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Is nRF51822 bluetooth smart beacon kit able to prototype?

hello everyone,

I am doing a project about Ibeacons. I need to make a selfmade bluetooth smart beacon (excuse me for bad English). I found a schematic circuit design of nRF51822 Bluetooth smart beacon on this link: infocenter.nordicsemi.com/.../nRF6930_Beacon_Ref_Design_UG_v1.1.pdf (PAGE 22)

I was wondering if the Schematic Circuit Design is complete for prototype and making a PcB layout, not that there are things missing on the Schematic Circuit and need to be attached on.

I really hope somebody could help me or give me tips.

  • The schematic looks complete to me.

    However the schematic is the easy bit, the PCB antenna design is the difficult thing.

    You should read infocenter.nordicsemi.com/index.jsp

    and create a My Page account to download the hardware files.

    BTW. I'm not sure what you mean by "selfmade". Do you mean you have to solder a beacon together, or design it from scratch and then assemble it or get it made

  • Thank you for your response

    Design it from scratch and theb assemble it. And if i want to program the microcontroller, do i need solder the microcontroller on the pcb layout. And what is difficult on the pcb antenna?

  • What is difficult on the antenna?;) If you have experience with 2.4GHz radio design then it should be fine. If not then you will have massive amount of things to learn, doing several trials and errors. Why you don't buy any of dozens off-the-shelf beacons on the market and you want to go through the 6-18 month pain of custom HW design and manufacturing?

  • But, if you're just copying the reference chematic, you are not designing "from scratch" - are you??