Thingy:53 - Microcontroller platform for IoT with Bluetooth Mesh and Matter

The Nordic Thingy:53 is an IoT prototyping platform built around the dual Arm Cortex-M33 nRF5340 SoC. It is fast enough o run embedded machine learning (ML) models directly on the device, plus Bluetooth LE, Bluetooth mesh, Thread, Zigbee, and Matter. There are also a bunch of integrated sensors, including temperature, humidity, air quality and air pressure, plus color and light sensors, accelerometers, and a magnetometer.
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[@verbluftebladsy-bo1ke]

Great to see Gary talk about professional products from reputable companies. The Thingy53 seems to not only demonstrate various technologies it is available as a reference design for ones own product design I was surprised to see. I tried the nRF Connect SDK and was blown away by the substantial software offering to support development of actual products based on the Thingy53.

[@lint2023]

The idea of a package with battery, case and mcu is a winner. This might spur other suppliers to offer something similar but with much less sensor/module completeness and for much lower cost. It's a great idea.

[@Razor_Burn]

Great to see you review the Nordic Thingy53 as its a fun little development board and Nordic Semiconductor are leaders in Bluetooth LE devices and just released their first WiFi 6 dev board which looks great!

[@richpeacock]

excellent. I'm learnibg ML and EdgeImpulse so this will help greatly. Thanks

[@TheRealStructurer]

I like the concept and hope more will come. For now I’ll keep my ESP32’s and 3D printed cases

[@PatrickFelstead]

It’s nice to see alternatives to ESP32. Be aware there is the M5 stack Core2 to which has an ESP32 IPS display Lopo battery sensors etc in an injection moulded in case.

[@GaryExplains]

Interesting how you said "alternative to ESP32". Arm based microcontrollers are the defacto standard and ESP32 is an alternative to Arm, not the other way around! 😉

[@taranagnew436]

can you set it up as a Bluetooth receiver/transmitter, if a certain device/s is in use (on the receiver) ( i have a phone,tablet an computer) then (on transmitter) send audio to bluetooth headset/hearing aids? FYI my bluetooth hearing aids can only connect to 1 device at a time

[@iliarrabet9482]

A problem is that the ribbon cable does not come with the device. I had to buy separately ordered a 10-pin JTAG cable and it does not match. Now I have to order another one...

[@MarkRiverbank]

The non-trivial programming is probably a dealbreaker, but I definitely think there is a market for more finished solutions rather than prototyping boards. There are plenty of one-off applications where you’re not going to order a custom circuit board but don’t want to have to figure out a case to hide a messy breadboard. However, an esp32-based solution would probably be a better fit for the DIY market.

[@robin_saltnes]

It is possible to make your own DFU-compatible firmware and flash it over USB. It's just not quite as easy as using a devkit with a dedicated programmer chip as a debugging probe ;)

[@4Simmix4]

what happens if the nRF Edge app were to ever become not-supported and would through a bug end up no longer functioning? is there no other way to use its machine learning capabilities? it's great to see this having compatibility for the threat protocol looking forward to the Bluetooth mesh video you mentioned, thanks for all the work you put into these very informative videos

[@yjweaver5108]

Yes good point, after teaching a machine, is it necessary to connect to the app or can it implement the machine completely on the thingy

[@gauve30]

Can you cover the TI CC3235SF development kit or any others from TI for comparison?

[@GaryExplains]

Thanks for the idea, but in all honesty I doubt I will spend the money to buy one of those, it is quite niche.

[@gauve30]

@@GaryExplains how about just a video with your thoughts comparing strengths or weaknesses of platforms from Nordic, TI, and so on.

[@collinb5524]

Hmmm ill probably stick with arduino\esp32\RasPi

[@jyvben1520]

Can we develop on linux ?

[@GaryExplains]

I haven't tried it, but a quick look at the nordicsemi.com shows that most of the tools, including nRF Connect for Desktop, are available for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

[@NordicSemi]

Yes, you can.

[@levram2]

Priced at $53 to $80 means this is dead on arrival. Much more excited for the ESP32-C6.

[@JoelJosephReji]

Maybe its more suited for a company where you would have something like a basic dev kit for programming iot project. Individuals can afford to spend time setting up the dev kit itself.

[@tonysheerness2427]

@@JoelJosephReji Has a microphone and can learn. You could use this to spy on any one and only record data from a certain person. Frightening. I can see lots these being bought just to see if a spouse is loyal.

[@wlgrd7052]

How many sensors and application examples has the ESP32-C6 kit vs this one? I'm curious to check it out