Smart door lock enables users to monitor doors via smartphone

Ultra low power (ULP) RF specialist Nordic Semiconductor has announced that Samsung SDS, a Seoul-based subsidiary of multinational corporation Samsung, has used Nordic’s award-winning nRF52832 Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) System-on-Chip (SoC) in its ‘SHP-DP930 Smart Doorlock’.

Smart door locks are emerging as a popular product category in the burgeoning Asian smarthome sector. China in particular is driving market growth with the country investing more than $150bn to build a world leading home automation sector.

The ‘push-pull’ smart door lock is the latest offering in Samsung SDS’ smart door lock range for the Asia and Oceania regions. The lock is a full-body mortice unit that can be retrofitted to any existing door, enabling the user to instantly gain access to their home or office without the need to carry door keys. The door lock can be activated from the user’s Bluetooth 4.0 (and later) smartphone using Bluetooth LE wireless connectivity powered by the Nordic SoC, or alternatively provides fingerprint, PIN, and RFID proximity card access options. Mechanical override keys are also supplied.

When a registered user approaches the door, they can unlock it by simply touching the door button on Samsung SDS’ iOS or Android partner app. In addition, the ‘sHome Doorlock’ app enables the owner to view ‘in and out’ activity records for their home or office, and receive push notifications in the event of low batteries or whenever the lock is successfully accessed. This, for example, enables a parent at work to see when their children arrive home safely from school.

Nordic’s nRF52832 multiprotocol Bluetooth LE SoC, combines an 64MHz, 32-bit Arm Cortex M4F processor with a 2.4GHz multiprotocol radio (supporting Bluetooth 5, ANT, and proprietary 2.4GHz RF software) featuring -96dB RX sensitivity, with 512kB Flash memory and 64kB RAM. The SoC delivers up to 60% more generic processing power, offering ten times the Floating Point performance and twice the DSP performance compared to competing solutions.

The SoC is supplied with the S132 SoftDevice for advanced Bluetooth LE applications. The S132 SoftDevice offers Central, Peripheral, Broadcaster and Observer Bluetooth LE roles, supports up to twenty connections, and enables concurrent role operation.

The SHP-DP930 Smart Doorlock is powered by eight AA batteries that provide over 12 months standard operation between replacement, thanks in part to the nRF52832 SoC’s low power requirements. The SoC has been engineered to minimize power consumption with features such as the 2.4GHz radio’s 5.5mA peak RX/TX currents and a fully-automatic power management system that reduces power consumption by up to 80% compared with Nordic’s nRF51 Series SoCs.

“Battery life was one of the most important factors we considered in our selection of the wireless chip,” said Joonho Moon, Group Leader of Business Planning Group, Home IoT team, Samsung SDS. “Nordic’s nRF52832 SoC not only proved itself to be the best performing solution for power consumption, it also offered the most up-to-date and stable RF protocol software.”

The nRF52832 SoC features a software architecture which separates application code from the RF protocol software (“stack”) eliminating any dependencies between the two as well as the risk of corrupting the stack during application development. It also supports over-the-air device firmware updates (OTA-DFU), using secure signatures to authenticate such that only updates coming from a verified and trusted source can be made on a given device. The SoC’s Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) offers strong protection, while the Arm processor and ample Flash and RAM can simultaneously manage the demands of AES and processor-intensive applications.

For additional security, the nRF52832 SoC offers an on-chip NFC-A tag, enabling out-of-band (OOB) pairing and simplifying the process of secure pairing between two Bluetooth devices by exchanging authentication information over an NFC link.

Moon continued: “In addition to the Nordic SoC’s hardware benefits, access to many software examples made development both easy and stable. Technical support was also extremely valuable, both on-site and through the very active online Devzone community.”

Geir Langeland, Nordic Semiconductor’s Director of Sales & Marketing, added: “Samsung is a universally known and trusted brand. It’s therefore appropriate that Samsung SDS is taking a leadership position in the smart home security sector with the launch of its new smart door lock. The SHP-DP930 Smart Doorlock cleverly takes advantage of the nRF52832 SoC’s proven hardware and robust and secure Bluetooth LE stack to deliver a compelling solution for an Asian consumer base eager to implement smart home solutions.”

The SHP-DP930 Smart Doorlock is now available throughout Asia and Oceania.