Gazell nRF51822

[Andrew Kohlsmith]

Does the s210 softdevice not function on the nRF51822? I see it available for the nRF51422 here but it is listed under the 51422 only.

I have a v1.1.0 PCA10031 (nrf51422) and have written an LED blink example with s210 linked in and it works. If I take the same code and load it on a v2.2.0 PCA10000 (nRF51822) it does not work. Is this expected? Can the nRF51822 run Gazell or is it BLE and (enhanced) shockburst only?

I see several hints/references saying that the nRF51422 has hardware not available on the nRF51822, but nobody ever spells it out. I don't see anything obvious in a cursory review of the product specification documents of the relevant devices. Which specific hardware/peripheral does the nRF51422 hardware contain that is not on the nRF51822?

Can anyone help clarify? Can I run Gazell on the nRF51822 and if so, how?

[endnode]

Hi Andrew,

Your observation is correct, Nordic was solving ANT "licensing" on nRF51 by producing specific HW variants (nRF514xx) which are then running with ANT compatible radio stacks (there is even ANT+BLE variant). If you don't need ANT then you can use "BLE only" stacks S110/120/130 and these will run exactly the same on nRF514xx as well as nRF518xx, but S210/S310 run only on nR514xx.

To the Gazell: I believe that this Nordic-proprietary protocol is similar to ShockBurst (and ESB;) in terms of compatibility and licensing: it runs "beside" BLE/ANT stacks and it can run on any HW variant from nRF5x family. If you want to run it on your nRF51 DK then with your variant according to compatibility matrix (see on Infocenter) you should be able to use the "latest" nRF5 SDK v12.3.0 (v13 drops nRF51 support for the moment) and there are Gazell examples ready for PCA10031 (at least I see it in .\nRF5_SDK_12.3.0_d7731ad\examples\proprietary_rf\gzll\gzp_dynamic_pairing\host\ ).

Cheers Jan

[endnode]

And btw. if you are designing new HW it might be good to consider migration to nRF52 as it is more powerful, yet more power efficient and BOM cost isn't big difference. There should be experimental Gazell support since SDK v12.