Tools and Set-up - switching from another vendor.

[Mramalfi1]

Greetings,

Trying to fast-track my set-up and use of the Nordic Semi devices and toolchain. My questions/comments are as follows:

1 - What is the best *free* option for setting up a *GUI-based* development environment ? We've used the IAR compiler with a different toolset and it was really nice. However, the latest quote I received was substantially out-of-range. The limited/eval version will not fit our needs. 

1B. Are there any illustrations of the GCC toolchain in use ?

2 - Our company currently owns a nRF52840 Preview Development Kit *and* a 'Nordic Thingy:52'

3 - Need to know which of the SDK offerings to download. Seems there were some specific offerings for the 52840, but one was labeled - going from memory - Threads, .... We will be doing some RTOS projects so need whichever version will support those activities. Also, doing a lot of BLE development - is this handled by the SoftDevices ?

4 - Looking explicitly for an (external ADC) accelerometer/BLE template, if available.

5 - Any other hints/tips that can get us up and running ASAP

Regards,

Mr. Amalfi

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

1. In my opinion, the best IDE for developing for nRF devices is Segger Embedded Studio. This is a commercial tool, but Nordic pays Segger to provide it free of charge for all nRF5 development, so there is no cost associated with it for our customers. The SDK examples also provide projects for other IDE's as well as Makefiles for GCC

3. I recommend you to start with SDK 15, which has support for all nRF52 devices. You can find documentation for it on Infocenter. The SDK include a FreeRTOS port with a few examples, such as the Heart Rate Application with FreeRTOS. The SoftDevice is Nordics BLE stack. The S140 version 6.0.0 SoftDevice is the first (and so far only) qualified SoftDevice for the nRF52840.

4. The SDK contains a number of examples that you should find helpful.

5. My top advice to get quickly up to speed is to spend time going through the Getting started chapter.

Good luck with nRF development!