Help getting startred

[wolfman24]

Hello everyone, I have an application that i would like to complete and I have most of it finished on Arduino but there are size constraints. Because of that i found the Nordic Semiconductor nRF51822 chip to be the best for the job. I have just ordered the development kit but i wanted to be as prepared as possible when it gets here and i was hoping i could have a few questions answered.

1. For my end goal of programming a Nordic Semiconductor nRF51822 chip and having it be part of my PCB, do i need A Nordic "Dongle"?
2. What is the Nordic "Dongle"?
3. I have some background in Java and swift (going for mobile app end result here), can anyone send me some guide as to using the best SDK to get everything coded?
4. I have seen some "J-TAG" when talking about the SDK, what is that precisely?
5. Any and all tutorials and references to help get me started with the software issue as it looks like there is a lot of steps for someone who is of my level (Total Beginner)

Any and all posts are greatly appreciated as you can tell I am pretty confused and don't know much but I am all too eager to learn. I just need some help sifting through everything to get the right stuff to study. Thank you so much for you help!!!

[Einar Thorsrud]

It's good to hear you found the nRF51 best for the job. I will try to answer your questions by one.

1. You do not need a Nordic dongle to program your chip. However it can be very useful for testing, particularly using our Master Control Panel to communicate with your product over BLE and the nRF BLE sniffer.

2. See 1.

3. The SDK is a set of libraries, driver and examples written in C. I think you can find many embedded C programming tutorials/introductions on the web by googling. There are also numerous books covering both general C programming and embedded programming. For the nRF specifics you should know that there are lot's of examples in the SDK and some relevant tutorials and guides here on DevZone and elsewhere on the web.

4. JTAG is a group developing debug interface standards, and used as a name for the standard it self. The nRF5x use SWD. SEGGER J-Link is used to interface with the nRF debug interface on the development kits. The necessary tools are provided in the nRF5x-Tools software bundle.

5. If you have not already, start with learning or refreshing your C programming skills. Then you should probably look at the tutorials here on DevZone, particularly the once in the Getting Started section. There is also a Getting started section on Infocenter, which is the source for official Nordic documentation.

If you install the required tools and use Keil you will have your development environment up and running with debugging in a few minutes with no configuration required. If you prefer GCC or are developing on OS X or Linux you would probably want to check out the GCC and Eclipse tutorial.

You can always post any questions you have on this forum, and most of the time you will get good answers from some of the bright contributors. If at some point you have very product specific questions (e.g. design reviews) you should probably post those on the support portal in stead.