FYI: a developer has begun porting ESPHome to nRF52 platform as custom platforms (which in turn will allow support for nRF52840 as a core platform)

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FYI; tomaszduda23, an independent developer is working on developing an initial port of ESPHome for nRF5 platform on Zephyr RTOS for nRF52 SoC series based nRF52840 SoC from Nordic Semiconductor (and in theory it should also lay the ground work for the newer nRF54 SoC series):

Summery for those unfamiliar with Nordic Semiconductor and their lines of microcontroller chips; Nordic Semi is a 40+ year-old company that has been making their ARM-based nRF5 family of ultra-low-power wireless MCU SoCs (nRF51, nRF52, and nRF53 series) since 2012 and those have become very popular among developers/manufacturers that make battery-powered devices, especially those requiring ultra low-power wireless communication on the 2.4 GHz ISM bands, like Bluetooth, Thread, and Zigbee. Nordic Semi also makes Wi-Fi SoCs but then we are no longer talking about ultra low-power devices.

Note that I have nothing to do with this project myself, I just stumbled in this project and wanted to spread this news because I got exited by the potential of this could not only bring more developers and thinkers that feel more familiar with the Nordic Semiconductor nRF5 platform to start using and contributing to ESPHome, so it should hopefully help the community grow even faster, but it could possibly make it easier to make running ultra low-power battery-operated devices running ESPHome, as well as add another type of radio MCU hardware for ESPHome that can support Thread/OpenThread and Zigbee.

PS: Off-topic That development effort might be indirectly interesting to another sub-project to follow for those who (like myself) have been asking for native Thread/OpenThread and Zigbee wireless support in ESPHome (and perhaps posted in the feature request tracker) since Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 do not support WiFi but does support Thread and Zigbee protocols, (similar to the ESP32-H2), with nRF52840 and the newer nRF5340 being ideal for battery-powered devices:

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Looks like tomaszduda23’s work on basic support for nRF52840 for ESPHome progressing very nicely and just yesterday he marked his pull request as ready for review and testing by devs/testers:

Btwy, also wanted to mention missed that @NateLust previous begun porting ESPHome to nRF52840:

Looks like @NateLust has not updated his forked esphome repository the last year and seems like the “zephyr-dev” branch there is latest:

There do not seem to be any new posts from @NateLust on this since he posted this zephyrESPHomeGuide in little over 1-year ago:

PS: Noted that @NateLust did also make more progress on Thread/OpenThread for ESPHome than any other have I seen so far(?).

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This would be really amazing as it might allow for projects like b-parasite to using esphome instead of the custom firmware that is very difficult for new users to build and install!

I might even try to revive my boards again!

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FYI, looks like this is making progress now with ESPHome added support for custom platforms:

That in turn will allow a nrf52 platform core to be used as an external component:

After that still need support for specific SoC models such as:

PS: FYI, Nordic Semi has also released nRF54L Series including a powerful nRF54L15 SoC with a lot more resources:

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FYI, the initial pull requests for nrf52 core (based on zephyr) from tomaszduda23 has now been merged into ESPHome dev branch:

plus many more new related nrf52 patches are in development now that the initial support has been added and will soon be in the mainline:

PS: Also interesting and relevant is that the initial pull request for Zigbee support on nrf52 for ESPHome is now also getting close to being merged soon:

PPS: Also noted that luar123 has begun working on an external low-level Zigbee component support for ESPHome on Espressif ESP32 as well:

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ESPHome now officially supports the Nordic nRF52 platform! Check it out:

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Will these changes natively support the BBC Micro:Bit, which I believe has a NRF51822 chip?

Asking as I have a few lying around, and this would probably revive that ecosystem significantly, breathing new life to sales and utilisation, and allow learners to adopt HomeAssistant into their home style once the novelty of flashing a LED has worn off.

It would possibly appeal to those that do not want dependency on Chinese technology such as the ESP ecosystem, but still want a flexible platform to deploy their projects.

A win-win situation.

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