Bluetooth Micros: Nordic vs. SiLabs vs. TI?

[bitblit]

Hey guys,

Working on a new project that needs a Bluetooth capable microcontroller, wanted to get feedback on if any one of the above vendors might be a better choice.   Ideally the base SDK would be solid so using profiles like RFCOMM (serial port), HID and BLE is easy.

I'm looking at small designs that would be "baremetals" and possibly at some point using FreeRTOS or Zephyr or MyNewt.

In the past I built a design around a Nordic nRF24L01 (SPI/2.4 GHz proprietary RFIC) and overall had a good experience but so my first thought was Nordic.  But a lot of the SiLabs parts look very attractive and their dev. tools *look* good, but I haven't personally put them through the paces.  I'm also thinking of SiLabs for non-RF projects too so it might be nice to build some broader knowledge base.  Seems both Nordic and SiLabs are carried by Mouser so that's good news too.  I've always thought the TI / ChipCon solutions are technically good but their documentation is very dense and seems a bit harder to get started.

Would appreciate your thoughts and feedback.

[awallin]

ruuvitag might use nordic? they should have kicad-sources and firmware available as open-source projects?
https://github.com/ruuvi

[ElektroHS]

I'm used Nordic nRF52832 for home automatisation devices.
You should look at the final cost of products too.
As for me - Silabs looks more expensive in comparison to Nordic.
I use Nordic development board nRF52 for devices based on nRF52832. They have full stack of SDK and it works nice imho.

So Nordic is good choice imho.
Nordic has good forum. While Silabs has good cases/classes. 


It's a pity I didn't use Silabs before. Now I have similar question re zigbee controllers and going to try both devices in practice in case of I don't receive any feedback. It's pity Silabs based devices will cost a bit more in my calculation. 

[Evan.Cornell]

I am using Nordic nRF52832 as well for commercial product; I haven't had any issues, and the support via direct email and forums has been great. Inventory is getting a little difficult these days, but that probably goes for most IC vendors.

[rsjsouza]

I've always thought the TI / ChipCon solutions are technically good but their documentation is very dense and seems a bit harder to get started.

I am familiar with the TI stuff - did you look at their SimpleLink Academy? It has some thorough step by step guide to get familiarized with their software.
https://dev.ti.com/tirex/explore/node?node=AHjJ8SNDuLXt3h6qHE4-OA__pTTHBmu__LATEST

HID and Serial are not on their latest SDK, but they have a github with these examples and I was able to port them to the newest versions.
 https://github.com/ti-simplelink/ble_examples

[nali]

No experience of SiLabs or TI but I developed a couple of BLE prototypes from scratch using nRF52382 as a newbie to the platform. General experience was pretty good I'd say, online support was pretty good as long as you don't ask dickhead questions although you do sometimes get a technician who can't go much beyond "please look at xxxxx example code".

The SDK examples cover most bases although the actual reference documentation is nothing more than a Doxygen report. My only niggle was they updated their HAL (nRF to nRFx) a while ago and the code samples were a bit of a mishmash between the two. This was a year or two so ago mind so things might've changed since.

[ElektroHS]

Now Nordic has "new" chip nRF5340 that I'm thinking to try as well

[lucazader]

We have used the nRF52 series at work. they arent too bad.

However we also use the ESP32. Especially with the newest module from them available for $2.5.
If we were to go back and re do the development of the product that uses the nRF, we would have used the esp32
If you dont need to be super low power (we have found around 5-10mA with BLE advertising) then this is the better option. Has BLE, Standard BT, as well as wifi.

[ElektroHS]

We have used the nRF52 series at work. they arent too bad.

However we also use the ESP32. Especially with the newest module from them available for $2.5.
If we were to go back and re do the development of the product that uses the nRF, we would have used the esp32
If you dont need to be super low power (we have found around 5-10mA with BLE advertising) then this is the better option. Has BLE, Standard BT, as well as wifi.

eps32 isn't battery friendly... if you can connect to some power, then it can be good choice... it's very depend on tasks

[SiliconWizard]

You usually use BLE for low-power devices, so if you specifically look for a BLE device, the ESP32 is IMHO a dead-end. Now of course it's very versatile, so interesting if you don't care about power consumption. But if you don't, why care for BLE? Also, BLE profiles are typically meant for "infrequent" data exchange, not for continuous streaming, like classic Bluetooth. So the choice depends entirely on your use case.

[nali]

There is a LE Audio now for streaming over BLE. Not used it though and I don't know how fit for purpose it is.