Keil, Mbed, Gcc Or IAR BLE

[Epasta]

Hy world,

I'm new on nordic and i would like to understand what tool is best for develop application for nrf51dk.

I've have tried to use keil but is very difficult for me! Are there a little starter guide, for understands, know, and study it?!

I'have tried mbed online compiler. It's very easy! is similar as a game! is it reliable?! with mbed i can create anything! but with keel nothing!!!

Gcc and iar not seen!!

What is the best??

I have a big ble project and i would like to create a best firmware

I'm afraid that mbed isn't reliable and secure!

Thanks for the time and the reply.

Best Regardes Enrico

[Einar Thorsrud]

There is probably no "best" tool. It all depend on you requirements, your experience, you preferences and in some cases your pocketbook. That said you should not go for mbed, as it is far less flexible than using our SDK directly. It is mainly suited for educational purposes, and less suited for real product development.

In my experience Keil and IAR is easier to get started with as they give you the complete development environment in one package, requiring very little configuration from your side. Just install it, download our SDK and you are ready to go. Of those, Keil is the one we have best support for, and you can use a free version for applications that are less than 32 kB, which covers most needs. The Getting Started section in the SDK documentation is a good place to start.

If you have experience with GCC and other GNU tools you may be equally (or more) happy using GCC, but it is more cumbersome to get started.

[Einar Thorsrud]

Many of the BLE peripheral examples in the SDK will fit within the 32 kB limit in Keil when optimization is used. However, if you have a more complex application you may get well beyond 32 kB. It is also a problem if you cannot disable optimization (which is essential for debugging), so you probably want to pay for Keil or get another solution. After I wrote the original answer to this case SEGGER Embedded Studio has become a real option worth considering for developing with the nRF5 series. My personal opinion is that I would try that before Eclipse.