Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault
41 comments
·June 24, 2025SOLAR_FIELDS
Nordic makes some good products. When I was doing hardware design for a product that uses a battery my options for power profiling were either not to do it or spend some eye watering amount of money. Then I discovered Nordic makes the PPKII, a cost effective, highly accurate profiler with quite good software. I detect good things in store for the company just based on the quality of stuff they have been putting out.
blutack
The TinyCurrent or uCurrent can be used for this as well when paired with a scope with scpi. However, the ranges aren't dynamic which is annoying if you're using something a WiFi part where you're going from uA to 200mA.
https://n-fuse.co/devices/tinyCurrent-precision-low-Current-...
readmodifywrite
The PPK2 is one of the best pieces of kit I have and it'd be worth it at 5x the price.
There's an unofficial Python library as well. I have power consumption tests running as part of my automated firmware test suite.
cushychicken
Love that most of the comments here are love for PPKII
Strong agree with all those comments - it’s a great little tool at a great price!
null
Neywiny
Looks like it switches different ranges. ST makes something similar that has similar dynamic range without switching. They use analog circuitry (op amps and junk) to compensate for the resistor drop, so the path is uninterrupted. I've had systems where the auto-ranging on a bench meter is enough to cause it to reset. I can't find a schematic for the PPKII (haven't looked too hard though) but if it's actually switching the supply, that can cause issues to devices downstream. Especially if that switching causes a voltage drop change.
readmodifywrite
It switches the detection range, but not the actual power supply. You can ramp from <5 uA up to 500 mA and back all you want. I haven't noticed any glitching on the actual supply.
Schematics: https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Development-hardware/Pow...
dragontamer
With the onset of cheap 16-bit, 18-bit or even 24-bit sigma delta ADCs, it isn't a very hard circuit to shove a 1 Ohm sense resistor, 2.048V reference and have sensing down to 31uA (16-bit), 8uA (18-bit) or less for 24-bit ADC.
SigmaDelta gets pricy if you want higher speeds though. But it's possible.
ranma42
I have the ST one (X-NUCLEO-LPM01A), but its range is actually not enough for something like an ESP32, it goes into "overload" as the max current is 50mA for dynamic (100kHz bandwith) and 200mA for "static" measurements.
Looks like the PPKII can do up to 1A.
monegator
> Nordic makes some good products
and godawful software. the SDK for their NRF52/3/4 is pure madness, i haven't even managed to set up the toolchain, documentation always out of date. They used to have another toolchain for the older parts, but good luck setting it up now.
blutack
I'm sorry you've had a bad experience but I don't agree, I prefer it to the ST, TI and definitely the Microchip tooling. It's CLI first, like the Espressif and Pico tooling which is a big plus for some and not for others.
Also, no mandatory login walls for toolchains and datasheets gets them a lot of goodwill in my book.
monegator
I'm proficient with many MCU families.
Microchip tooling: download, double click, install, just works. Zero need for any framework, good bare metal support. a C project is an actual C project. Granted, if you use that MCC piece of shit you're in for a bad time, but going bare metal require zero effort, a single include file if you need to access peripherals, and you actually have documentation to do so.
ST tooling: sort of almost just works, more effort but you can still go bare metal with relative ease.
Current nordic: it's actually a zephir project, thousands of files to generate and compile. No options to go bare metal. (used to be possible with the older SDK, or so they tell me. Too bad i can't seem to be able to let a project compile with the old SDK, or set up the IDE for intellisense with the new SDK, but i haven't had enough time yet.)
Bonus: Espressif. At least their VSCode integration really just works. The peripherals are frustrating and severely bugged though and there can be supply chain issues, and that's the reason i'm looking at nordic for some BLE-enabled project, because the ESP32 parts won't cut it for this or that reason (usually the basic yet still bugged peripherals).
