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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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  • 0

    If you are looking at a serial interface you can also look at the nRF8001 that provides a well defined serial interface (SPI) and you can use an Arduino to control the nRF8001. See devzone.nordicsemi.com/arduino Making a weighing scale with Arduino and the nRF8001 should be easy using the nRFgo Studio for nRF8001 configuration.

  • 0 in reply to David Edwin

    Yes, I will try to persuade my manager to buy more hardware when I've proven that I'm able to use what I have responsibly. Interfacing with the display bits might be easier, because I'm not certain if the epoxied chip is really showing an SPI port, or some other test points.

    I really appreciate all the project-specific help, and hope that we can continue to work on this. I've installed nRFgo Studio on the old Toshiba with the DB9 COM port, and the software is working fine. However, I'm afraid to plug it into the current chip I have. I know it's not the final development board we'll be using, but it really would be nice to show something practical to my manager rather than just a comment thread. If the 8002 is 5V safe, all will be well! But please confirm this, because I understand the datasheet to say that it's only able to run at 3V levels.

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  • 0 in reply to David Edwin

    Yes, I will try to persuade my manager to buy more hardware when I've proven that I'm able to use what I have responsibly. Interfacing with the display bits might be easier, because I'm not certain if the epoxied chip is really showing an SPI port, or some other test points.

    I really appreciate all the project-specific help, and hope that we can continue to work on this. I've installed nRFgo Studio on the old Toshiba with the DB9 COM port, and the software is working fine. However, I'm afraid to plug it into the current chip I have. I know it's not the final development board we'll be using, but it really would be nice to show something practical to my manager rather than just a comment thread. If the 8002 is 5V safe, all will be well! But please confirm this, because I understand the datasheet to say that it's only able to run at 3V levels.

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