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Serial UART to nRF8002 to Bluetooth 4.0 service

Peter Burkimsher

Hi Nordic Devs,

First, thank you for excellent documentation and sample code for use with your hardware. It's been tremendously useful already!

I'm pleased to own an nRF8002 Bluetooth LE chip, mounted on a proximity tracker (iCookie). I've soldered onto the test points, and made a breakout board for the serial UART.

Now I'd like to use the serial connection to send some data that will be transmitted as a characteristic of a Bluetooth 4.0 service.

I can see the nRF8002's broadcast services using LightBlue on my MacBook Pro. itunes.apple.com/.../id639944780

To communicate with the serial line, I have 5 options.

  1. My Raspberry Pi has 3.3V GPIO ports, including UART as an option.
  2. I have an old Toshiba laptop with a DB9 serial connector. I think that uses 5V.
  3. I have a SystemBase USB to RS422/485 adaptor. systembase.co/.../
  4. I have a CANUSB USB to serial adaptor. www.can232.com/
  5. I have a COMS USB to 485 adaptor. www.ebay.com/.../231089860247

As far as I can tell from the datasheet, the nRF8002 uses 3V levels, which means only the Raspberry Pi is safe to use. Can you confirm that?

I don't have a MAX3232 serial level converter, unfortunately, but I am looking to find one. If I get a voltage converter, would it be possible to then make the UART work with one of my serial adaptors, or the old Toshiba laptop?

nRFgo Studio only works on Windows. Do you have any suggestions for the Raspberry Pi?

I have 7 days to figure something out, but my equipment is limited to what I listed above.

I'm not trying to reverse-engineer the iCookie. The goal of this project is to make a wireless kitchen scale, which will require interfacing the weighing scale sensor-SPI-adaptor/Raspberry Pi-UART-nRF8002-Bluetooth-mobile app. The iCookie was selected by my manager as a cheap way to get access to a Bluetooth 4.0 chip.

Please let me know if there's anything you can suggest!

Peter Burkimsher

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    I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this is not possible. The UART interface of the nRF8002 is only usable for DTM testing and configuration of it, and can not be used to transfer custom data in any way. The nRF8002 is a hard-coded system-on-chip for proximity use cases, and you can not extend or change what profiles or services it supports in any way.

    I'd strongly recommend you to instead get hold of an nRF51822 kit of some kind, and develop with that. I understand that your 7 days timescale may be problematic, but there isn't really any way you can get the nRF8002 to do what you want.

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    I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this is not possible. The UART interface of the nRF8002 is only usable for DTM testing and configuration of it, and can not be used to transfer custom data in any way. The nRF8002 is a hard-coded system-on-chip for proximity use cases, and you can not extend or change what profiles or services it supports in any way.

    I'd strongly recommend you to instead get hold of an nRF51822 kit of some kind, and develop with that. I understand that your 7 days timescale may be problematic, but there isn't really any way you can get the nRF8002 to do what you want.

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