Cost of chip with multiple bluetooth connections

[Caspar]

Hi,

We are a group of students at NTNU looking at the possibility of creating a small device that connects to your phone and multiple other BT devices simultaneously, letting your phone control them and push data streams through an app. Unfortunately, we have no experience working with bluetooth or designing electronics, so we are wondering what the necessary hardware and assembly would be and what it would cost. Any help or rough price estimate would be greatly appreciated.

[endnode]

If you buy nRF52 DK for $40 you are basically set to go. Indeed if you want something more production ready (e.g. with casing etc.) and/or in volume you can get something in 2-20 USD (EUR) range as well, all depends on many factors. But probably the most important question is: are BLE (and then Nordic based BLE) chips/boards the best fit for your application? Hard to say from your poor description;)

Once you give us some more hints we might even link some off-the-shelf beacons/boards which will suite your project (might cost few bucks more then if you would be a company designing and manufacturing them but it will save you big initial investments and 6-24 months of development/testing/certification). There are many examples linked on Nordic main website (all nRF51/52 modules and ready-made "beacons"), you can also have many hits just by searching on Aliexpress or similar site. And finally note that Nordic products are only one of leading options, there is some competition out there... (although people here believe that nRF5x chips are the way to go for BLE/ANT/Thread applications;)