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

RE: 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

Stefan Birnir Sverrisson — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 16:12:54 GMT

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:

Connect the nRF51-DK/nRF52-DK to the PC via USB cable
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.
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

RE: 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 — Sat, 19 Mar 2016 05:37:05 GMT

hi, thaks f or u r reply,and what is seggar j-link ,can we program beacon kit using this

RE: 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

Stefan Birnir Sverrisson — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 16:11:08 GMT

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.

RE: 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 — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 05:06:04 GMT

hi, thanks for u r reply , my question is, i don't have " nrf51 DK board ", can i program without "nrf51 Dk" board, if so what are the possibilities............

RE: 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

Stefan Birnir Sverrisson — Tue, 15 Mar 2016 16:28:10 GMT

Depending on the Beacon kit version you have, there are different bootloader versions preprogrammed to the Beacon kit, see the Beacon kit verison table on this thread. If you have Beacon kit version 1.1.0 or later, you have softdevice S110 7.1.0 and bootloader from nRF51 SDK 7.1.0 preprogrammed to the Beacon kit. This means that you can upload over the air via the bootloader any application based on nRF51 SDK 7, e.g. any BLE sample applications in SDK 7 that use S110 softdevice.

Unfortunately, you can not upgrade the softdevice over the air on the Beacon kit, you need to do that with a programmer/nRF51-DK and an adapter table, as described on this thread in the update from 27.11.2014

The bootloader from nRF51 SDK 7.1.0 requires an init file to be uploaded with the applicaiton. Here is a description on how to prepare such an init file