Nrf51822 revisions

[Leon Schmetz]

L.S.

For our products we have chosen to use the RFDigital RFD22301 (previously RFD51822) product which has a nrf81522 chip inside.

Last year we discovered some issues with the module which proved to be related to the revision of the nrf81522 inside. The rev 2 chip did not have the issues (malformed packets). So we made arrangements with our supplier to only use chips with rev 2.

It turns out now that there are a quite some parties that have a big stock rev 1 chips and are still marketing rev 1 in their products as does RF Digital. Now RFDigital marks their products with production week which as it turns out does not guarantee that a later production date also means rev 2 inside. Mouser offers RFD81522 with rev 1 only. Rutronik has(had) RFD22301 with rev 2.

Now I hear rev 2 is declared obsolete by Nordic, while rev 1 isn't. The preferred rev is rev 3.

So, can anyone shed some light on this? Moving to rev 3 means which RFDigital has in its new Simblee module with an incompatible footprint so it means redesign, modifying/checking firmware for which we do not have the time.

What is the best course of action?

[Hung Bui]

We have forwarded this question to RFDigital and got the response that RFDigital has handled this case directly with Leon.

We just want to clarify that this issue is not in the scope Nordic can solve because it's between the module maker, module’s distributors and the end customer.

From our point of view there are possibly some reasons why the supplier still provides stocked Rev 1 module:

1.       This could be that the module includes custom firmware that runs on that version and the revision of the device is transparent and does not affect the user
   

2.       Manufacture having to invest and put resources into updating firmware to reflect version changes.  
   

3.       The potential need to recertify  if there was a Rev Change from Rev 1.  
   

Note that if you contact RFDigital, they should be able to let you know how and where to get Rev 1 and/or Rev 2 module from different distributors.

However, for new design we suggest our customer to move to Rev 3 as both Rev 1 and Rev 2 are discontinued.