New to NRF51422

[D_Hercules]

I am developing a product where I need to read a signal from an SPI ADC and send remotely to a receiver. This will be powered of a coin cell. I see that the NRF51422 is low power, but I am confused about how to program it... is the software available able to load a defined program on the NRF51422 much like any other microcontroller? or this chip is only useful for handling the signal transmission?

Is there another NRF chip that comes in a more friendly package, like soic or QFN? maybe less pins, but easier to prototype?

Thanks.. A little bit of pointers will go a long way. Right now I am using the NRF24L01 with an atmel micro, but I want to save space in my board by combining mcu and transmission in one chip.

[RK]

Yes you can program the nrf51822, it's a full MCU as well as radio and peripherals (it has an ADC on it by the way if you want to avoid using the SPI ADC, it also has SPI so you can read the SPI ADC if you use that).

the NRF51822 does come in QFN, it's one of the packaging options.

I suggest buying the development kit, it's cheap, it has an integrated JLink debugger you can use for testing your code and also programming your custom boards after you make them.

Nordic also has the nRF52 series chips which are even lower power and have even more features. I haven't tried hand-prototyping those yet, they have a pretty tight footprint which is more complicated than QFN (but not quite as bad as BGA).

[RK]

Yeah the nRF51s reflow easy and I have a homebuilt reflow toaster. Just ensure you skinny up the pads to the point your board house (I use Elecrow) can get some mask between the pads and do any usual kind of adjustments you make (I tend to lengthen a pads a little so I can touch up with an iron if necessary).

Elecrow's standard service will do 0.075mm pad clearance and 0.15mm minimum solder mast so that means for the nrf51s I get a max 0.1mm pad (0.1 + 0.15 + 2 * 0.075 == 0.4). I have done with without any mask between the pads and it does work, but you get a lower yield and get to play touch up with hot air quite a bit.