Arduino has announced a neat little upgrade for most of its u-blox NINA-W102 boards, including the Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 and Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect: the ability to use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) simultaneously, rather than having to choose betwixt the two.
“Until recently, on boards using the NINA-W102 module, you had to choose between Wi-Fi or Bluetooth LE for connectivity,” Arduino explains of the change, announced during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week. “This was due to hardware limitations that required shared communication interfaces for both functionalities, and the firmware implementation couldn’t support concurrent usage. With the latest updates, this limitation is gone – everything now works seamlessly together.”
Arduino has announced a firmware update for most, but not all, of its NINA-W102-equipped boards to enable simultaneous Wi-Fi and BLE. (📷: Arduino)
The change is software-only, applying to all revisions of u-blox NINA-W102 boards with no hardware modifications at all. All users have to do is make sure they’re running the NINA-W102 firmware version 3.0.1 or newer, and that they’re using the WiFiNINA and ArduinoBLE libraries version 2.0.0 in their programs.
The new firmware is compatible with the Arduino MKR WiFi 1010, Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect, and Arduino Nano 33 IoT — but, sadly, does not extend to the Arduino UNO Wi-Fi Rev2, which uses the same NINA-W102 module. “[The Arduino UNO Wi-Fi Rev 2] cannot run Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LE together in the same sketch due to limited memory,” the Arduino team explains. “You can still use both features, just not at the same time. Make sure to install the latest updates for this board too, to ensure full compatibility and avoid issues.”
The new firmware and library versions are now live in the Arduino IDE; the Arduino blog has additional details, alongside a sample sketch demonstrating simultaneous Wi-Fi and BLE use.
