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There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit

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Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit

#131
post #67

I wonder why they didn’t use NFC. They could get away with a much simpler chip, or even a fully analog solution if they didn’t need the complexity of Bluetooth. Seems like you could just about accomplish the same thing with a pair of NFC tokens, a photodiode, and some transistors. Basic components. Connect one of the two NFC chips to the coil depending on how much light is reflected off the test strip. When you scann…

Not all phones have NFC, especially cheap Android ones like Xiaomi, but every single one has Bluetooth.

Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit

#132

As a European: why are there chips in this? I just broke open mine and it looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/muz7FIy I bought 50 of these 2 weeks ago. Were 3-4 euro a piece.

Personal data collection, probably. I cant imagine it is for the user's benefit that it uses bluetooth and requires an app, but it does let them hoover up your contact details and infection status. This probably sells > cost of the electronics.

Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC Nordic has a M0 version with bluetooth radio--the BBC micro:bit and a few other maker boards used it. But perhaps it's not really available in cheap quantities anymore and a way overpowered M4 is what they got.

Yeah, those are the nrf51x line, this is the nrf52x line. It seems from the outside at least that Nordic is pushing the nrf52x hard even in price conscious designs. Even the micro::bit was respun for a v2 with a nrf52x also (including it's M4). Albeit I don't have much direct data on that.

Yes, the 51 is really old by now. The 52 line extends down as far as the tiny nRF52805.

The 51822 is not nearly as fun to work with as the 52s, e.g. current Apache Mynewt with NimBLE doesn't even fit into the 51's tiny flash, the 51 doesn't have systick, and so on.

Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit

#134

As a European: why are there chips in this? I just broke open mine and it looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/muz7FIy I bought 50 of these 2 weeks ago. Were 3-4 euro a piece.

I'm wondering if they're subsidized, but the price in Germany at the supermarket hovers around 1€ each. I was really surprised to hear that these are not a thing in the US, any idea why?

Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any chance I can reuse one of these boards given that I have a few of these test kits? Or are the tools so bad that it's not worth it?

An nRF52 dev kit is like $30. It’s probably not worth the time and aggravation to try to repurpose one of these COVID tests unless you’re really determined. Nordic is one of the better vendors - their tools and docs aren’t too bad.

You also do not have to use their tools. Use Rust with nrf-rs, or Apache Mynewt (with a fully open source BLE stack), or libopencm3, or…

Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit

#136
post #98

US paid $230M to have this device built. https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/02/01/us-231m-deal-ellume-at...

They paid $230 million for 8.1 million devices and the building of a US based manufacturing facility capable of producing 19 million devices a month.

Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit

#137
post #4

I worked at a company that was using these chips to control doors. They're extremely cheap chips, but writing code for them is not pleasant. Documentation is lacking and the tools people use to write code for it suck. Props to the devs who helped put this together.

nRF52s are definitely not extremely cheap, they're high-quality fully-documented dev-friendly chips with lots of onboard resources. If you want cheapest BLE, there's some utter crap from Dialog Semiconductor that comes with a proprietary SDK in ROM and one-time programmable (!!) memory for the application (external flash can be used in development).

And you DO NOT have to use the Nordic SDK, there are lots of better and fully FOSS options — Apache Mynewt, libopencm3, Rust nrf-rs…

Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the argument (which to be clear, I don't agree with) is that there isn't a big federal database of vaccinations. Now mind you, if people understood how the EU QR codes work (public/private key), they'd realize this wasn't an issue, but if people are staunchly anti-vax / anti-science, this is probably a big ask...

But also, just to be clear: This doesn't prevent "forgeries" from circulating. Those aren't home-made, but you can just copy a QR code from someone else. And next-to-noone is checking the ID (which in theory would be required to close that point). And even if the ID were to be checked, all you need to find is one doctor or pharmacist, that is willing to misread your yellow book (WHO vaccination booklet). I'd still sa…

> And next-to-noone is checking the ID (which in theory would be required to close that point)

In Germany, stores and restaurants do check the ID now as well as actually scan the certificate - it took a couple of weeks and a bunch of fines being handed out, though.

> And even if the ID were to be checked, all you need to find is one doctor or pharmacist, that is willing to misread your yellow book (WHO vaccination booklet).

The amount of doctors or pharmacists willing to risk their license and imprisonment is thankfully extremely low - the overwhelming majority follows the rules and calls the police upon discovery of fake WHO booklet entries (see e.g. https://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/rheinland/gefaelschte-Impfau...).

> I'd still say: There isn't much use in the proofing system. Just do vaccinations Israel-style. I.e. have the option to get vaccinated literally everywhere and without our "but you need an appointment" and "but your last dose needs to be 6 month ago" (the latter is getting better).

The Israel-style vaccination system is clearly better than what is available in most Western countries, but it relies on a population that sees getting vaccinated and protecting themselves as a patriotic duty (with the notable exception of the Ultra-orthodox Jews). Offering easy access to vaccinations doesn't help against widespread propaganda or, as we see in Germany, myths of "vaccination dictatorship", "mind control" and other similar bollocks.

Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Wouldn't surprise me if the amount of waste an ICU unit creates were literally 100x to 1000x the waste of a person not needing that care

There was a viral tweet a couple weeks ago that showed just how much medicine was required to keep one person alive for a single day (https://twitter.com/drfrocester/status/1456668662744633349).

No idea if it is realistic though, that fentanyl pile on the left looks like you could tranquilize a herd of elephants with it.

Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit

#140
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Documentation is lacking and the tools people use to write code for it suck. Okay, I'm going to ask "Compared to whom?" Nordic has been one of the better BLE chip manufacturers in terms of documentation, in my experience. Most places use Keil tools directly from ARM. So, if programming these sucks, so does programming most embedded Cortex M4 chips. (No argument. Keil sucks. However, that doesn't mean that Nordic su…

Say what you will about the hardware, but ESP-IDF is the gold standard for me now

ehh… It is pretty easy to use but there's way too much bundled stuff in there, you're always under FreeRTOS, and Wi-Fi support is all proprietary blobs (but that's unfortunately the case with every embedded Wi-Fi chip… unlike Bluetooth LE with has multiple fully FOSS implementations)
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