Bluetooth 5 qualified SoC enables intelligent voice control

7th March 2017

Alice Matthews

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As the introduction of Bluetooth 5.0 means the connected devices market is entering a new era of connectivity, Dialog Semiconductor has announced the next generation in its SmartBond family – DA14586. The System-on-Chip (SoC) is the company’s first standalone device that is qualified to support the latest Bluetooth 5.0 specification, delivering what the company claims to be the lowest power consumption and unrivalled functionality for advanced use cases.

Derived from the SmartBond DA14580, which the company claims has proven to be the smallest, highest integrated and lowest power Bluetooth SoC in mass production over the past three years, the DA14586 maintains this position for these benchmark metrics, offering even greater flexibility to create more advanced applications with the smallest footprints and power budgets. Other enhancements include an advanced power management setup with both buck and boost converters, which enable support of most primary cell battery types.

“The Bluetooth 5 standard is one of the most highly-anticipated developments in connectivity, and Dialog is amongst the first out of the gate to enable development on this standard with a qualified standalone SoC,” said Sean McGrath, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Connectivity, Dialog Semiconductor. “Not only is DA14586 following in the SmartBond tradition of flexibility and low power consumption, but now, with Bluetooth 5 support and an integrated microphone interface, we have an SoC that opens the door to a new era of connected devices and applications.”

In addition to Bluetooth 5 support, DA14586 has double the memory of its predecessor for user applications, making it suitable for adding Bluetooth low energy to proximity tags, beacons, connected medical devices and smart home applications. Meanwhile, an integrated microphone interface reduces the system cost of voice-command remote controls, a fast growing emerging market. Advanced features are also included allowing for Mesh based networked applications to be simply supported.

Like all Dialog SmartBond solutions, DA14586 is easy to design-in and supports fully-hosted applications. The SoC is supported by a complete development environment and Dialog’s SmartSnippets software to help engineers optimise software for power consumption. For cost-sensitive applications, the SmartBond family will also include the DA14585 with integrated One-Time Programmable (OTP) memory as an alternative to flash memory.

The DA14586 and DA14585 and their associated development kit will be available for purchase through Mouser and Digi-Key.

Dialog will also be showcasing the DA14586 and DA14585 devices at the upcoming Bluetooth World event in Santa Clara on 28^th-29^th March 2017.