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.

[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.

[runsiv]

Hi Peter

Which SDK are you using for your application? 

When you say Arduino, which arduino are you referring to since Arduino is really just a software platform. As long as the board running Arduino has the same gpio voltage uart should not be an issue,. If the Arduino in question is one based on the 8bit AVR's you will need level shifter on the UART since the AVR's is running at 5V while the 52840 is running on 3v3V. Since you said you have a DK I would suggest to start working with the DK as the dongle is not ment suited for development due to lack of debugger and less access to GPIO pins. However you could solder on wires to flash the dongle from the DK and use the DK as debugger for the dongle. If you flash the dongle with another FW it will overwrite the bootloader that is already there you can use it as it was just another 52840.

Regards

Runar