Thingy:53 – Multisensor Firmware Development, USB CDC Issue and AIDA PUSH Project

Question

Hello Nordic Semiconductor Support Team, 
 My name is Marius, and I am the founder of AIDA AS, a Norwegian engineering company working with industrial engineering, HVAC systems, offshore installations and technology development. 
 We are currently developing AIDA PUSH, Predict the Failure. Prevent the Cost. AIDA PUSH is intended to become an industrial condition-monitoring and predictive-maintenance platform. 
 Our objective is to develop a compact, intelligent sensor system capable of continuously monitoring industrial equipment, identifying abnormal operating conditions and detecting potential failures before they result in equipment damage or unplanned downtime. 
 Typical applications include:

Electric motors, pumps and fans

Gearboxes and rotating machinery

Bearings and mechanical components

Valves and actuators

Engine blocks and powertrain components

Offshore and industrial HVAC equipment

We have selected the Nordic Thingy:53 (nRF5340) as our initial development platform because of its integrated sensors, processing capabilities, Bluetooth connectivity and support for Zephyr RTOS. 
 Our immediate objective is to develop a single firmware application that can operate all, or as many as practically possible, of the Thingy:53's onboard sensors simultaneously. 
 We are particularly interested in:

BMI270: Accelerometer and gyroscope

ADXL362: Low-power accelerometer

BMM150: Magnetometer

BME680: Temperature, humidity, pressure and gas resistance

BH1749: Light and color sensor

PDM microphone: Acoustic measurements and analysis

Bluetooth LE: Wireless communication

USB CDC ACM: Communication, diagnostics and data streaming

External flash: Local data storage

The firmware should support concurrent sensor acquisition with configurable sampling rates, timestamps and buffered data processing. Our intention is to combine multiple measurements to identify changes in equipment condition. For example, a motor could be monitored through vibration, acoustic measurements and temperature trends simultaneously. We also intend to implement:

FFT and vibration frequency analysis

RMS calculations

Sensor fusion

Baseline measurements and trend analysis

Anomaly detection

Local processing and wireless transmission

In a later development phase, each physical PUSH device will be associated with a specific asset and component, such as a motor, gearbox, bearing or valve. This will allow us to maintain individual equipment histories and develop asset-specific condition-monitoring algorithms. 
 Our current setup is: 
 Hardware

Nordic Thingy:53

nRF5340 application processor

USB connection to a Windows development PC

Software

nRF Connect SDK v3.4.1

Zephyr RTOS

Visual Studio Code with Nordic extensions

West build system

MCUboot / sysbuild

nRF Connect for Desktop Programmer v4.8.0

We are experiencing difficulties getting our custom application to start and communicate after flashing. The following steps have been verified:

The application builds successfully without compilation errors.

The Thingy:53 is recognized by Windows when started in MCUboot DFU mode.

nRF Connect Programmer detects the device.

The generated DFU package is accepted by Programmer.

Firmware transfer completes successfully.

The Programmer reports: 
 "MCUboot DFU completed successfully!" 
 However, after disconnecting and reconnecting the device in normal operating mode:

The device does not appear as a USB CDC ACM COM port.

Windows does not detect an expected USB device.

We receive no serial output.

We cannot confirm whether our application is executing.

No visible LED indication confirms application startup.

We have enabled the following configuration options: 
 CONFIG_I2C=y
CONFIG_SENSOR=y
CONFIG_BMI270=y

CONFIG_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_PRINTK=y
CONFIG_STDOUT_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_SERIAL=y
CONFIG_BOARD_SERIAL_BACKEND_CDC_ACM=y

CONFIG_LOG=y
CONFIG_LOG_DEFAULT_LEVEL=4 
 We have also added an early startup message in main() : 
 printk("AIDA PUSH: MAIN STARTED
"); 
 However, we cannot observe this message because USB communication is not established during normal operation. 
 At this stage, we do not know whether the problem is related to:

MCUboot image compatibility or activation

USB CDC ACM configuration

Devicetree configuration

Application initialization

Sensor driver initialization

Incorrect build or flashing configuration

We would appreciate guidance on the recommended configuration and debugging procedure for this hardware. 
 Questions 
 Does enyone have an existing reference application, demonstration project or GitHub repository that supports simultaneous operation of all or most Thingy:53 sensors? We are specifically looking for a working application with source code that we can use as a foundation for further development. 
 What is the recommended approach for concurrent acquisition from multiple Thingy:53 sensors using Zephyr RTOS? Would Nordic recommend separate threads, asynchronous sensor APIs, message queues or another architecture? 
 Is there a known working configuration for USB CDC ACM on Thingy:53 using nRF Connect SDK v3.4.1 and MCUboot? Are there specific board configurations, overlays or bootloader considerations we should be aware of? 
 Could you advise how to verify that our generated firmware image is compatible with the MCUboot version installed on the device, and how to confirm that the application has actually started after DFU? 
 Are there recommended Nordic or Zephyr libraries for implementing FFT, RMS calculations and real-time vibration analysis on the nRF5340? 
 Are there any existing Nordic reference projects combining multiple sensors, Bluetooth LE, USB communication and local data logging? 
 Our long-term intention is to develop AIDA PUSH into a scalable industrial monitoring platform. The Thingy:53 is our initial prototype and software development platform. As the project matures, we intend to develop custom hardware using Nordic Semicondssible. Any guidance, example projects or recommendations from you would be greatly appreciated. 
 Thank you for your time and support. 
 Best regards, 
 Marius Founder / CEO AIDA AS Norway 
 AIDA PUSH – Predict the Failure. Prevent the Cost.