NRF52840 Dongle PCA10059 UART issues

[Esteban]

Hello everyone, I am trying to send and receive messages over UART using Teraterm, the PCA10059 dongle and the UART Android app.

I was following the directions found in the sdk documentation

I was able to flash the example program into the PCA10059 found in sdk 15 using nrfutil: nRF5_SDK_15.0.0_a53641a\examples\ble_peripheral\ble_app_uart\pca10056\s140

I have two questions: 

• Is it possible at all to use this example app with the PCA10059 even though it is a project for PCA10056?
• If so, then how can I actually test my program? I can't seem to get Teraterm to recognize the COM port when the device is plugged in, although the UART Android app is able to read and connect to the dongle. Teraterm only recognizes something is connected to the COM port when the dongle is in bootloader mode. 

I appreciate any input from you guys, thanks!

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

Generally, you need to adapt the example to the specific board you are using to get correct pin assignment etc. You can see how to do that under Using the SDK with other boards. However, for the nRF52840 dongle there is no UART connected to the PC, other than the virtual COM port that is used for programming via Serial DFU (USB).

You should consider the nRF52840 DK instead if you want to develop firmware for the nRF52840. The nRF52840 dongle is primarily intended to be used together with nRF Connect for desktop, and is not well suitable as a development board. This is primarily because it lacks an onboard debugger.

[Eric]

Does this mean you can't send UART messages over the USB port of the nRF52840 dongle?

[Einar Thorsrud]

You can implement a Virtual COM port (CDC ACM USB) on the nRF52840 dongle, as is done with the USB CDC ACM Example. Note that in this case you are not actually using the UART peripheral on the nRF52840 dongle at all, only USB.

If you use the DK instead, this has a onboard debugger which can also do USB-UART bridging, so that you can actually use the nRF52840 UART peripheral (useful at least if you are using the DK to develop an application that will use UART in the end).

[zsnave]

Well, not quite.  That "USB CDC ACM Example" only runs properly on the PCA10056.  When it is adapted to the PCA10059 the CLI functionality disappears.

[EvanJohnson]

Hey Zsnave,

Ideas about getting CLI functioning on the PCA_10059? Or around this? I noticed the same.