NRF52832 - real time tasks(CAN Open)

Question

Would it be advisable for system design to use CAN(CAN Open) and BT simultaneously on nRF52832 IC? 
 Why this bothers me is because capabilities of nRF BT MCU's are growing both in processor power and memory size, but still soft-device can interrupt you whenever it wants and for how long it wants. Do you guys use nRF52 for real-time tasks except BT?

endnode · Accepted Answer

It could work if you are sure that your SW driven interface will fit into certain uninterrupted time slot. That is typically few milliseconds wide but with some effort and limitations you can extend it to much more. However if CAN use case you have in mind is asynchronous with some longer unpredictable activity then you are almost certain to fail. nRF5x are great MCUs but if your desired interface isn't supported in HW it's better to sacrifice few cents (or bucks), few dozens of microAmps, some PCB real estate an put dedicated low-power MCU to handle that (and that being connected with SPI or I2C). I've seen several designs with NXP LPC or STM ST32 and nRF5x which were pretty good in exactly this.

NRF52832 - real time tasks(CAN Open)

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