Nordic will release a new development kit in april, named mkit. It is based on arm mbed.
Writing a ble app will be easy, fast and simple using mbed BLE API.
My question to Nordic is : Will Nordic provide a mac os x version (patch) of CMSIS-DAP debugger for its chip ? or all os x developers will be left :( :( :( .
-c
I'm pretty sure Nordic isn't going to release a MacOS version of CMSIS-DAP, even if they did, what debugger on OSX would work with it? There seem to be few enough debuggers on windows which can use it, unless someone has written an Eclipse plug-in (in java accessing a HID) then there's nothing on OSX I know of which would be able to use it.
mbed looks pretty good, nice idea and it's great to see Nordic adapting a product for it. It's also nice to see ARM making an alternative to Segger debugging, although why they used HID I really don't know, it's not a HID in any way, and that limits drivers on OSX, HIDs are special. I would have expected a simple CDC type device which anyone could write to, even libusb. If ARM wants this to be 'the' development environment for embedded Cortex, they're going to need to pick an OSX debugging platform and write a driver for it.
Right now all that remains is to hope in OpenOCD fork with CMSIS-DAP support, but it's in early stage.
If mbed had used libhid instead of libusb, it would be compatible with everything (Win-OSX-Linux).
As usual, the myopia is total.
If Apple had not put BLE in its devices, Bluetooth Low Energy would still be something curious but without practical applications ( and something near zero as chipset sale).
All BLE applications come from iOS and OSX developers, and what do they do? A Windows and linux based Development Environment. What geniuses.
libhid, yes that's partly what I meant when I wondered why they made the device a HID. I don't hold a lot of hope out for the OpenOCD fork either, and if they do pull it off I still don't know what on-mac debugger we'd be using. Eclipse probably. Xcode has lost any extensibility it used to have, there's a couple others have said OSX support is coming.
I can see why it is this way, embedded development just hasn't been done on Mac in the past, the tools just don't exist, there are only a handful of Mac dev platforms worth using and none of those were designed for embedded. So when ARM went to find a platform to write a reference CMSIS-DAP they picked someone they knew, Keil. There's probably a huge opportunity out there for someone to sell a proper OSX embedded dev environment.
I agree with you, BLE has changed the world and kits like the ones we're using from Nordic, and others, have put embedded development into the hands of individuals and small groups (although the Bluetooth group just shot itself in the foot with the change in fee structure). Tools haven't caught up yet.
