The ESP32 was the obvious choice for wireless DMX reception, native WiFi, Art-Net/sACN support, done. But obvious isn't always right.

Running WiFi on a wristband is brutal on battery. We measured roughly 10x the power consumption compared to BLE. On a single cell LiPo that's the difference between a 6 hour festival set and a 45 minute demo. Not a trade-off we're willing to make.

So WiFi is gone from the wristband itself. The nRF52840 handles everything over BLE - it's leaner, better suited for a wearable, and the RF performance is excellent in dense crowd environments where you have hundreds of devices competing for airspace.

The DMX side is solved with a WiFi-BLE bridge sitting outside the wristband, a small fixed node that receives Art-Net or sACN over WiFi from the lighting console and rebroadcasts to the wristbands over BLE. The wristband stays dumb and power-efficient. The bridge handles the heavy lifting.

New addition: VEML6040 RGBW color sensor

Added a VEML6040 ambient light sensor to the board. I have a specific application in mind for live events that I'm not ready to share publicly yet - but if you've ever thought about what a wristband could do if it knew what color light was hitting it from the stage rig, you're probably on the right track.
More on that when the time is right. Follow the project if you don't want to miss it.
Next log: nRF52840 RF layout decisions and BLE performance in high-density environments.

See the PCB below, going to small batch manufacturing now

Check out the Kickstarter