hi, i have nrf51822 beacon kit,so i want upgrade the firmware,then what are the possible ways i have,and how can i do it ,without nrf51 DK

[yennaboinasivaji]

nRF51822 Bluetooth Smart beacon

[Stefan Birnir Sverrisson]

There are two possibilities to change firmware on the Beacon kit:

1. With a connected programmer

The nRF51-DK serves as a programmer in this case, if you have any other compatible programmer, you can possibly connect that programmer to your Beacon kit with an adapter cable. If you do not have any programmer now but would like to use one, I would by the nRF51-DK kit and use it as a programmer.

2. Via the bootloader

To upload a new application to the beacon kit, take an applicaiton hex file you would like to upload and bundle it together with an init file into a .zip file. Then upload that zip file with e.g. your smartphone to the beacon kit and then power-reset your beacon kit. Then a new applicaiton should be running on your device. To do this, follow the instructions given in this blog post.

[Stefan Birnir Sverrisson]

Hi.

Yes, you need segger J-link to program the beacon kit. The nRF51-DK or nRF52-DK provides j-link as it has Segger chip on board. So if you buy nRF51-DK or nRF52-DK and also the adapter cable (to connect the nRF51-DK/nRF52-DK together) then you can program the beacon kit.

To connect the PC to the beacon kit, do the following steps:

1. Connect the nRF51-DK/nRF52-DK to the PC via USB cable
2. Connect one end of the adapter cable to the "Debug out" port on the nRF51-DK/nRF52-DK, and the other end to the beacon kit. Debug out port is described in the nRF51-DK user guide 1.0, section 5.10.
3. Follow the guidelines in Chapter 3 in the nRF51-DK user guide on how to program the nRF51-DK. If you have your beacon kit connected to the "Debug out" port on the nRF51-DK, the beacon kit will automatically be programmed instead of the nRF51-DK kit