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nRF52840 mini Dongle

Hi,

 

For a running project I would like to have a nRF52840 based mini dongle (Logitech Unifying formfactor).

I found some parties who sell nRF52840 dongles but thy are to large.

Is there anybody who found a manufacturer selling this kind of mini dongles?

A second option could be to develop a mini dongle myself. Especially with the new WLCSP package it is not that difficult to design a dongle with a small formfactor. The only problem is the prize level of the dongle is to high for my project (or the volume is to low to reach a healthy prize level).

My second question is. Are the people here who have the same need for a small dongle, and are interested in collaborating to design and produce a mini nRF840 based universal dongle?

Mabey Nordic itself is also interested in collaborating in this idea?

I really think a nRF52840 based dongle could be very useful in many applications as it can handle multiple protocols in one device.

Please let me know your thoughts and who knows.

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  • Hi Andreas,

    Thanks for your reply. 

    And Yes, I know about your dongle. In fact, I own a few of them.

    I do like them and thy are great for firmware development. However, for my end customer its way to big. I really need a nice small dongle used in an office environment.

  • Hi

    We had the same discussion internally recently. The dongle from Nordic is a great option if its ok to have a PCB in you hands. For developping purpose it is fine but for customers?

     For customers we prefer dongles with a housing. We found the following usb dongles with an nRF52840 in it (I hope its allowed to name products from other companies):

    1)          Raytac MDBT50Q-RX

    2)          Fanstel USB840F

    3)          Fanstel USB840M

    Please note that the Fanstel dongles have no 32kHz crystal. You should also consider how you will initially program or update these dongles. As far as i know they all come with a bootloader preinstalled.

    If anyone has more dongles I would be interessted to know.

    Regards Adrian

  • Thanks, I checked out the dongles. But they are still quite large.

    I did find and buy some nRF52840 dongles from a Chinese company Holyiot (via Alibaba). But thy are also to big.

    I did some design myself and even with the nRF52840 in a QFN73 enclosure its possible to create a dongle smaller than 20mm (like the Logitech dongle). And now with the WLCSP package this should be even easier to accomplish. So, I was hoping this small dongle was already on the marked.

    The problem with building a small dongle our self is the mechanical tooling cost. And the volume needed by my customer is simply not large enough to cover for that cost.

  • Fanstel USB840M
    they are still quite large

    The  Fanstel USB840M is 26 x 15 x 6 mm

    So what is your maximum acceptable size?

    consider how you will initially program or update these dongles

    at least one of the Fanstel ones has pads for a TagConnect ...

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