Missing radio on NRF52832

[Ekorre]

I am getting no radio (as in not being able to pick up advertisements packets) from my custom nrf52832 board. The antenna design is a hack so I am not looking fo stellar performance, rather signs of life. It is a chip antenna (2450AT18A100) directly connected to the ANT output via a want to be 50 Ohm trace.

What I have done so far:

• Confirmed the design on the nrf52-DK board, works.
• Measured the crystal to 32 MHz and confirmed life from the software.
• Soldered a 60 mm copper wire to the chip antenna pad (with the antenna removed), still nothing (I have gotten away doing this before).
• Measured the air spectrum between 2402 and 2480 MHz to see if turning the circuit on and off makes a difference. Lets pretend that makes sense. Saw no difference in the very crowded range. I lack equipment to perform any proper measurements.

It is supererogatory to say that I do not know what I am doing. What I am looking for are hints on what to check, what I might have missed and if there is something that can be done in software to either help or troubleshoot. I will add a matching network on the next design. Before I bin the board I would like to know that I tried what I could.

Any ideas?

[Ekorre]

Hello and thank you for the comments!

I did discover the radio_test demo and really appreciate that you can select just about any pin as serial interface (as a feature of NRF) and control said demo.

I have to clarify. The application software was running like intended on the NRF52-DK board so I am loading the SD and app just fine.

Now to the good news. All seem to work and what made the difference was replacing the oscillator twice. Either I am junk at soldering or something else is up.

I use CSTCW32M0X51-R0 (PDF: www.murata.com/.../pdfdownloadapi as oscillator and cannot really find a reason not to. Is there one?

Something to bring home from this is the radio_test mentioned by Hung Bui above so I am marking that as the answer.

Again thanks!