Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

cookieeeeee — Sun, 03 Dec 2017 23:44:26 GMT

Just a follow up for this question. For now, I could successfully made the BLE broadcast from Taiyo Yuden board, and for now blink a LED on my PCB. Thanks for all the help !!

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

cookieeeeee — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 23:08:49 GMT

Thanks guys. Sure, I will try go through with that. Now I think the BMD board works ok, I will try to see if I could get the Taiyo Yuden board working also.

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

Matt — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 23:04:28 GMT

No need to just "stick" to yourself on BLE problem, just ask in this forum and the good folks will try to pitch in and help :)

BTW for the RTT trace I have to define something like

CFLAGS += -DNRF_LOG_USES_RTT=1

in my makefile for my nRF52 work. I'm not sure if you have to do something similar for your nRF51 work. Better ask about this one, as a separate topic, in the forum.

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

Matt — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 22:59:10 GMT

I just scanned the datasheet of BMD200 and as far as external components are concerned, it is almost identical to BMD350 (16MHz vs 32 MHz crystal) so it's a mystery why your own sample code worked in the DK but not in BMD200.

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

cookieeeeee — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 22:52:49 GMT

To AmbystomaLabs, I tried with the uart example code, I also works now... I could change the advertised name so that I'm sure the code complies on the board.

I think I will move on to read more about the code itself.

Also actually now the solution is very simple to me, loading two code to the board with nRFGo and it's done. I think I got pretty nervous before using the Keil and stuck to myself on this problem, and wasted a lot of time repeating my mistakes again and again...

Thanks again.

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

cookieeeeee — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 22:47:10 GMT

Thanks Matt, yes I have go through the tutorial with the DK part and after that trying to do what I have did so far. Since now, I am clear how to program and what I did wrong with my software, I think I will keep reading more about the BLE code part. Thanks

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

Matt — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 22:42:54 GMT

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

cookieeeeee — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 22:39:17 GMT

Thanks for your help AmbystomaLabs.

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

cookieeeeee — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 22:38:07 GMT

Thanks Matt, but your link fails..

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

Matt — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 22:35:53 GMT

Have you gone through the tutorials here (devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../) I knew nothing about nRF52 a year ago and so I started with those tutorials and they really helped me a lot to learn the BLE basics (the Nordic style, of course!).

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

cookieeeeee — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 22:34:18 GMT

Except the Beacon example code, is there any other doc or tutorials you would recommend to read through? I went through the nrf51822 tutorial pages already, but still pretty confused about how to drive my own design code.

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

cookieeeeee — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 22:29:44 GMT

Sure, I had some ttl cables, I will also try that!

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

AmbystomaLabs — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 22:29:35 GMT

And Cookieeeee, that is good that you would prefer coding using the registers. I always find that easier too. You can do in one line what normally takes many lines if you use the drivers.

Just remember that the softdevice has priority in the processor. So the exact same processor resources you use in your app code are being used by the softdevice. Because of this some register settings are considered protected and should not be written to directly. The data sheet defines these.

Similarly ISR's from the SD have priority over your codes ISR's. Because of this don't try to do tasks that require microsecond accuracy using ISR's. There are many hardware tools like timers/counters/PPI/GPIOTE to work around these issues. You should familiarize yourself with them.

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

cookieeeeee — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 22:27:53 GMT

I have load the code to the BMD200 board, and if your code name device using Nordic_UART, I could scan it from my phone. Also,at early time I tried to program the board with LED, it also work.

Ok, for now I think I get out from a confuse region where I could not make my board works. Now, I need to understand how I could make the board to do the BLE.

Thanks for your help!

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

Matt — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 22:23:15 GMT

Do get the binaries from AmbystomaLabs as that should give you some indication as to whether the BMD200 is really working or not. And IF you have some spare cycles left after that, how about cough out a few dollars to get the usb to ttl serial cable (eg. www.adafruit.com/.../954), attach the tx, rx and gnd to the corresponding pins in BMD200, and insert the usb end into your pc (win 7 or 8, should work with 10), install the usb driver, and viola you get a virtual COM port on your pc through which you can observe your serial debug messages (say with putty).

