Flashing a 3rd party NFR52832 with ST link V2 on Eclise?

[MikeLemon]

Hello,

I am in a little bit of trouble here trying to flash a 3rd party module that is mounted on a custom PCB I made with the SWD pins exposed for programming.

I've been using it with the Arduino IDE and the st link V2 so far(Thus flashed softdevice S132 on it already) but I want to make the transacting from it sins it lacks capabilities. any way I know it works in term of hardware.

Now I'm not interested in wasting my money on buying the Segger J link so I want to use the ST link V2 so far I've followed this tutorial: devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../ up to the point of "Flash download" build the blinky code successful and waiting to see how you flash the chip with it.

Does anybody have any experience with it? thanks for your time.

[MikeLemon]

Yeah I've done just that. Is it suppose to work like seggers J link now?

Also a few thing I wanted to sort out for me but I don't think it's appropriate to post a whole question topic what is makefile for compilers? and when I want to upload an example from my SDK 11.0 to my 3rd party module which board folder to I head up to(for example PCA10040)? Can you get a visual C++ code from those examples? all I can see there is a makefile and .ld file

What is soft device? I have the S132 flashed on my board I assume it's some kind of bootloader for bluetooth could you make the bluetooth peripheral and central work without it?

[endnode]

Ooops, sorry but it would get a book to answer all these I'm afraid. If you are new to pure C development under GCC (where Makefiles and LD scripts are used to build and link the binary) you will need to find some general tutorials to this techno, there are many of them on the internet. Once you are fine with that you could approach nRF5 SDK. I would highly suggest to start with the latest release (v13.1.0) and nRF52 DK (PCA10040) board and just simply run few pre-compiled examples, then build them yourself and run again. Only then I would go to custom board (there are few rather simple steps how to "derive" header files for your custom board) and custom code. Sure, you can skip these steps but I cannot help you with that, sorry.

[endnode]

Also Soft Device isn't any kind of bootloader, it's simply BLE stack implementing certain parts of BT SIG specification on nRF5x HW. Soft Device itself does nothing, you need to build your application FW on top of its API, compile and link it properly for given start address (specific for each SD version) and load it to the chip. Only then something can run (but it will be mainly your FW code which will "boot" the chip and say if and when and how stack will be initialized).

[MikeLemon]

Well true I'm new to that kind of thing migrating from Arduino.

I guess I'll have to see how I work out with my custom board because I don't have money or time to buy two more DK's(Sins I have NFC involved if my project.)

Anyway's thank you very much that's been very helpful will grand the two answers at the top once confirmed to be working.

[MikeLemon]

Sorry for not letting this post die I just found some time to mess around with it where do you suggest I start learning that pure C programming assuming I'm a semi pro with arduino and programming? I just need a kick start to a video tutorial showing for to upload a blink code with that programmer to the MCU because I just don't know what elements I have or still need to do that.