Unclear on how to move forward with nRF7002 companion outside of Dev Kits

[Aidan Eglin]

Hi folks.

recently I've been experimenting with the nrf7002dk Development Kit, and I'd like to move forward with prototyping a custom board around the nRF7002 + nRF5340 chips (along with some other peripheral devices specifically for my use case). I've been able to get an idea of how to design the schematic around these chips from the hardware files here: https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Development-hardware/nRF7002-DK/Download?lang=en#infotabs. However, I have been completely stuck on how to move forward on the software side for the nRF7002 when it's not being used in a Dev Kit.

I have been primarily using these two wikis to understand the software side of things:

- https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/ncs-latest/page/nrf/app_dev/device_guides/nrf70/index.html

- https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/ncs-2.9.0/page/nrf/samples/wifi.html

All of these wikis are centred heavily around the usage of the Dev Kits and provide little to no context on how to use the nRF7002 outside of a Dev Kit environment. For example, I'd like to use a different set of pins for the QSPI interface - it's entirely unclear to me how to do that, because none of the Dev Kit examples mention it and I've been unable to find an example device tree file.

Am I viewing the wrong resources? What is the recommended approach to move from the Dev Kits to custom boards from Nordic?

I apologize if there's am immediately obvious answer to this that I've missed in my research - please humour me regardless, I'm still learning :)

Cheers,

Aidan

[Amanda Hsieh]

Hi, 

You can refer to this Developing with custom boards guide, which explains how to add your custom board to the nRF Connect SDK. For learning about device tree configuration, the Nordic Developer Academy offers courses that cover this topic: Lesson 3 – Adding custom board support

Here is the nRF7002DK board file: https://github.com/nrfconnect/sdk-zephyr/tree/main/boards/nordic/nrf7002dk , for your reference.

For a more structured approach to learning device tree customization, you can check these courses:

1. nRF Connect SDK Fundamentals
2. nRF Connect SDK Intermediate

Regards,
Amanda H.

[Aidan Eglin]

Thanks Amanda, I appreciate the support. I have previously used the custom boards guide & have followed through the Fundamentals & Intermediate course. My question is primarily related specifically to the nrf7002 - for this chip in particular, I'm struggling to find clear hands-on documentation for common functionality in a way that's easy to transfer to a custom board. Do you have any particular tutorials that may be most useful in this case?

For example, let's take a look at this sample: https://github.com/nrfconnect/sdk-nrf/blob/main/samples/wifi/scan/src/main.c. Where can I read more about "how" this works? How does Zephyr WIFI Management know that 1/ we're using the nRF7002 and 2/ what QPSI configurations we're using? I'm probably just missing something in the docs somewhere but right now I feel like I've got a gap in my understanding of how this works, which makes me apprehensive to use it.

Cheers,

Aidan

[Amanda Hsieh]

Hi Aidan, 

Aidan Eglin said:

How does Zephyr WIFI Management know that 1/ we're using the nRF7002

This is configured through Kconfig options. When you set CONFIG_WIFI_NRF70 to y in your project's configuration, you're telling the system to use the nRF Wi-Fi driver for the nRF70 Series devices. For Sysbuild projects, you would use SB_CONFIG_WIFI_NRF70 instead. See the nRF Wi-Fi driver.

Aidan Eglin said:

2/ what QPSI configurations we're using?

For the nRF7002DK, the nRF5340 host processor communicates over the QSPI bus with the nRF7002. See https://github.com/nrfconnect/sdk-zephyr/blob/v3.7.99-ncs2/boards/nordic/nrf7002dk/nrf7002dk_nrf5340_cpuapp.dts#L26 and Driver to nRF70 Series device communication.

Hope the Wi-Fi Fundamentals would help. 

-Amanda H.

[Aidan Eglin]

Great! Appreciate the help here Amanda, thank you.