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Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

One of Raspberry Pi's weaknesses is a lack of wireless technologies, which limits its communications capabilities with other devices. One new chipset from Qualcomm could help fill that gap.

The QCA4020 chipset packs in Bluetooth Low Energy 5, ZigBee 3.0, WiFi 802.11n, and OpenThread wireless communications protocols. The chipset is like a mini-developer board -- an integrated chipset with an ARM-based CPU. It can be used to create smart home or industrial devices. It can also serve as a wireless access point for Raspberry Pi and other developer boards used to make smart gadgets, drones, robots, and industrial devices. It has a number of connector protocols and can work with Arduino boards.

It'll work right out of the box, and gadget development is easy, said Joseph Bousaba, vice president of product management at Qualcomm. [...]"We are trying to make it as simple as possible to connect no matter what the radio is," Bousaba said.

The QCA4020 is one of the first development micro-boards based on new Bluetooth 5 protocol, which is two times faster and has quadruple the range of Bluetooth 4.2. Bluetooth 5 can transfer data at speeds of up to 2Mbps (bits per second) and has a range of more than 100 meters (109 yards).

[...] The QCA4020 chipset is also one of the few boards supporting OpenThread, which is an open-source take on Google's emerging Thread protocol. It is an adaptation from ZigBee, with a software stack that enables IP-based communication capabilities.

The QCA4020 has an integrated Cortex-M4 processor operating at 150Mhz, making it similar to Texas Instruments' $29 Launchpad Board and Nordic's nRF52840 Preview Development Kit, both of which have Bluetooth 5. But those boards don't include the wide range of radios like on Qualcomm's chipset.

[Ed Note - The RPi 3 does have Bluetooth 4.1 and WiFi 802.11n]

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