iBeacon - Production Programming and Configuration

[Dan]

Okay, noob alert. I am designing a product that requires a simple iBeacon (redundant?). I have this hardware on my bench: nRF51822 Bluetooth Smart Beacon Kit and downloaded documentation; 2x nRF51 Dongle; nRF52 Development kit.

I would like to copy the nRF51822 beacon reference design (hardware). But can anyone please help me figure out how to program the chip with a new design - that is, fresh chips, never been programmed. Related issue - I cannot connect to the nRF51822 beacon using the "Nordic Beacon" app on my iPhone. The beacon is operating - flashing the purple LED color every few seconds. Thanks in advance -

[Hieu]

Regarding the your inability to connect to the beacon, do you mean you cannot scan and find your beacon? I am fairly sure the beacon in the beacon example cannot be connected to. That beacon only broadcast advertising information. (I could be wrong, been a few weeks since I last looked at it).

[Dan]

Thanks - using the iPhone app, it doesn't find anything. Nothing. Using the Windows nRF Connect program, it does find it. So I know it's broadcasting. I also see my wife's smart watch, and the iPhone app doesn't see that either. So maybe it's a problem with the "Nordic Beacon" on my phone.

[Øyvind Karlsen]

Hi,

See this blogpost, on using the 6-pin tag header to program the beacon kit.

Best regards,

Øyvind

[Dan]

thanks, I have that cable now. But I can't compile the example project. I am using Kyle uVision and it isn't finding core_cmInstr.h ("no such file or directory"). I have googled and can't figure this out. The library file does exist in the folder structure. Why doesn't it find this file? I did see something posted that stated that some project was not compatible with Kyle tools. I think I'm close, I just need to be able to program this beacon board with new values. Can anyone help me compile this thing? Thank you.

[Øyvind Karlsen]

You need to build you the kit you are using, since the beacon is getting quite old you might have one that uses an older revision chip on it. This in turn means that the device might not be compatible with the most recent SDK and SoftDevice. Please see the compatibility matrix.