The OpenHarmony Hardware Developer Day (OHDD) held a session dedicated to NearLink in Shenzhen on October 22. NearLink is a short-range wireless technology developed in China. The event brought together technical experts and industry partners to walk through how NearLink and the open-source OpenHarmony operating system can be combined in smart hardware, from choosing chips to connecting devices.
On the protocol side, speakers explained the base service layer of the OpenHarmony NearLink protocol stack, including data transmission, priority scheduling, broadcast and scanning, and low-power dual-stack coordination. A later session covered the stack's architecture, scope and adaptation process, as well as what the NearLink Kit already supports, to help device makers integrate it.
For chip selection, the focus was HiSilicon's SLE short-range technology. Speakers highlighted low latency, high-precision ranging and high bandwidth, and covered chip options including the WS63 and BS21. Use cases included peripherals, car keys and wearables. Another talk showed how OpenHarmony's distributed soft bus works with NearLink to support automatic discovery, connection-free networking and fast transfer with low latency and low power.
Two deployment cases gave the sessions a practical edge. Chinasoft International presented a smart intersection project in Xi'an that uses OpenHarmony as a common base for signal controllers, cameras, radar-video units and guidance screens that usually sit in separate systems. The setup supports traffic guidance, priority passage for special vehicles, and longer green lights on request for pedestrians with limited mobility. Maintenance staff can tap a tablet against a screenless device to view and configure it, and the time to bring a single device online fell from 40 minutes to under 40 seconds, according to the presenters.
The second case was a NearLink-based contactless gate at the Shenzhen Metro station serving Shenzhen University of Advanced Technology. Once the service is activated and conditions are met, passengers can walk through without taking out a phone or card, which helps people carrying luggage, holding a baby or using a wheelchair. The system links automatic connection, pre-authorized ticketing, positioning and gate control, with fallback to on-site guidance and manual handling when something goes wrong.
The day closed with working sessions on specific projects, where partners raised adaptation problems and engineers answered them directly. The event was about the developer ecosystem around OpenHarmony and NearLink rather than any new operating system release.
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