nRF52840 Dongle - Communicate With Arduino Via UART

[Frivolous4121]

I made an assumption that the nRF52840 Dongle has the ability to communicate via UART as most boards I worked with have this feature.  This seems not to be true, but I don't understand what I'm reading that there is a possible workaround to enable something like it?

The suggestions I'm reading about in various posts seem to hint that one just needs to define the pins.

 UART communication on NRF52840 Dongle 

how to set up a simple uart connection between nrf 52840 dongle and a microcontroller (e.g. Arduino)

I haven't tried to code this yet to confirm or deny it works.  I'm working through the issues that I've uncovered as more features are being added to the main project.

I understand that the nRF52840 Dongle doesn't have a built-in debugger.  My goal is to have minimalistic hardware selected for use when integrated for deployment.  I do have the nRF52840 development board as well, but I'm trying to solve the problem presented in the final hardware used.

[Nguyen Hoan Hoang]

perhaps something like this is what you need

https://www.crowdsupply.com/i-syst/blueio832-mini

https://x.com/isyst_inc/status/1778960958922109132

[Frivolous4121]

At $50 - $80 per unit and limited to just BT as a communication protocol for what you suggested I think I would find another solution at a far better price point!  Are you affiliated with this project or have some hands-on knowledge that would convince me to use it vice the venerable nRF52840 Dongle that is available for ~$10 each and offers multiple communication protocols?

[Nguyen Hoan Hoang]

Frivolous4121 said:

nRF52840 Dongle that is available for ~$10 each and offers multiple communication protocols

The Dongle is the same nRF52840 as the Nordic dongle.  Beside form being more expensive it is the same nRF52840.  Why would it not able to support multi protocol.  Nordic software that runs un the Dongle is only BT by the way. 

[Frivolous4121]

Nguyen Hoan Hoang said:

Well, I designed it.  The firmware is optimized for speed that Nordic exemple code can't. 

See it this way.  How much time did you spend struggling on this ? How much you worth by hours ? Multiply that together see how much it costs you.

Well, I'm not in it for any speed contest so that is not a critical design consideration for me.

I see your point, but this is the only problem that I haven't been able to solve and its only been one day of researching a solution.  I'm not dead in the water either.  There are other nRF52840 boards out there that do come with built-in UART for the price point I would be happy with.  I'd just like to see if I can NOT introduce Yet Another Board to my ecosystem.

[Frivolous4121]

Nguyen Hoan Hoang said:

Nordic software that runs un the Dongle is only BT by the way. 

Not sure what exactly you mean by this, but the Nordic board supports multiple protocols as listed in the first sentence from their product landing page.

[Nguyen Hoan Hoang]

It means the MCU nRF52840 itself supports mutiprotocol.  In order to use it, you write the firmware yourself using the SDK.  The Dongle serve as utility tools. Bluetooth sniffer to test you BLE firmware. You can flash precompiled examples code.  That's it.    

The BlueIO832Mini board is on the hand is an application board.  It is shipped with preload firmware that allows you to do many things without writing code.  A UART bridge is one of the applications.  You use the free Apps to configure what you want to do.  For exemple capturing the ADC, use the BlueIOSigCap to configure the board to send ADC & digital value over Bluetooth.  The BlueIODevin allows you to configure the 4 GPIO pins as SPI or I2C then send read or write command to it to access the device that is connected to those pins. All that without writing any code at all.  Of course you can use another App to configure the pin to send PWM signal to the connected device as well.   

[Frivolous4121]

I see.  I don't have any trouble writing the firmware necessary to perform my goals.