I've got a Fanstel Eval board, I'm trying to jlink flash it, anyone have any experience?

[matthewnights]

I saw a really similar post but no real solution. I've got both a nrf52840dk and a fanstel ble840xe eval board that I've been playing with. the end goal is to make this start scanning for a ble device, i was surprised the evaluation board shipped with little to no capabilities and promptly bought a jlink capable board to flash. and for all i can tell, the flash worked! i got both s140_nrf52_6.1.0_softdevice.hex (also tried 6.1.1)
and nrf52840_xxaa.hex flashed to it. Downloaded screen and picocom, came up blank. looked into it more and it seems I need to rewrite firmware to adjust to how this one powers it's uart pins? 

my troubleshooting involved flipping every single thing on and off on this board. kinda exhausted. I'm settled on the fact that it should be on AT_COM-Hi and everything on.... like how it shipped... 

I'll give some photos I guess

I think it shipped without this switch, I can solder it but pretty sure it doesn't do anything.. 

There aren't any fanstel forums, this is the closest thing I could find.. any other nerds out there trying to get this thing going? Its an awful venn diagram of people having the capability to solder/design a board around this chip to make it work but also being able to write firmware for it. thought the eval board would cover at least one of those, just dug myself a deeper hole. looks like two small edits i have to make to the firmware, I'll have to figure that out

[matthewnights]

actually if it's a blank screen even with me mashing my keyboard and spamming enter, it's probably not just some pins and code huh... i should see SOMETHING... 

[matthewnights]

I've stared at it a while after flashing the fanstel "master" firmware, just to see if anything at all would work....

I got a board without a crystal AND LED1 is missing -_- that might be my issue.... not counting out the fact that I might have done something wrong but I've never hit a wall this hard when it comes to this kind of thing

[Kenneth]

Hi,

A few tips in general:

- if you are using UART, make sure the RXD pin is pulled high externally.

- if you have enabled pin reset, make sure the pin is high (and not pulled low by accident).

- if the board don't have an external 32kHz crystal, then make sure images (e.g. bootloader(s) and application) are configured to use internal 32kHz rc oscillator.

Kenneth

[matthewnights]

Yeah I think since the board came with no crystal whatsoever, I got a defective board. I looked at images I took when I first got the board and its still missing. Is it typical for it to ship without a crystal? There is clearly one in the picture from the product listing
https://www.fanstel.com/buy/ev-bt832x-evaluation-board-for-bt832x-the-longest-range-bluetooth-5-module-wejga-fjrxy?utm_medium=email&utm_source=customer_notification

[Turbo J]

All of the BTLE DK examples require the 32kHz crystal when you try to use the binaries or sources unmodified.

You can modify the source code in order to support operating w/o an LF crystal. This is a commonly asked question here.

I recommend starting with the newer NRF connect SDK instead of using old softdevice stuff that is no longer properly supported.