nordic thingy tutorials

[shangl]

hi,

i am quite new with programming tools like the nordic thingy and i am currently trying to get some initial program running, i.e. the blinky example. i have a few questions because i just cant get it running:

1. i found 2 sdks: the thingy sdk and the nRF5 sdk. which is the one to use?
2. i was able to compile the blinky example from the nRF5 sdk and tried to flash it by using "make flash". nothing happens
3. i tried to flash it manually via nrfjprog --family nrf52 --sectorerase --program _build/nrf52832_xxaa.hex --verify nrfjprog --family nrf52 --reset then actually the thingy starts blinking green, however, to me this seems more like an error. no matter how i change the code of main.c file, it always blinks with the same frequency (even if i change the sleep time or if i document out the code completely)

what am i doing wrong?

cheers simon

[Bjørn Kvaale]

You definitely want to use the Thingy SDK instead of the regular SDK. The LED of the Thingy by default "breathes" at a given interval (i.e. increases brightness for a given interval and then turns off for a given interval). The most probable reason that the LED blinks at the same frequency is that you haven't actually updated the Thingy:52 FW. If I were you, I would definitely take a look at the Nordic Infocenter and try to connect to the iOS or Android Thingy app first. Once you have gotten that working, you might want to have a look at this link here. As the link explains, there are two ways to upgrade the firmware of the Thingy. One thing to note is that you will need an nrf51 or 52 dev kit to be able to upgrade the Thingy: 52 firmware. Also, these two methods only work for Thingy FW that Nordic Semiconductor has written. Beware that if you want to upload custom FW, you will need to use Secure DFU. Hope that helps!

[Eugene0469]

thanks for the answer @Bjørn Kvaale. I see that you advise on using the thingy SDK. Is any way one can use the regular SDK, in my case, the SDK v15.2, and do I need to make any changes when using this SDK?

[Bjørn Kvaale]

You can try to get it working on the regular SDK, but you would need to make quite a few changes to the board header file, as the regular SDK is made to be used on development kits normally. The Thingy SDK is actually based on the nRF5 SDK v13, but with heavy modifications, so I would much rather recommend using the Thingy SDK. You should also be able to port the Thingy SDK to Segger Embedded Studio if you prefer this.

You could always add nRF5 features into the Thingy SDK if you want to do this.