'Bluetooth Gateways In The Field: The Ezurio Sentrius MG100'
As more deployments using Golioth's Bluetooth-to-Cloud hit the field, we will be featuring Bluetooth gateways that are up to the task. Today we're featuring the Ezurio Sentrius MG100, which is well targeted at industrial cellular needs.
Golioth’s Bluetooth-to-Cloud development continues to roll out new features for private access users, including offering a range of solutions for shuttling bluetooth data up to the cloud. As more customers build sensor-rich devices for agriculture, smart buildings, and asset tracking, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is the protocol of choice for low-power, short-range communication. But there’s still a missing piece in many deployments: how do you reliably bridge BLE sensors to the cloud with off-the-shelf options? That’s where Bluetooth gateways come in.
Over the past few months, we’ve been evaluating a variety of BLE gateways, some that pair with Wi-Fi or Ethernet, others that speak cellular, and running them through their paces with Golioth. Our goal was simple: find a reliable, flexible, and developer-friendly solution that we can confidently recommend to customers building BLE-enabled fleets.
Defining a Great BLE Gateway
At Golioth, we think of networks in terms of devices (your sensors and actuators) and gateways (the last hop to the cloud). Gateways can be:
Managed — fully onboarded in Golioth with OTA updates, logging, settings, and policy control.
Unmanaged — authenticated to Golioth but only relaying data for endpoints that don’t run our SDK.
A gateway is any device that connects directly to Golioth, typically over cellular, Wi-Fi, or Ethernet, and forwards traffic for local BLE nodes. For the newest Bluetooth-to-Cloud capabilities, that means the gateway needs to be able to forward data wrapped in Pouch, our new innovation in the space of non-IP communication. It’s also possible for Gateways to forward non-Pouch traffic, but we’ll be focusing on the most enhanced version of data transfer (ie. Pouch) for the near future.
The BLE Gateway Landscape
You’ll find plenty of Zephyr-compatible dev boards, Nordic’s nRF9160 DK and the Thingy91:X among them that technically fit the bill. We love these boards for rapid prototyping and POCs: they pair the nRF52840’s BLE prowess with an nRF91 Series LTE-M/NB-IoT modem.
But most teams aren’t in the business of maintaining custom hardware stacks. They want a turnkey gateway that just works. That’s why, even though you can cobble together a solution from dev boards, we don’t recommend it for production.
Our Top Pick: Ezurio Sentrius MG100
After testing, we recommend the Sentrius MG100 from Ezurio for industrial BLE + cellular deployments. Here’s why:
Zephyr-Ready: First-class support in Golioth’s Zephyr SDK, so you can hit the ground running.
Proven Hardware: nRF52840 for BLE Central; Sierra HL7800 for LTE-M/NB-IoT.
Off-the-Shelf Reliability: No soldering irons or custom enclosures, just unbox and deploy.
Customizable: Optional branding and packaging, so it fits right into your product lineup.
With the MG100 + Golioth, you get a hardened, field-ready gateway that delivers the “set-and-forget” experience you and your customers expect.
Next Up: BLE + Wi-Fi/Ethernet Gateways
A microcontroller-based cellular device in an industrial enclosure doesn’t fit every application space. In our next post, we’ll explore the world of BLE + Wi-Fi/Ethernet gateways, as well as discussing more about the processing needs of particular gateways.
We’re continuing to enhance our BLE gateway tooling, improve reference firmware, and if you are building a connected product, sign up for Golioth’s Bluetooth-to-Cloud Connectivity private access program, or join us in the forum to tell us more about your use case!
