Reset Bricked nRF51822 Beacon Kit

[rsp5y]

Hi,

I've recently bricked my nrF51822 Beacon Kit (www.nordicsemi.com/.../nRF51822-Bluetooth-Smart-Beacon-Kit)

...by uploading some bad firmware. I can no longer program it over the air. I want to reset it back to its factory state. Can't find the documentation to do that on this specific kit, is there a specific procedure?

Thanks!

[MartinBL]

Hi,

Are you able to describe how the bad firmware bricked the kit?

Unfortunately, if you really can't update over the air, you will have to buy some sort of a programmer. The original firmware is not stored anywhere on the chip after your update so there is no way to restore it.

[rsp5y]

Hi @Martin I'm not sure exactly what went wrong but I have the original firmware that was working before I uploaded the bad one. I just bought the cable, can I just connect and flash? Or is there a different procedure?

Here are the symptoms:

1. When battery is in (or debugger connected using TC connector cable) no LEDs turn on at all
2. I am using a ULink2 debugger with Keil uVision5. Before I was just building .hex files and sending them over the air. Now I am trying to flash using the ULINK2 debugger+TC cable and I am getting the error "Flash DOwnload failed - "Cortex-M0"
3. When I plug in my ULINK2 Debugger and open up nRFGo Studio I see no connected devices and "nRF5x Programming" is greyed out.

Other than this, my code build fine. I just can't flash the beacon kit anymore...any suggestions?

Thanks for your help

[MartinBL]

1. That is weird, but might not be a problem.
2. The "Flash DOwnload failed - Cortex-M0" error is a very common error and there are lots of Q&As on it here on devzone. The most common cause is that you are trying to flash your application on top of a Softdevice. This can be fixed by doing a chip erase. It seems like using ULINK2 might not be straightforward. Please browse some of these threads for some tips.
3. It is hard to say what the issue is in this point. Can you try to use the command line tool nrfjprog and do "nrfjprog --recover --family nrf51"?

Also make sure to use the latest drivers.

[ta2]

Out of curiosity, what happens when you have both the battery and the TC cable connected to your board? I'm asking since you used the word "or" in (1).

The power pin on the TC cable is (usually) an output from your device and an input to your programmer. (The ULINK2.) This is to allow the programmer to adapt to the main voltage used on the device.

So generally, just connecting the programmer to your device doesn't provide any power. That could cause both (2) and (3).

--- ta2

[MartinBL]

That is a very good point. The TC cable cannot supply any power.