BLE Transitioning from nRF51 to nRF52

[KCY]

Hi,

I am trying to transition from nRF51822 to nRF52840. I have the PCA10056 board to help me with the transition. I was able to make the BLE work with the nRF51822 by flashing the softdevice, and then the application program. However, with the nRF52840, I flashed the softdevice, and once I try to upload the .hex application, I get an error saying that "The hex file has data in the softdevice region. Try programming using "Program SoftDevice", or erase all before programming." The same thing happens even when I erase all and repeat the steps.

Thank you :)

[Vidar Berg]

Hi,

Are you testing with the pre-compiled .hex from the SDK by any chance? Those are merged with the softdevice already so you don't need to program the softdevice separately. 

e.g., 

nrfjprog --program "C:\nRF5_SDK_15.2.0_9412b96\examples\ble_peripheral\ble_app_hrs\hex\ble_app_hrs_pca10056_s140.hex" --chiperase -r

[KCY]

Thank you, Vidar! It works with the pre-compiled .hex. However when I try to compile my hex file, I get this error: "error: L6050U: The code size of this image (40220 bytes) exceeds the maximum allowed for this version of the linker." How can I solve this problem?

[Vidar Berg]

The free version of Keil has a 32K code size limit and most of the new examples exceeds this. You can buy a full license from Keil to fix this linker "error", or use Segger Embedded Studio which is a free alternative for Nordic customers.