Free Webinar Series that covers building with the nRF52840, Zephyr, KiCad, and Golioth’s new Bluetooth capabilities
Have you ever wanted to build your own Apple AirTag? What about seeing how they work under the hood? Join us for a free webinar series where we walk through how to design and prototype a small, Bluetooth-enabled sensor device using Zephyr RTOS and the nRF52840. Our first webinar in the series will start this Friday, April 11th. You can sign up at the bottom of this post.
Small electronics, big ideas
In our first session, we’ll cover the technical foundation for building your own AirTag-style tracker—from the ground up. We first analyze the capabilities of the Apple Airtag and see what we can pull into something that is a similar form factor. The target is to use the nRF52840, a versatile BLE-capable SoC that’s great for low-power devices, and Zephyr, a modern embedded RTOS that makes it easier than ever to bring smart features to tiny hardware. Next we develop the constraints for this project and start walking down the path of designing, building, and programming a device. This is an even more supercharged device thanks to Golioth’s new Bluetooth-to-Cloud capabilities.
Topics we’ll explore:
- How the AirTag works and what’s under the hood
- Finding parts that match functionality
- Thinking through device programming using Zephyr / nRF Connect SDK
In future sessions, we’ll cover:
- Form factor design considerations (small is the goal!)
- How to do layout for small devices on low cost PCB processes
- Writing code in Zephyr with Golioth’s new Bluetooth SDK
- Power optimization for long battery life
- Privacy, security, and real-world tracking features
More than a tracker: a sensor playground
This first webinar is the start of a bigger journey. We’re not just cloning features—we’re learning how to take control of our own designs and make devices that work the way we want. Whether you’re making a pet tracker, a lost-item finder, or just tinkering with BLE, this will be a practical and fun place to start. The range of device capabilities and the small form factor will allow us to place sensors in a variety of locations and still capture sensor data through a gateway.
We’ll continue to develop for Zephyr, one of our favorite ecosystems and RTOSes. It offers a powerful, scalable development environment with built-in Bluetooth support, ideal for low-power applications. Combined with the nRF52840’s excellent BLE performance and hardware flexibility, it’s a great stack for prototyping and building your own custom trackers—no proprietary ecosystem required.
Webinar Details
The first session of this webinar series is coming up this week
- Friday April 11th @ 1:30 pm EDT
- Sign up below to join the list and get links to this and future webinars.
- Yes, it will be recorded! We will send the recording to everyone who signs up.
This is the first of a series on building tiny devices that punch above their weight. Join us, bring your questions, and let’s explore the world of small, smart tech together.
Where do I sign up? I don’t see a link! Thanks for doing this, I’ve been meaning to dive deeper into how AirTags work for a while now!
There’s a signup at the bottom of the blog post, it looks like this (for my test user viewing)
If you don’t see it, you might have a script blocker on?
Here is a direct link to the signup form.
Thanks a lot! Turns out the problem was Firefox. I opened the site with Chrome and the form was there