Integration of MAX30001 with Ezurio nRF54L15U DK: Application Hangs after TF-M Boot & SPI/Jumper Configuration

[Vishveshwaran]

• Hi Nordic Support Team,

  I am currently working on integrating the MAX30001 ECG/Bio-impedance sensor with the Ezurio nRF54L15U DK (nRF54L series). I am using the nRF Connect SDK V3.1.1

  I have two main issues: the application seems to hang/stop outputting logs after TF-M initialization, and I need clarification on the hardware configuration for this specific third-party DK.

  1. The Issue (Boot Log): I have configured the SPI driver for the MAX30001. When I flash the board, I see the Trusted Firmware-M (TF-M) boot up, but I get no output from my main application. The logs stop here:

  Plaintext

  Pins have been configured as secure.
  GPIO port: 0x00000000
  Pin: 0x00000000
  Pin: 0x00000001
  Booting TF-M v2.1.2
  [Sec Thread] Secure image initializing!
  TF-M Float ABI: Hard
  Lazy stacking enabled
  [INF][PS] Encryption alg: 0x550020
  

  I suspect this is a TrustZone configuration issue where the SPI pins or the GPIOs used for the sensor (CS, INT) are defined as Secure and the Non-Secure application is faulting when trying to access them.

  2. Hardware Configuration Questions (Ezurio DK): Since this is the Ezurio nRF54L15U DK, the documentation is slightly different from the standard Nordic DKs.

  • SPI Pins: Could you confirm the recommended default SPI pins (MOSI, MISO, SCK) and Chip Select (CS) for this board overlay?

  • SPI Mode: For the MAX30001 on nRF54, should I be strictly using SPI Mode 0 (CPOL=0, CPHA=0)?

  • Jumper Configuration: The board has several jumpers (Jxx). To isolate the nRF54L15 for external SPI communication with the sensor, are there specific jumpers I need to remove to disconnect on-board peripherals that might share the same bus?

  • GPIO Security: Do I need to explicitly set the SPI pins to non-secure in the spm.conf or via Kconfig to allow the application to use them?

  My Current Setup:

  • Board: Ezurio nRF54L15U DK

  • Sensor: MAX30001 (MAX30001EVKIT or custom breakout)

  • Interface: SPI

  Any guidance on the correct Device Tree Overlay configuration for the pins and how to pass the execution past the TF-M stage would be helpful.

[Vidar Berg]

device_is_ready() is returning false because the driver initialisation failed on boot before main(), so there is no point in calling this function in a loop. You can probe the I2C bus with a Logic analyser or oscilloscope to find try find why the initialisation is failing. Maybe it's something simple as an address NAK.

[Vishveshwaran]

i am not having a proper driver file also, the driver file which i am using now is based on a git repo and that too with lot of changes in it, so i dont know whether that is the problem, can you tell me how to access the logic analyser in the nrf for this particular issue? 

[Vidar Berg]

What I meant to suggest was using a logic analyser or oscilloscope to inspect the TWI transactions between the nRF and the MAX30001 slave to determine why the initialization is failing.