Wonder Workshop
Dash Lightning FW + HW port
nRF54L15 and Zephyr RTOS: migrating a decade-old educational robot to next-generation silicon without touching the BOM
Wonder Workshop's Dash robot has been teaching children coding and STEM concepts since 2014, earning a place in classrooms and homes across the world. A decade later, the nRF51822 at the heart of Dash's Bluetooth stack is reaching end of life, and Wonder Workshop needed to modernize the platform to keep the product viable. The migration had to preserve everything that made Dash commercially successful: its affordability, its rich sensor-driven feature set, and its ability to be manufactured at high volume with tight cost controls. Finding the right silicon and the right engineering partner to execute the transition were both critical decisions.
Wonder Workshop needed to migrate Dash off end-of-life silicon without increasing BOM cost or losing any existing features.
What We Built
As a Nordic Design Partner with early access to the nRF54L15, Focus evaluated the chip before it was widely available and confirmed it as the right fit: the Cortex-M33 core provides the processing headroom Dash needs for future features, while its ultra-low power profile and competitive cost keep the BOM intact. Focus designed the updated hardware and reimplemented the firmware in Zephyr RTOS with nRF Connect SDK, replacing the existing ThreadX-based codebase. The migration consolidates Bluetooth communication, sensor data processing, and motor control into a single chip, reducing component count and simplifying the overall design. Working through ten years of legacy documentation and code, the team ported and reimplemented the existing feature set while laying a software foundation designed to support the next generation of development.
Impact
Dash gains a modern hardware and firmware foundation that extends its commercial life and gives Wonder Workshop a faster path to future features.
nRF54L15 next-gen SoC
Consolidating Bluetooth, sensor processing, and motor control into a single chip
Zephyr RTOS + nRF Connect SDK
Open-source, modular software platform replacing a decade-old ThreadX codebase
Nordic Design Partner
Early silicon access and direct Nordic technical support, critical for adopting a recently released platform
Early access to new silicon only pays off with the expertise to use it. That combination gave a ten-year-old platform a viable path to the next decade.
