Bluetooth Low Energy Fundamentals & nRF9160DK

[Andrea82]

Good morning, 

I'm a bit concerned because seems like I cannot use the nRF9160DK to complete the Bluetooth Low Energy Fundamentals. Am I right?

Do I have to buy another development kit? 

[Elfving]

Hello,

It is true that you can't use the nRF9160 for BLE, though there is an nRF52840 on the nF9160DK as well! In order to program the nRF52840 instead of the nRF9160, simply flip switch 10.

Regards,

Elfving

[helsing]

Good morning,

The easiest thing would be to obtain an nRF52 or nRF53 series DK.

seems like I cannot use the nRF9160DK to complete the Bluetooth Low Energy Fundamentals. Am I right?

This depends on how much extra work you are willing to do and how familiar you are with nRF9160 DK and nRF Connect SDK. As you might have seen, nRF9160DK is not listed under hardware requirements for the course:

Any of the following development kits: nRF5340 DK, nRF52840 DK, nRF52833 DK, nRF52 DK

Have you tried using nRF9160 DK and run into any issues so far?

I suppose some parts of the course should be possible to follow with nRF9160 DK, however, the following objectives might require some extra knowledge and work(or hacks) to accomplish:

• Read the status of a button on your Nordic device
• Toggle a LED on your Nordic device

As stated in the article Developing with nRF9160 DK: "The nRF52840 SoC does not have any connection to the any of the LEDs, buttons, switches, and Arduino pin headers on the nRF9160 DK board. It is, however, possible to route some of the pins of the nRF52840 SoC to the nRF9160 SiP". Consult the nRF9160 DK board control table and image to understand how LEDS and buttons are available from nRF52840. It might be easier to connect an external button and LED to some of the GPIOs than making use of the built in LEDs and buttons of the board.

Check out the article Board controller firmware to see how board switches may be configured and use this as a starting point. You will need to configure your device tree to match the added LED/buttons.

Another issue is Lesson 6 where the nRF Sniffer firmware is not listed as compatible with nRF9160 DK. I do not know whether it is possible to run this firmware on nRF9160 DK.