Use nRF5 SDK on nRF52832 Breakout Board through serial programming

[jakelstr]

Hello, I have a nRF52832 Breakout Board from SparkFun. I can see from their tutorial that I can program this board using the serial bootloader that they have burned into the chip, and that I can use the Arduino IDE and various libraries to program it. With that said, is it possible for me to use commands available in the nRF5 SDK and still program the board over serial, that is, without using JTAG programming or using the dev kit to load a program?

I have asked SparkFun tech support but they didn't seem to know.

[Matt]

There is no JTAG programming for nRF52, only SWD programming :) Not sure what you meant by "commands available in the nRF5 SDK", can you elaborate on that? I believe the SWD and SWDCLK are available in the SparkFun breakout board; you may need some soldering work though.

[jakelstr]

Sorry, I'm brand new to this board and Bluetooth 4.0 in general. Sparkfun made reference to JTAG programming, so that's what I said. I guess what I'm referring to is connecting this breakout board to Nordic's own dev kit for programming. (I don't have a dev kit.)

As for what I mean by "commands available in the SDK", just for totally random example, the function "uint32_t ble_bas_battery_level_update" appears as part of the "Battery Service Module" in the SDK... Is there a way that I can write programs using the SDK, but still program the device using SparkFun's serial bootloader? For example can I use ARMGCC to compile a program and somehow get it into the device over serial? Or do I cross some sort of line into needing to use SWD programming for it to work?

[Matt]

You should be able to use armgcc to compile your application and generate a bin file, and pass that bin file to the Sparkfun serial bootloader for flashing into the nRF52. I say "should" since I have not used the Sparkfun breakout board before...

[akash]

I am also using SDK to debug the sparkfun breakout board. Using the SWD and SWDCLK we can pass the data in breakout board. I am using SES instead of ARMGCC since eclipse is complex.