Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense with Headers

The Nano 33 BLE Sense (with headers) is Arduino’s 3.3V AI-enabled board in the smallest available form factor: 45x18mm!

The Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense is a completely new board on a well-known form factor. It comes with a series of embedded sensors:

• 9-axis inertial sensor: making this board ideal for wearable devices
• A humidity, and temperature sensor: to get highly accurate measurements of the environmental conditions
• Barometric sensor: you could make a simple weather station
• Microphone: to capture and analyse sound in real time
• Gesture, proximity, light color and light intensity sensor : estimate the room’s luminosity, but also whether someone is moving close to the board

The Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense is an evolution of the traditional Arduino Nano, featuring a much more powerful processor, the nRF52840 from Nordic Semiconductors, a 32-bit ARM® Cortex™-M4 CPU running at 64 MHz. This will allow you to make larger programs than with the Arduino Uno (it has 1MB of program memory, 32 times larger!), and with a lot more variables (the RAM is 128 times larger). The main processor includes other amazing features like Bluetooth® pairing via NFC and ultra-low power consumption modes.

Embedded Artificial Intelligence

The main feature of this board, besides the impressive selection of sensors, is the possibility of running Edge Computing applications (AI) on it using TinyML. You can create your machine learning models using TensorFlow™ Lite and upload them to your board using the Arduino IDE.

Arduino’s developer Sandeep Mistry and Arduino’s advisor Dominic Pajak have prepared an introductory tutorial to AI on the Nano 33 BLE Sense, but also a more advanced guide on color detection.

An Improved Arduino Nano

If you used Arduino Nano in your projects in the past, the Nano 33 BLE Sense is a pin-equivalent substitute. Your code will still work, but remember, it operates at 3.3V. This means that you need to revise your original design in case it is not 3.3V compatible. Besides that, the main differences to the classic Nano are: a better processor, a micro-USB connector, and all of the sensors mentioned above.

You can get the board with or without headers, what will allow you embedding the Nano inside any kind of inventions, including wearables. The board comes with tessellated connectors and no components on the B-side. These features allow you to solder the board directly onto your own design, minimizing the height of your whole prototype.

Oh, and did we mention the improved price? Thanks to a revised manufacturing process, the Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense is really cost efficient … what are you waiting for? Upgrade now!

Bluetooth® and BLE

The communications chipset on the Nano 33 BLE Sense can be both a BLE and Bluetooth® client and host device. Something pretty unique in the world of microcontroller platforms. If you want to see how easy it is to create a Bluetooth® central or a peripheral device, explore the examples at our ArduinoBLE library.

Getting Started

The Getting Started section contains all the information you need to configure your board, use the Arduino Software (IDE), and start tinkering with coding and electronics.

Batteries, Pins and board LEDs

• Batteries: the Nano 33 BLE Sense has no battery connector, nor charger. You can connect any external battery of your liking as long as you respect the voltage limits of the board.
• Vin: This pin can be used to power the board with a DC voltage source. If the power is fed through this pin, the USB power source is disconnected. This pin is an INPUT. Respect the voltage limits to assure the proper functionality of the board.
• 5V: This pin outputs 5V from the board when powered from the USB connector or from the VIN pin of the board. Note: for it to work, you need to short the VBUS jumper on the back of the board.
• 3.3V: This pin outputs 3.3V through the on-board voltage regulator. Note: for ultra low-power functionality, you should cut the 3V3 jumper on the back of the board, and use an external battery at 3V3.
• LED ON: This LED is connected to the 5V input from either USB or VIN.
• I2C pins: As opposed to other Arduino Nano boards, pins A4 and A5 have an internal pull up and default to be used as an I2C Bus so usage as analog inputs is not recommended.
• NFC: There is the possibility of attaching an external NFC antenna between pins D7 and D8 to activate Bluetooth® pairing of the board over NFC.
• The HTS221 humidity and temperature sensor: Due to self-heating, when the board is powered by USB, the HTS221 becomes unreliable and shows an offset in each reading that changes with the external temperature. To obtain reliable measurements, the board shall be powered by the 3v3 pin, this could be done by cutting the +3V3 solder jumper on the bottom and powering the board through the VIN pin.

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