The Nordic Thingy:53 is a multi-sensor prototyping platform for Matter, embedded machine learning (ML), and other wireless IoT products. It is based on the nRF5340 SoC, Nordic Semiconductor's current flagship dual-core wireless SoC.

With integrated sensors for motion, sound, light, and environmental factors, it is the perfect platform for building proofs of concept and developing prototypes in a very short time. It supports a wide range of wireless protocols, including Bluetooth® LE, Bluetooth mesh, Thread, Zigbee®, and the smart home standard, Matter.

The Thingy:53 comes pre-installed with firmware to work with the nRF Edge Impulse mobile app to create and run embedded machine learning applications directly on the Thingy:53 with Edge Impulse Studio. The pre-installed firmware enables users to take full advantage of the advanced sensors of the Thingy:53 in applications like voice recognition or movement pattern detection. The low-power accelerometer and the PDM microphone can also wake the SoC from sleep on motion or sound events. This is especially useful for creating low-power embedded machine learning applications, which allows the device to remain sleeping and save power when there is nothing to register.

The Arm® Cortex®-M33 application processor core of the nRF5340 SoC ensures that the Thingy:53 can handle heavy computational tasks of embedded machine learning without affecting the wireless connectivity. The application core is clocked at 128 MHz for the best possible performance with ample room for user applications in its 1 MB of Flash storage and 512 KB RAM. Wireless connectivity is handled separately by another Arm Cortex-M33 core clocked at a lower 64 MHz for more power efficient operation for continuous wireless connection without taking up any computational resources from the application core.

nRF Programmer App

The accompanying nRF Programmer app for the Thingy:53 adds a level of simplicity never seen before in a prototyping platform of this type. With the app, users will be able to select from pre-made firmware for the Thingy and flash it directly over the air from an iOS or Android device. This means uploading new firmware to take advantage of the nRF5340 SoC and its built-in sensors capabilities is possible anywhere and without connecting to a PC. For more info about the apps, see the product pages at launch.