2640R2L can use AOA/AOD for indoor positioning, which is very suitable for improving the performance of Internet of Things (IoT) applications. In terms of cores, both CC2640R2L and CC2640R2F are the same: 48 MHz ARM® Cortex®-M3 cores, and they both have 275 KB non-volatile memory, including 128 KB in-system programmable flash, up to 28 KB system SRAM, of which 20 KB is ultra-low leakage SRAM. Compared with CC2640R2F, CC2640R2L does not have a Sensor Controller Engine, so the cost of CC2640R2L is lower and it is more suitable for the application scenarios of basic transparent transmission function. CC2640R2L: Microcontroller Powerful Arm® Cortex® -M3 Up to 48 MHz clock speed 275 KB of nonvolatile memory including 128 KB of in-system programmable flash Up to 28 KB of system SRAM, of which 20 KB is ultra-low leakage SRAM 8 KB of SRAM for cache or system RAM use Supports over-the-air upgrade (OTA) RoHS-compliant packages 5 mm × 5 mm RHB VQFN32 (15 GPIOs) 7 mm × 7 mm RGZ VQFN48 (31 GPIOs) Peripherals All digital peripheral pins can be routed to any GPIO Four general-purpose timer modules (eight 16 bit or four 32 bit timers, PWM each) UART, IIC, and IIS Real-time clock (RTC) AES-128 security module Integrated temperature sensor Low power Wide supply voltage range Normal operation: 1.8 V to 3.8 V External regulator mode: 1.7 V to 1.95 V RF section 2.4-GHz RF transceiver compatible with Bluetooth low energy 5.1 and earlier LE specifications Excellent receiver sensitivity (–97 dBm for BLE), selectivity, and blocking performance Programmable output power up to +5 dBm Single-ended or differential RF interface CC2640R2F: Microcontroller Powerful Arm® Cortex® -M3 Up to 48 MHz clock speed 275 KB of nonvolatile memory including 128 KB of in-system Programmable Flash Up to 28 KB of system SRAM, of which 20 KB is ultra-low leakage SRAM 8KB of SRAM for cache or system RAM use Supports over-the-air upgrade (OTA) RoHS-compliant packages 2.7 mm × 2.7 mm YFV DSBGA34 (14 GPIOs) 4 mm × 4 mm RSM VQFN32 (10 GPIOs) 5 mm × 5 mm RHB VQFN32 (15 GPIOs) 7 m...

The Internet of Things (IoT) connects billions of devices and brings a huge opportunity for businesses to grow. However, billions of new connected devices also brings billions of new opportunities for hackers to steal intellectual property (IP), compromise users’ property and invade their privacy. While consumer awareness for Internet security grows as more security breaches at large companies are revealed to the public, secure Internet communication technology has advanced to a level that provides online banking, e-commerce and government services. State-of-the-art Internet security relies on advanced cryptographic algorithms, powerful computers and collaboration between major Internet companies and users. The common security capabilities available to Internet applications today include the following: Private communication – Information exchanged between parties is encrypted, such that an eavesdropper cannot understand it. End-point authentication – Communicating parties confirm each other’s identity prior to any information exchange to prevent attackers from using a false identity to access information and gain unauthorized control of a remote device. Information authentication – Critical information including transaction data and software updates are digitally signed to authenticate its origin and prevent malware installation. These security capabilities largely rely on a few fundamental building blocks, including: Stable cryptographic ciphers such as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA2) and the public key ciphers RSA and ECC. When used properly with an adequate key size, these ciphers have no known practical attack. The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, superseding its predecessor Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, provides the framework for establishing a secure communication channel between two parties. It handles both information encryption and end-point authentication, and relies on the cryptographic ciphers mentioned above. Public key infrastructure (PKI) provides the building blocks for authentication and trust through a digital certificate standard and certificate authorities (CA) such as Symantec and others. The benefit of using these well-known ciphers and protocols in IoT applications is two-fold. First, it relies on proven technology that is widely deployed and tested by the industry at a mega-scale. Second, it allows harnessing the power of already deployed Internet services (e.g. email, social media) as well as the public key infrastructure provided by CAs. Although Internet security technology is widely available, recent research from Symantec Security suggests that many deployed IoT devices have not implemented adequate security measures. There are likely multiple reasons for these security gaps, but vendor awareness, software complexity and implementation costs are probably at the top of the list. Many IoT devices are based on low-end microcontrollers (MCUs) that have limited processing...

Project Name: BLE Portable Ultrasound Diagnosis System Projection Location: Taiwan, China With the gradual rise of primary medical care, the demand for portable ultrasound has become popular in clinical medical care, bedside care, and field first aid. The ultrasonic transducer system can be safely and stably connected with smart mobile terminals through RF-star's TI series Wi-Fi module. And through the combination with cloud technology, artificial intelligence, deep learning, etc., a single portable ultrasound can achieve the diagnosis operations on multiple parts of the body and multiple clinical applications by multiple inspection modes. Now, more and more medical institutions realize the potential of handheld ultrasound. The Smart BLE palm ultrasound may be the next stethoscope.