But i'm willing to put up with microchip's BLE modules again (i evaluated them several times over the years, always a disaster. But not the newer based on PIC32MZ, and the price have come down to be reasonable.) if the only option with nordic is the zephir monstruosity.
5ADBEEF
I don’t think most have this experience. Zephyr is the future.
joezydeco
I've had bad experiences with Zephyr in the past. It's been half-baked and passed around from company to company for ages.
Be Linux or don't be Linux, but don't be halfway between the two.
I have a lot more hope for PX5.
flyingcircus3
Segger Embedded Studio is a complete solution. One installer. You might need to pick an older version to go with an old SDK version, but its very straightforward.
mystified5016
I spent so much time trying to get the SDK working for NRF52 that I genuinely just gave up and redesigned our whole product to use an ESP32 instead of the NRF plus other uC.
I think that is genuinely the reason espressif is eating everyone's lunch. All the old players in the IC business have such inexcusably bad SDKs that the acceptably designed and documented ESP-IDF framework just makes the most sense to use. Why would I spend six weeks fighting with Nordic SDKs with their weird system-wide installation when ESP-IDF can be set up in five minutes isolated to your user directory?
Seriously, it takes longer to find the correct Nordic SDK installer than it does to git clone, idf.py install, ./export.sh
And Nordic's weird documentation web portal is just egregiously bad. Espressif puts it in a static HTML page with a selector for the framework version. It's simple, elegant, and fast.
I did like using the NRF52 once it was finally behaving, but the ESP is just so easy.
vbezhenar
I've found old SDK actually not that bad. Documentation is not great, but sources are available and it's just mostly C code with some hairy macros, but it's manageable. After few weeks I became quite proficient. I don't like their suggested approach "copy&paste example you like and tinker it", I never do that, so I had to untangle their Makefiles, I had to research their defines (app_config.h, what's a monstrosity), I had to write my own linker scripts, but in the end I have my application under control and it's all standard gcc toolchain, no fancy stuff.
phoronixrly
Do they have nice open-source SDKs for these nice products?
vbezhenar
I'm working with NRF5 SDK. Most of its source is available (no idea if it's free software or not, but sources are there). The most glaring exception is softdevice - that's BLE implementation, it's huge binary blob, taking control over most CPU.
Their newer SDK based on Zephyr RTOS, I didn't work with it, but I think it's mostly open source as well.
Avamander
You can use NimBLE on quite a few of these chips.
fra
It's all on Github (https://github.com/nordicsemiconductor), but it is not technically open source as it is a modified BSD that does not let you use the SDKs with other chipsets.
billforsternz
> Throughout the product lifecycle, continuous software upgrades strengthen the security, performance, power consumption, and functionality of products in the field.
This doesn't feel right to me. Back in the day when I started in embedded systems you would have to get it right before you shipped it. That had it's own problems of course, but at least you knew where you stood and if something worked well it would continue to work well until the hardware died.
Also I think the right word grammatically is continual not continuous. I suspect they changed it because continual software upgrades sounds terrifying.
fra
In hindsight I think the correct word would be "regular software upgrades".
pedalpete
This is great news. We are implementing memfault, probably in September/October period, but were struggling with the pricing model for long-term growth.
I'm assuming Nordic gives the company the support and reach their mission and discover a more workable business model.
fra
Hi Pete -- email me (francois at) and I'll get you early enrolled into the special deals we have coming for Nordic customers.
jacknews
"allows customers to focus on innovation – free from the burden"
Sounds great, but does it actually mean lock-in, in reality?
fra
Every vendor you bring in comes with switching cost, and this is no different. But we do our best to make it easy for folks to migrate off of our platform should they decide.
ffhsotsifacjafi
[flagged]
I'm the co-founder and CEO of Memfault. We were in the W19 YC batch. I never thought our news would make the front page of HN!
This is a very exciting day for us (after a very intense few months). We've known the Nordic team for years and could not think of a better partner to grow our platform.
Happy to answer questions, if you have them.