Reference design nRF51822 + sensor

[Vishal]

Hi, Are there any reference design for interfacing a nRF51822 with an external sensor for e.g. an accelerometer (STM LIS3DH, AD ADXL362 etc)

Also do we have a profile of the utilization of the Cortex M0 in the nRF51822, is there any bandwidth left for processing sensor data (assuming I am xmitting data every 2 seconds) or do I need a separate uC to work with the sensor (in which case its pretty straight forward)

We are trying to shortlists BT radios + controller for our design and wanted to do a quick survey of the current capabilities of available & upcoming products before doing a in-depth evaluation. Since its not a specific technical question, hoping that this is an acceptable forum to post this

[Ole Morten]

There isn't any reference design as such, but due to the flexible pin-mapping of the digital interfaces of the nRF51822, you can hook most I2C/SPI/UART sensors to any pin, and use them directly.

As for the CPU availability, this is covered by the S110 SoftDevice specification, so I'd recommend you to take a look on it. You may have to create a MyPage account to download it.

[Vishal]

Thanks Ole.

Looks like I can hook up sensors directly and based on the S110 specifications it appears it might be sufficient to run our algorithm but would need to do an evaluation

It appears that nRF51822-mKIT is more suitable than nRF51822 DK for my portable health device evaluation. Is that a fair statement ? However it is available only on pre-order ... when is it expected to be available ?

Regards Vishal

[Ole Morten]

The mkit is only available for pre-order yet, and the only difference between it and the evaluation kit is direct compatibility with the online mbed tools. I'd therefore say that either the development kit or the evaluation kit should be better options for most applications currently. Take a look at this question for the differences between them: https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/index.php/what-s-the-difference-between-nrf51822-evaluation-and-development-kits

To clear up this question, I'd also be happy if you could accept my reply as an answer, by clicking the button below it!