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

AmbystomaLabs — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 22:17:39 GMT

See below. The beacon code is pretty simple and will accomplish your need of proving your board will broadcast. It is straight from SDK 12.2 except I edited the RTC settings.

You will have a lot to learn about programming these devices. It takes a lot of code to make bluetooth work. Beacon code is some of the simplest and the API commands for the softdevice are pretty straightforward.

If you look in the Nordic documentation for S130 all of the API commands are explained in detail. It is a good place to start understanding how the code works.

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

AmbystomaLabs — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 22:13:37 GMT

Cookieeeee, Just do an erase all in nRFGO then install the enclosed S130 and then using the application tab install the enclosed beacon.hex file. Your dev board will then broadcast as a beacon.
Beacon.hex has been modded to use the internal RC RTC.

s130_nrf51_2.0.1_softdevice.hex

beacon.hex

Let me know how it goes.

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

cookieeeeee — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 21:28:39 GMT

Many thanks for your help! Yes, I had trouble looking for some basic example code which I could read through and understand like what initial functions should I put, and how to set up the variables. Like for Atmel chip I would read through the datasheet and find out those setting in registers. But for nrf series, I just tried my best to search some examples, but didn't really find a one I could understand.

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

AmbystomaLabs — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 21:26:49 GMT

You don't need to have the com port pinned out. It seems like you just want it to broadcast for now. I'll send you a few different builds of code you can use. Just give me a few minutes.

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

cookieeeeee — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 21:24:41 GMT

Thanks AmbystomaLabs, thing is I only had a breakout board with the BLE chip, there is no uart interface with my PC. I was trying to run some example code from SDK and make sure my board works and base on that set up some GPIO functions and interrupt functions and data transmission through the BLE. I just tried using the uart example with nRF Studio, the code works fine on the DK, but not on the BMD200 board. Do you think my step was wrong? Should I first try some GPIO example code, like just toggle a pinevery second and then put the BLE in? I had experience developing Atmel chips, and experience using the chip with RF or BLE. For the past, I would just connect for example the UART line from the BLE chip to the Atmel chip and by sending data from the Atmel to the BLE with UART, the data would be seen by the phone. But I don't have experience programming the BLE chip itself.

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

AmbystomaLabs — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 21:17:36 GMT

Cookieeee, don't try to add RTT to your code that is way beyond your experience level. I will send you a compiled uart example.

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

cookieeeeee — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 20:14:00 GMT

Yes, for now I switch to first try play around with the Rigado chip. I used a Jlink connecting the SWD interface from the chip and use nRFGo to load the code.

I think the connection is ok since I now use a brand new Rigado chip, and use the nRFGo to programm it. Upon opening the nrfgo, it says you must erase the chip before you can programming, then I just click the erase and the chip is successfully be erased, and with this I think the connections are good.

For the RTT debug, I have tried with this link. Since the SDK I'm using is ver 12.2.0, I assume I just need to do the configuration in the wizard, which I did. Then I load the code, open the RTT terminal, but there is nothing print on it.

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

Matt — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 19:10:43 GMT

Can you add segger_rtt tracing to your example code? Run the example code in the DK and check the trace in RTT viewer in your pc, then run the example code in the Rigado BMD200 and check the trace again in the RTT viewer. Also, can you double check the Segger JLink flasher connection to the Rigado BMD200? I assume you have a separate Segger JLink flasher and are not using the nRF51 DK to program the BMD200, right?

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

cookieeeeee — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 18:48:10 GMT

Thanks for your kind reply.

I will go through the nRFGo studio again to build my project.

Thing is, my project need to have a BLE function to the phone so I could transfer some data in between, that's why I was trying to load a uart or a beacon code to my own board so that I could make sure my boards works with BLE and base on that I could then add more function into it. Just like when first develop a chip using LED blink example to make sure the board works.

I just tried use nRFGO to load the UART code with DK, it works fine, but if I load the code to my own board, nothing happens, I change nothing in the code.

Do you think my way would work?

I will try find more on how to use the nRFGO and solder some new boards and do again.

RE: Problems with Programming nRF51822 customized board

AmbystomaLabs — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 17:51:28 GMT

I should clarify the error is from the rom settings being wrong since nRFGo doesn't care about the ram settings. But likely both are wrong in your project.